Alex Murdaugh’s Retrial May Come Down to Evidence SLED Never Bothered to Test

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
One more here this morning. Alex Murdaugh convicted of shooting his wife Maggie and son Paul beside the dog kennels on the family South Carolina farm and sentenced to life. And the state Supreme Court threw it out, ruling that the court clerk had tampered with the jury, the same clerk who later pled guilty to charges tied to the tell-all book she wrote about the trial. Now Murdaugh gets his do-over and his lawyers are demanding new testing on an unknown man's DNA under Maggie's fingernails.
The comments are lighting up about this. So I want to go into this and I think we touched on it a little bit last week, but I think because so many people are jumping into this one and it makes for a great headline, unknown male DNA underneath her fingertips. Robin, how crazy is that or not?

**Robin Dreeke** (1:05)
So I think the biggest are people love DNA. So I understand that gets a lot of weight because everyone thinks because everyone watches Criminal Minds and everything that DNA is the end all be all can solve all crimes. And if you just had DNA, there'd be no crime in the world or we'd solve every crime out there.
But in this case, from what I understand, there was no struggle. And so the DNA that she has under her fingernails didn't come from the actual the crime scene itself. It probably came from something else. Is that a reason not to test it? No, I think it's a reason to test it because if they can identify who the DNA came from, it's one more interview to do. But the likelihood of them already having interviewed someone that who this DNA that is, is pretty high just because thorough investigation, everyone in her circle has been interviewed and at least one degree of separation from them should have also been interviewed especially when the case has this kind of notoriety. So is it a waste of time? No, I don't think anything like that's a waste of time. Was it going to go somewhere? Most likely not.

**Tony Brueski** (2:03)
Well, I mean reasonable doubt is what they're going for. And if you can throw into the mix that there's somebody else's DNA underneath someone's fingernails, without context, a juror might go, wow, what is this?
But then I ran the stats the other day and it's rather Robin. Yes, I did. But it's we all have unknown DNA underneath our fingernails most every day of our lives. And it doesn't mean that's because someone tried to murder us or we were in a struggle or any. Go to the grocery store, buy a bunch of stuff. You're going to have other people's DNA on you.

**Robin Dreeke** (2:43)
A lot of touch DNA on us all the time.

**Tony Brueski** (2:45)
Yeah, so why do you think, other than it makes a lovely headline, and I guess my play to some jurors, maybe that's the answer. Then that's just flat out it. But to me, it just seems like such a simple one to debunk on cross if you're the prosecutor going, yeah, sounds neat, but here's what I just said. Everybody's got it on them pretty much all the time. It doesn't mean shit.
What does that say to you about where they are in terms of defending Alec Murdaugh, in terms of an investigation into trying to look at a third party culprit, that they're putting weight onto this idea that is so easily just explained with conjecture.

**Robin Dreeke** (3:31)
Yeah, who knows? It reminds me very much of the Kohbeger case though. I mean, she threw everything at the sink.
At the case, including Kitchen Sink, just trying to come up with all these different theories to explain why I wasn't Kohbeger. But in this one, I see a potential in here. It's like, hey, maybe it's a jilted lover of hers that was the third party involved in a defense, that it wasn't Alec, it was actually Maggie's jilted lover or love interest. Who knows what they're coming up with? But hey, when you don't have much to work with sometimes, I think just throwing it out there and see what sticks maybe. But like you said, at this point, I think a lot of these things, and I think this is what, and what's her face, the defense attorney for Kohbeger.

**Tony Brueski** (4:17)
Oh, Taylor, Ann Taylor.

**Robin Dreeke** (4:18)
Ann Taylor is doing too, is a lot of these public statements you put out there is to taint that jury pool intentionally or unintentionally with doubt. So why not, right?