The Question No One Can Shake: Why Did Alex Murdaugh Lay out Maggie’s Clothes?

Sometimes, the smallest details are the hardest to forget. For Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson, the longtime housekeeper for the Murdaugh family, it was something seemingly ordinary — pajamas on the laundry room floor — that stuck in her mind. The next day, after the brutal murders of Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh, that detail wouldn’t let go. Over time, it would become central to the question she couldn’t shake: Why did Alex Murdaugh lay out Maggie’s clothes?

In the beginning, Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson didn’t know what she was seeing. Months later, however, it would all start to click — the wrong parking spot, the laundry, and the sudden insistence from Alex Murdaugh about what shirt he was wearing. One by one, the pieces began to shift in her mind. Once they fell into place, she said it became clear: He wasn’t telling the truth.

When Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson returned to Moselle the day after the murders, things were already off. Maggie Murdaugh’s Mercedes was parked in a place she never left it.

More chilling, though, was what the housekeeper saw inside: Maggie Murdaugh’s pajamas were laid out on the laundry room floor — neatly positioned, as if she had intended to spend the night. But Maggie Murdaugh’s housekeeper hadn’t planned to stay at the lodge that night. More importantly, she knew Maggie Murdaugh never placed her clothing on the floor like that.

“I knew automatically that wasn’t her,” Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson told People, recounting the moment that wouldn’t leave her alone. At first, she couldn’t say who might’ve moved the clothes or parked the SUV. But that unease stayed with her for months.

Then, in August 2021, Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson says Alex Murdaugh sat her down and brought up something seemingly unrelated: his shirt. “You remember what I was wearing that day,” she recalls him saying. “You know, the Vinny Vines (Vineyard Vines) shirt.”

That moment landed like a gut punch. She hadn’t brought it up. He had. She recalled very clearly that she remembered straightening the collar of a completely different shirt for him that morning.

“One thing was for sure,” she shared via People. “He was lying.”

To this day, there’s no official explanation for the clothes Maggie Murdaugh never laid out. On Reddit, YouTube, and crime forums, amateur investigators have debated the possibility that Alex Murdaugh staged the scene — either to suggest that Maggie Murdaugh had come willingly to Moselle, or to mislead investigators into believing she had intended to stay the night.

On TikTok, one user described the layout of the pajamas as “too careful to be casual,” suggesting it was part of a broader attempt to shape a story. Another theory noted how the pajamas, the car placement, and Alex Murdaugh’s insistence about his own shirt all seemed to center around appearances — small visual cues meant to steer perception.

In court, prosecutors used Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson’s testimony to build a broader narrative: that Alex Murdaugh was controlling details, even before anyone knew he was a suspect. While much of the public focus has centered on ballistics, timelines, and phone records, it was this quiet observation from someone inside the home that helped shift the emotional weight of the case.

Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson had worked for the family for years. She knew Maggie Murdaugh’s habits, her routines, how she folded laundry, and how she arranged her closet. That’s why the clothing layout struck her so deeply. It didn’t fit. It wasn’t Maggie Murdaugh.

It’s easy to imagine how this moment might have slipped by anyone else — dismissed as grief, or coincidence. For Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson, it marked the beginning of what she now believes was Alex Murdaugh trying to construct an illusion. And, as she told People, that illusion broke the moment he tried to rewrite what he wore that day.

From that day forward, Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson no longer questioned what her gut had already decided.

Dominated by headlines, courtroom drama, and shocking revelations, it’s the smallest clues that yield the biggest evidence. Maggie Murdaugh’s clothes on the laundry room floor — untouched and out of place — became more than a strange detail. They were the thread that, once pulled, unraveled everything Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson thought she knew about Alex Murdaugh.

So, why did he lay out her clothing on the laundry room floor? Unfortunately, we may never get a definitive answer. That, however, hasn’t stopped the internet from speculating on various possibilities.