Attorneys for Alex Murdaugh are seeking independent testing of unidentified male DNA reportedly found beneath the fingernails of his late wife, Maggie Murdaugh.
Defense lawyers Dick Harpootlian, Jim Griffin and Margaret Fox detailed the request in a July 30 memorandum provided to Oxygen, asking that the evidence be examined by Othram, a Texas-based forensic genetic genealogy laboratory.
The filing states that “unknown and unrelated” male DNA was detected under the fingernails on Maggie’s left hand after she and the couple’s 22-year-old son, Paul Murdaugh, were fatally shot on June 7, 2021, at the family’s hunting property in Colleton County, South Carolina.
The memorandum supports a defense motion filed last month seeking an independent laboratory review of the DNA evidence. According to the defense, while the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division’s lab found unknown DNA beneath Maggie’s nails, it “did not attempt further analysis to identify the source.”
Murdaugh’s legal team now wants Othram to perform single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP, testing on the samples. That type of analysis can review “hundreds of thousands of genetic markers” and may allow investigators to pursue the source of the DNA through genetic genealogy.
After a July 7 virtual meeting involving prosecutors, the defense and Othram personnel, the state supplied the lab with “quantitation results” and “electropherograms” tied to evidence collected from Maggie’s fingernails on both hands, the filing says.
But Murdaugh’s attorneys contend that, during a subsequent discussion between the state and the defense, prosecutors “disclosed for the first time” that they were also holding reserved fingernail evidence samples that “remain unprocessed,” according to the memo.
Prosecutors allegedly intend to use those reserved samples for additional short tandem repeat, or STR, testing through the SLED laboratory. STR testing examines repeating sections of DNA to help generate a distinct genetic profile for an individual.
Yet, his attorneys argued that the samples should be sent to Othram for SNP testing instead.
“STR analysis is well suited to confirming or excluding a known suspect,” they wrote in the memo, “but it cannot identify an unknown individual who has no profile already in the database, and it performs poorly on degraded, low quality of mixed samples.”
On the other hand, they argued that SNP testing “can extract usable information from degraded or trace amounts of DNA that STR analysis cannot, and it enables forensic genetic genealogy.”
“That capability is what allows Othram to potentially identify the source of the unknown male DNA on [the fingernail evidence] even though no direct match exists in law enforcement databases,” they argued in the filing, “and it is a capability SLED’s SRT methodology does not have.”
They cautioned that if SLED uses the samples to conduct its own STR analysis it could risk “consuming the very material Othram would need” to do its own testing.
They also argued that prosecutors have “offered no explanation” on why they would need to repeat testing they’ve already done.
South Carolina Attorney General’s Office Communications Director Robert Kittle told Oxygen that they plan to issue their response in court, saying “We will file a detailed response with the Court addressing all the defense claims.”
Alex Murdaugh Granted New Murder Trial
Alex—who has continued to proclaim his innocence—was convicted of the murders of Paul and Maggie in March 2023, but the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial for the former attorney in May.
The court found the new trial was warranted after his attorneys raised concerns that former Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca “Becky” Hill may have improperly influenced jurors, according to a decision provided to Oxygen.
As attorneys now prepare for a new trial, Alex remains behind bars serving out a 40 year federal sentence for fraud, money laundering and other financial crimes. He is also serving time for state-level financial crime convictions.
