Forensics, Photoshop & Loose Ends: The Unresolved Murdaugh Evidence Battle

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by JENN WOOD

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Nearly five years after the murders of 52-year-old Maggie Murdaugh and her son, 22-year-old Paul Murdaugh — and more than three years after Alex Murdaugh‘s attorneys accused prosecutors and investigators of fabricating blood spatter evidence against him — one of the most explosive motions filed before the original trial remains unresolved.

No hearing was ever held on the motion – and no ruling was ever handed down by the court.

It’s just another loose end in a saga increasingly defined by them… although the motion could wind up being one of the first orders of business in Murdaugh’s second trial, just as soon as the S.C. supreme court (which emphatically reversed Murdaugh’s double homicide convictions last week) picks a judge to preside over those proceedings.

At issue is a January 18, 2023 motion for sanctions (.pdf) filed by Murdaugh attorneys Dick Harpootlian, Jim Griffin and Phil Barber seeking to exclude all testimony tied to controversial Oklahoma bloodstain analyst Tom Bevel — along with any testimony derived from Bevel’s work product.

While never introduced during Murdaugh’s first trial, Bevel’s work product was the evidence that buried the disgraced attorney and confessed fraudster in the court of public opinion – solidifying his guilt in the hearts and minds of many tracking the case.

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The filing in question accused agents of the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) of “badgering” Bevel into changing his original conclusion that blood samples obtained from Murdaugh’s white T-shirt were “consistent with transfers and not back spatter from a bullet wound.”

According to the defense, Bevel’s original report was buried inside a massive discovery dump – mislabeled and misplaced – and was only uncovered thanks to the amazing digital sleuthing of Harpootlian’s paralegal, Holli Miller.

The discovery prompted Murdaugh’s attorneys to accuse SLED and Bevel of attempting to “fabricate evidence” against their client through Photoshop-enhanced imagery of the bloody shirt. They further accused the state of refusing to comply with judge Clifton Newman‘s December 2022 discovery order compelling the production of communications, Photoshop files and other underlying forensic materials.

Despite the severity of these allegations, the sanctions motion was never formally decided prior to Murdaugh’s six-week murder trial – which began on January 25, 2023. Nor was it ever revisited afterward.

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KEY EVIDENCE — UNTIL IT WASN’T

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The blood spatter issue occupied a strange — and increasingly controversial — place in the Murdaugh prosecution from almost the very beginning of the investigation.

Long before Alex Murdaugh was formally charged with murder in July 2022, rumors swirled throughout South Carolina’s legal community that investigators believed they had uncovered powerful forensic evidence tying him directly to the killings of his wife and son at Moselle.

In April 2022, FITSNews reported sources familiar with the investigation believed high-velocity impact spatter on Murdaugh’s clothing directly tied him to the killings.

At the time, the evidence appeared devastating.

“The presence of this forensic evidence on his clothing ‘could have only come from one thing,’” sources told this outlet.

The implication was unmistakable: investigators believed Murdaugh had been standing close enough to one or both victims to be sprayed during the shootings.

That allegation carried enormous weight because bloodstain pattern analysis — particularly high-velocity impact spatter associated with gunshots — has historically been viewed by jurors as highly persuasive forensic evidence. In theory, tiny mist-like droplets can reveal positioning, proximity and movement during a shooting.

And prosecutors badly needed something physical connecting Murdaugh to the actual murders.

At the time of the leak, public discussion surrounding the case was increasingly dominated by circumstantial evidence: financial crimes, shifting timelines, missing weapons, cellphone data and Murdaugh’s own inconsistent statements to investigators. The alleged blood spatter evidence appeared different. It appeared tangible. Scientific. Direct.

The problem? Behind the scenes, the forensic picture was far less settled than the public understood.

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By late 2022, the foundation supporting the blood spatter narrative began to fracture — dramatically. According to defense filings, SLED retained Bevel to evaluate the white T-shirt Murdaugh wore on the night of the killings.

Bevel was not an obscure figure in forensic circles. He was nationally known in bloodstain pattern analysis and had testified in numerous high-profile cases around the country. But he was also controversial — particularly among innocence advocates who sharply criticized aspects of his testimony in the David Camm case in Indiana, where disputed bloodstain evidence contributed to years of wrongful prosecution before Camm was ultimately acquitted.

Initially, however, the defense alleged Bevel’s conclusions did not support SLED’s theory at all.

According to motions later filed by Murdaugh’s defense team, Bevel’s original February 2022 report (.pdf) concluded the stains on the shirt were “consistent with transfers and not back spatter from a bullet wound.”

In other words, the stains were supposedly more consistent with Murdaugh touching the bodies of Maggie and Paul after discovering them — something he openly admitted doing during the 911 call — than with him being sprayed while firing the weapons.

The defense further alleged SLED already knew by that point that confirmatory HemaTrace testing performed on the shirt had returned negative results for human blood in the very areas where Bevel would later claim high-velocity spatter existed.

That allegation became central to the controversy…

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Presumptive blood tests like Leuco-Crystal Violet (LCV) can indicate the possible presence of blood, but they are not definitive because other substances can trigger reactions. HemaTrace testing, meanwhile, is designed to confirm the presence of human blood specifically.

According to the defense, every relevant cutting from the shirt tested negative.

At the same time, another issue emerged — one that would later become a cornerstone of the sanctions motion. The shirt itself had been subjected to LCV testing by SLED. Over time, according to defense attorneys, that process caused the shirt to darken dramatically until critical details were effectively obscured forever. Defense attorneys accused SLED of destroying the evidentiary value of the garment before independent experts could meaningfully analyze it.

Then came the most explosive allegation of all: that SLED agents pressured Bevel into changing his conclusions.

Defense filings laid out an extraordinary timeline in which investigators allegedly met repeatedly with Bevel after his initial report failed to support the prosecution’s theory. According to those filings, SLED agents traveled to Oklahoma in March 2022 to meet with Bevel in person after discussing concerns regarding his original conclusions.

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Shortly afterward, the defense alleged, Bevel informed investigators he had used Photoshop-enhanced imagery to isolate color patterns on the shirt and now believed he could identify “over one hundred stains consistent with spatter.”

“Bottom line I don’t see any other mechanism to get so many misting stains onto his shirt other than the spatter created from the shotgun wounding,” Bevel wrote in one email cited by the defense.

That reversal transformed the shirt from a potentially exculpatory piece of evidence into one of the prosecution’s most publicly discussed forensic claims.

It also triggered one of the nastiest discovery fights in the entire case. Beginning in November 2022, Harpootlian and Griffin filed a series of increasingly aggressive motions accusing SLED and prosecutors of withholding evidence, concealing Bevel’s initial report, destroying evidence and presenting “manipulated opinion testimony contradicted by exculpatory evidence.”

Judge Newman eventually ordered prosecutors to turn over communications, draft reports, Photoshop files and other underlying forensic materials tied to Bevel’s work. The defense later argued those materials were never fully produced.

The allegations culminated in a sprawling sanctions motion filed just days before trial began in January 2023 — a motion asking Newman to prohibit not only Bevel’s testimony, but any testimony derived from his work product. And then — almost abruptly — the entire issue began fading from the courtroom.

By the time jurors were seated in Walterboro, the blood spatter evidence that once appeared poised to become a centerpiece of the state’s forensic case had largely evaporated – and Bevel was never called to testify.

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RELATED | ‘FINGERS ON THE SCALES OF JUSTICE‘

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Instead, prosecutors pivoted to Orangeburg County deputy and former SLED agent Kenny Kinsey, who testified broadly about crime scene reconstruction and back spatter concepts. But even Kinsey ultimately stopped short of definitively concluding the stains on Murdaugh’s shirt were gunshot blood spatter.

The prosecution’s theory of guilt ultimately leaned far more heavily on cellphone evidence, Murdaugh’s own testimony, kennel video footage placing him at the scene moments before the murders and the mountain of financial crimes evidence admitted by judge Newman.

The once-ballyhooed blood spatter evidence — the same evidence publicly described as potentially direct forensic proof of Murdaugh’s guilt — vanished. And because prosecutors chose not to fully introduce the disputed Bevel testimony during trial, the sanctions motion itself drifted into procedural limbo.

That meant the court never formally resolved whether:

• the shirt was improperly destroyed,
• exculpatory forensic evidence was withheld,
• Bevel was improperly influenced,
• or whether the Photoshop-enhanced analysis was scientifically reliable.

More than three years later, those questions remain unanswered — another unresolved thread in a saga increasingly defined by unresolved threads.

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DAVID OWEN’S LONG SHADOW

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Another reason the unresolved sanctions motion remains significant? Ongoing scrutiny surrounding the conduct of former lead SLED agent David Owen.

Owen was deeply involved in the blood spatter saga outlined by the defense — including direct communications with Bevel and participation in the controversial Oklahoma trip defense attorneys claimed was designed to pressure the expert into changing his conclusions.

Since the Murdaugh trial, Owen’s credibility and investigative conduct have repeatedly resurfaced in other major South Carolina cases.

Most notably, Owen recently became a central figure in the Michael Colucci murder prosecution — a case which collapsed spectacularly last year after judge Roger Young quashed Colucci’s indictment due to Brady violations tied to undisclosed evidence. In that case, Colucci’s attorneys accused Owen of suppressing exculpatory evidence for years — including statements suggesting the alleged victim had threatened suicide prior to her death.

Judge Young ultimately ruled the state failed to meet its obligations and ordered prosecutors to start over from square one.

Owen also drew intense scrutiny during Murdaugh’s murder trial after cross-examination by Griffin revealed misleading or inaccurate statements made to the grand jury that indicted him for murder.

Those issues — viewed together — have caused defense attorneys in multiple cases to increasingly frame Owen not as an isolated problem, but as part of a larger pattern involving investigative shortcuts, discovery disputes and credibility concerns.

That backdrop makes the unresolved Bevel sanctions motion more difficult to dismiss as ancient procedural history.

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THE TOM BEVEL PROBLEM

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Then there is Bevel himself. Outside South Carolina, Bevel’s name is already associated with another controversial wrongful conviction saga: the prosecution of former Indiana state trooper David Camm.

Camm was accused of murdering his wife and two children in 2000 — a case that largely turned on bloodstain pattern analysis. Bevel testified that tiny stains on Camm’s shirt were high-velocity impact spatter generated by the shootings, a conclusion prosecutors used to argue Camm had been standing close to the victims when they were killed.

But the case against Camm steadily unraveled.

His convictions were overturned twice, and after more than a decade fighting the charges, Camm was acquitted in 2013. Another man tied to the crime scene through DNA evidence was ultimately prosecuted in connection with the murders.

In the years that followed, Bevel’s testimony in the case became a flashpoint in broader debates over the reliability of bloodstain pattern analysis — a forensic discipline that has faced increasing scrutiny nationwide for its subjectivity and lack of standardized scientific validation.

Critics of the Camm prosecution argued Bevel’s conclusions were overstated and helped drive a wrongful prosecution narrative.

That history matters because many of the same themes surfaced again in the Murdaugh case:

• disputed interpretation of tiny stains,
• evolving forensic conclusions,
• and aggressive reliance on blood pattern analysis as a centerpiece of a murder prosecution.

Defense attorneys in the Murdaugh case repeatedly highlighted those parallels as they challenged Bevel’s changing opinions regarding the white T-shirt worn by Alex Murdaugh the night of the murders.

But because prosecutors ultimately chose not to call Bevel as a witness, the court never fully examined those issues in open court. As a result, one of the most controversial forensic fights in the entire Murdaugh saga was never conclusively resolved.

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RELATED | THE MURDAUGH SAGA: LOOSE ENDS

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ANOTHER LOOSE END

In July 2024, FITSNews published an expansive review of the many “loose ends” still hanging over the sprawling Murdaugh saga.

At the time, that list included unresolved questions surrounding Curtis “Eddie” Smith – Murdaugh’s check casher and alleged drug runner – missing millions, alleged drug trafficking ties and the broader web of corruption orbiting the once-powerful Murdaugh dynasty.

The unresolved blood spatter sanctions motion belongs on that list too – not because it necessarily proves misconduct occurred. And not because it somehow erases the substantial body of evidence prosecutors ultimately used to convict Murdaugh at trial.

It belongs on that list because some of the most serious allegations ever made regarding the integrity of the investigation were never actually adjudicated.

Those questions were effectively frozen in time once prosecutors pivoted away from Bevel and chose not to make the disputed blood spatter evidence a centerpiece of the trial. For years, that left the issue lingering in a strange legal gray area — significant enough to spark explosive motions and intense public debate, but never formally resolved because the jury convicted Murdaugh without it.

Now, however, the legal landscape surrounding the case has fundamentally changed.

With the South Carolina supreme court reversing Murdaugh’s murder convictions, the possibility of a retrial suddenly transforms old unresolved fights into potentially active issues again.

If prosecutors elect to retry Murdaugh, they will face strategic decisions about what evidence to present the second time around — especially after the supreme court sharply criticized the scope of financial crimes evidence admitted during the original trial.

That matters because the blood spatter evidence was initially viewed as one of the few pieces of purportedly direct forensic evidence tying Murdaugh physically to the shootings themselves. In a retrial where prosecutors may seek a more streamlined presentation focused more tightly on the murders, the temptation to revisit stronger forensic arguments could increase.

But doing so could also reopen the entire Bevel controversy. Defense attorneys would almost certainly renew attacks on:

• the HemaTrace results,
• the destruction of the shirt,
• the Photoshop-enhanced imagery,
• Bevel’s changing conclusions,
• the conduct of investigators during the forensic review process.

They would also likely argue that the unresolved sanctions issues deserve full litigation before any such testimony could be presented to a second jury.

At the same time, prosecutors may conclude the controversy surrounding the evidence outweighs its value entirely — particularly given how successfully they secured convictions the first time without Bevel ever testifying.

Either way, the unresolved motion is no longer merely historical background.

The reversal of Murdaugh’s convictions means dormant issues once left behind in Walterboro could suddenly regain legal significance. And in the endlessly unfolding Murdaugh saga, unresolved questions have a habit of refusing to stay buried.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

As a private investigator turned journalist, Jenn Wood brings a unique skill set to FITSNews as its research director. Known for her meticulous sourcing and victim-centered approach, she helps shape the newsroom’s most complex investigative stories while producing the FITSFiles and Cheer Incorporated podcasts. Jenn lives in South Carolina with her family, where her work continues to spotlight truth, accountability, and justice.

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