Alex Murdaugh’s murder case has exploded back into the national spotlight after his legal team revealed what they claim is bombshell DNA evidence that was never fully investigated — evidence they say could completely change the outcome of his upcoming retrial.
Just one day after South Carolina’s Supreme Court stunned the country by overturning Murdaugh’s double murder conviction, his attorneys went public with shocking new claims about the 2021 killings of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.
“There was DNA under Maggie’s fingernails — male DNA that was not Alex’s and not any family member’s,” Murdaugh attorney Jim Griffin told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo Thursday night. “And it was never entered into CODIS.”
CODIS is the FBI’s massive DNA database used by law enforcement agencies nationwide to identify suspects and connect evidence to crimes. According to Griffin, investigators never followed up on the unidentified DNA.
The revelation could become a major focal point in the retrial of the once-powerful South Carolina attorney, whose dramatic fall from grace captivated America during one of the most sensational murder trials in recent memory.
Murdaugh, 57, had been sentenced to two consecutive life terms after a jury convicted him in 2023 of brutally murdering Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, near the dog kennels of the family’s sprawling hunting estate in Colleton County.
But now his lawyers are painting a very different picture.
Defense attorneys claim investigators became so laser-focused on Murdaugh from the very beginning that they ignored other possible suspects and failed to properly preserve key evidence at the crime scene.
“There were tire tracks leaving the murder scene that were never followed,” Griffin said. “They were actually trampled over.”
The attorney also claimed the defense has since received information pointing to “other potential suspects,” along with alleged tips about possible motives and even the location of the missing murder weapons.
“We’ve received tips about who was in the area that night and what motives they had,” Griffin claimed during a separate interview on Fox & Friends.
The defense is also taking direct aim at prosecutors’ timeline of the murders — one of the key pillars of the state’s original case.
At trial, prosecutors argued Maggie and Paul were killed shortly after 8:44 p.m., largely based on cellphone activity and a cellphone video recorded by Paul moments before his death. The video captured voices prosecutors said belonged to Paul, Maggie and Alex together near the kennels.
That video shattered Murdaugh’s original alibi after he initially told investigators he had not been near the kennels before discovering the bodies around 10 p.m.
Now Griffin says the timeline was far less certain than prosecutors claimed.
“We don’t even know when the murders happened,” the attorney argued. “There’s no eyewitnesses. There’s nothing to set the exact time of death.”
He even mocked the coroner’s methods during the original investigation, claiming the estimate was based largely on placing a thumb under the victims’ armpits to gauge body temperature.
Despite attacking the state’s case, Griffin admitted Murdaugh lied repeatedly to investigators after the killings.
“He was standing there with a shotgun in his hand beside his dead wife and son,” Griffin said. “He had a pocket full of pills. He was a drug addict.”
According to the defense, Murdaugh’s lies stemmed from paranoia fueled by opioid addiction — not guilt over murder.
“He lied, and once he started lying, he kept lying,” Griffin said.
Prosecutors originally argued Murdaugh murdered his wife and son to distract from mounting financial scandals that were closing in around him. At the time of the killings, Murdaugh was allegedly facing exposure for stealing millions from clients and law partners, while his family was also under intense scrutiny over a fatal 2019 boat crash involving his son Paul.
That crash killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach and triggered lawsuits that prosecutors claimed threatened to expose Murdaugh’s entire financial empire.
But defense attorney Dick Harpootlian blasted the prosecution’s motive as “manufactured” and insisted there was never any physical evidence directly tying Murdaugh to the murders.
“No DNA. No blood. No fingerprints. No murder weapons,” Harpootlian said. “There is technical evidence that would indicate he wasn’t there.”
The dramatic reversal of Murdaugh’s conviction has once again divided true crime followers across America, with some convinced the disgraced attorney manipulated the system for years — while others now question whether investigators rushed to judgment.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, however, says prosecutors remain confident.
“We have credible evidence that supports the conclusions we came to the first time,” Wilson said Thursday. “And we intend to pursue those again.”
Even with the murder conviction overturned, Murdaugh is not walking free anytime soon. He remains behind bars serving lengthy federal and state prison sentences tied to his massive financial fraud schemes, including stealing millions from vulnerable clients and associates.
Still, the possibility of a retrial packed with explosive DNA evidence, alternate suspect theories, and fresh attacks on the original investigation is already shaping up to become another courtroom spectacle America won’t be able to look away from.
Discover more from Next Gen News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.