Sandy Smith has long held that her son’s death was no accident but the result of a brutal beating. The division’s chief, Mark Keel, has assigned extra regional agents to the homicide investigation in hopes that knowledgable parties might be more willing to speak now, according to a 22 March press release. The announcement directed people to contact South Carolina’s law enforcement division with any tips. “He probably was pounding on his coffin, saying, to anybody who could hear, ‘I was not hit by a car, but I was intentionally killed.’ And now we’ve told him we hear his voice.”īland’s law firm announced on Monday that Sandy Smith was offering a $35,000 reward for information leading to the identification and conviction of anyone responsible in her son’s death. “Stephen for many, many years, I can only imagine, was not so much at peace in his grave,” Bland said in a video. With the second autopsy completed and the investigation unfolding, Bland said Stephen can “really rest at ease”. “I walked in the door, saw him, gave him a hug - just broken down.”īuster also told the jury that he’d been aware of his father’s addiction to painkillers but said he thought that Alex had “handled it” after a stint at a detox facility.But speculation following the since-disbarred lawyer’s recent life sentence for those killings helped Sandy Smith raise more than $87,000 to have her son’s body re-examined in an investigation that South Carolina law enforcement division has said was never closed since the agency opened it in June 2021.Īttorney Eric Bland, who is representing the family, said in a Sunday statement that this weekend was a “bittersweet” and “trying time”. 21, recalling how his father had called him on June 7, 2021, to tell him his mother and brother had been shot dead. He testified in his father’s defense on Feb. īuster attended each day of his father’s murder trial, sitting alongside his girlfriend and his uncle. “Thank you for not allowing Stephen's story to be swept under a rug,” she said.Īs they investigated the Murdaugh murders, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division agents reopened probes “based on information gathered” into the death of Smith and the 2018 death of Gloria Satterfield, the Murdaugh’s housekeeper who died after falling at the family’s home.Īlex Murdaugh later admitted to stealing more than $4 million in insurance money that was owed to Satterfield’s family. Last week, Smith’s mother, Sandy, announced she had raised $60,000 via GoFundMe to exhume his body and conduct an independent autopsy. “I am requesting that the media immediately stop publishing these defamatory comments and rumors about me,” Buster said. “I unequivocally deny any involvement in his death, and my heart goes out to the Smith family. “These baseless rumors of my involvement with Stephen and his death are false,” Buster said in his statement. Prior to his death, Smith, an openly gay nursing student, had told his sister that he’d been quietly seeing another young man whose identity would shock many people in the conservative area.Īfter he died, the Murdaugh name was frequently brought up to investigators, but Buster has now denied any involvement. While authorities initially suspected Smith died in a hit-and-run, there was little evidence of a crash, fueling suspicions his body had been dumped there. Smith was found dead of blunt force trauma in the middle of a rural road in Hampton County, South Carolina, on July 8, 2015. “Before, during and since my father’s trial, I have been targeted and harassed by the media and followers of this story. “I haven’t spoken up until now because I want to live in private while I cope with their deaths and my father’s incarceration,” he added. I love them so much and miss them terribly,” Buster said. “I have tried my best to ignore the vicious rumors about my involvement in Stephen Smith’s tragic death that continue to be published in the media as I grieve over the brutal murders of my mother and brother. In his first public statement since his father Alex Murdaugh was convicted of murdering his mother and brother, Buster Murdaugh has hit back at the “vicious rumors” tying him to the 2015 death of a high school classmate.īuster vehemently denied any involvement in the death of 19-year-old Stephen Smith, whose death investigation was reopened by detectives investigating the 2021 murders of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh, in a statement to media on Monday.
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