Eight years after a 19-year-old nursing student was found dead in the middle of a rural Lowcountry road, the death of Stephen Smith is still an open wound and an open case. His body has been exhumed, a private autopsy has challenged the original findings and state investigators now say the 2015 death should be handled as a homicide, as per WTTE.
New interview turns up the volume
On Tuesday, the "Criminally Obsessed" team released an interview that digs back through Smith's final hours and the holes in the official record. In the sit-down, senior reporter Anne Emerson talks with Wall Street Journal reporter and author Valerie Bauerlein to walk through the timeline and the unanswered questions. The conversation, published by WTTE, places Smith's death inside the larger Murdaugh saga and the wave of public pressure that has kept the case from quietly fading away.
Exhumation and a second look at the body
Smith's remains were exhumed in late March 2023, followed by a private, independent autopsy that his family pushed for in hopes of settling long-standing doubts. CBS News reported that the review specifically revisited a key question: did his injuries actually line up with the hit-and-run explanation that authorities put on paper in 2015?
Pathologist Dr. Michelle DuPre, who led the independent examination, told reporters that Smith's fatal injury was a severe skull fracture and pointed to details she believed did not fit a straightforward pedestrian-versus-vehicle collision. Her findings were turned over to state investigators, although SLED has not made the full report public, according to Fox News. The private team's conclusions helped push officials toward treating the case as something more than a tragic traffic accident.
Why the Murdaugh name keeps surfacing
State investigators say they reopened Smith's file on June 23, 2021, after information surfaced during the probe into the 2021 killings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh. The agency has repeatedly said the Smith investigation "remains active and ongoing," according to Live 5 News. That public tie to the high-profile Murdaugh murders yanked the case back into the spotlight and has fueled years of rumor across the Lowcountry.
Where the case sits now
Attorneys and private investigators working with Smith's family have tried to keep the heat on. In 2023, lawyers Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter announced a reward and helped pay for the exhumation, and regional reporting has pointed to two men briefly mentioned in 2015 patrol notes as possible persons of interest, according to Fox News. The attorneys also said SLED Chief Mark Keel personally called to say the state no longer viewed Smith's death as a simple hit-and-run, an account described by Law&Crime.
What a homicide label really changes
With SLED now treating Smith's death as a homicide, investigators have access to tools and resources that were not fully on the table when the case was classified as a traffic incident. It also raises the possibility of a grand jury review or criminal charges if the evidence supports them. No arrests have been announced so far, and the agency continues to urge anyone with information to come forward, according to CBS News.
Even with a second autopsy, fresh forensic scrutiny and the attention that followed the Murdaugh trials, the Smith case has no public resolution. His family has kept pushing for answers. Bauerlein, who wrote a deep dive into the broader Murdaugh story in The Devil at His Elbow, has said the available facts are messy yet worth revisiting. For now, the truth about what happened on that dark stretch of Sandy Run Road sits with investigators and with anyone who knows more than they have been willing to say.
