We're closing up our live coverage of today's trial. Thank you for reading.

Alex Murdaugh is back in the docket tomorrow for the rest of his cross-examination.

Contributors to today's page were: Marianna Brady, Chelsea Baily, Jason Armesto, Bernd Debusmann, Sam Cabral, Jessica Murphy, Chloe Kim, Grace Conley, and Thomas Mackintosh.

Please check back with us again for more coverage.

Court has just adjourned after a day in which Alex Murdaugh took the stand in his own defence in this gripping trial that has had plenty of twists and turns.

His cross-examination by prosecutors will continue tomorrow.

Here are some of the key developments in the trial today.

In often emotional testimony, Alex Murdaugh denied shooting and killing his wife Maggie and son Paul in June 2021.

• He did, however, admit to a slew of other wrongdoings, including lying about his whereabouts on the night of the murders and stealing money from clients to feed his opioid addiction.
• Murdaugh and his team have implied that the deaths of Maggie and Paul were related to a 2019 drunk boating accident that left one of Paul's friends dead.
• He also said that he hired a hitman to shoot him dead to spare his son the embarrassment that he expected would come after allegations of financial misappropriation came to light.
• Prosecutors have called into question Murdaugh's alibi and sought to point out inconsistencies in his testimony.
• Ultimately, they believe that Paul and Maggie's death was part of a desperate effort to cover-up his financial crimes.

That's all for today. The court has adjourned until Friday.

Creighton Waters said he needs a few more hours for his cross-examination. We'll be back tomorrow.

In another of a series of contentious exchanges over what the prosecutor said were straightforward questions, Murdaugh and Creighton Waters have sparred over whether Murdaugh lived a "wealthy" lifestyle.

The exchange came as Waters sought to examine the amounts of money misappropriated by Murdaugh.

Despite having acknowledged that he made more than $1m a year - as well as owning multiple properties and a hunting lodge - Murdaugh said he wouldn't "characterise it" as such.

Waters has also gone through several of the high-profile - and profitable - cases that Murdaugh took one during his legal career.

This trial has a lot of twists and turns, here are some dates to keep in mind:

• 26 February 2018 - Murdaugh family housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, dies at their home believed to have been a trip and fall.
• 24 February 2019 - Paul Murdaugh was allegedly intoxicated when he crashed the family's boat into Archer's Creek Bridge, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach. This often referred to as "the boat case" in the trial.
• 7 June 2021 - Paul and Maggie Murdaugh were shot and killed on the family's hunting estate. Alex frantically calls 911 to report the shooting.
• 10 June 2021 - A hearing was scheduled for this day the Mallory Beach "boat case" trial. Instead, Alex is interviewed by state investigators in connection to his wife and son's murders. Later that day, his father, Randolph, dies.
• 4 September 2021 - Alex calls 911 and claims that he was ambushed and shot in the head on the side of the road. Later that month, he admits to staging the attack in an attempt to die so his son, Buster, could collect his life insurance payout. Alex also admits to stealing money from his law firm and checks into rehab.
• 14 July 2022 - Alex Murdaugh is charged with the murder of his wife and son. He also faces separate charges in connection to alledgely stealing millions in legal settlements from his clients.

Holly Honderich
BBC News, Washington

Image source, Reuters

Outside this trial, Alex Murdaugh is facing a mountain of charges for financial crimes. Investigators say he stole some $8.8m (£7.3m) from clients and colleagues over a decade.

His alleged financial crimes have played a big role in the murder trial, after the judge ruled that they were admissible at trial - a big win for prosecutors.

The financial crimes, prosecutors argue, is key to Murdaugh’s motive. They say he killed his wife and son in a desperate effort to conceal his wrongdoing, as his theft and embezzlement neared exposure.

Murdaugh has yet to enter a plea in these cases, but his friends and colleagues have testified that he confessed and apologised for the theft.

State prosecutor Creighton Waters is walking Alex Murdaugh through each instance that he allegedly stole millions of dollars in settlement money from his clients.

Throughout the course of the trial, he has admitted that he stole money from his former clients and that he was wrong. The state claims that he murdered his wife and son because his financial misdeeds were going to be exposed.

Murdaugh denies he was concerned about his "financial house of cards" collapsing.

“You have charged me with murder of my wife and son and I have sat here for all these weeks listening to all this financial stuff that I did wrong, that I’m embarrassed by,” Murdaugh said.

“The details that you’re asking me for, I can’t tell you. But what I can tell you is that in all these financial situations, I stole money that was not my money, I mislead people that I shouldn’t have mislead and I did wrong,” Murdaugh said. “I can tell you that.”

Okay, so there's a lot to keep track of here, but we are currently talking about the moments after the 2019 boat accident that killed Mallory Beach.

Alex's son, Paul, was allegedly driving the family's boat intoxicated when he crashed it into a bridge, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach. In the hours after the crash, Alex appeared at the hospital, wearing his solicitors badge. There have been allegations that he was trying to intimidate witnesses to the accident.

"I never went around acting like I was on official buisness," Alex Murdaugh said. "I'm saying that I have no memory of that whatsoever."

On cross-examination, he has said that he would sometimes wear his badge visibly because it "has a warming effect" with members of law enforcement.

Image source, Courtroom Feed

Over the last several minutes, prosecutor Creighton Waters has focused on a solicitor's badge that Alex Murdaugh says was kept in his his car.

When asked why he kept the badge in an easily accessible part of his car, Murdaugh said he believed "law enforcement is friendlier when you're in law enforcement".

In a slightly confusing exchange with Waters, Murdaugh denied, however, that he ever considered himself law enforcement.

With this line of questioning, the prosecution appears to be making the case that investigators and local law enforcement officials were differential to Murdaugh in the wake of the killings.

On cross-examination, the state is trying to reinforce just how deeply entwined Alex Murdaugh and his family have been in the Hampton County legal system for generations.

• From 1920 - 2006, some member of the Murdaugh family served as the lead solicitor in the 14th Circuit court
• Murdaugh says his grandfather was the "longest serving prosecutor in the country"
• After his grandfather retired, Alex Murdaugh's father stepped into the role
• The state prosecutor said he even worked with Randolph Murdaugh on a homicide case invovling an officer
• Alex and the state agree there's been a decades-long "unbroken chain" of someone in the Murdaugh family being the chief prosecutor

Prosecutor Creighton Waters shot off rapid-fire questions to Alex Murdaugh, many framed as "Would you agree?"

Murdaugh has stumbled over a few of his answers and insisted that he's trying to answer Waters to the best of his ability.

When Waters pressed Murdaugh for a straightforward answer to what he described as "a simple question", Murdaugh said: "I'm not trying to be difficult."

The cross examination so far feels a little combative.

Holly Honderich
BBC News, Washington

Image source, Grace Beahm Alford/The Post and Courier/Pool

For more than a month at trial, lead prosecutor Creighton Waters has worked to poke holes in Alex Murdaugh's alibi - pointing to inconsistencies and lies about timing and his whereabouts on the night Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed.

His theory for Alex Murdaugh's motive is this: Murdaugh was about to be exposed for his years of financial crimes. The murders of Paul and Maggie, Waters has argued, were desperate attempts at a cover-up.

The court has heard from dozens of witnesses, including colleagues and friends of Murdaugh's - who have testified that he stole millions from his law firm for over a decade. A civil court case involving his son, Paul, was threatening to bring that wrongdoing to light.

“Listen to the gathering storm that all came to a head,” Waters told the court earlier this month. "The evidence is going to be such that you are going to reach the inescapable conclusion that Alex murdered Maggie and Paul, that he was the storm, that the storm was coming for them, and the storm arrived on June 7, 2021."

It's a tricky case for the prosecution because all the evidence in this case is circumstantial - there was no murder weapon discovered, no blood found on Murdaugh's clothes, and no eye-witness to the crime.

Image source, Grace Beahm Alford/The Post and Courier/Pool

Creighton Waters, the lead prosecutor handling the Murdaugh case, begins his cross-examination of Alex Murdaugh.

"Let's start with a few things we can agree on," Waters says.

He goes on to establish that Murdaugh has lied on two counts.

"The most important thing you are here to explain is your lie, for a year and a half, that you were never down by the kennels that night," he alleges.

He continues on: "You agree that you were stealing from your clients, and your law firm?

"Yes I agree with that," comes the reply from Murdaugh.

The court in Colleton County is back in session.

Alex Murdaugh will now be cross-examined by the prosecution.

Holly Honderich
BBC News, Washington

Early in this trial Judge Clifton Newman ruled that the prosecution could bring evidence of Alex Murdaugh's alleged financial crimes to the murder trial - a big loss for his defence team.

And earlier this week, before Murdaugh decided to take the stand, his lawyers asked the judge to prevent any questions to him about financial misdeeds, a motion that the judge dismissed.

Today, the defence took a different approach regarding the financial crimes. They've put all theft and fraud in the context of Murdaugh's opioid addiction, which he says he has been battling for more than a decade. With the defence, we heard much more about his drug use than any financial misdeeds.

That's likely to change with the cross-examination. The state is certain to ask a number of tough questions about the estimated $8.8m (£7.3m) allegedly stolen from clients and colleagues.

The court is taking a brief 10 minute recess.

When the trial resumes, the state will have the opportunity to begin cross-examining Alex Murdaugh.

They are expected to press him on inconsistencies in his testimony to police and for further details about his actions on the day his wife and son were shot and killed.

Stay tuned. You can watch live at the top of the page.

In what has been a lengthy questioning from his defence team, Alex Murdaugh is now describing his late wife Maggie.

"She was just as beautiful inside as she was outside," he says.

He describes Maggie as an "adventurous" person who wanted to experience things on her own to find out if they were "good or bad".

She was lovely, Murdaugh says, "a very feminine person" who stayed at home with her sons.

"She threw herself into her boy's life," he says. "She never took not working for granted. She might not have worked, but I promise you she worked."

He reiterates: "I would never hurt Maggie, ever."

Alex Murdaugh has described the day he hired a hit man to shoot him, so that his son, Buster, would be able to collect on his life insurance policy.

"I meant for him to shoot me so I'd be gone," Murdaugh said. "I knew all this was coming to a head. I knew how humiliating this was going to be for my son. I had been through so much. At the time in the bad place that I was, it seemed like the better thing to do."

The defence walked through 4 September 2021, the day that Alex Murdaugh frantically called 911 to say that he had been shot in the head while trying to change a tyre by the side of the road.

He was airlifted to a nearby hospital where doctors found that he had been grazed by a bullet. But things began to unravel quickly from there.

Reports began circulating that, hours before the shooting, Murdaugh was forced to resign from his family law firm after his colleagues confronted him over "misapprorpriated funds". He would later be charged with multiple felonies for stealing millions of dollars in legal settlements from his clients.

In the days after he was shot, Alex admitted that he had hired a "hit man", external to help him commit suicide so that his surviving son, Buster, could collect on his life insurance policy. He also checked himself in to "rehab" for opioid addiction.

The prosecution has argued Alex killed his wife and son to cover up his financial misdeeds. They will likely bring up this incident during the cross-examination in an attempt to show that Alex resorted to desperate measures to hide that he had allegedly stolen money, and was comfortable lying to investigatosrs.

The state has accused Alex Murdaugh of murdering his wife and son because financial crimes he had committed were about to be exposed.

The defence is now trying to prove that Alex did not fear his "financial house of cards collapsing" and therefore there alleged motive for murder is moot.

"I'm not quite sure how I let myself get where I got," he said. "But I battled that addiction for so many years, I was spending so much money on pills."

But Alex does admit to stealing client funds and to being addicted to opiate painkillers, specifically oxycodone and oxycotin.