Newly-released stills from bodycam footage show Alex Murdaugh dressed in a “clean” white shirt after he claims he touched his wife and son’s bloodied bodies on finding them shot dead at the family estate in South Carolina.

Mr Murdaugh is dressed in a white T-shirt and dark shorts in the images. The stills are grainy but there are no obvious signs of blood on his shirt.

Rachel Sharp pieced together a timeline of the key moments in the sprawling case against Alex Murdaugh.

Alex Murdaugh told a 911 dispatcher moments after he says he discovered the bodies of two murdered family members that his son Paul had been receiving threats “for months” over a fatal boat crash.

Mr Murdaugh, 54, can be heard telling the operator that his son Paul had been involved in a fatal boat crash and had been getting threats “for months and months and months.”

Rachel Sharp filed this profile of the high-profile lawyer.

Bodycam footage was played in Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, on Thursday morning as the high-profile double murder trial got underway.

Disgraced attorney Alex Murdaugh broke down in tears as his lawyer described how his son and wife were “butchered” on the family’s South Carolina hunting estate.

Mr Murdaugh wiped tears from his eyes as his defence attorney described the scene he claims his client found near kennels on the estate and denied that he had anything to do with it.

Dick Harpootlian told the jury that the prosecution’s explanation for the murders was just “theories” and “conjecture” and that Mr Murdaugh was a “loving” husband and father.

He was a high-powered attorney who ran both his own law firm and worked in the local prosecutor’s office.

He was the son of a powerful legal dynasty that dominated the local South Carolina community for almost a century.

And he was a family man who lived with his wife and two adult sons on their sprawling country estate.

Rachel Sharp has been following the case for The Independent.

Prosecutors have described how disgraced South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh allegedly murdered his defenceless wife and son at the family’s hunting lodge in 2021.

Mr Murdaugh is accused of brutally killing his wife Margaret, known as Maggie, and his youngest son, 22-year-old son Paul, outside kennels on the estate on 7 June 2021.

Prosecutors told the opening of his trial on Wednesday that Mr Murdaugh had first shot his son with a shotgun, and then killed his wife with an AR-style rifle.