South Carolina police have reportedly renewed their investigation into the 2015 dea†h of gay teenager Stephen Smith by exhuming his body. Sources close to the investigation informed WCIV that Smith’s body was exhumed on Friday 31 March, so that it could undergo an independent autopsy.
The body of the 19-year-old was discovered in Hampton County in July 2015. His dea†h was initially considered an accident caused by a hit-and-run. Smith’s dea†h was finally classified as a homicide this month, after an investigation lasting nearly eight years.
Since Alex Murdaugh was convicted of double murd*r earlier this month, there has been a resurgence of interest in Smith’s k!lling.
Buster, Murdaugh’s surviving son, and Smith went to high school together and are therefore likely to be connected. Sandy Smith, Smith’s mother, started a successful fundraising campaign last month to pay for a private exhumation and autopsy of her son.
She wrote a letter to federal investigators implicating Buster in her son’s dea†h and accusing local authorities of bungling the inquiry into his dea†h. According to a case file obtained by Fitsnews on Thursday, however, South Carolina investigators have focused in on two 25-year-olds, Patrick Wilson and Shawn Connelly, who were both initially suspected in Smith’s k!lling.
Six years later, when Alex Murdaugh murd*red his wife Maggie and son Paul on their 1,700-acre Moselle estate, the two were teens who lived just a few miles from where the Smith’s mutilated body was found.
About five months after Smith was murd*red, Alex Murdaugh’s older brother Randy Murdaugh encouraged Wilson’s stepfather to alert authorities to the boys’ involvement in the murd*r.
Connelly had a history of traffic violations and DUIs, and Wilson allegedly told his stepfather that Connelly was driving the vehicle that “hit and k!lled Stephen Smith.”
At Randy Murdaugh’s insistence, his father reported the incident to the police. Wilson had been arrested for attempted murd*r for reasons that were not obvious at the time of his confession. Shortly thereafter, a solicitor who “served at the leisure of the Murdaughs” dismissed the charges, according to one historian of Hampton.
Randy Murdaugh brought two auto accident claims against Connelly on behalf of customers within a year after Smith’s murd*r, but all were dismissed by judges who were sympathetic to Murdaugh.
Neither man was thoroughly searched by the initial investigation team despite the admissions. The police initially said the k!lling “looked to be a homicide,” but later determined Smith had been k!lled in a hit-and-run accident.
Check out more details we have provided you relating to Stephen Smith below links:
- Stephen Smiths Second Autopsy Results May Be Highly Restricted Eight Years Later
- Authorities in South Carolina are Treating Stephen Smiths De@th as Homicide
Although the Murdaughs have not been officially cleared by police, according to one law enforcement source who spoke with FitsNews, the agency has information that the legal family has no involvement in the case.
After allegations that Buster Murdaugh murd*red Smith to cover up an affair between the two baseball players, police said last week that they “immediately” put Murdaugh on their radar as part of the revived probe.
As he mourns the dea†h of his mother and brother and comes to terms with his murd*ring father’s incarceration, Buster has “unequivocally” dismissed “vicious rumors” that he was complicit in the murd*r.
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