One day after the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned Alex Murdaugh's double murder conviction, his lead attorney went on national television and made a claim that, if true, raises hard questions about how investigators handled the case from the start: male DNA found under the fingernails of Murdaugh's slain wife was never run through the federal law enforcement database, and it did not belong to anyone in the Murdaugh family.

Defense lawyer Jim Griffin laid out the claim Thursday in an interview with NewsNation's Chris Cuomo, as reported by the New York Post. Griffin said his team plans to introduce the DNA findings and other new evidence at retrial, arguing that state investigators locked onto Murdaugh from the beginning and ignored leads pointing elsewhere.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson pushed back, telling reporters his office has "credible evidence that supports the conclusions that we came to the first time, and we intend to pursue those again." But the defense's public offensive, touching DNA, contested timelines, and alleged investigative failures, signals that a retrial will look very different from the six-week proceeding that produced a unanimous guilty verdict in 2023.

The DNA claim and what investigators missed

Griffin told Cuomo that DNA recovered from beneath Maggie Murdaugh's fingernails belonged to an unidentified male, not Alex Murdaugh, not Paul Murdaugh, and not any other family member. He said the samples were never entered into CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System that law enforcement agencies use to compare DNA profiles against known offenders and unsolved-case evidence.

"There was DNA under Maggie's fingernails, male DNA that was not DNA of Alex or any other family members. They were never put into CODIS. That has never been followed up on."

Griffin's characterization is, for now, a defense claim. No independent lab report or court filing confirming the details has been publicly released. But if the DNA exists as described, the failure to run it through a national database is the kind of investigative gap that juries notice, and that defense attorneys build entire reasonable-doubt arguments around.

The DNA claim fits into a broader pattern the defense has alleged since the original trial. Griffin said tire tracks leading away from the scene near the outdoor dog kennels at the family's Colleton County hunting estate were "never followed" and were in fact "trampled over." He said his team has since received tips about the location of murder weapons, the identities of people in the area that night, and possible motives.

In cases where DNA evidence is still being tested months into an investigation, the stakes of proper forensic handling are obvious. In the Murdaugh case, the defense says the handling fell short from the outset.

A circumstantial case with contested timelines

Maggie Murdaugh, Alex's wife, and Paul Murdaugh, his 22-year-old son, were found shot to death near the dog kennels on June 7, 2021. Prosecutors argued that Alex killed them to divert attention from mounting financial crimes and the legal pressure created by the Mallory Beach wrongful-death lawsuit. Beach, 19, had died after Paul drunkenly crashed a boat into a bridge in December 2019. A pre-trial hearing in that case had been scheduled just three days after the killings.

Alex Murdaugh initially told investigators he last saw Maggie and Paul alive when they ate dinner together around 8:15 that evening. He said he found their bodies just after 10 p.m. when he returned from visiting his ailing mother. The county coroner initially estimated the time of death between 8 and 10 p.m., later narrowing the window to between 8:50 and 9 p.m.

Prosecutors leaned on a video clip taken by Paul at 8:44 p.m. that captured three voices, placing Alex at the kennels minutes before the victims' cellphones stopped showing activity. That clip became a centerpiece of the state's case. But Griffin challenged the entire timeline framework on Thursday.

"The state's evidence and their whole theory of the time of death is cessation of use of cellphones, and we know Paul's cellphone's battery was running out... and there's no eyewitnesses. I mean, there's nothing to set the time of death."

Griffin also took aim at the coroner's methods, saying the official "put his thumb under the armpits of Maggie and Paul to guesstimate what time of death it was." If accurate, that is a remarkably imprecise basis for establishing one of the most consequential facts in a double murder prosecution.

The Washington Examiner reported that investigators processed the crime scene extensively but acknowledged missed steps, including failing to test shower and sink drains for blood, not quickly searching Murdaugh's mother's home, and not preserving tire tracks, gaps that align with what the defense has now put front and center.

No forensics tying Murdaugh to the scene, defense says

Dick Harpootlian, another member of Murdaugh's defense team, framed the prosecution's position in even starker terms. He argued that former Colleton County Clerk Becky Hill's jury tampering and the amount of time prosecutors spent on Murdaugh's financial crimes were solely responsible for the guilty verdict.

"If you strip all that away, what do [prosecutors] have? They don't have any forensics tying [Murdaugh] to the murder scene. No DNA, no blood, no fingerprints. They have no weapons. They have no ballistics... matter of fact, there is technical evidence that would indicate he wasn't there."

Harpootlian did not specify what "technical evidence" he was referring to. But the assertion that there is no direct forensic link between Murdaugh and the killings is not new, the defense made the same argument at trial. What has changed is that the Supreme Court's reversal gives those arguments a second hearing, potentially before a jury that has not been influenced by the clerk's conduct.

When investigators handle a high-profile case, the public expects thoroughness. In other cases where forensic answers have been slow to arrive, public confidence erodes. The Murdaugh defense is banking on that same dynamic at retrial.

The lie Murdaugh told, and why

Griffin did not pretend his client was a model witness. He acknowledged on air that Murdaugh "lied about the circumstances" of the evening of June 7, 2021. Griffin's explanation: Murdaugh was at the scene, armed, and impaired.

"He was standing there with a shotgun in his hand by his truck with his dead wife and his dead son. And he had a pocket full of pills. He was a drug addict. He said he [was overcome with] drug paranoia and he lied. And once he started to lie, he continued to lie... that was his explanation."

That is a difficult set of facts for any defense to manage. A man with a gun, standing over the bodies of his wife and son, lying to investigators, and then continuing to lie. Griffin's gamble is that jurors will accept the drug-paranoia explanation and focus instead on what he says the state cannot prove.

Griffin called the prosecution's motive theory, that Murdaugh killed his family because they were pressing him about $750,000 in missing funds, "manufactured" and "ludicrous." He told Fox & Friends on Wednesday that the defense has "multiple alternative theories" and has received tips about people in the area that night and their possible motives.

Whether those tips amount to anything verifiable remains an open question. Defense lawyers routinely preview their strongest-sounding claims in media appearances. What matters is what they can prove in a courtroom, under cross-examination, with admissible evidence.

The attorney general's response

Wilson's statement was brief and measured. He said his office possesses "credible evidence that supports the conclusions that we came to the first time." He did not elaborate on what specific evidence he meant or whether the state plans to address the defense's DNA claims directly.

That restraint may be strategic. Prosecutors who have already secured one conviction, even one that was later overturned on procedural grounds related to jury tampering, not evidentiary insufficiency, may see no advantage in litigating the case on cable news. But the defense has no such hesitation. Griffin and Harpootlian have been on multiple networks in the span of two days, laying the groundwork for a narrative that investigators botched the case and prosecutors papered over the gaps.

Murdaugh, 57, will not walk free regardless of the retrial's outcome. He is serving concurrent 40-year federal and 27-year state sentences for financial crimes, including stealing from his own clients. The murder charges carry the heaviest moral weight, but the prison time is already locked in on other counts.

The question of whether law enforcement agencies follow every lead, or lock onto a suspect and build backward, is one that surfaces repeatedly in American criminal cases. Disputes over investigative tunnel vision have dogged other high-profile matters as well, and the Murdaugh retrial may become the next prominent test of that concern.

What comes next

No retrial date has been set. The defense has signaled it will press hard on DNA, alternative suspects, and the state's reliance on circumstantial timelines built around cellphone activity. The prosecution says it stands behind its original theory.

For the families of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, the reversal means reliving the worst chapter of their lives in a second courtroom proceeding. For the public, it means watching a case that already drew national attention get relitigated with new claims that, if substantiated, would suggest investigators left significant forensic work undone.

Accountability in a murder case runs in every direction. If Alex Murdaugh killed his wife and son, justice demands a conviction that holds up. If investigators cut corners and ignored evidence pointing to someone else, justice demands answers about that, too. Scrutiny of the people running an investigation is not an obstacle to the truth, it is a prerequisite.

A system that convicts the right person for the right reasons does not need to fear a second look. One that cannot survive it has a problem bigger than any single defendant.