I'm Jake Tapper, this is the lead and you have been watching accused murderer Alex

Alec Murdoch on the stand under cross examination from the prosecution.

As you know, don't know the disgraced former South Carolina attorney has pleaded not guilty

to the 2021 killings of his wife and younger son.

It has been an emotional day of testimony filled with tears and confessions from Murdoch

including his admission that he did in fact lie to investigators about not having been

at the canals where his wife and son were shot to death.

Let's go straight to CNN's Jean Kassar's and Jean Watt.

What's your takeaway from Murdoch's testimony today, especially the cross examination

from the prosecutors?

Well, let's start with the cross examination since they're in it right now.

This is a murder trial just as you've described, but you would think on this cross examination

so far that it was a financial crimes trial.

He is charged with multiple financial crimes and it was not supposed to come into this case,

but it did.

The judge allowed it in and this is the prosecutor's motive for murder that all of this had been

happening for years and all of a sudden he's confronted with one aspect of it and that

night he went and killed his wife and his son.

So suddenly he would be the victim and there wouldn't be any further looking at these

financial crimes at least for the moment.

So that's why the prosecutor is going into this.

But he's diffusing every question by admitting everything and he hasn't pled guilty or not

...