COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel confirmed Tuesday night that his agency is now investigating the 2015 death of Hampton County teen Stephen Smith as a murder.
“We do believe it was a murder,” Keel told The State Tuesday night. “We don’t believe it was a hit-and-run.”
How Smith, 19, died has been the subject of increasing speculation for years, as one of a number of suspicious Lowcountry deaths.
In recent months questions about his death — his body was found on a rural two-lane road at night in Hampton County — have been raised by state and national media. For years, officials have said Smith, who was openly gay, was the victim of a hit-and-run.
Keel said that he spoke earlier Tuesday with Columbia lawyer Eric Bland, who represents Sandy Smith, Smith’s mother, and told Bland that SLED was now investigating her son’s death as a murder.
Bland and his law partner, Ronnie Richter, then released Keel’s statement to the media.
Keel’s call was “a long time coming for Sandy Smith,” Bland told The State Media Co. “This was a woman who for years was fighting the fight alone, saying her son was murdered. It was obvious to most people that it wasn’t a highway fatality.”
SLED’s investigation into Smith’s death has been ongoing since 2021, according to a SLED spokesperson.
Keel “believes that there is a small group of people that have knowledge about what happened to Stephen,” Bland said.
For years, rumors about a connection between the powerful Murdaugh family and Smith’s death have swirled in Hampton County. Earlier this month, Alex Murdaugh was convicted of killing his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, in June 2021. No known evidence has ever linked the Murdaughs to Smith’s death.
On Monday, Murdaugh’s surviving son, Buster, who attended the same high school as Smith, released a statement saying “baseless rumors of my involvement with Stephen and his death are false. I unequivocally deny any involvement in his death, and my heart goes out to the Smith family.”
About Stephen Smith’s death
Smith, a nursing student at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College, was found dead on Sandy Run Road around 4 a.m. on July 4, 2015.
His car was reported to be 3 miles away, with its gas cap unscrewed.
On July 8, 2021, an autopsy concluded that Smith died from blunt force trauma to his head.
An initial investigation by the South Carolina Highway Patrol’s Multi-disciplinary Accident Investigation Team concluded that Smith’s death was a manslaughter caused by a vehicular hit-and-run. However, the lead MAIT investigator, Todd Proctor, has repeatedly and publicly expressed doubts about this conclusion.
“Nothing about this case from the very beginning pointed towards it being a hit-and-run,” Proctor told Fox News in a June 2021 interview.
Many of the telltale signs that a motor vehicle caused Smith’s death were absent from the scene. Over the years, critics of the hit-and-run finding have cited the absence of vehicle parts, broken glass and tire marks in the road or vicinity of Smith’s body. Smith’s shoes, loosely tied, were still on him. Pedestrians struck by cars are usually knocked out of their shoes.
Smith’s mother, Sandy, has long been the most vocal critic of the hit-and-run finding. She has insisted that her son was murdered. She has appeared on numerous state and national broadcasts and social media shows.
Earlier this month, she opened a GoFundMe page to raise money for an independent autopsy for her son.
“Smith’s family believes he was murdered, and wants an unbiased look at his body and an accurate determination of his cause of death based on facts,” said a statement released Tuesday night by Bland and Richter.
As of Tuesday night, Smith’s Go Fund Me has raised more than $80,000.
Sandy Smith retained Bland and Richter, already well known to law enforcement, earlier this week to represent her.
In September 2021, the two attorneys filed a lawsuit alleging Murdaugh stole money from the legitimate heirs in another Hampton County death, and that lawsuit sparked numerous investigations that have led to 99 charges of various kinds of financial fraud and other crimes being filed against Murdaugh
Murdaugh is now in state prison serving two life sentences for the killings of his wife and son.
SLED has asked anybody with information about Smith’s death to call 803-737-9000.
