Police hit roadblocks, chased rumors linking Murdaughs in Stephen Smith death investigation
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Murdaugh murders in Colleton County
Two members of a powerhouse legal family were shot and killed June 7 in Colleton County, SC. Read more of our coverage.
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This story first published July 23, 2021.
Police looking into the death of Stephen Smith, a 19-year-old Hampton teen found dead on a rural road in 2015, hit several obstacles in their initial investigation and unsuccessfully chased rumors tying the Murdaugh family to the case, according to audio interviews recently released.
The records show S.C. Highway Patrol investigators circled the Murdaugh family, interviewing people with third-hand information, but never actually asked family members about their alleged involvement.
The files show that a Murdaugh family member, a personal injury lawyer, called the Smith family on the day Stephen Smith was found dead, offering to represent them at no charge. The family told police they thought the offer was “weird.”
The case was cold for years — until the killings of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh on June 7. Weeks later, S.C. Law Enforcement Division, the agency investigating the double homicide, confirmed that it will also investigate Smith’s death due to information gathered in the Murdaugh murder investigation.
A man on his way to work spotted Stephen Smith’s body on Sandy Run Road in the early morning hours of July 8, 2015. Smith had a head wound consistent with being shot, the coroner explained in a report.
After his autopsy, however, Smith’s death was ruled a hit-and-run. The forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy hypothesized he could have been struck in the head by the mirror on a large truck.
S.C. Highway Patrol officers investigating the case doubted that conjecture.
“There’s just no physical evidence. We got evidence on the body but no physical evidence,” SCHP Cpl. M. E. Duncan explained to Smith’s twin sister in a July 17, 2015 interview. “Like I said, I will say ‘hit-and-run’. ... I don’t even want to call it that. It’s more a ‘death investigation.’ [It] could be a homicide, could be a voluntary, involuntary [manslaughter].”
SCHP Lance Cpl. Todd Proctor, who at the time was tracking rumors that the Murdaughs were involved, was more frank.
“He didn’t get hit by no car,” Proctor told one person he interviewed.
“I’m not saying whoever did this murdered him,” Proctor said, because murder has to be premeditated. It may have been an accident that was covered up, he theorized.
‘He’s on our radar’
According to the SCHP interviews, Proctor received tips from several sources that Paul Murdaugh’s older brother, Buster, was somehow involved in the death.
The case file shows only that Proctor tried calling Buster Murdaugh once on Oct. 20, 2015. His voicemail was full, so he sent him an email. The file shows no record that Proctor made contact with Murdaugh.
In a Sept. 2, 2015 interview with a tipster about the rumors, Proctor hinted that there may have been more contact with the Murdaugh family over this case.
Proctor said Buster Murdaugh has been on SCHP’s radar for some time.
“The Murdaughs know that,” he said. “They know that he’s on our radar.”
The SCHP investigator tried tracing the rumors about Buster Murdaugh back to their source through classmates of Stephen Smith who had passed them along, according to the audio files.
Proctor was unable to find the source or locate any evidence to corroborate the rumors.
Proctor now works as a school resource officer with the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office. Reporters with The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette were unsuccessful in interviewing Proctor after leaving multiple messages for him at the school where he works and with the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office.
Other links to the family?
The case has one confirmed link to the Murdaughs, according to audio interviews and case notes: Buster’s uncle, Randolph “Randy” Murdaugh IV, a lawyer who called the Smith family shortly after they learned of Smith’s death.
“The day that Stephen passed away, Randy Murdaugh was the second person to call my dad after the coroner,” Stephanie Smith, Stephen’s twin sister, said on a July 17, 2015 interview. “And he said he wanted to take the case, and it would be free of charge and everything.”
Smith said the family thought it was “weird” that the representation was offered for free. Duncan with Highway Patrol didn’t ask any further questions about it in his interview with Stephanie Smith.
On Thursday, a reporter with The Island Packet left a message for Murdaugh at his law firm, Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick, P.A., based in Hampton.
Murdaugh works as a personal injury attorney, which may explain why he would contact a family in mourning.
Months later, Randy Murdaugh’s name came up again in the files.
In mid-December 2015, the Highway Patrol’s Duncan spoke with a Hampton police officer, the files show.
The officer, Nick Ginn, had third-hand information from an 18-year-old student at Legacy Christian Academy in Ridgeland. The student confided in his step-dad that he knew who may have been driving drunk and killed Smith.
The step-father called Officer Ginn.
On Dec. 18, 2015, Proctor followed up. He eventually reached the student’s step-dad, who told Proctor “that the reason that he was passing this information on was because Randy Murdaugh told him to call.”
There were no follow-up questions from Proctor nor any other references to this lead in the file afterwards. The file contained no interviews with members of the Murdaugh family.
Smith ‘harassed’ before death
Stephanie Smith and her mother, Sandy, said Stephen had been acting strangely in the two weeks before he died.
Stephen “played hooky” in the days before his death, and he normally never skipped school, Sandy Smith said. He was taking summer classes at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College.
His sister said he was also staying out late and then would take the back roads to their home in Hampton.
She described him as acting “secretive.”
While Stephanie Smith was aware that her brother, an openly gay teen in small-town Hampton, was on dating apps, she didn’t think he was in a relationship.
So she and her family were surprised when a 47-year-old Hampton County man came to Stephen Smith’s wake announcing he was Smith’s boyfriend.
In an approximately hour-long conversation with SCHP investigator Duncan that sometimes turned contentious, the alleged boyfriend said he spoke to Smith on the phone on the day he died.
Earlier in the night, the man said, Smith had told him that he was at a store on Snider’s Crossroad, between Islandton and Walterboro in Colleton County.
“He said he was being harassed at that store,” the man told Duncan on July 14, 2015. “He said it was a couple of guys in a pickup truck. If I recall correctly, he said they were rednecks.”
He said Smith later told him he felt like he was being followed.
The boyfriend told SCHP investigators that his last text from Smith was around 3:30 a.m. on July 8. Smith was supposed to be on his way to his place, the man said.
The authorities thought Smith may have run out of gas and was walking to the nearest gas station when he was killed. His car was found abandoned a few miles from where he died. The gas hatch was open, with the gas cap hanging on the side.
Stephanie Smith said that doesn’t add up. Smith would’ve hopped into the woods if he’d heard a car coming. She said the two of them had done that before.
In an interview last month, Sandy Smith said she was overjoyed to find out SLED was opening a new investigation into her son’s death. She felt vindicated.
“That was like the best day of my life in six years,” Sandy Smith told The Island Packet. “I was just so ecstatic. It was shocking.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2021 at 9:46 AM with the headline "Police hit roadblocks, chased rumors linking Murdaughs in Stephen Smith death investigation."
