Alex Murdaugh’s legal team injected a new and unverified claim into court proceedings Friday, suggesting a recent homicide in Allendale County could have a link to the murders of Murdaugh’s wife and son — a disclosure that appeared to catch both prosecutors and the presiding judge off guard.
Murdaugh was back before the court after the South Carolina Supreme Court, earlier this year, unanimously threw out his 2023 murder convictions and two life sentences in the killings of Maggie Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh.
In ordering a new trial, the high court concluded that former Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill improperly influenced jurors, denying Murdaugh the impartial jury to which he was entitled. He remains behind bars on separate state and federal sentences tied to financial crimes.
During Friday’s hearing, defense attorney Jim Griffin told South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Debra McCaslin that the defense had learned from FITSNews reporting that weapons potentially tied to the Murdaugh case may have surfaced in connection with a recent Allendale County killing.
Before August 14, 2026, Alex Murdaugh had last appeared in plainclothes during his financial crimes sentencing on November 28, 2023, at the Beaufort County Courthouse. (Pool)
Griffin said Murdaugh’s defense team wants the state to examine the allegation and provide any records or evidence that may be connected to it.
FITSNews told News Outlet that Griffin was referring to its Aug. 8 “Week in Review” episode on YouTube. A transcript reviewed by News Outlet shows FITS founding editor Will Folks and research director Jenn Wood discussing what they characterized as an unverified report about a possible third gun associated with the Moselle crime scene.
“We’re hearing reports that a Murdaugh gun was used in a subsequent crime,” Folks said during the episode. “We’re not going to say where at this point. We’re not going to get into the details.”
State Judge Debra McCaslin oversees a judicial hearing on Monday, June 29, 2026, at the Marc H. Westbrook Judicial Center in Lexington, South Carolina. Alex Murdaugh will be retried in the June 7, 2021, shooting deaths of his wife and son, after his original conviction was overturned due to jury tampering. (Tracy Glantz/The State via Pool)
Folks said the outlet was investigating whether the firearm was tied to the Murdaugh family and perhaps one of the guns that has never been recovered.
Wood cautioned that the information had not been confirmed.
“It’s a pretty consistent rumor and, you know, I’m hearing it from very good sources,” Wood said. “We have not been able to validate a lot of it and I’m not sure if it’s even the gun. It just said that it was tied to the murder of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh.”
Neither speaker identified Allendale County, described a ballistics comparison or said investigators had established that a weapon used in the Murdaugh killings was used in a subsequent crime.
The Moselle Estate House in Islandton, which once served as the Murdaugh family’s primary residence. (South Carolina State Attorney’s Office/Keen Eye Marking)
At Friday’s hearing, Griffin did not identify the victim, the alleged weapon or any testing that supported the purported connection. He said the defense wanted related records as potential Brady material — evidence that could be favorable to the defense.
Griffin told McCaslin that a South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) firearms examiner testified at Murdaugh’s first trial that shell casings from the .300 Blackout rifle used to kill Maggie Murdaugh bore extraction marks matching casings recovered from the Murdaugh family’s shooting range.
Griffin said that if shell casings from the Allendale County case matched casings tied to the Murdaugh murders, the defense wanted the underlying testing and investigative records.
Such a finding, he argued, could raise questions about the original ballistics analysis or suggest that a firearm associated with the Murdaugh case was later used in another killing.
Creighton Waters, a prosecutor for the S.C. Attorney General’s office, points at Alex Murdaugh in the double murder trial of Alex Murdaugh at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. (Andrew J. Whitaker/The Post and Courier/Pool)
Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters told the court the allegation was entirely new to him.
“I have never heard the first thing about that,” Waters said, adding that he communicates with SLED daily and had not been told of any such development.
“I will certainly look into that, but I would be flabbergasted to find out that actually had happened and no one had advised this office of that,” Waters said.
McCaslin also appeared struck by the allegation.
“As far as the murder in Allendale with the murder weapons, you certainly raised my eyebrows on that,” McCaslin told Griffin.
Alex Murdaugh is taken to the Colleton County Courthouse for sentencing on March 3, 2023. (Joshua Boucher/Pool/The State/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Griffin said FITSNews had broken other Murdaugh-related stories before the defense learned of them. He also told the court that a podcast included a reference to the alleged connection.
McCaslin directed Griffin to send the material to Waters for review.
Waters said he does not follow podcasts or blogs covering the case.
“I don’t watch the podcast and I don’t read the blogs because I try to base what I’m doing on the evidence and not on speculation that’s out there in the media,” Waters said. “It would blow my mind if something like that had happened in SLED and not call me.”
No evidence establishing a connection between an Allendale County homicide and weapons used in the Murdaugh killings has been presented.
Waters later said during Friday’s hearing that SLED then told him there is no known ballistics match linking a .300 Blackout used in an Allendale County shooting to another crime. Waters said the firearm evidence from the Allendale case was entered into a ballistics database but “there have been no leads or no matches on that.”
“I’m going to find out more and double check and we’re going to run this down,” Waters said, adding that SLED told him there were “no leads or hits” involving the .300 Blackout used in the Allendale shooting.
