Just after 4 AM on July 8, 2015, a call came into Hampton County emergency dispatch. A driver spotted a body in the center of a remote stretch of highway known as Sandy Run Road. The body belonged to 19-year-old Stephen Smith, a nursing student at nearby Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College. There was nothing to suggest a vehicle had been involved in Stephen’s death, yet a hit and run would become the sheriff’s department’s official determination. The story didn’t sit well with Stephen’s friends, his family, or the South Carolina Highway Patrol. The circumstances begged several questions: Why would Hampton County make such a rush to judgment regarding the cause of death? Who were they trying to protect? And who was responsible for killing Stephen Smith? It would take eight years, and the widely publicized capital murder trial of Alex Murdaugh, for South Carolina authorities to admit that what happened that night in Lowcountry was no traffic accident, it was a homicide that many believe could be tied to the Murdaughs, Hampton County’s Royal Family.

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Research & Writing: K. Brant.

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