Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson

Simpson is married to a police officer in Hampton and a mother to five. She worked profiling Hispanic gangs in Lowcountry correctional facilities from 2001-2007. She worked in real estate near Brunson and met Alex through the son of a friend. The son had been struck by a car and needed a personal injury attorney. Simpson was bilingual and helped the friend and walked into the PMPED office and met Alex.

She testifies Alex told her he’d take the case as long as Simpson did the translation and assist him on the case. Later, Alex would call her and ask her to translate in other cases. He would pay her and reimburse her for her costs. This led to a position helping Maggie at the homes in Moselle and Hampton.

Belinda Rast

Rast grew up in Hampton County and is a certified nursing assistant and a private home health care provider for Libby Murdaugh at Almeda. She has been employed at Almeda for four years.

Rast says Libby is her family away from home. Her typical hour shift is 8 pm. to 8 am and 7 pm to 7 am on weekends. In 2021, she was working at Almeda on June 7. Rast testifies she was called and told to come to the house. She had switched a day off with Mushelle Smith. If she had been there, Rast work schedule would have been 3pm until 9 am.

Rast said she had met Maggie but did not know her personally. She said Alex came to see his parents more often than others in the family and he was always polite and offered to help do things for Randolph and Libby – he got ice cream for Libby.

On 8 pm-8 am. shift, how often did Alex come to visit during your shift? Rast: Not often during my shift. Maybe 6-7 times over 4 years.

Before Randolph passed, was there a time he came to visit late at night? Yes. Alex and Maggie came to bring Krispy Kreme the night before, on Sunday. Alex went to his room but Randolph was asleep.

Randolph was told Alex and Maggie came and brought donuts and he was surprised. He thought it strange they came at night. Rast says Mr. Randolph knew what was going on, he had no mental issues.

Matthew Wilde, FBI

Supervisory special agent with FBI, stationed in Rock Hill. Oversees cellular analysis survey team (CAST) analyzes cell phone location data. He uses data from a cell phone and nearby cell towers to find date, time, and location of the cell phone at a certain time and map the location. 

In your role at CAST, you became involved in this case? In July 2021 after being asked by Dylan Hightower. Hightower had received call records from individuals in the case and there were questions if the cell tower near Moselle could provide coverage for the area.

CAST has a piece of equipment that measures signal strength — where it exists and where it doesn’t. Wilde explained he and his team grabbed 3 of the equipment boxes and drove all around Moselle and the neighboring properties recording signal strength and direction. Wilde testified he personally drove the Moselle property.

He is asked to identify the report generated for this case – cell phone records, cell break downloads from Paul’s phone, signal strength from the drive test, and known locations of cell towers in the area.

Wilde looked at information taken from phones belonging to Alex, Paul and Maggie Murdaugh, Marty Cook and CB Rowe to prepare a map of the general locations where the phones were on the day of the murder. The cell breakdown data from Paul’s phone was provided by SLED.