The South Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to hear convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh’s jury tampering appeal.The order, issued Tuesday, means the case will go straight to the high court, skipping the lengthy Court of Appeals process. The state Supreme Court could overturn a judge’s decision from earlier this year that denied Murdaugh’s attempt to get a new murder trial.His attorneys filed a motion in July requesting the high court review that ruling before his appeal is determined by the state Court of Appeals because the case “concerns an issue of significant public interest and a legal principle of major importance warranting certification.”Late last year, Murdaugh’s legal team requested a new trial based on allegations that the now-former Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca “Becky” Hill tampered with the jury by making comments implying Murdaugh’s guilt to jurors.On Jan. 29, retired Chief Justice Jean Toal held that Hill, the now-former clerk, was “attracted by the siren call of celebrity” and made improper comments to the jury, but ruled that the comments did not influence the verdict it reached.“I simply do not believe that the authority of our South Carolina Supreme Court requires a new trial in a very lengthy trial such as this on the strength of some fleeting and foolish comments by a publicity-influenced clerk of courts,” Toal said in January.In Murdaugh’s filing requesting the state Supreme Court review, his attorneys wrote that the “legal principle of major importance is whether it is presumptively prejudicial for a state official to secretly advocate for a guilty verdict through ex parte contacts with jurors during trial, or whether a defendant, having proven the contacts occurred, must also somehow prove the verdict would have been different at a hypothetical trial in which the surreptitious advocacy did not occur.”Hill has repeatedly denied the allegations, but has since resigned her position as clerk of court and is under state investigation, while facing numerous state ethics violations alleging she used her professional position for personal gain.Citing the “ongoing” nature of the matter, the state Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on the state Supreme Court order.Last year, after a six-week trial, a Colleton County jury found Murdaugh guilty of shooting and killing his wife, Maggie, and youngest son, Paul, at the family’s hunting estate in June 2021. He was sentenced to – and is currently serving – two life sentences in state prison for their murders.Murdaugh has also been sentenced in state and federal court, to 27 years and 40 years respectively, on dozens of financial charges stemming from more than a decade of stealing money from clients and his law firm.He is also appealing his federal sentence for the financial crimes.
The South Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to hear convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh’s jury tampering appeal.
The order, issued Tuesday, means the case will go straight to the high court, skipping the lengthy Court of Appeals process. The state Supreme Court could overturn a judge’s decision from earlier this year that denied Murdaugh’s attempt to get a new murder trial.
His attorneys filed a motion in July requesting the high court review that ruling before his appeal is determined by the state Court of Appeals because the case “concerns an issue of significant public interest and a legal principle of major importance warranting certification.”
Late last year, Murdaugh’s legal team requested a new trial based on allegations that the now-former Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca “Becky” Hill tampered with the jury by making comments implying Murdaugh’s guilt to jurors.
On Jan. 29, retired Chief Justice Jean Toal held that Hill, the now-former clerk, was “attracted by the siren call of celebrity” and made improper comments to the jury, but ruled that the comments did not influence the verdict it reached.
“I simply do not believe that the authority of our South Carolina Supreme Court requires a new trial in a very lengthy trial such as this on the strength of some fleeting and foolish comments by a publicity-influenced clerk of courts,” Toal said in January.
In Murdaugh’s filing requesting the state Supreme Court review, his attorneys wrote that the “legal principle of major importance is whether it is presumptively prejudicial for a state official to secretly advocate for a guilty verdict through ex parte contacts with jurors during trial, or whether a defendant, having proven the contacts occurred, must also somehow prove the verdict would have been different at a hypothetical trial in which the surreptitious advocacy did not occur.”
Citing the “ongoing” nature of the matter, the state Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on the state Supreme Court order.
Last year, after a six-week trial, a Colleton County jury found Murdaugh guilty of shooting and killing his wife, Maggie, and youngest son, Paul, at the family’s hunting estate in June 2021. He was sentenced to – and is currently serving – two life sentences in state prison for their murders.
Murdaugh has also been sentenced in state and federal court, to 27 years and 40 years respectively, on dozens of financial charges stemming from more than a decade of stealing money from clients and his law firm.
He is also appealing his federal sentence for the financial crimes.
New evidence discovered after Murdaugh murders reignites a cold case. “48 Hours” obtains findings of independent forensic experts. CBS News national correspondent Nikki Battiste reports.
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A federal judge on Monday is scheduled to sentence Alex Murdaugh – the 55-year-old former attorney already serving two life sentences for the murders of his wife and son – for nearly two dozen financial crimes following his guilty plea last year, according to the US Department of Justice.
What should have been a straightforward sentencing hearing, however, could be complicated by prosecutors’ allegation in a motion last week that Murdaugh failed a polygraph test, violating the terms of a plea agreement that required his honesty. Murdaugh denies the claim, and his attorneys asked the judge to disregard the government’s motion during sentencing Monday.
Murdaugh pleaded guilty last September to 22 federal charges, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering after federal prosecutors accused him of defrauding his personal injury clients and namesake law firm of millions of dollars in settlement funds he used for his personal benefit.
Each charge carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 or 30 years, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina said previously. In a filing last week, prosecutors recommended Murdaugh be sentenced to between 17.5 and almost 22 years in prison.
The now-disbarred attorney was previously sentenced in state court to 27 years for similar crimes after pleading guilty to almost two dozen charges including money laundering, breach of trust, conspiracy, forgery and tax evasion. That’s in addition to the consecutive life sentences he received a year ago for his conviction of the June 2021 murders of his wife, Maggie, and 22-year-old son, Paul – killings state prosecutors cast as a desperate attempt to distract from and delay investigations into his unraveling financial schemes.
While Murdaugh insists he is innocent of the murders, he has admitted to the financial crimes, saying he was maintaining a yearslong opioid addiction.
Whether the federal sentence imposed Monday is served concurrent with Murdaugh’s state sentence depends on whether a federal judge determines – as prosecutors alleged – he breached his plea agreement by failing a polygraph test.
In exchange for his guilty plea, federal prosecutors agreed to recommend Murdaugh’s sentence be served concurrently with the one imposed in South Carolina, court filings show. But in light of the failed polygraph test, prosecutors asked the judge to release the government from the terms of the plea deal, freeing them from the obligation to recommend a concurrent sentence.
At the same time, prosecutors proposed a motion to seal the polygraph examination report and four FBI reports about interviews with Murdaugh last year, saying all are related to an ongoing grand jury investigation and allegations of criminal activity by other people.
Murdaugh agreed to the polygraph examination as part of his plea deal – which explicitly required him to be “fully truthful and forthright” – as officials work to recover the millions of dollars he bilked from his victims.
What exactly Murdaugh was asked and how he responded is not publicly known, though the government’s filing indicates the examination was conducted “on issues related to hidden assets and the involvement of another attorney in Murdaugh’s criminal conduct.” But the results of a two-part polygraph test in October 2023 indicated deception, the government claims, voiding the agreement.
Murdaugh’s attorneys have asked the judge to either deny or delay ruling to hold their client in breach of the plea agreement until the polygraphs are provided to him, according to their own sentencing memorandum Thursday.
They claimed the polygraph examiner engaged in “odd conduct” to manipulate the results in a way that would void the plea agreement. That included allegedly sharing his belief Murdaugh is innocent of his wife’s and son’s murders, their filing said, and “‘secretly’ confiding” to Murdaugh he had just performed a polygraph on Joran Van der Sloot, who confessed last year to killing Natalee Holloway almost two decades ago.
Ultimately, Murdaugh’s attorneys contend the government’s conduct prior to the polygraph exam and the agent’s conduct during it “raises significant concerns as to whether the Government has acted in good faith.”
Murdaugh’s attorneys also opposed the government’s motion to seal the evidence, arguing prosecutors had not adequately explained why a “less drastic” action, like redactions, would not be sufficient.
US District Court Judge Richard M. Gergel on Friday ordered prosecutors to file a redacted version of those documents, adding the court understood why the government wanted to keep them sealed: A “detailed explanation” to justify the sealing could undermine the ongoing investigation, the judge wrote.
However, Gergel also indicated it was possible for sentencing to proceed Monday without divulging details from the documents the government wants to keep under seal.
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A South Carolina judge on Monday denied Alex Murdaugh‘s bid for a new trial after his defence team accused a clerk of court of tampering with a jury.
Judge Jean Toal said she wasn’t sure if Colleton County Clerk Becky Hill was telling the truth that she never spoke to jurors about the case, saying she was “attracted by the siren call of celebrity.”
But Toal said the 12 jurors who testified all said any comments did not directly influence their decision to find Murdaugh guilty.
Toal said after reviewing the full transcript of the six-week trial, she couldn’t overturn the verdict based “on the strength of some fleeting and foolish comments by a publicity-seeking clerk of court” because they didn’t actively change the jurors’ minds.
Alex Murdaugh: Convicted killer’s attorneys file motion for new trial, allege tampering
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All 12 jurors took the 90-mile (145-kilometre) trip from Colleton County to Columbia to give what was typically about three minutes of testimony, mostly yes-or-no questions from the judge’s script. Murdaugh, now a convicted killer, disbarred lawyer and admitted thief serving a life sentence, wore an orange prison jumpsuit as he watched with his lawyers.
Hill also testified, denying she ever spoke about the case or Murdaugh at all with jurors.
“I never talked to any jurors about anything like that,” Hill said.
Toal questioned her truthfulness after Hill said she used “literary license” for some things she wrote about in her book about the trial, including whether she feared as she read the verdict that the jury might end up finding him not guilty.
Murdaugh’s defence later called Barnwell County Clerk Rhonda McElveen, who helped Hill during the trial. McElveen said that Hill suggested before the trial that they write a book on the case together, “because she wanted a lake house and I wanted to retire,” and that a guilty verdict would sell more books.
Under cross-examination, McElveen said she didn’t reach out to the trial judge because she didn’t think any of Hill’s comments or behaviors rose to the level of misconduct.
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Hill was also questioned about why she told people hours before the jury received the case that she expected deliberations to be short. The clerk said it was a gut feeling after years in a courtroom.
Alex Murdaugh sentenced to life in prison for murder of wife, son
The unusual hearing was prompted in part by a sworn statement from the first juror called to the stand Monday.
She affirmed what she said last August, repeating Monday that Hill told jurors to note Murdaugh’s actions and “watch him closely” when he testified in his own defence.
“She made it seem like he was already guilty,” the woman, identified only as Juror Z, said. Asked whether this influenced her vote to find him guilty, she said, “Yes ma’am.”
In later questioning, the juror said she also stands by another statement she made in the August affidavit: that it was her fellow jurors, more than the clerk’s statements, that influenced her to vote guilty.
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“I had questions about Mr. Murdaugh’s guilt but voted guilty because I felt pressured by other jurors,” she said.
The rest of the jury filed in one by one and said their verdicts weren’t influenced by anything outside the trial. One said he heard Hill say “watch his body language” before Murdaugh testified, but said Hill’s comment didn’t change his mind.
“You have 11 of them strong as a rock who said this verdict was not influenced,” prosecutor Creighton Waters said. “The evidence is overwhelming from the people who mattered.”
Defence attorney Jim Griffin said Toal’s belief that Hill was not credible will eventually be a win in an appeals court and Murdaugh’s conviction will be overturned.
“The innocent man was wrongly convicted — we didn’t think she would say that,” Griffin said outside court.
Murdaugh’s fall from his role as an lawyer lording over his small county to a sentence of life without parole has been exhaustively covered by true crime shows, podcasts and bloggers.
Toal set a difficult standard for Murdaugh’s lawyers. She ruled the defense must prove that potential misconduct by Hill directly led jurors to change their minds to guilty.
Toal was Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court for 15 years before retiring. She was appointed by the current high court justices to rule on the juror misconduct allegations.
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Toal also limited what could be asked of Hill, ruling out extensive questions about a criminal investigation into whether the elected clerk used her office for financial gain, emailed prosecutors with suggestions on how to discredit a defense expert, conspired with her son who is charged with wiretapping county phones, or plagiarized part of her book using a passage from a BBC reporter who accidentally emailed her instead of her boss with a similar address.
Hill admitted lifting the writing of the BBC reporter during her Monday testimony.
Even if Murdaugh, 55, gets a new murder trial he won’t walk out free. He’s also serving 27 years after admitting he stole $12 million from his law firm and from settlements he gained for clients on wrongful death and serious injury lawsuits. Murdaugh promised not to appeal that sentence as part of his plea deal.
Murdaugh has remained adamant that he did not kill his younger son Paul with a shotgun and his wife Maggie with a rifle, since the moment he told deputies he found their bodies at their Colleton County home in 2021. He testified in his own defence.
Even if this effort fails, Murdaugh hasn’t even started the regular appeals of his sentence, where his lawyers are expected to argue several reasons why his murder trial was unfair, including the judge allowing voluminous testimony of his financial crimes. They said this enabled prosecutors to smear Murdaugh with evidence not directly linked to the killings.
A South Carolina judge on Monday denied Alex Murdaugh‘s bid for a new trial after his defense team accused a clerk of court with tampering with a jury.
Judge Jean Toal ruled that even if Colleton County Clerk Becky Hill did tell jurors to watch Murdaugh’s actions and body language on the stand, the defense failed to prove that such comments directly influenced their decision to find him guilty.
Murdaugh was back in a South Carolina courtroom Monday, but this time the convicted killer, disbarred attorney and admitted thief wasn’t the one fidgeting in the spotlight.
Instead, it was the jurors who found him guilty of the shooting deaths of his wife and son who were questioned by Toal on whether comments by Hill, the court clerk, influenced their conviction. Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison.
The first juror questioned Monday said Hill did tell jurors to watch Murdaugh’s actions and “watch him closely.”
“She made it seem like he was already guilty,” said the woman, identified only as Juror Z. Asked whether this affected her vote to find him guilty, she said “Yes ma’am.”
In later questioning the juror said she supports a sworn statement she gave months ago that her fellow jurors, more than the clerk’s statements, influenced her to vote guilty.
Alex Murdaugh, right, talks with his defense attorney Jim Griffin during a jury-tampering hearing at the Richland County Judicial Center, Monday, Jan. 29, 2024, in Columbia, S.C.
Andrew J. Whitaker/The Post And Courier via AP, Pool
Several other jurors called later said they didn’t hear any comments about the case from the clerk and that nothing from outside the testimony and evidence influenced their verdicts. One said he heard Hill say “watch his body language” before Murdaugh testified, but said her comment didn’t change his mind.
Each juror’s testimony lasted only about three minutes as the judge asked the same questions from her written sheet.
In another surprising twist, a bailiff interrupted the hearing to share that because the jurors’ cellphones were not taken from them on arrival at court, several were able to watch the Court TV live feed and heard everything the first juror said.
Despite the setback, the judge said she would proceed to get the jurors’ testimony on the record, and resumed the hearing after a short break, in part to enable herself to calm down, she said. “We are going to get through this,” she declared.
The unusual hearing comes in response to the tampering allegations by Murdaugh’s attorneys.
Hill also is expected to be grilled by lawyers for Murdaugh, whose fall from his role as an attorney lording over his small county to a sentence of life without parole has been exhaustively covered by true crime shows, podcasts and bloggers.
Jury tampering is the basis for Murdaugh’s appeal, but Judge Toal’s rulings after a pretrial hearing this month had set a difficult standard for his lawyers to prove.
Toal ruled the defense must prove that potential misconduct including alleged comments by Hill warning jurors not to trust Murdaugh when he testifies directly led jurors to change their minds to guilty.
The defense argued if they prove the jury was tampered with, it shouldn’t matter whether a juror openly said their verdict changed, because the influence can be subtle and still keep Murdaugh from getting a fair trial.
“According to the State, if Ms. Hill had the jury room decorated like a grade-school classroom with colorful signs saying ‘Murdaugh is guilty’ that would not violate Mr. Murdaugh’s right to a fair trial … so long as jurors did not testify that they voted guilty because of the decor,” the defense wrote in a brief.
Toal also did not let the defense call the trial judge Clifton Newman as a witness, nor prosecutors or other court workers who might testify that Hill seemed certain of Murdaugh’s guilt or tried to influence the case.
The judge also limited what can be asked of Hill. Toal told lawyers they can’t question the elected clerk about a criminal investigation announced by state agents into whether she used her office for financial gain, emailed prosecutors with suggestions on how to discredit a defense expert, conspired with her son who is charged with wiretapping county phones, or plagiarized part of her book on the case using a passage from a BBC reporter who accidentally emailed her instead of her boss with a similar address.
“I’m very, very reluctant to turn this hearing about juror contact into a wholesale exploration about every piece of conduct by the clerk,” Toal said.
CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman said that the jurors being ordered to testify was unusual.
“It is very, very rare,” Klieman said. “The judge has said, ‘this will not be a trial of the court clerk.’ So all that this judge wants to know about is, was the verdict actually affected by any actions of the court clerk.”
Attorney Eric Bland represents five of the jurors, one of whom has already testified.
“I’m confident that they’re gonna say they rendered a just verdict,” Bland told CBS News.
Hill, in a sworn statement, has denied any jury tampering.
Murdaugh, 55, appeared at the hearing in a prison jumpsuit. Even if he had gotten a new murder trial, he would not have walked out free. He’s also serving 27 years after admitting he stole $12 million from his law firm and from settlements he gained for clients on wrongful death and serious injury lawsuits. Murdaugh promised not to appeal that sentence as part of his plea deal.
But Murdaugh has remained adamant that he did not kill his younger son Paul with a shotgun and his wife Maggie with a rifle since the moment he told deputies he found their bodies at their Colleton County home in 2021. He testified in his own defense.
The jurors, their anonymity protected, were allowed to enter the Richland County Courthouse through a private entrance. The hearing was televised, but their faces could not be shown and they were only identified by their juror numbers.
Murdaugh hasn’t even started the regular appeals of his sentence, where his lawyers are expected to argue a number of reasons why his murder trial was unfair, including the judge allowing voluminous testimony of his financial crimes. They said this enabled prosecutors to smear Murdaugh with evidence not directly linked to the killings.
A judge has rejected convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh’s request for a new trial. Murdaugh and his lawyers alleged a court clerk improperly influenced the jury when he was convicted of killing his wife and one of his sons. Nikki Battiste has the latest.
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Convicted killer Alex Murdaugh’s defense team is accusing the court clerk of influencing the jury’s verdict in his high-profile murder trial. The jurors are now set to testify today by a judge about these allegations. Nikki Battiste reports.
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January 7 –Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, is pulled over for reckless driving. He is hospitalized following the arrest and dies three days later from injuries sustained during the traffic stop. Five officers from the Memphis Police Department are fired. On January 26, a grand jury indicts the five officers. They are each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. On September 12, the five officers are indicted by a federal grand jury on several charges including deprivation of rights.
January 24 –CNN reports that a lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence discovered about a dozen documents marked as classified at Pence’s Indiana home last week, and he has turned those classified records over to the FBI.
January 25 – Facebook-parent company Meta announces it will restore former President Donald Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack.
February 15 – Payton Gendron, 19, who killed 10 people in a racist mass shooting at a grocery store in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo last May, is sentenced to life in prison.
April 7 –A federal judge in Texas issues a ruling on medication abortion drug mifepristone, saying he will suspend the US Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of it but paused his ruling for seven days so the federal government can appeal. But in a dramatic turn of events, a federal judge in Washington state says in a new ruling shortly after that the FDA must keep medication abortion drugs available in more than a dozen Democratic-led states.
October 25 –Robert Card, a US Army reservist, kills 18 people and injures 13 others in a shooting rampage in Lewiston, Maine. On October 27, after a two-day manhunt, he is found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.
August 4 –Alexey Navalny is sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges, Russian media reports. Navalny is already serving sentences totaling 11-and-a-half years in a maximum-security facility on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up.
January 9 – The College Football Playoff National Championship game takes place at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The Georgia Bulldogs defeat Texas Christian University’s Horned Frogs 65-7 for their second national title in a row.
February 19 –Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wins the 65th Annual Daytona 500 in double overtime. It is the longest Daytona 500 ever with a record of 212 laps raced.
March 12 – The 95th Annual Academy Awards takes place, with Jimmy Kimmel hosting for the third time.
March 14 – Ryan Redington wins his first Iditarod.
May 21 –Brooks Koepka wins the 105th PGA Championship at Oak Hill County Club in Rochester, New York. This is his third PGA Championship and fifth major title of his career.
July 3-16 –Wimbledon takes place in London. Carlos Alcaraz defeats Novak Djokovic 1-6 7-6 (8-6) 6-1 3-6 6-4 in the men’s final, to win his first Wimbledon title. Markéta Vondroušová defeats Ons Jabeur 6-4 6-4 in the women’s final, to win her first Wimbledon title and become the first unseeded woman in the Open Era to win the tournament.
November 1 –The Texas Rangers win the World Series for the first time in franchise history, defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-0 in Game 5.
November 5 –The New York City Marathon takes place. Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola sets a course record and wins the men’s race. Kenya’s Hellen Obiri wins the women’s race.
While investigating the murders of Alex Murdaugh‘s wife Maggie and son Paul in June 2021, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) stumbled across a clue in another mysterious death — that of Stephen Smith, a 19-year-old who’d been found dead on July 8, 2015. His death was ruled a hit and run even though investigators at the scene found no evidence of one, and the case had gone cold until SLED’s discovery after the Murdaugh murders brought it back to life. SLED announced it would be renewing the investigation into Smith’s death, sparking new theories and reviving old rumors.
SLED has never said what it found that led them back to Stephen Smith, but through reports and interviews found in the 2015 case file 48 Hours pieced together what happened in the original investigation by the South Carolina Highway Patrol.
The story of Stephen Smith’s death begins with his final conversation with his mother, just a week before his death.
July 1, 2015: An unusual conversation
Sandy and Stephen Smith
Sandy Smith
Sandy Smith says the last time she saw her son Stephen was July 1, 2015, when he visited her house. Stephen was a nursing student at the time and was shuttling between the homes of his parents, who lived apart. Sandy says Stephen told her something that day that now gives her pause.
“He told me that he was goin’ on a fishin’ trip, deep sea fishin’,” Sandy told “48 Hours.” What seemed odd, according to Sandy, was that Stephen said he was taking the trip with “a prominent person.” To this day, Sandy doesn’t know who that prominent person could have been, and Stephen never said.
Despite the mysterious exchange, Sandy says her last day with her son was joyful. As he left her house, she warned him of an oncoming storm and told him to text her when he arrived at his destination. “So, when he made it, he texts me and says, ‘I made it safe, Mom. Mama, I love you.’” Sandy says those were Stephen’s last words to her.
July 8, 2015 | 3:59 a.m.: A body in the roadway
A red square marks the spot on Sandy Run Road where Stephen Smith’s body was found on July 8, 2015.
South Carolina Highway Patrol
On July 8, 2015, a local man was on his way to work in the early morning hours when he noticed someone lying in the road — in the location indicated by the red square in the image above. Concerned, the man called 911 at 3:59 a.m. Officers were dispatched to the scene and found Stephen deceased in the roadway, blood pooling around his head.
What exactly had happened to Stephen? Highway Patrol agents noted that there was none of the evidence you might typically find at the scene of a vehicle accident. Officers saw no debris in the roadway, skid marks or injuries consistent with someone being struck head-on by a car. What they did see was a large wound to Stephen’s head. It was so significant that the incident report notes, “After checking the body, it appears that the victim had been shot.”
Thomas Moore, a retired lieutenant with the South Carolina Highway Patrol and an on-scene supervisor for the Smith case, told “48 Hours,” “The consensus when I got there, speakin’ with the coroner, the first words out of his mouth was, ‘This is not a hit and run. This is a murder.’”
July 8, 2015 | Early morning hours: Stephen Smith’s car found
Stephen Smith’s car
South Carolina Highway Patrol
Not long after Stephen’s body was found officers discovered his car, as well. It was pulled over on the side of the road nearly three miles away, with the gas cap hanging off. “In all the years I’ve worked, a car sittin’ on the side of the road with the gas cap off is — is not normal,” former Lieutenant Thomas Moore says. “I thought it was staged.”
So, had Stephen run out of gas and decided to walk down the road in search of help? Or was this truly a staged crime scene? It seems from the case file that there were more questions than answers that July morning.
July 8, 2015 | Later that morning: “The biggest shock”
Stephen Smith
Sandy Smith
While officers were still at the scene on the morning of July 8, 2015, Sandy tuned in to a local radio show on her way to work. The host said a body had been found on a rural road, and Sandy recognized the location. It was close to Stephen’s father’s house.
“So, I called [Stephen’s sister] and asked her if everything was OK,” she told “48 Hours.” “And she said, “‘Mama, did Stephen stay with you last night? Because he didn’t come home last night.’” And then my stomach dropped, and I knew it was him.” Sandy eventually received confirmation: the body found in the road was her son. “I lost it then,” Sandy says. “It was just the biggest shock of our life.”
July 8, 2015 | 12:30 p.m.: The autopsy: not a gunshot wound
At 12:30 p.m., as Sandy mourned, Stephen was taken for an autopsy. Though officers initially believed Stephen had been shot due to the way his wound looked at the scene, the medical examiner performing the autopsy found no evidence of a bullet and came to a different conclusion.
“It is the opinion of the pathologist that the decedent died of blunt head trauma sustained in a motor vehicle crash in which the decedent was a pedestrian struck by a vehicle,” the doctor wrote. In simple terms: Stephen wasn’t shot, he was struck by a vehicle while walking in the road.
To Sandy, that conclusion didn’t sound right. She says Stephen was cautious and would never have been walking in the middle of the road so late at night. Something seemed fishy, and she was determined to find out what had really happened to her son.
July 17, 2015: Unsubstantiated rumors
Soon after Stephen’s body was found, Hampton County Guardian managing editor Michael DeWitt says rumors started spreading in the Lowcountry. “Everybody knows everybody,” he told “48 Hours” of Hampton’s small-town atmosphere.
It was especially true that everyone knew the Murdaugh family. Alex Murdaugh was a prominent attorney, and three generations of Murdaugh men had held the top prosecutor job in the circuit for nearly a century. It was natural, Sandy says, for all roads in Hampton to lead to the Murdaughs. “Anything happens,” she says, “the Murdaugh name comes up.”
Soon the name appeared in the Stephen Smith case file. On July 17, 2015, a recorded interview indicates that the Highway Patrol was informed of a rumor circulating about Buster Murdaugh, Alex Murdaugh’s oldest son. The story officers heard in follow-up interviews was that Buster had supposedly been in a car with some other boys that night, when they saw Stephen in the road and struck him with an object.
Various versions of the rumor circulated in the community, many pointing to Buster Murdaugh’s purported involvement. But there is no public evidence that Buster or any Murdaugh had anything to do with Stephen’s death, and Buster himself has since contested the claims.
“These baseless rumors of my involvement with Stephen and his death are false,” he said in a statement released through his father’s attorney in 2023. “I unequivocally deny any involvement in his death, and my heart goes out to the Smith family.”
The case file indicates that investigators made a call to Buster in 2015, but there is no record of any investigator having spoken to him.
Dec. 18, 2015: A possible lead
The Buster Murdaugh rumor wasn’t the only story the South Carolina Highway Patrol heard. According to the case file, on Dec. 18, 2015, a Highway Patrol officer was made aware of another tip called in by a man named Darrell Williams.
Williams told police that his stepson, a young man named Patrick Wilson, had come over to his house and told him a story involving his friend Shawn Connelly. Wilson said Connelly told him he’d been driving drunk and had hit something he thought might’ve been a deer, then returned to the area the next day and saw law enforcement on the scene.
Though the case file indicates attempts were made to find Wilson and Connelly, there is no record of officers ever speaking to either of them. Wilson had no comment to 48 Hours. Messages to the Hampton’s County Sheriff’s Office, Williams, and Connelly have not been answered. Sandy Smith says she asked Shawn Connelly point blank if he killed Stephen, and he told her he did not.
2016: The case goes cold
Stephen Smith
Sandy Smith
For reasons that are unclear, in 2016 Stephen’s case went cold. Despite the medical examiner’s opinion that Stephen had been hit by a vehicle, former Highway Patrol Lieutenant Thomas Moore still believes the case was not an accidental hit and run, but a murder. He feels the case went cold because the Highway Patrol was not equipped to handle that type of investigation alone.
“The case certainly went cold on our part. Lotta frustration,” Moore tells “48 Hours.” “From the beginning I felt like we were investigating a case that … we don’t handle. We’re not homicide investigators.”
Moore also says, “I don’t think it ever went cold for Sandy Smith.”
Sept. 28, 2016 | A plea for outside help
On Sept. 28, 2016, fed up with the lack of progress in Stephen’s case, Sandy Smith wrote to the FBI.
“I was just lettin’ ’em know that, you know, my son was murdered and there’s no progress,” Sandy says. “And just, “Please help. Just please help me.””
Her letter was answered. Sandy says agents came to her home, and they were later able to unlock Stephen’s phone. “[The agent] said there was a lot of interesting information in the phone that needed to be looked at,” Sandy says. “There’s somethin’ in that phone that nobody wants out there.”
But Sandy says local and state agencies didn’t pursue the information. And despite her best efforts, the case would remain cold.
June 7, 2021 | The Murdaugh murders
Maggie and Paul Murdaugh
Maggie Murdaugh/Facebook
On June 7, 2021, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were found dead at the kennels at Moselle, the family’s country estate. It was another Hampton County tragedy – though this time, there was no doubt that it was murder. It was investigated from the start by the SLED.
June 22, 2021 | SLED steps up to the plate
SLED headquarters
CBS News
On June 22, 2021, less than a month after the Murdaugh deaths, SLED made an announcement no one was expecting. “SLED has opened an investigation into the death of Stephen Smith,” a spokesperson told the media, “based upon information gathered during the course of the double murder investigation of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh.”
No one but SLED knows exactly what information it discovered during the Murdaugh case that pointed them back toward Stephen Smith. But the announcement gave Sandy hope that there might finally be progress in her son’s case.
“I hate that something bad had to happen for him to be brought back up, you know, brought to the light,” Sandy says, adding: “He deserves justice just like Paul and Maggie and everybody else. He deserves justice.”
March 19, 2023: A powerful team in Sandy Smith’s corner
Attorneys Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter
CBS News
Two years passed. Even with SLED’s involvement, there didn’t seem to be any progress in Stephen’s case as SLED focused its resources on investigating Alex Murdaugh. But on March 19, 2023, high-powered South Carolina attorneys Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter announced their firm would be representing Sandy in the Stephen Smith death investigation.
“Ronnie and I are like arsonists. We started the fire,” Eric Bland says. He and Richter worked with Sandy to get Stephen’s case back in the public eye, in the hopes of raising awareness to achieve what had been one of Sandy’s goals for years: getting a new autopsy for Stephen, whose manner of death was still unclear.
“Our sole goal was to start the fire,” says Bland, “To rekindle the interest in Stephen’s death. And what that entailed was us being able to get permission to exhume his body and have a second autopsy performed.”
March 31, 2023: Stephen Smith’s body exhumed
Stephen Smith’s exhumation on March 31, 2023.
LunaShark Media
On March 31, 2023, Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter helped Sandy Smith achieve her goal of exhuming Stephen’s body so another autopsy could be performed. It was an emotional day for Sandy, who says it was joyful for her to see a longtime goal realized.
Dr. Michelle DuPre, a former investigator and forensic pathologist who’s performed more than 3,000 autopsies, was hired by Bland and Richter to oversee Stephen’s new autopsy on April 1, 2023. Though results of the autopsy were not publicly shared, in an exclusive interview. DuPre tells “48 Hours” what she observed about Stephen’s injuries.
“There was blunt trauma,” she says, pointing to a spot on a model as pictured in the image above. “He had about a seven-and-a-half inch laceration on the right side of his forehead that went from his eyebrow to about the middle of his head.”
She was able to dispel some of the confusion surrounding Stephen’s death that occurred in the original investigation. “At one point, there was thought to be a gunshot wound,” she says, “We can definitively say that there was not.” She also doesn’t believe Stephen’s body was staged, saying, “We don’t believe that he was placed there. We believe that … whatever happened, happened right there.”
May 16, 2023: Dr. Kenny Kinsey shares his findings
CBS News national correspondent and “48 Hours” contributor Nikki Battiste and Dr. Kenny Kinsey.
CBS News
Bland and Richter also hired Dr. Kenny Kinsey, a crime scene expert and star prosecution witness in the Murdaugh murder trial, to conduct an independent investigation into Stephen’s death. On May 16, 2023, he told CBS News’ Nikki Battiste about his findings.
“How confident are you that you know what happened to Stephen Smith that night?” Battiste asks.
“I’m as close to a degree of scientific certainty as I’ve ever felt,” says Kinsey.
All of the information gathered by Kinsey and DuPre has been turned over to SLED for their ongoing investigation.
Sept. 28, 2023: Stephen Smith’s dreams live on
Sandy Smith announces the Stephen N. Smith Memorial Scholarship.
LunaShark Media
In September 2023, Sandy Smith announced the creation of the Stephen Nicholas Smith Memorial Scholarship. As stated on the website for the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, “the mission of the Stephen Nicholas Smith Memorial Scholarship Fund is to provide annual scholarship support for qualified students with financial need.”
Stephen’s dreams of becoming a doctor were tragically cut short. He was buried in his scrubs with his stethoscope, Sandy says, “everything he needed.”
Now Sandy hopes this scholarship in his name will provide opportunities for kids like Stephen looking to pursue their goals through higher education.
2023: Hope for justice
Sandy Smith holds a photo of her son.
AP
SLED’s investigation into Stephen Smith’s death has so far yielded no new public information, and it’s unclear how much progress has been made. Sandy’s attorneys confirm a grand jury was empaneled and has issued subpoenas.
Sandy hasn’t given up hope. She has offered a $30,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest in Stephen’s case and urges anyone who knows anything about his death to come forward. If you have any information on the death of Stephen Smith, email SLED at tips@sled.sc.gov today.
On June 22, 2021, two weeks after Alex Murdaugh, scion of the Murdaugh legal dynasty, reported finding the bodies of his son Paul and wife Maggie fatally shot at the dog kennels of the family’s sprawling Moselle property, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, known as SLED, released a simple statement to media: “SLED has opened an investigation into the death of Stephen Smith based upon information gathered during the course of the double murder investigation of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh.”
That single sentence was the turning point for Sandy Smith, who’d been fighting to keep her son’s case from fading into obscurity, even writing letters to high-level politicians and the FBI. “That was the happiest day of my life,” she tells “48 Hours” contributor and CBS News correspondent Nikki Battiste in “Stephen Smith: A Death in Murdaugh Country,” an all-new “48 Hours” airing Saturday, Nov. 25 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
Stephen Smith
Sandy Smith
For nearly a decade, Sandy Smith has refused to let her son’s case grow cold. In the early morning hours of July 8, 2015, Stephen Smith’s body was discovered on a rural road in South Carolina’s Lowcountry. This is where three generations of the Murdaugh family had occupied the top solicitor’s office and enjoyed a century of power and influence, particularly among local law enforcement. Stephen’s death was quickly ruled a hit-and-run by the medical examiner, a conclusion that neither Sandy Smith nor the investigators with the South Carolina Highway Patrol believed at the time.
“I wanted a second opinion,” Sandy Smith tells Battiste.
With a new high-profile legal team now in her corner, she’s finally getting it. A few days after Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter announced they were representing Smith pro bono, SLED chief Mark Keel publicly acknowledged SLED was treating Stephen Smith’s death as a homicide. And thanks to more than $130,000 in GoFundMe donations from Sandy Smith’s supporters, Bland and Richter were able to arrange an exhumation of Stephen Smith’s body in order to conduct an independent autopsy.
When Battiste asks Sandy Smith, “What do you think it took for Stephen’s case to finally get the attention it deserves, that you wanted?” Smith doesn’t mince words. “Somebody else had to die,” she says, referring to Paul and Maggie Murdaugh.
Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of the double murders of his wife and son after a sensational six-week trial watched around the world. Bland and Richter, who were already representing several of Murdaugh’s victims of alleged multimillion-dollar financial scams, offered to represent Sandy Smith pro bono. “This is a woman that has fought this battle alone since 2015 … screaming as loud as she could … with not a lot of people listening,” says Bland.
Almost immediately after Stephen Smith’s death, rumors of Murdaugh involvement swarmed the Lowcountry like locusts. Hampton County Guardian editor Michael DeWitt Jr., who is also the author of the book “The Fall of the House of Murdaugh,”says he heard the same rumors in far-flung corners: “that at least one Murdaugh child was in a vehicle with other boys and allegedly, somebody in the vehicle … struck the young man with a baseball bat and killed him.” A similar story was repeated to Highway Patrol investigators in recorded interviews, and the Murdaugh name, particularly Buster Murdaugh, comes up dozens of times in the original case file, obtained by “48 Hours” through public records requests.
Buster Murdaugh, Alex Murdaugh’s oldest son, who according to the case file, had not spoken with Highway Patrol investigators nor publicly addressed the allegations, broke his silence two weeks after his father’s conviction. In a statement released by his father’s attorney, Jim Griffin, Buster Murdaugh denied the rumors, calling them “baseless” and said in part, “I unequivocally deny any involvement [in Stephen Smith’s] death.” Buster Murdaugh issued a second denial several months later during a televised interview on Fox Nation. And for the first time, he also offered an alibi, stating he was with his mother and brother at their beach house at the time Stephen Smith was killed.
“We are aware of no evidence today that would suggest that any Murdaugh played any role in Stephen Smith’s death or played any role in trying to cover up the investigation into his death,” says Richter.
But the Murdaughs and Smith’s case remain inextricably linked by SLED’s findings. Richter tells “48 Hours,” “Somehow, some way in the Murdaugh murder investigation, a new thread was opened up into Stephen Smith.”
While SLED has kept its investigation close to the vest, what evidence investigators found while looking into the Murdaugh murders that led them back to Stephen Smith has been the subject of intense speculation. “Whatever it was, it’s major enough for … the highest police organization in the state to open up its own investigation,” says DeWitt.
Given the pivotal role cellphone evidence played in Alex Murdaugh’s trial, Bland and Richter say it’s possible evidence from Stephen’s tablet or phone, which was found in his front pocket, may play a key role in this case, as well. But Sandy Smith says she had asked the FBI to crack Stephen’s phone back in 2016.
“Do you know if … anyone actually was able to read Stephen’s text messages or see where he might’ve been based on cellphone evidence?” asks Battiste.
“What I heard from the FBI agent,” says Sandy Smith, is “there was a lot of interesting information in the phone that needed to be looked at.” But she says neither local nor state authorities pursued the case further, and Stephen’s case went cold. “There’s something in that phone that nobody wants out there,” she tells Battiste.
Sandy Smith has been fighting to keep her son’s case from fading into obscurity, even writing letters to high-level politicians and the FBI.
AP
According to Sandy Smith’s attorneys, SLED now has all of the evidence in the Stephen Smith case, including his phone and tablet, and an investigative grand jury is zeroing in on potential suspects. Meanwhile, Sandy Smith is keeping hope alive that she will get answers and justice soon. She announced a scholarship fund in Stephen’s name, and she’s offering a $30,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction.
During an independent investigation by Sandy Smith’s team led by Dr. Kenny Kinsey, who recently retired as chief deputy of the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office and was an expert witness in Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial, the baseball bat theory was ruled out. Kinsey and Dr. Michelle DuPre, a retired investigator and forensic pathologist who oversaw Stephen’s new autopsy, theorized that Stephen had died from a single fatal blow to the head and died on the road where he was found.
“The injuries can tell us so much about what happened,” says DuPre. And in this case, she says they did.
“Whatever hit him was fast and it was large,” Kinsey tells Battiste.
These and other startling findings, shared exclusively with Battiste, are part of the latest “48 Hours” report.
“How confident are you that you know what happened to Stephen Smith that night?” Battiste asks Kinsey. “I’m as close to a degree of scientific certainty as I’ve ever felt,” he says.
Moselle, the South Carolina estate that was home to the Murdaugh family prior to attorney Alex Murdaugh’s murder of his wife and son, is back on the market, with the 4-bedroom home listed for $1.95 million.
The listing is a carve-out of the Murdaugh’s larger estate, which sold for $3.9 million earlier this year and included 1,700 acres. But the new offer only includes 21 acres and the primary Murdaugh residence, the Moselle Estate House, which the listing says could serve as a “a family residence or compound” or allow new buyers to engage in “equestrian pursuits, [a] hobby farm, or just a weekend retreat destination.”
The kennels, where Alex Murdaugh, once a prominent lawyer in South Carolina, killed his wife and younger son, aren’t included in the new sale, according to listing agent Crosby Land Company.
Murdaugh was convicted in March of killing his wife Maggie Murdaugh and son Paul at the rural estate, which was purchased earlier this year by James A. Ayer and Jeffrey L. Godley, according to a land deed. The proceeds of that initial sale went to the Murdaugh family’s surviving son, Buster, and victims of a 2019 boat crash involving Paul, reported the Greenville News, citing a settlement approved in January by a South Carolina judge.
“The Moselle Estate House listing consists of the 5,275 square-foot estate house and 21 acres of land,” Crosby Land Company said in a Monday statement sent to CBS MoneyWatch. “Beyond the stately brick columns at the property’s entrance awaits a long, impressive oak-lined driveway leading to a quintessential southern vision of the classic and traditionally styled home with stunning high-end features such as pine flooring and sportsman’s room.”
For the first time, Alex Murdaugh has pleaded guilty to crimes.
The disgraced former South Carolina attorney, who was convicted in March of murdering his wife and son, pleaded guilty to nearly two dozen fraud and money laundering charges Thursday morning in a federal courtroom in Charleston.
The plea is related to a scheme in which Murdaugh and a bank employee allegedly defrauded his personal injury clients and laundered more than $7 million of funds, according to an indictment. Murdaugh was accused of using the settlement funds for his “personal benefit, including using the proceeds to pay off personal loans and for personal expenses and cash withdrawals.”
Murdaugh cried as he told the judge he was pleading guilty of his own free will. He said he was doing so because he was guilty of the crimes, but also so his son, Buster, could see him taking responsibility for his actions, as well as to help his victims heal, according to three attorneys present during the proceedings.
Murdaugh agreed to plead guilty to 22 charges in all: one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud; one count of bank fraud; five counts of wire fraud; one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud; and 14 counts of money laundering.
The majority of the charges carry a maximum federal sentence of 20 years, though four of the charges carry a maximum sentence of 30 years.
US District Court Judge Richard Gergel accepted and signed the plea agreement between Murdaugh and federal prosecutors. Gergel will determine federal sentencing for Murdaugh at a later date.
“Alex Murdaugh’s financial crimes were extensive, brazen, and callous,” US Attorney Adair F. Boroughs said in a statement. “He stole indiscriminately from his clients, from his law firm, and from others who trusted him. The US Attorney’s Office, the FBI, and SLED committed to investigating and prosecuting Murdaugh’s financial crimes when they first came to light. Today marks our fulfillment of that promise.”
The agreement says that if Murdaugh cooperates and complies with the conditions of the plea agreement, the government attorneys agree to recommend to the court that any federal sentence he receives for these charges “be served concurrent to any state sentence served for the same conduct.” The agreement does not have a sentence recommendation included in it, as written.
“The Defendant agrees to be fully truthful and forthright with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies by providing full, complete and truthful information about all criminal activities about which he/she has knowledge,” the agreement reads.
If he is found in any way to break this portion of the agreement, the agreement would be voided.
Much of the agreement is focused on Murdaugh working with the government to repay victims and locate missing assets. The agreement says Murdaugh must pay restitution to his victims and requests he forfeit a total of $9 million in assets. Further, he must submit to a polygraph test, if requested by the government, and could be called to testify before other grand juries or in future trials.
Attorney Justin Bamberg, who represents several of Murdaugh’s victims in the financial crimes, criticized the plea agreement in a statement.
“Given the severity and callousness of his crimes, Alex Murdaugh should never receive any incentive-based deal from the government, be it federal or state, and we respectfully disagree with the federal government’s voluntary decision to concede to a concurrent sentence in exchange for his guilty plea and agreement to ‘cooperate,’” he said.
“We trust that the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office will remain steadfast in its commitment to hold Murdaugh accountable and will give him no breaks and offer no incentives; that ship sailed years ago,” he added. “Murdaugh’s victims are looking forward to seeing him receive the individual sentences he earned via his own individual criminal conduct towards each of them under South Carolina law.”
The fraud charges are just the latest legal problems for Murdaugh, the scion of a prominent and powerful family of local lawyers and solicitors in South Carolina’s Lowcountry.
Murdaugh was convicted in March of murdering his wife Maggie and son Paul in 2021 at their sprawling estate, and he was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Days after his conviction, Murdaugh’s lawyers began the appeals process. However, earlier this month, his defense team filed a court motion to suspend the appeal, so they could request a new trial. The motion included bombshell allegations that the Colleton County Clerk of Court tampered with the jury.
The South Carolina attorney general has asked the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to investigate the claims.
Last week, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson asked the court to order Murdaugh’s defense team to correct their motion due to several “procedural defects.” The prosecutor’s office didn’t directly dispute the motion but noted the ongoing investigation has already “revealed significant factual disputes” that undermine the credibility of Murdaugh’s claims.
Murdaugh’s attorney’s responded to the state’s request on Thursday, accusing prosecutors of attempting to delay the appeal suspension and prevent the defense from requesting a new trial. The defense attorneys argued the “procedural defects” raised by prosecutors are not relevant to the filing and asked the court to “expeditiously grant” a new trial.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals has not yet issued a decision.
In addition, the disbarred attorney remains entangled in several other state and federal cases in which he faces more than 100 other charges.
Murdaugh is set to stand trial in November on charges related to stolen settlement funds from the family of the Murdaughs’ late housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield.
They are the first of dozens of state charges he faces in alleged schemes to defraud victims of millions. The financial crimes he is accused of in the case include embezzlement, computer crime, money laundering and tax evasion.
Former South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh, who was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted in the 2021 shooting deaths of his wife and son, pleaded guilty Thursday to 22 federal counts of fraud and money laundering.
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The former South Carolina attorney, whose family were both prosecutors and founders of an influential law firm in Hampton County, entered his official plea on Thursday in federal court in Charleston. He copped to a total of 22 counts, including 14 counts of money laundering, five counts of wire fraud, one count of bank fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The charges stem from an alleged scheme in which Murdaugh and a bank employee allegedly defrauded clients out of millions while he worked as a personal injury attorney at his Hampton law firm.
“I want to take responsibility,” Murdaugh told the judge, at times struggling to contain his emotions. “I want my son to see me take responsibility. It’s my hope that by taking responsibility that the people I’ve hurt can begin to heal.”
The disgraced legal scion is already serving two life sentences for the murders of son Paul, 22, and wife Maggie, 52. They were found fatally shot on June 7, 2021 near a kennel area on the family’s sweeping “Moselle” hunting estate. Prosecutors have argued he killed them because he knew his financial wrongdoings were about to be uncovered, and he was hoping their deaths would buy him sympathy and time to figure out a cover-up.
Murdaugh has meanwhile maintained his innocence in the double-killings, proclaiming from the witness stand during his weeks-long trial that he could never hurt his loved ones.
“There’s two things Alex will tell you,” defense attorney Dick Harpootlian said after the hearing on Thursday. “One, he stole the money. Two, he did not kill Maggie and Paul.”
Murdaugh is also facing about 100 different charges in state court. Authorities said he committed insurance fraud by trying to have someone kill him so his surviving son could get $10 million in life insurance. The shot only grazed Murdaugh, and he ultimately survived.
Investigators said he also failed to pay taxes on the money he stole, took settlement money from several clients and his family’s law firm, and ran a drug and money laundering ring.
He is scheduled to face trial on at least some of those charges at the end of November.
Murdaugh’s tearful court appearance on Thursday comes just days after he signed a plea agreement, which requires that he provide officials “full, complete and truthful information about all criminal activities about which he has knowledge,” according to the terms. That may also involve him undergoing a polygraph test, if requested by the government.
In exchange, prosecutors will recommend that the “sentence imposed on these [federal] charges be served concurrent to any state sentence imposed for the same conduct.”
The South Carolina attorney general has asked an appeals court to order convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh’s defense team to correct and refile their motion requesting a new trial, while also noting an ongoing investigation has raised significant doubts about the disgraced attorney’s claims of jury tampering.
Murdaugh, a disbarred personal injury attorney, is appealing his conviction for murdering his wife and grown son. However, last week his attorneys requested that appeal be suspended as they seek a new trial for Murdaugh based on jury tampering allegations.
In a five-page response filed Friday afternoon, State Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office is asking the state court to give Murdaugh’s team 10 days to refile a corrected motion. It lists several “procedural defects” in Murdaugh’s original court motion submitted on September 5, arguing it did not meet the requirements necessary to suspend his appeal and allow his motion for a new trial to proceed in the circuit court.
Last week, the attorney general asked the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to investigate the claims in Murdaugh’s motion for a new murder trial, according to a joint statement from Wilson and the investigative agency.
“The state’s only vested interest is seeking the truth,” the September 7 joint statement reads. “As with all investigations, SLED and the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office are committed to a fair and impartial investigation and will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead.”
The state’s response Friday doesn’t directly dispute the allegations of jury tampering by Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca “Becky” Hill included in the original motion from the defense. But it does note the investigation is ongoing and has already “revealed significant factual disputes” that undermine the credibility of Murdaugh’s claims.
Murdaugh’s attorneys claimed Hill “tampered with the jury by advising them not to believe Murdaugh’s testimony and other evidence presented by the defense, pressuring them to reach a quick guilty verdict, and even misrepresenting critical and material information to the trial judge in her campaign to remove a juror she believed to be favorable to the defense.”
CNN has reached out to Murdaugh’s defense team for comment.
In their motion for a new trial, the state said Murdaugh’s defense team failed to show the evidence in question was discovered since the trial or demonstrate the evidence could not have been discovered before the trial, which lasted for six weeks between January and March this year. The response also said the original motion is missing a required affidavit from Murdaugh himself.
The state also argues conflicting remarks were made during press conferences and media interviews by Murdaugh’s attorneys about when evidence of the alleged jury tampering was first discovered, stating they must be explained and clarified. In the new motion, Murdaugh must establish exactly when and how he first learned about the allegations he raised, the state said.
If the defense files a new motion that meets the legal standard, the credibility of Murdaugh’s claims will be under the discretion of Judge Clifton Newman, who, in March, handed down the two life sentences the disbarred attorney is currently serving in a South Carolina state prison, according to the state’s response.
In a separate case, Murdaugh is scheduled to appear before a federal court judge next week, where he is expected to plead guilty to nearly two dozen charges related to fraud and financial crimes, pending a cooperation agreement, according to Murdaugh’s defense team.
Murdaugh is also set to stand trial in November on charges related to stolen settlement funds from the family of the Murdaughs’ late housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield. It is the first of 101 state charges related mostly to accusations of stealing from his clients’ legal settlements, with victims’ alleged total losses amounting to almost $8.8 million, according to prosecutors.
Convicted murderer and disgraced former lawyer Alex Murdaugh is seeking a new trial in South Carolina, alleging the court clerk tampered with the jury as his lawyers claim there is “newly discovered evidence” in the case.
Attorneys for the 55-year-old alleged in a new court filing that Rebecca Hill, Colleton County’s Clerk of Court, engaged in intentional misconduct — deliberately violating a defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial before an impartial jury — to secure financial gain for herself.
Hill self-published a book on the case called “Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders” in July.
Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian, attorneys for Murdaugh, are requesting an evidentiary hearing that they said in a news conference Tuesday will give them subpoena power so they can request phone records and emails in addition to speaking to witnesses. Ultimately, they are hoping for a new trial.
“I respect this court, but I’m innocent,” Murdaugh told the judge ahead of sentencing. “I would never under any circumstances hurt my wife Maggie, and I would never under any circumstances hurt my son.”
Now Murdaugh’s attorneys claim Hill “instructed jurors not to be ‘misled’ by evidence presented in Mr. Murdaugh’s defense. She told jurors not to be ‘fooled by’ Mr. Murdaugh’s testimony in his own defense,” they said in a court filing.
She also had “frequent private conversations with the jury foreperson,” “asked jurors for their opinions about Mr. Murdaugh’s guilt or innocence,” “invented a story about a Facebook post to remove a juror she believed might not vote guilty” and “pressured the jurors to reach a quick verdict,” they allege.
The new filing contains sworn affidavits from three of the jurors, identified only by their numbers, as well as excerpts from Hill’s book.
“Ms. Hill did these things to secure for herself a book deal and media appearances that would not happen in the event of a mistrial. Ms. Hill betrayed her oath of office for money and fame,” Murdaugh’s attorneys wrote.
When they shared the affidavits with Murdaugh, “He was astonished, he was shaking, he was in disbelief,” Griffin said Tuesday afternoon.
The jurors spoke with the attorneys because “they’re upset with the way this played out,” Harpootlian said, though he could not comment on whether the jurors regretted their votes to convict.
“We were hitting brick walls until her book came out, and then jurors who obviously were not comfortable with how she handled matters were even less comfortable with her going on a book tour, making money off what she did,” Griffin said.
Griffin and Harpootlian said in a statement they also asked the South Carolina U.S. attorney to open a federal investigation.
CBS News has reached out to Hill for comment but has not received a response.
Attorneys for Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced former lawyer convicted of killing his wife and son, are calling for a new trial. They allege a court clerk improperly tampered with the jury during his trial. Mark Strassmann reports.
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“48 Hours” explores the double life of a once prominent lawyer and his stunning fall from grace. Murdaugh is now an admitted drug addict, thief and convicted murderer. “48 Hours” contributor Nikki Battiste reports.
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Alex Murdaugh, the disbarred South Carolina lawyer convicted this March of murdering his wife and son in June 2021, has been indicted on 22 counts of federal fraud and money laundering, including charges of defrauding his late housekeeper’s family after her death in February 2018.
The new fraud charges announced on Wednesday come in addition to a staggering 20 indictments containing 101 charges issued by the state of South Carolina against Murdaugh for allegedly defrauding people of nearly $9 million. The state charges range from breach of trust to forgery, money laundering and tax evasion.
The charges served as key evidence in Murdaugh’s widely watched murder trial; prosecutors argued that as people close to him discovered the extent of his alleged schemes, he killed them to garner sympathy for himself and buy time to cover up his misdealings.
Alex Murdaugh gives testimony during his murder trial at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, on Feb. 23, 2023.
Murdaugh, a personal injury attorney, was first arrested in October 2021 for allegedly misappropriating insurance funds meant for the family of housekeeper Gloria Satterfield after her fatal “trip and fall” accident at his home. (The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, or SLED, announced in September 2021 that it would be investigating Satterfield’s death, and in June 2022 said it would exhume her remains, which has not yet occurred.)
In December 2021, Murdaugh agreed to a $4.3 million settlement with the Satterfields, apologizing “for his financial transgressions committed in connection with the wrongful death settlement funds recovered in connection with the death of Gloria Satterfield and the pain it has caused.”
Murdaugh was in jail on fraud and other charges when he was charged in July 2022 with killing Maggie and Paul Murdaugh in June 2021. After a lengthy trial, he was convicted of their murders in March and is serving a life sentence. He is currently appealing the verdict.
The federal indictment alleges that Murdaugh, in addition to siphoning funds from the Satterfield settlement, schemed to obtain money and property from his personal injury clients by redirecting their settlement funds to himself, conspiring with his banker to commit wire and bank fraud, and creating a phony bank account through which he funneled the personal injury settlements.
In a May 1 filing, Murdaugh said he “invented” the story that his family’s dogs had caused the 57-year-old Satterfield to fall on the steps “to force his insurers to make a settlement payment.” If the insurer “only attempted to [pay the Satterfield estate because] it was the victim of fraud,” then anyone who received the money would be required to return it, the filing states.
Murdaugh was part of a prominent legal family that wielded unprecedented power and influence in their small South Carolina community and a onetime prosecutor himself. “All judges, all judges in the state, either knew him or knew of him,” Judge Clifton Newman said after the murder trial.
“Trust in our legal system begins with trust in its lawyers,” U.S. Attorney Adair F. Boroughs said in a statement on Wednesday. “South Carolinians turn to lawyers when they are at their most vulnerable, and in our state, those who abuse the public’s trust and enrich themselves by fraud, theft, and self-dealing will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Murdaugh’s lawyers Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin said he has been cooperating with authorities.
“Alex has been cooperating with the United States Attorneys’ Office and federal agencies in their investigation of a broad range of activities,” their statement said. “We anticipate that the charges brought today will be quickly resolved without a trial.”
