Creighton Waters has been the lead prosecutor on the Alex Murdaugh murder case from the beginning. He told a Lexington County courtroom on August 14 that he speaks to SLED every day. When the defense told Judge Debra McCaslin that weapons from a recent Allendale County murder may be connected to the Murdaugh case, Waters said he had never heard the first thing about it.
The judge’s eyebrows went up. So did everyone else’s.
McCaslin ordered SLED to release fingernail DNA collected from Maggie Murdaugh to the defense for independent testing. SLED’s standard method had already confirmed unknown male DNA under her fingernails. It could not identify who it belonged to. The defense had argued for months that SLED’s own retesting would destroy the only remaining sample before an outside lab could touch it. The judge ruled the defense gets access.
The venue has been moved out of the Colleton County circuit entirely. The first jury convicted Murdaugh in the county where his family held the local prosecutor’s office for three generations. That conviction was reversed after the clerk of court was found to have tampered with the jury. McCaslin said she will personally oversee how jurors are summoned and screened for the retrial.
The prosecution won permission to play Murdaugh’s 2023 testimony. That includes the moment he admitted lying about being at the kennels the night Maggie and Paul were killed. The prosecution lost roughly twelve and a half hours of financial crimes evidence the state Supreme Court said should not have been admitted the first time.
A retired FBI investigator listened to all of it. Her first question is about SLED.
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