Picture this: June 7, 2021. A sprawling hunting estate in Colleton County, South Carolina — the kind of property where the driveway is longer than most streets. Alex Murdaugh, the most powerful lawyer in the Lowcountry, calls 911. His voice is shaking. His wife Maggie and his son Paul are dead by the kennels. Shot.
Now freeze that image, because five years later, nobody has found the guns that did it.
Alex Murdaugh was convicted in 2023 of those murders. The whole country watched. Then the South Carolina Supreme Court threw the whole thing out — because the clerk of court was allegedly tampering with the jury to sell books. You can’t make this shit up. The retrial starts April 5, 2027, moved to Sumter County because nobody in Colleton could sit on that jury with a straight face.
This past week, both sides walked into a courtroom in Lexington County, and the judge — Debra McCaslin — looked them all in the eye and warned she “will not allow these proceedings to become a circus.”
Too late, Judge. The circus is already in town.
Because here’s what the defense just dropped on the table: they say the murder weapons — a shotgun and a .300 Blackout rifle — didn’t just vanish. They say two police officers hid them.
Let that sink in. The defense filed a motion claiming that as early as 2023, state investigators heard from witnesses that two Hampton County-area cops, friends of the Murdaugh family, were involved in a crime-scene cover-up. Yemassee Police Chief Greg Alexander allegedly showed up early at the scene, gave Murdaugh a change of clothes, and was later seen with the murder weapons. A second unnamed officer allegedly moved the weapons and bloody clothes — possibly stashed them at the police station.
The defense says a state grand jury is actively investigating. They say Chief Alexander was subpoenaed. Prosecutors won’t confirm or deny — grand-jury secrecy.
Alexander, through his lawyer, denies everything. In a Facebook video, he said: “I’m not a cat. I don’t cover up no doo-doo.”
A former prosecutor called it a “wild goose chase.”
But here’s the part the mainstream coverage keeps dancing around: the defense didn’t learn about this from the prosecutors. Harpootlian found out by reading FITSNews — a subscription news site. The state never disclosed it. That’s either the worst discovery failure in modern legal history, or something a lot uglier.
And while we’re here — the polygraph lie. Back in August, Harpootlian told the cameras Murdaugh passed a polygraph “with flying colors.” This week, Judge McCaslin corrected the record: he failed it. It was about the financial crimes, not the murders. But a defense attorney got caught misleading the public, and it barely made a ripple.
The defense did win one thing this week: DNA testing on swabs from Maggie’s phone. Ninety days to get results. It’ll consume the last testable samples. They don’t have to share the results unless they use them at trial.
What they lost: a broader ballistics-data request. Next hearing is November 13.
Now here’s what nobody’s saying out loud. The state convicted a man of a double shooting without ever recovering either gun. Five years. Two guns. Gone. Now the defense says cops may have hidden them. If that’s true, the state’s entire first-trial theory — that Murdaugh acted alone — falls apart.
And Becky Hill, the clerk whose alleged jury-tampering-for-a-book-deal blew up the whole conviction? She’s faded from the coverage. A scandal inside the scandal, and nobody’s asking where she is.
One more thing, and it’s the thing that matters most: Alex Murdaugh is never getting out. Forty years federal, twenty-seven years state, for stealing $12 million from his own clients. The retrial isn’t about freedom. It’s about the murder label. It’s about legacy.
Most coverage doesn’t lead with that. Now you know.
Brought to you by Team Murphy Media.
If you’d like us to continue this work and keep Shop Talk Weekly subscriptions free, consider making a donation: Cash App $dj7309 · PayPal paypal.me/dj7309. Can’t donate? Like, share & subscribe — that costs nothing and means everything.