SC man accused of shooting Alex Murdaugh says in TV interview that Hampton lawyer wasn't shot [The Island Packet (Hilton Head Island, S.C.)]

Oct. 14—The Walterboro man charged with shooting Alex Murdaugh in an alleged botched suicide-for-hire plot and his lawyer appeared on multiple national television morning shows Thursday saying Murdaugh was never struck by a bullet and accusing Murdaugh of making up the insurance fraud scheme.

"I didn't shoot him," Curtis Eddie Smith said in a prerecorded interview Thursday on NBC's TODAY. "If I had shot him, he'd be dead. He's alive."

Smith — who calls Murdaugh a close friend and has been identified by other news outlets as a distant cousin — has said he didn't know what Murdaugh had planned when he called, asking to meet on a rural Hampton County road.

"He's got it like this," Smith explained on camera, holding one of his hands like a gun. "He said, 'You going to shoot me?' I said, 'No.'"

Smith said when Murdaugh began to move, he grabbed the gun from him and it "went off."

"The gun went off. Did the bullet hit him?" TODAY anchor Craig Melvin asked.

"No," Smith said, shaking his head and beginning to cry as he looked at the floor. "There was no blood on me, there was no blood on him."

A similar interview with Smith and his lawyer Jonny McCoy appeared on CBS Mornings later in the morning, where Smith describe the situation and said he was an innocent man.

"No crime was committed," McCoy said.

Two weeks ago, Smith's other lawyer, Jarrett Bouchette, told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette that Smith was being made out as "the fall guy" for Murdaugh.

Bouchette said SLED seemed to base its charges on what Murdaugh told SLED, "because the whole alleged scheme as best as I can tell came to the attention of SLED through Mr. Murdaugh."

Talking to reporters on Sept. 16, Murdaugh lawyer Dick Harpootlian, a Democratic state senator from Richland, said Smith was Murdaugh's drug dealer for about a decade.

Bouchette and McCoy both disputed that. Smith considered Murdaugh a longtime friend, they said.

Neither Harpootlian nor Jim Griffin, Murdaugh's lawyers, were available for comment Thursday morning.

Smith's TV appearances come a day after Griffin appeared on FOX Carolina addressing Murdaugh's opioid addiction, the shooting, and SLED's characterization of Murdaugh as a person of interest in the killings of his son Paul and wife Maggie.

Griffin said he met with Murdaugh hours before the reported shooting, and Murdaugh explained to him "how serious his addiction was" and that he'd already made an arrangement to go to rehab.

"He felt like ending his life. I don't think he wanted to end his life so he could get life insurance for Buster," Griffin said. "But if he was going to end his life, he wanted to do it in a way that would benefit his son, and that's what transpired."

Griffin said he doesn't think the Sept. 4 shooting was an "elaborate" scheme, mentioning that Murdaugh was unaware the suicide clause on his insurance had expired.

Griffin said Smith — though he did not refer to him by name during the interview — was "unaware of why Alex had called him out there, but Alex made the request, and he obliged."

Murdaugh's lawyers have requested medical records from the Savannah hospital where Murdaugh was treated, and those will describe any injury he sustained. But Griffin said in the Fox Carolina interview that some documents he's already obtained from the helicopter transport "clearly document massive head bleed," mentioning blood through the head bandage, neck brace, and elsewhere. The report, according to Griffin, said personnel tried to evaluate the extent of the injury but "they couldn't see it because there's so much blood matted in his hair."

Sept. 4 shooting, arrests, bonds

Smith's interview with TODAY comes a month after the S.C. Law Enforcement Division arrested him on six charges stemming from the Labor Day weekend shooting of Alex Murdaugh.

Murdaugh was also arrested and charged with insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud and falsifying a police report.

On Sept. 4, Alex Murdaugh called 911 to report he'd been shot in the head.

Jim Griffin, one of Murdaugh's lawyers, told reporters after the shooting that Murdaugh pulled off the road because he was experiencing car trouble, and a person in a passing pickup truck shot him.

In the week after the shooting, Griffin said the events he described were what Murdaugh had told him. That included descriptions of injuries — Griffin said Murdaugh had an entry and exit wound, a brain bleed in two places, and a skull fracture.

A box checked on a Hampton County Sheriff's Office police report made public Sept. 9 indicated that Murdaugh suffered "no "visible injury" in the shooting. After the report was released, Hampton County Sheriff TC Smalls told a reporter that the box was likely checked in error.

"He did have an injury," Smalls said. "That probably was a mistake. I will check on that."

An amended report released later in the day indicated that Murdaugh was injured in the shooting.

When Murdaugh appeared for his bond hearing Sept. 16, viewers noted that his head — where he allegedly suffered a gunshot wound just two weeks prior — appeared unscathed.

Since the shooting and the bond hearing appearance, Murdaugh's lawyers have regularly maintained that their client was shot and injured.

This story was originally published October 14, 2021 9:37 AM.

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