Alex Murdaugh’s lawyers say Eddie Smith failed polygraph about Maggie, Paul’s murders

Defense attorneys for accused double murderer Alex Murdaugh say in a new court filing that Curtis “Eddie” Smith, not their client, likely killed Murdaugh’s wife and son in June 2021.

The 11-page motion, filed Friday in Colleton County, says that Smith flunked an investigator’s lie detector test when asked about the June 2021 killings of Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22.

“Smith decidedly failed a polygraph when questioned if he murdered Maggie and Paul,” says the motion, filed by Murdaugh’s attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin. “The reason Smith failed the polygraph when asked if he murdered Maggie and Paul is because he in fact did commit these heinous crimes.”

The bodies of Maggie and Paul were found on the ground near dog kennels on the family’s 1,700-acre estate in rural Colleton County after nightfall on June 7, 2021. Murdaugh has said he found their bodies when he returned home.

A trial in the double homicide case against Murdaugh as the lone defendant has been rescheduled to now start Jan. 23 and run through Feb. 10 in Colleton County, where the killings took place. The case is assigned to Judge Clifton Newman.

Establishing Smith’s unreliability is important because “the Attorney General has represented that the State intends to present Smith as a cooperating witness against Alex in the upcoming murder trial,” the motion said.

Murdaugh, 54, a disbarred lawyer, was indicted in Maggie and Paul’s shooting deaths in July and has since contended he is innocent.

Smith’s attorney Aimee Zmroczek told The State newspaper Friday that her client is innocent and has an “ironclad” alibi for the time the killings took place.

“Eddie Smith continues to be a victim of Alex Murdaugh and his deeds,” said Zmroczek, who represents Smith with Jarrett Bouchette.

“If you look at this case since the murders, there has been a desire on the part of Alex Murdaugh to insinuate that Eddie Smith is somehow involved. This is a continuation of that,” Bouchette said

Robert Kittle, a spokesman for South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office, said Friday the office plans to file a written response Monday.

“To date, we have provided over three-quarters of a terabyte of information to the defense,” Kittle said. “We will address these issues in our pleadings and in the courtroom and will not try this case outside the courtroom.”

Eddie Smith accused of being killer by Murdaugh attorneys

Smith, 62, has for more than a year been a mysterious figure in the universe of people connected to Murdaugh.

A truck driver and Murdaugh’s distant cousin, Smith has been charged by a state grand jury with funneling substantial amounts of drugs to Murdaugh for years as well as serving as a vehicle to cash checks totaling millions of dollars that Murdaugh is said to have stolen from clients and other lawyers for years. Smith then turned money over to Murdaugh but also kept much of it himself, an indictment says.

Smith also was charged last year in a botched scheme to allegedly help Murdaugh collect $10 million in life insurance for his sole surviving son, Buster. In that scheme, Murdaugh asked Smith to shoot him in the head and kill him, but “the bullet grazed Alex’s skull and did not kill him,” Friday’s defense motion said. There is no evidence Buster participated in the scheme.

Smith is currently being held without bond in safekeeping, or isolation, away from other inmates at the Lexington County jail, Zmroczek said.

He is under state grand jury indictments for money laundering and drug trafficking, both under the alleged auspices of Murdaugh, the indictments say.

Meanwhile, Murdaugh is being held at the Richland County jail without bond after he was charged with the murders of Paul and Maggie.

Friday’s defense filing offers a rare glimpse into how investigators for the state Attorney General’s office have handled the months-long investigation into Paul and Maggie’s killings.

Since the slayings, the State Law Enforcement Division and the Attorney General’s office have released scant information about how the killings took place or what evidence they have to link Murdaugh to the deaths.

There were apparently no eyewitnesses to the killings. The two firearms used in the killings — a rifle and a shotgun — apparently have not been recovered.

The defense motion seeks to compel prosecutors to turn over all polygraph data, notes and other information related to a polygraph examination given to Smith by a SLED captain on May 5, 11 months after Paul and Maggie’s killings.

“Capt. (Bryan) Jones asked Smith if he shot Maggie or Paul, and he said no, repeatedly. Capt. Jones then told Smith the questions that would be asked during the polygraph examination, and, after more small talk, began the examination. Smith failed,” the motion says.

The motion says the polygraph indicated deception when Smith was asked three questions: “Did you shoot either of those people at that property on Moselle Road? Did you shoot either of those people at that property on Moselle Road last June? Were you present when either of those people were shot at that property on Moselle Road?”

The motion also says that while prosecutors have produced some information about that polygraph test, they have not provided all data underlying the polygraph report.

Under a standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case known as Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors are supposed to turn over all evidence that could be favorable to a defendant in criminal cases.

“No Brady material will be withheld,” attorney general spokesman Kittle said.

Defense motion details blood, allegation of affair

Harpootlian and Griffin also unleashed a broad attack on how SLED and prosecutors have handled the case in their motion Friday.

“The State assumed Alex guilty of the murders before reviewing any evidence but failed to find evidence supporting that assumption despite an investigation lasting more than one year,” the motion said. “Nevertheless, on July 14, 2022, the Attorney General caved to intense public interest in this case and indicted Alex with the murders.”

Evidence that prosecutors have so far turned over to the defense shows that there is no real substantial evidence and the case is “a weak circumstantial case based entirely on Alex being at the scene within an hour or so of the time of death,” the filing says.

The filing also asserts that prosecutors can’t or refuse to say the exact time when they believe Maggie and Paul were murdered.

Moreover, the filing says, “a minuscule amount of Maggie’s blood on a T-shirt” was transferred to Murdaugh “when he frantically attended his wife’s bloody corpse” and is unlikely to be “spatter” resulting from Murdaugh being the shooter.

In the 13 months following Paul and Maggie’s deaths, SLED agents only “sporadically” investigated any role Smith might have had in the killings, the filing says. Agents waited four months after the deaths to execute search warrants for Smith’s home and phone, seeking evidence, the motion says.

Smith told investigators that he regularly deleted his phone’s call logs and texts.

In May of this year, in an answer to SLED questions about what he knew about Paul and Maggie’s deaths, Smith told agents that he had heard Maggie had an affair with an unnamed groundskeeper at the estate and Paul discovered the two in a barn.

Paul “got upset” and shot his mother, and the groundskeeper “already went to his truck and got a shotgun,” the motion quoted Smith as telling SLED.

Smith told investigators that he had three alibi witnesses — Donna Eason, Steve Hudson and Kevin Salisbury — who could place him away from the scene of the murders.

But, the filing said, SLED never questioned Eason. And SLED delayed questioning Hudson and Salisbury, giving Smith time to coach them on what what they should tell investigators, the filing added.

The filing also asserts that Smith regularly delivered drugs to Moselle — the name of the Murdaugh estate — near the dog kennels where Maggie and Paul were murdered.

Haarpootlian and Griffin intend to seek a court order to get Smith to provide a DNA sample to compare against any DNA found at the murder scene, the filing says.

“Surprisingly, it appears that the only clothing SLED conducted DNA analysis upon are the clothes worn by Alex,” the filing said.

Should the defense get even some of the material in Friday’s motion before a jury at trial, it would offer an alternate narrative showing that someone besides Murdaugh could have killed Maggie and Paul.

Smith’s attorney, Bouchette, told The State newspaper Friday that the filing “looks like an effort to distract and dissuade from evidence of Mr. Murdaugh’s guilt.”

Ultimately, Bouchette said, “it is for the judge to decide what will be admissible at trial or not.”

This story was originally published October 14, 2022 at 1:13 PM with the headline "Alex Murdaugh’s lawyers say Eddie Smith failed polygraph about Maggie, Paul’s murders."