The Re-Trial Of Alex Murdaugh

The first retrial hearing in the Murdaugh case produced a moment that deserves more attention than it received. Dick Harpootlian presented the court with transcripts from interviews conducted with the first people to arrive at the Moselle property after Maggie and Paul were found dead. He told Judge McCaslin the accounts contain conflicting information about who was present at the property that ni...

For case followers tracking every strategic detail: the prosecution’s position heading into the April retrial is fundamentally different from 2023. The 12.5 hours of financial crimes testimony that defined how the first jury understood Alex Murdaugh — before they heard any murder evidence — has been restricted by the Supreme Court. The motive theory faces a jury that knows Murdaugh already pleaded...

The first retrial hearing produced a ruling that goes directly to the defense’s ability to prepare. Judge McCaslin denied Murdaugh a laptop after the prison warden refused. The conference room compromise means every discovery review session requires his attorneys to physically visit the facility with their own equipment. Harpootlian warned the court that without better access, preparation could ta...

The defense is building Alex Murdaugh’s retrial around evidence SLED collected and never fully analyzed: DNA from an unknown male found under Maggie Murdaugh’s left-hand fingernails. They want Othram — the lab behind the Kohberger identification — to run an independent analysis on a rush order. Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke take the audience’s hardest questions head on. Is a proven liar’s denial w...

Alex Murdaugh's murder convictions were overturned, and the retrial is now moving forward in front of a newly assigned judge. Before the first hearing, his defense team made its opening moves — and they tell you a lot about how this second trial is going to be fought. There are three motions. The defense wants the trial moved out of the five-county circuit where the Murdaugh name dominated the cou...

When the Supreme Court erased Alex Murdaugh’s murder convictions, Blanca drove straight to Maggie’s grave. Twenty years inside that household. Not staff — family. The person Maggie cried to behind closed doors. Blanca fixed Alex’s collar the morning of June 7th. She found the wet towel the next day. She gave every detail to a jury that convicted in three hours. Then Becky Hill destroyed the verdic...

The kennel video convicted Alex Murdaugh the first time. His voice at the dog kennels minutes before Maggie and Paul were shot. Multiple people identified that voice under oath. He admitted he lied about being there. The jury came back in three hours. Now Dick Harpootlian says his team has a counter. He won’t say what it is. But he said it on national television, which means he wants the potential...

The retrial hasn’t begun and the prosecution is already losing the people who built its case. Ryan Kelly, the SLED agent who testified as one of the state’s final witnesses at the 2023 murder trial, was fired from the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office on June 8, 2026. Kelly had been running the office’s internal affairs unit — investigating other officers’ misconduct — when allegations of harassm...

The retrial of Alex Murdaugh for the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh is being shaped right now — in press conferences, in federal court filings, and in strategy signals neither side would normally make public. Criminal defense attorney Bob Motta reads all of it through a lens most commentators don’t have. On the defense side: a stated plan for the kennel video, unknown male DNA under Maggie’s...

There’s a reason the defense filed this lawsuit in federal court instead of state court. Federal rules let them run their own investigation in a way the murder case never allowed. They can force sworn interviews. They can demand documents that haven’t been made available through the criminal process. And they can pull in anyone connected to the Colleton County courthouse during the first trial — n...

The first time Creighton Waters stood in front of a jury and talked about Alex Murdaugh, he had twelve and a half hours of financial destruction to work with. Stolen money from vulnerable clients. Insurance fraud. A man who lied to everyone who ever trusted him. By the time the jury considered the murder evidence, they already knew exactly what kind of person was sitting at the defense table. The...

Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin are doing something unusual for a defense team heading into a retrial — they’re telling everyone what they plan to do. Harpootlian said on national television that his team has a strategy for the kennel video, the single most damaging piece of evidence from the first trial. That video placed Alex’s voice at the Moselle kennels minutes before Maggie and Paul were ki...

The defense team says other suspects committed these murders. Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson — twenty years inside the Murdaugh household, a key prosecution witness at the first trial — agrees that other people were involved. And her agreement is the worst thing the defense could hear. Because Blanca isn’t saying someone else did it. She’s saying Alex always used someone else to do everything — and the...

The woman now overseeing Alex Murdaugh’s retrial reportedly rented office space from his defense attorney and named him under oath as a lawyer who shaped her career. Judge Debra McCaslin was handed exclusive jurisdiction over every Murdaugh proceeding by the South Carolina Supreme Court — the same court that reversed his murder convictions and ordered a new trial in the killings of Maggie and Paul...

Years before the South Carolina Supreme Court handed her the most closely watched murder retrial in the state's history, Judge Debra McCaslin stood before legislators and named the lawyers who left a mark on her career. One of them was Dick Harpootlian — the man who will stand at Alex Murdaugh's side when his double murder case goes back to trial for the killings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh. The c...

The Murdaugh retrial doesn't just affect Alex. It touches every case, every family, and every unresolved question connected to the Murdaugh name. Eric Bland represents the Satterfield sons whose testimony the Supreme Court dismissed. He represents Sandy Smith whose son's homicide investigation was reopened because of the Murdaugh murders. And he built the financial crimes case that prosecutors are...

The Murdaugh name appeared more than forty times in the original investigation of Stephen Smith's death in 2015. Stephen was a former classmate of Buster Murdaugh. He was found dead on a road miles from the Murdaugh family's hunting property. When SLED reopened the case six years later, they said it was because of evidence found during the Murdaugh murder investigation. They never revealed what th...

Jim Griffin went on national television after the Supreme Court ruling and said the defense has evidence nobody's seen — including an unknown male DNA profile found under Maggie Murdaugh's fingernails. He said it wasn't properly investigated. He said it changes the case. And now the defense walks into retrial with subpoena power and the ability to build a full third-party culprit strategy around i...

Becky Hill wanted to sell books. Alex Murdaugh's murder convictions are gone. And the financial crime victims who sat on that witness stand are now being told by the state's highest court that some of their testimony had "zero probative value." Eric Bland represented those victims. He's the attorney who exposed the financial schemes that prosecutors used as their entire theory of motive. And he's...

Alex Murdaugh finished law school at the University of South Carolina in 1994. The judge who now holds his future finished at the same school in 1993. Twelve months apart, same building, same degree — and two lives that could not have run in more opposite directions. He walked into a family firm with a century of Lowcountry power behind it. She walked out with law books other people had to buy for...

For everyone who has followed the Murdaugh case with their heart in their throat — waiting, again, for a verdict that finally holds for Maggie and Paul — here is what we actually know about the woman now in charge. Judge Debra McCaslin was handed the entire Alex Murdaugh case by the South Carolina Supreme Court: every motion, every ruling, and the retrial itself. And while the internet fixates on...

Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson spent twenty years watching Alex Murdaugh use other people to do his work. Curtis Eddie Smith cashed four hundred thirty-seven checks totaling roughly $2.4 million. A network of enablers kept the financial machine running for years. Alex moved money through other people's hands. He used relationships as cover. He built deniability into every arrangement. He never did anyt...

When the Supreme Court erased Alex Murdaugh's murder convictions, Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson didn't call anyone. She drove straight to Maggie's grave. Twenty years inside that household. Not staff — family. The person Maggie cried to when Alex's financial world was caving in and nobody would tell her why. Blanca fixed Alex's collar the morning of June 7th. She remembered the shirt. She found the we...

The prosecution should fear Blanca Simpson because she knows things they never asked about — and three years of processing the case has given her clarity they might not be ready for. The defense should fear her because she spent twenty years watching Alex Murdaugh operate, and the version of events they're selling doesn't match the man she knew. Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson is not a neutral party and...

Four hundred thirty-seven checks. Roughly two point four million dollars. All flowing from Alex Murdaugh to Curtis Eddie Smith over eight years. That's just one relationship in Alex's network. Add the law partners who didn't ask questions. The bankers who processed the transactions. The people who enabled the opioid pipeline. The man who agreed to shoot Alex on the side of the road for an insuranc...