by JENN WOOD
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Alex Murdaugh’s attorneys pushed back hard on Friday (October 9, 2026) against prosecutors’ responses to their recent evidence demands, arguing grand jury secrecy cannot shield earlier criminal investigative records.
They also said prosecutors’ promises to provide other material needed to be fulfilled…
In four replies (.pdf) submitted a day after prosecutors in the office of attorney general Alan Wilson made their latest arguments, Murdaugh’s attorneys asked S.C. circuit court judge Debra McCaslin to privately review grand jury testimony concerning the alleged disposal of the missing murder weapons. Attorneys also sought permission to proceed with additional DNA testing, independent microscopic comparisons of cartridge cases and firm deadlines for production of laboratory records and original crime-scene scans.
As FITSNews reported Thursday, prosecutors agreed to provide some of the requested evidence but opposed other demands — disputes the defense’s latest filings brought into sharper focus ahead of a scheduled hearing next Friday (October 16, 2026).
Their central message: prosecutors’ agreements resolve only part of the defense’s requests, while its objections leave significant questions for the judge.
To recap: Murdaugh was convicted of the murders of his wife, 52-year-old Maggie Murdaugh, and younger son, 22-year-old Paul Murdaugh, and sentenced to life in prison following a six-week trial in Walterboro, S.C. in early 2023. Those convictions were reversed in May of this year, however, after the S.C. supreme court found numerous issues with the conduct of the trial – including allegations of jury tampering and potential jury rigging.
Jury selection for the retrial is scheduled to begin April 5, 2027, in Sumter County.
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MISSING WEAPONS: SECRECY UNDER SCRUTINY
The most consequential reply concerned information the defense says reached the S.C. Law Enforcement Division (SLED) in 2023 about the alleged removal of weapons and clothing from the Islandton, S.C. family property – known locally as ‘Moselle’ – where the murders were committed
As FITSNews first reported on September 25, 2026 a state grand jury was reportedly examining an alleged crime-scene coverup involving the missing murder weapons. Neither gun used to kill Maggie and Paul has been recovered.
In Thursday’s response, prosecutors declined to confirm or deny the existence or contents of a state grand jury investigation. Much of their filing instead recounted testimony documenting Murdaugh’s friendship with Yemassee police chief Greg Alexander.
Friday’s defense reply challenged both the secrecy argument and the relevance of that emphasis.
“A statement given to SLED agents in 2023” is distinct from evidence received by a state grand jury, attorneys argued, adding that a later decision to investigate the subject through that process “does not retroactively seal SLED’s investigative file.”
The defense said prosecutors had not denied receiving an account in 2023 that a police chief spoke of arriving early at Moselle and providing Murdaugh with a change of clothes, or that weapons and clothing were taken to a police station. It also argued that the response did not deny the lead case agent knew of the account.
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RELATED | RETRACING GREG ALEXANDER’S ROAD TO MOSELLE
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According to Murdaugh’s lawyers, evidence of someone else removing the weapons could be favorable to Murdaugh – even if that person was his friend. Prosecutors argued at trial that Murdaugh transported the weapons to his parents’ home in nearby Almeda, S.C. – a location investigators failed to search until several months after the murders.
“Evidence that the weapons left the scene in someone else’s hands contradicts the theory the state tried — that Mr. Murdaugh alone carried them to Almeda,” attorneys wrote.
Such an account would not, by itself, establish who committed the murders. But the defense contends it could challenge the prosecution’s explanation of what happened afterward and provide material for questioning witnesses.
Attorneys also renewed their demand to know whether prosecutors intend to present a different account of the crime at the retrial – one potentially involving other participants.
“If the point is instead that the state intends to try a different theory in April, one in which others participated, then the defense is entitled to know that, too,” Murdaugh’s attorneys argued.
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The defense directly challenged prosecutors’ assurance that it would comply with its disclosure obligations “if and when those obligations are triggered.”
According to the reply, those obligations arose when SLED received the statement — rather than when prosecutors later pursued the subject through a grand jury.
The defense proposed separate treatment for the two categories of records it seeks.
For the underlying SLED investigative materials, attorneys requested an immediate response to their disclosure demands. For grand jury testimony, they asked McCaslin to review the transcripts in camera – or in her chambers privately – before deciding what must be turned over.
The reply cited the secrecy statute’s provision permitting court-directed disclosure to comply with constitutional and other legal requirements or to further justice. It also cited a S.C. supreme court decision in support of judicial review when prosecutors resist disclosure.
That approach would allow the judge to examine the testimony herself rather than rely solely on either side’s description of it.
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RELATED | Murdaugh Retrial: Secrecy, Science And A Flood Of Filings
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DNA: THE DEFENSE IDENTIFIES ITS TEST
The DNA reply supplied a more specific testing proposal while asking McCaslin to resolve the dispute over evidence that could be exhausted during analysis.
The defense said Othram would perform Y-chromosome STR analysis on material from Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernails and, if transferred, material collected from her cellphone. The testing could be performed through Othram’s wholly owned subsidiary, Sorenson Forensics, which the defense described as fully accredited for the procedure.
The proposed analysis targets male DNA in samples containing a known female contributor.
The State had sought more information about the testing process and an opportunity to object before the remaining material was consumed. Friday’s reply argued that the parties had already exchanged their positions and that the issue was ready for a decision at the October 16, 2026 hearing.
Attorneys also disputed the practicality of preserving a portion for additional State testing.
“A sample at this concentration cannot be divided and still yield a result; dividing it guarantees that neither laboratory obtains one,” they asserted.
The defense also requested transfer of the remaining cellphone swabs and extract under a documented chain of custody, arguing that moving the material to another laboratory would not itself consume it. Prosecutors have confirmed that the phone material remains preserved but have not unconditionally agreed to its transfer.
On the analytical records prosecutors agreed to provide, the defense asked for a firm deadline and clarification that production would include the underlying native data.
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BALLISTICS: NO LEAD, NO EXCLUSION?
The ballistics reply challenged prosecutors’ contention that the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) had already “mathematically ruled out a correlation” between the Moselle cartridge cases and evidence from two Allendale cases.
The defense seeks microscopic comparisons involving the April 25, 2026 killing of Frank Alexander Brown III and several shootings that took place on April 27, 2024.
Prosecutors opposed those comparisons, arguing that caliber and geographic proximity did not establish a sufficient connection and that the database searches produced no investigative leads linking the cases.
Friday’s reply drew a distinction between the absence of a database lead and an examiner’s exclusion following a microscopic comparison.
“It is not an examiner’s exclusion,” attorneys wrote, adding prosecutors had not represented that an examiner compared the Moselle and Allendale cartridge cases under a microscope.
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The defense proposed an examination by its own firearms expert at SLED’s laboratory, under a protective order and conditions imposed by the court.
It also sought the records underlying the database results, arguing that the entry log attached to the State’s response showed what was submitted rather than what the comparisons returned.
The reply renewed a separate challenge to the first trial’s portrayal of .300 Blackout weapons as uncommon. Attorneys pointed to prosecutors’ figures showing 123 NIBIN entries across 2021 and 2022 and argued that the underlying records could inform cross-examination at the retrial.
As FITSNews noted Thursday, those figures represent database submissions — not counts of murders or unique firearms.
Even a confirmed connection to a later shooting would not necessarily exclude Murdaugh’s use of a weapon in June 2021. The defense argued that the significance of such a connection would be a question for the jury, should the comparison produce one and the evidence be admitted.
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RELATED | DNA, Bullets And Missing Data: Murdaugh Defense Presses State
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SCANS: A PROMISE IS NOT PRODUCTION
The dispute over original FARO crime-scene scans appeared closer to resolution, but the defense rejected the State’s description of its motion as moot.
“It is not moot until the data are produced,” attorneys wrote.
Prosecutors said Thursday that SLED possessed the original scans and would provide them. Friday’s reply asked McCaslin to specify what that production must include and set a deadline.
The requested material extends beyond images that can be viewed in a read-only program. It includes the individual scans, the complete project folder, registration information, panoramic images and records documenting collection and processing.
The defense said its reconstruction experts could not begin work dependent on those files until they received them.
Attorneys clarified that they were not claiming the State withheld the raw scans during the first trial. Their complaint concerned the response to the current request.
They said the issue would be resolved if the complete data were delivered at or before the October 16 hearing.
For the disputes that remain, Friday’s filings ask McCaslin to turn offers into deadlines and competing arguments into decisions. The defense warned that continued delays could make the April trial date difficult to maintain — while leaving the judge to determine what must be disclosed, what testing may proceed and under what conditions.
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THE MOTIONS…
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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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SOUND OFF…
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3 comments
Can’t leave this story without comments, can we? So, here is mine from Jenn Wood’s Elena Moore story:
Jenn Wood’s summary of Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher’s press conference (which I watched in its entirety on WLTX-19) is impeccably accurate.
But both Ms. Fisher and Ms. Wood missed points which I have, qualifications, and a right and duty to highlight for everyone.
First and foremost, cardiac arrythmias DO KILL the apparently healthy young. Witness the young athletes and/or military recruits who sporadically succumb during training, games, or marching, specially in extreme heat. But that diagnoses is an electro-physiological, not anatomical, one and cannot be made with any certainty through an autopsy of a five-day-decayed body whose decay was accelerated by the extreme ambient heat. So, it would have been better to call it a diagnosis by exclusion rather than imply it was a definitive anatomical diagnosis.
Second and seriously, “get help” is bandied about by almost every Jill and Joe Schmo to basically anyone with whom they disagree. It is likely as frequent a proposed “solution” as “lock them up and throw away the key.” But no one asks “where?”
Long in-patient hospitalization of one patient means a bed unavailable for the next patient.
Long prison terms mean prison over-crowding, inability to recruit prison workers, and temptations of more criminality even by prison workers themselves.
So, what are the answers? First, admit that we have no guaranteed cures or even diagnosis for all mental illness any more than we have guaranteed early detection and cures for all cancers. Next, keep and publish good, politics-free, statistics. Third, think outside the box and propose biologically-plausible innovative solutions and test them rigorously.
More “mental health beds” cannot be simply bought in the mattress store.
They need more psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and other workers all the way to hospital orderlies. And where do you get those while ensuring they do not become mental health patients themselves?
Nor does merely throwing money or prisons at any problem solve anything.
Case in point: his mother is SUPER good looking (super-model Cindy Crawford) and his father is SUPER rich (Gerber empire heir Rande Gerber); but 27-year old model and athlete Presley Gerber died 20 September 2026 in a VERY expensive and exclusive rehabilitation facility. So, probably no body-shaming, bullying, etc. was involved.
So, what was probably involved? In my opinion free from false humility, moral vacuity.
Many young men would figuratively and/or literally have killed to have Presley Gerber’s looks and/or money; and many women would have done so to have Elena Katerina’s looks. But did either victim of self-harm/self-neglect have a moral core unimpregnable with belief in what Jesus Christ said in Matthew 6:25 and Luke 12:22-23?
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?”
’22 Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.[“]’
And a missed nugget in the news conference is Coroner Fisher’s revelation that completed suicides now exceed overdose deaths in the relatively-affluent Lexington County, South Carolina.
Again, PLEASE never demagogue or politicize human deaths which could have been prevented by moral clarity and true, innovative, science
All the Prosecution has, and will even have, on Alex Murdaugh are FALSE claims about (1) Alex lying about going to the kennels, and (2) the REAL time of the shootings.
This VIC (very important comment) of mine should put FALSE claim (1) to rest:
The Prosecution does NOT want to test the male DNA in the swab from Maggie’s phone because it knows that, like the DNA from Maggie’s fingernails, it will EXCLUDE Alex because Alex NEVER had Maggie’s phone that night and was eager to help the responders on the scene find it the next morning.
Besides, Alex NEVER ever actually said “I was never at the kennels” or ANYTHING like that. TO THE CONTRARY, when Rogan Gibson told “Grandmar” (Maggie’s mother) that he heard Alex’s voice in the background of the phone conversation with Paul which preceded the unsent video, Alex WAS in the room with Rogan Gibson and Grandmar but did NOT “stand up and say no I wasn’t there.”
Here is the trial transcript, with page and line numbers, from the OFFICIAL Record on Appeal (RoA):
[RoA_2669, line 25] Q. 172. Is that another screen shot of your phone?
(R. GIBSON – DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. WATERS [Transcript page 1437 = RoA_2670])
[1] A. It is.
[2] Q. And are those other missed calls that came in?
[3] A. 10:25 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.
[4-6] Q. When you spoke to Special Agent Croft on June 8th of 2021, did you tell him and Special Agent McCallister who you thought you heard on that phone call at 8:40?
[7] A. I did.
[8] Q. And who did you say you heard?
[9] A. I thought it was Mr. Alex but I wasn’t exactly sure.
[10] Q. And did you give him a percentage?
[11] A. I did.
[12] Q. What did you say?
[13] A. 99 percent.
[14] Q. That you heard Mr. Alex on that phone call at 8:40.
[15] A. That’s correct.
[16-17] Q. As time went on after the murders, did you go to Moselle where all of the family and friends were gathering?
[18] A. I did.
[19] Q. Were you there a fair amount?
[20-21] A. Probably the whole part of that — or that — later that week.
[22-24] Q. While you were there at the house where the family and friends had gathered, did anyone ever ask you about your last contact with Paul?
[25] A. There was.
(R. GIBSON – DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. WATERS [RoA_2671 = 1438])
[1] Q. And who asked you?
[2] A. Grandmar.
[3] Q. And that would be Ms. Branstetter?
[4] A. That’s correct.
[5] Q. Maggie’s mother?
[6] A. That’s correct.
[7] Q. And what did you say?
[8-10] A. I told her, yeah, that I had talked to Paul about the dog. I told her that I heard Ms. Maggie in the background, and I heard a male voice that I thought was Mr. Alex.
[11] Q. Was he in the room then?
[12] A. Yes.
[13] Q. Did he stand up and say no, I wasn’t there?
[14] A. He didn’t.
[15-16] Q. Did you ever have any conversation with Alex Murdaugh about what happened that night?
[17] A. No, sir.
[18-19] Q. Did he ever ask you about whether or not you heard him on that phone that night?
[20] A. No, sir.
[21] Q. Did he ever tell you what he did that night?
[22] A. No, sir.
[23] Q. Did you ever ask him what he did that night?
[24] A. No, sir.
Some are finally agreeing with, thank God publicly, about the more realistic time of the shootings, which is the crux of the whole case.
I pray there would be outright dismissal instead of retrial.
But for that to be accepted by the prejudicial-publicity-tainted public, a FORMAL process must be instituted to dispel all the misinformation and misconceptions out there.
It’s a real tragedy that a man widowed and bereft of his younger son stands falsely accused of shooting them and guilty in the majority of the public’s mind even though constitutionally presumed innocent.
Those of us who want this injustice corrected need to work harder, smarter, and together.
God speed and God bless.