Specifically, Murdaugh attorneys Dick Harpootlian, Jim Griffin, Phillip Barber, Maggie Fox and Andrew Hand filed a motion on Thursday (June 30, 2026) asking the judge handling their client’s upcoming retrial to order an independent laboratory review of DNA evidence found under the fingernails of the late Maggie Murdaugh. According to the defense attorneys, state investigators have concluded the DNA “belongs to an unknown, unrelated male.” Maggie Murdaugh and her son, 22-year-old Paul Murdaugh, were brutally murdered at the family’s Colleton County hunting property on the evening of June 7, 2021. “DNA evidence was collected from underneath Maggie Murdaugh’s left-hand fingernails at the scene,” Murdaugh’s attorneys alleged. This reporter contacted SLED and the office of S.C. attorney general Alan Wilson – whose statewide grand jury division oversaw the initial Murdaugh prosecution (and is overseeing the Murdaugh retrial prosecution) – for comment.