Timeline: The mysterious death of Stephen Smith in Murdaugh country

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 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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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

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.

April 1, 2023: A new, independent autopsy

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

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

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  

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 [email protected] today.  

In:
• 48 Hours
• Alex Murdaugh
• Murder