Murdaugh Adjacent? | The Death of Stephen Smith

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stephen Smith died mysteriously in 2015 in South Carolina.

Though his death was initially ruled a hit-and-run, it has more recently gained attention following the 2021 murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, which lead to the reopening of his case two years ago. The Murdaugh family was mentioned in the initial investigation, but no charges were filed.

Smith was found dead with a large gash on his forehead, a partially dislocated shoulder, and cuts and bruises on his hand. Authorities initially thought Smith had been shot, but no bullet or fragments were found. In March 2023, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) officially ruled Smith's death as a homicide.

In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and reporter Dave Mack discuss what types of injuries one sustains when hit by a vehicle, why Joe and Dave think the perpetrator was likely a local, exhumation, mirror strikes, and more.

Show Notes:

0:00 - Intro

1:26 - Encountering unexpected road obstacles

4:30 - Open homicide with lots to still investigate

6:45 - What happens when you call 911?

11:10 - Misidentifying a gunshot wound as a hit and run

13:00 - Joe describes types of injuries and evidence left on a vehicle when it strikes a pedestrian

20:40 - Why Joe and Dave think the perpetrator was likely a local

22:10 - Besides head trauma, what other physical damage would you expect to see in a hit and run case?

23:40 - What is a mirror strike?

27:25 - Exhumation and its challenges

34:00 - The importance of thorough examination including high-quality imaging and analysis

38:25 - Outro

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm not one to believe in ghosts, but many times when you're driving down the road, particularly
0:25.2	down here in the deep cell. One of the things that comes to mind when you're in a car by yourself,
0:29.9	late at night, you wonder what's out there. You wonder what might be approaching you. Can you
0:34.9	imagine being on your way to work one day? You look up and you see something in the little road,
0:39.8	you're not really sure what that might be. And then all of a sudden, you swerve at the last
0:45.1	second and you think to yourself, what did I just see? And your brain is going to another place
0:51.6	other than human remains. The case that we're going to talk about today involves human remains.
0:58.8	It actually involves the body of a young man, a young man that has been in the news quite a bit
1:05.2	recently. We're going to talk about his death. We're going to talk about his discovery in the middle
1:09.9	of a lonely two-lane blacktop in the low country of South Carolina. We're going to talk about the death
1:16.9	of Stephen Smith. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags.
1:25.1	My buddy Dave Mack, he's a senior reporter with Crime Online Dave. You ever have those moments
1:31.4	where you're driving down the road and you think you catch something in your highline and you're
1:35.3	not really sure what it is and then you have to do a double-taking thing. I can't believe I just
1:40.1	saw what I saw. I have so many questions for you about the death of Stephen Smith.
1:45.7	I can't imagine going down the road, early morning hours, you're just getting your day started
1:50.8	to cup a coffee in your hand and you come up on something in the road that obviously ought not be
1:57.2	there and all I could think of is the panic and you're not exactly sure so you have to stop your car
2:05.4	and check on whatever it is. You're compelled to do that, you know, at any number of levels and
2:11.3	I've actually encountered this working as a death investigator where I'll be talking to somebody
2:16.4	interviewing them out on the scene of a person found in the roadway. They almost always say,
2:22.2	I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe this is happening because I think there's
	...

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