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Mar 22, 2023 · South Carolina authorities have confirmed they are investigating the death of Stephen Smith as a homicide, nearly eight years after the 19-year-old was found dead in the middle of a rural road from what was ruled to be a hit-and-run.
- 3 min
- Meredith Deliso
- Overview
- July 1, 2015: An unusual conversation
- July 8, 2015 | 3:59 a.m.: A body in the roadway
- July 8, 2015 | Early morning hours: Stephen Smith's car found
- July 8, 2015 | Later that morning: "The biggest shock"
- July 8, 2015 | 12:30 p.m.: The autopsy: not a gunshot wound
- July 17, 2015: Unsubstantiated rumors
- Dec. 18, 2015: A possible lead
- 2016: The case goes cold
- Sept. 28, 2016 | A plea for outside help
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.
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.
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."
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
- CBS News
- Emma Steele
- 42 min
Nov 26, 2023 · Frustrated by a lack of answers, Sandy Smith is working with a team of lawyers and experts to find out what happened to her son. "48 Hours" has obtained exclusive access to the findings of an ...
- Correspondent
- Nikki Battiste
- 42 min
Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss, the longtime DJ on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show, has died, his wife announced Wednesday. He was 40. Boss was pronounced dead just before 11:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday in...
- 5 min
- Diana Dasrath,Andrew Blankstein,Marlene Lenthang
May 25, 2023 · Stephen 'Twitch' Boss' autopsy report sheds new light on the details of his death nearly six months after the beloved dancer died by suicide.
- emily.stmartin@latimes.com
- Staff Writer
Apr 3, 2023 · CNN — The body of Stephen Smith, whose 2015 death was thrust back into the spotlight during the investigation of the 2021 killings of Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and her son Paul Murdaugh, was...
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Dec 15, 2022 · Dancer and longtime "Ellen DeGeneres Show" DJ Stephen "tWitch" Boss died at the age of 40. On Wednesday, DeGeneres took to Instagram to remember her friend, who also served as co-executive...
