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Stephen Smith died 8 years ago. More people than ever want to know why

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Stephen Smith was 19 years old when his body was discovered on a rural two-lane road in South Carolina in 2015. His family has never accepted a medical examiner’s ruling that Smith died from a hit-and-run. They think foul play was involved — and state agents agree.
“The Stephen Smith case is being investigated as a homicide,” Renée Wunderlich, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division’s public information director, told NPR on Wednesday.
“We do believe it was a murder,” as South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel told The State newspaper. “We don’t believe it was a hit-and-run.”
Interest in Smith’s case has spiked because of where he died: in Hampton County, not far from Moselle, the hunting estate where Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were shot to death, in a case that became an international sensation. SLED agents opened their inquiry into Smith’s death in June of 2021 — the same month the pair died.Smith’s family is exhuming his body
SLED issued its update as Smith’s mother, Sandy, is taking new actions to learn more about his death in July of 2015. That includes arranging for an exhumation and private autopsy. She has raised about $90,000 to fund her effort.
“Stephen was in the process of discovering himself and his sexuality,” Sandy Smith told local news outlet Bluffton Today months after her son died. “He was gay. One rumor is that he may have had a man stalking him, the authorities asked me about that, but I’ve heard other stories I believe more.”
Smith went on to say her son would have been wary of any approaching cars on a dark road — and that she thought some of Stephen’s former classmates were involved in his death.
“One of the guys that supposedly did this, Stephen told his twin sister that he had ‘a fling’ with the boy,” Smith said.

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