COLUMBIA, S.C. —

A judge will determine whether evidence of disbarred South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh's alleged financial crimes is admissible in an upcoming double-murder trial that has drawn worldwide attention for its bizarre twists.

Prosecutors recently said that Murdaugh killed his wife and youngest son last year to gain sympathy and distract others from his damning financial crimes. On Friday, prosecutors and defense attorneys debated the relevance of those years of alleged financial misdeeds that lined Murdaugh’s pockets with nearly $9 million.

Murdaugh, the disgraced heir to a Lowcountry legal dynasty, has pleaded not guilty and repeatedly denied any involvement in the June 2021 slayings of his wife, Maggie, 52, and their son Paul, 22.

According to prosecutors, at the time of the killings, Murdaugh was terrified about a pending motion that threatened to expose years of substantial debts and illicit financial crimes by revealing his personal records. Such a move would have spelled “personal, legal, and financial ruin” for Murdaugh, state grand jury chief prosecutor Creighton Waters wrote in a filing Thursday.

Prosecutors said Murdaugh was a drug addict who helped run a money laundering and painkiller ring and stole millions from settlements he secured for mostly poor clients to fund an increasingly unsustainable lifestyle.

According to Waters, high-profile, six-figure cases had failed to alleviate Murdaugh's financial woes, prompting Murdaugh to do anything to avoid his “day of reckoning” — including murder.

Conveniently for Murdaugh, Waters said, the discovery of his slain family members temporarily suspended the increased scrutiny over his finances. Murdaugh would spend the following days collecting money to account for missing fees sought by his law firm, Waters said.

“This is a white-collar case that culminated in murders," Waters told Circuit Judge Clifton Newman on Friday.

A motive is not necessary for a prosecutor to win a murder conviction — a point Waters made in the state's latest filing. But Murdaugh's lawyers asked the state to spell out the motive in order to justify including a million pages of evidence related to over 80 counts of alleged financial crimes.

Murdaugh’s defense attorneys insisted Friday that the alleged crimes amounted to character evidence that is not admissible into murder trials.

Defense attorney Jim Griffin said it is ridiculous to claim that a person seeking to distract from financial crimes would then put themself at the center of a murder investigation.

Griffin also said there is no reason to admit the financial documents since there’s no evidence that Murdaugh’s family knew of any alleged crimes or that Murdaugh stood to benefit from collecting any life insurance policies.

The idea that Murdaugh sought to engender sympathy through the deaths is also illogical, according to Griffin, considering Murdaugh's father was dying on the day they were slain — an experience sure to provide plenty of pity.

The defense has criticized what they see as the slow release of evidence linking Murdaugh to the slayings.

Central to the defense's concerns is the presence of blood stains on a white T-shirt allegedly worn by Murdaugh on the night of the killings. Attorney Dick Harpootlian has argued that South Carolina Law Enforcement Division agents successfully persuaded a forensic consultant to reverse his initial judgment and instead say the stains must be backspatter from a bullet wound. Harpootlian said SLED destroyed the shirt and had evidence suggesting the stains were not a human's blood.

Defense attorneys on Friday sought an evidentiary hearing compelling the state to provide all communications with the consultant. Prosecutors said any ruling on the bloody shirt's consideration would be premature as they themselves are still assessing whether they will use it as evidence.

Throughout Friday’s hearing, Murdaugh, donning a blazer, sat unshackled and could occasionally be seen speaking with his attorneys.

Prosecutors shared inklings of new details earlier this week. Within a minute of his first conversation with responding officers on the day of the killings, Murdaugh allegedly claimed the slaying must have been connected to the February 2019 boat wreck that killed teenager Mallory Beach.

Beach was killed when authorities say an intoxicated Paul Murdaugh wrecked his father's boat — an event that ultimately led to dozens of charges accusing Alex Murdaugh of stealing nearly $5 million in settlement money from lawyers who sued him over the death. Murdaugh now faces additional charges involving money laundering, a narcotics ring, a staged attempt on his life and millions of additional stolen funds.

And while Murdaugh seemed wealthy, prosecutors said it was a series of land deals worsened by recession that “permanently changed his finances.”

The events of the past 18 months have marked a steep fall for the Murdaughs. The family founded a massive civil law firm over 100 years ago in tiny Hampton County, where — alongside four surrounding counties — Murdaugh’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather dominated the legal scene as the area’s elected prosecutors for more than eight decades.

“The jury will need to understand the distinction between who Alex Murdaugh appeared to be to the outside world — a successful lawyer and scion of the most prominent family in the region — and who he was in the real life only he fully knew — an allegedly crooked lawyer and drug user who borrowed and stole wherever he could to stay afloat and one step ahead of the detection,” Waters wrote Thursday.

NEW YORK —

Nearly four years after Jeffrey Epstein's death, thousands of pages of records obtained by The Associated Press are shedding new light on the financier’s time behind bars and a frantic response by federal corrections officials to his death.

The documents, including emails between jail officials and psychological evaluations, offer a fuller picture of Epstein as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges at the now-shuttered Metropolitan Correctionalnassar Center.

Epstein killed himself at the federal jail in 2019. In the days and weeks that followed, corrections officials struggled to explain how such a high-profile detainee had managed to take his own life.

The records show how he was moved from the jail’s general population to specialized housing and how he was briefly on suicide watch before being downgraded to psychiatric observation — his status when he killed himself.

Here are takeaways from the more than 4,000 pages of documents:

AN AGITATED INMATE

Epstein was anxious and despondent during much of his time in jail, prompting concern from jail guards and psychological experts about his mental state. He complained often about jail life, including poor sleep, constipation, the color of his uniform and his treatment by other detainees. The noise from a broken toilet in his cell left him sitting in the corner with his hands over his ears, according to one psychologist.

But despite his litany of complaints, Epstein insisted that he wouldn't take his own life. Even after he was discovered on his cell's floor with a strip of bedsheet around his neck and placed on suicide watch for 31 hours, he denied that he was contemplating suicide, which he said was against his Jewish religion. Plus, he added, he was a “coward” who didn’t like pain.

“He described having a ‘wonderful life,’’” a psychological evaluation stated. “He said ‘it would be crazy’ to take his life. He furthered, ‘I would not do that to myself.’”

A LETTER TO ANOTHER SEX OFFENDER

Among the new revelations was an attempt by Epstein to reach out to another notorious pedophile: Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexually abusing scores of young athletes.

A letter sent by Epstein to Nassar was found returned to sender in the jail’s mail room weeks after Epstein’s death. “It appeared he mailed it out and it was returned back to him,” the investigator who found the letter told a corrections official by email. “I am not sure if I should open it or should we hand it over to anyone?”

The letter itself wasn't included among the documents turned over to the AP, which also don't indicate what became of the letter.

FINAL PHONE CALL

Epstein was found dead on the morning of Aug. 10, 2019. He had hanged himself with a bedsheet, according to the medical examiner. Hours earlier, he appears to have successfully deceived jail guards one last time by telling them he wanted to talk on the phone to his mother, who had been dead for 15 years.

A correctional officer escorted Epstein to a shower area at around 7 p.m., where he was permitted to make a 15 minute “social call.” Reports later indicated that he had phoned his 30-year-old girlfriend.

Weeks after his death, a jail warden questioned why an employee had failed to follow policy by allowing Epstein to make an unmonitored call.

MUDDLED RESPONSE

The documents shed light on the lurching response by the Bureau of Prisons in the critical hours of Epstein’s death.

In one email, a prosecutor involved in Epstein’s criminal case complained to an agency lawyer that it was “frankly unbelievable” that the agency was issuing public news releases “before telling us basic information so that we can relay it to his attorneys who can relay it to his family.”

In another email, the prosecutor wrote of getting “increasingly frantic calls” from Epstein’s lawyers.

“We need to know as soon as possible the very basic facts, such as time and cause of death at the absolute minimum,” wrote the prosecutor, whose name was redacted. “It has now been hours since this was reported publicly,” the prosecutor wrote, adding that it was “extraordinary frustrating to have to tell them that we have less information than the press.”

As news outlets began reporting details of the agency’s failings, a high-ranking federal prison official made the apparently baseless suggestion to the agency’s director that reporters must have been paying jail employees for information.

THE AFTERMATH

Epstein’s death touched off a wave of anger toward the Bureau of Prisons and questions about the operation of the Metropolitan Correctional Center. In an internal memo, officials blamed “seriously reduced staffing levels, improper or lack of training, and follow up and oversight” for the death.

Two guards who were supposed to be watching Epstein on the night of his death were found to have falsified records, admitting to napping and browsing the internet instead of monitoring the high-profile inmate.

The documents show other efforts to implement reforms, such as requiring jail captains to review footage, ensuring that guards are completing their rounds every 30 minutes. Jail officials said they would allow psychological experts to play a larger role in determining how housing decisions are made.

In some respects, the officials may have overcorrected. A memo sent to the Bureau of Prisons director shortly after Epstein’s death warned that wardens were “defaulting to leaving inmates on suicide watch longer than the psychologists have advised.”

By 2021, the Metropolitan Correctional Center had closed down. An investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general is still ongoing.

Prosecutors inched closer on Friday to concluding their case at the R. Kelly sex-trafficking trial, calling two final witnesses to try to further cement allegations he groomed young victims for unwanted sex in episodes dating to the 1990s.

One witness was a former assistant for the R&B singer who echoed testimony of other ex-employees describing his mercurial behavior and the control he exerted on everyone around him.

The other was an expert witness on abusive relationships who is to return to the witness stand for cross-examination on Monday before the government rests.

The expert, psychologist Dawn Hughes, testified about studies showing that many abusers systematically isolate, demean, subjugate and spy on their victims as means of control — all tactics allegedly used by Kelly. Generally speaking, it isn't unusual for powerful people like Kelly to be surrounded by underlings who "knew about it and didn't do anything,” Hughes said.

Prosecutors played recordings for the jury Wednesday they say back up allegations the R&B singer abused women and girls.

In court papers, prosecutors have described tapes of a profane Kelly threatening violence against victims during recorded rants in 2008.

Jurors listened to the recording using headphones. There was no audio for the press and public — already restricted by the judge to an overflow courtroom as a coronavirus precaution — making it impossible to know exactly what the panel was seeing or hearing, or how it was reacting to it.

A video feed to the overflow courtroom showed Kelly not wearing the headphones that would have allowed him to listen.

The defense was expected to begin putting on its case later Monday, with closing arguments possible before the end of the week at a New York City trial that began on Aug. 18.

The 54-year-old defendant, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, has pleaded not guilty to racketeering charges accusing him of running a Chicago-based enterprise of managers, bodyguards and other employees who helped him recruit and transport his victims. That alleged travel violated the Mann Act, which makes it illegal to transport anyone across state lines for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

The Grammy-winning artist has vehemently denied the charges, claiming that the women were groupies who wanted to take advantage of his fame and fortune until the #MeToo movement turned them against him.

Prosecutors in the office of the Manhattan District Attorney are in possession of former President Donald Trump’s tax records, CNBC and CNN reported on Thursday.

Prosecutors served a subpoena against Trump’s accounting firm Monday, hours after the Supreme Court denied Trump’s request to keep his returns private.

CNN reports that the district attorney’s office is now in possession of millions of pages of tax documents spanning from January 2011 to August 2019.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday ended a nearly two-year legal battle over the privacy of Trump’s taxes. Attorneys are investigating the former president and his business for alleged tax fraud, but no charges have been filed as of yet.

The documents will likely not be made public, as they are subject to grand jury secrecy rules. However, the investigation could dog Trump in his post-presidency years and could hinder his attempts to run for office again should it advance further.

In a statement released following the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday, Trump called the district attorney’s investigation a “fishing expedition.”