Does Eric Bland Think the Murdaughs May Know More About Stephen Smith?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:06)
Eric Bland represents Sandy Smith, and he's been in her corner since 2023 Stephen Smith was found dead on a Hampton County road in 2015 with a 7 1⁄2-inch skull fracture. Sled called it a homicide three years ago, exhumed the body, sealed the autopsy results, and still no arrest. With the Murdaugh case torn open again, Sandy Smith has to be asking whether any of this chaos finally reaches her son. Eric Bland joins us to discuss the latest in the Murdaugh case and the Stephen Smith investigation. Eric, welcome.
I want to talk about another case, but obviously we've talked about it in the past. Stephen Smith, we haven't had an update on this in quite some time. Sled reopened Stephen Smith's case specifically because of information found in the Murdaugh investigation.
I don't know exactly what that was, and I'm in no way going down the road of Buster is connected to Stephen Smith. That's not where we're going. But I am curious, do we know the answer to that question? What was the nexus here that somehow brought Murdaugh name to the Smith case?

**Eric Bland** (1:27)
It had to have been some kind of electronic discovery. It happened in July of 2021 The murders were obviously on June 7th of 2021, and something happened which caused SLED to reopen the investigation. The Highway Department had the file essentially from 2015 all the way through until they closed it. During the murder investigation, something they discovered and Chief Keele has never told me, but I believe it was some kind of electronic evidence that either was on somebody's phone or whether it was a photo or something that caused the investigation to open. I had a really good dialogue with Chief Keele. Basically from, I would say, right after the murder conviction in 2023, almost through to the beginning of 2024, where he was keeping me updated. Remember, we did a second autopsy. We took Stephen's body down to Florida and we got him an autopsy done. It reached some new conclusions.
We were optimistic that Sled was going to reallocate all those resources that they had on the Alex case to Stephen's case.
In this modern time, you got to be able to solve a killing. We had heard rumors that there were five or six people that had knowledge, not necessarily that they were guilty or they were involved, but they had real relevant knowledge as to what happened to Stephen on July 7th of 2015 when he was walking that road near Mizzell. We heard that there was a grand jury in panel, so we were very encouraged, but now we are extremely discouraged. What happened? Nothing. We've put a $50,000 reward out there, and we thought that the Cone of Silence, Tony, that existed in Hampton County when the Murdaughs were in power would be broken once Alex was convicted and the family was held in disrepute and all the things that came out about the grandfather and everything like that. We heard about the grandfather actually put an obituary in the paper about his wife when she was going to leave him. We just thought that people would say, you know what, the Murdaughs don't scare us anymore, we're willing to talk. Not that there was any connection with Alex or Buster to the Murdaugh. However, in the Highway Department file, the Murdaugh were mentioned in the investigative notes. The next day, Randolph and Alex came to the scene where Tony was in the road and they were seen there, and their names are there, but nothing. And we are hearing nothing. Sandy Smith is discouraged. We are discouraged.
It's just one of those things. And can you imagine this woman has lived 11 years now without any answers as to what happened to her son?

**Tony Brueski** (4:44)
And the thing is, if there's more than one person involved in that, it certainly opens up the door and the likelihood that somebody's gonna talk at some point. What in your opinion would be inspiring someone not to speak about any knowledge they have on this, unless they're the person who actually did it, who then have obviously has a vested interest in not going to prison? But if someone just knows something about me, do you think this was the action of one person and they're just like, no, I got away with this, I'm done?

**Eric Bland** (5:16)
No, no, I think there's a couple that were in a vehicle on that night, whether they were intentionally going to hurt Stephen because of his lifestyle. That's one thing or that he had knowledge. He had told his mother that he was going the following week, fishing in the Keys with a very, very important person and his mother wanted to know who it was and Stephen wouldn't tell him. So we know that there could be a very important VIP involved.