Attorney Eric Bland speaks about Stephen Smith case

And we're following up tonight. Attorneys representing the family of Steven Smith say investigators confirmed they're treating his death as a homicide. The South Carolina law enforcement division says they took over the case in 2021 when they received new information. And Highway Patrol indicated they did not believe Steven Smith died in a hit and run crash. According to the Smith family attorney, Eric Bland, officials say that they were waiting until Alec Murdoch's murder trial ended to make this announcement. They thought witnesses would not be as open about the case. So they say SLED has reportedly been dedicating more resources to Smith's case since the end of the trial.

Smith was found dead on a rural road in Hampton County in 2015. Initially, authorities considered his death the result of a hit and run, but no arrests were ever made. Smith's mother, who you see in this photo with him, has continued to push for answers into what happened. Now, we have been following this story very closely. Fox County's Grace Runkel, who was in Walterboro for the entire Murdoch trial, goes in-depth with Eric Bland, who's at home recovering from knee surgery. What's next for the Smith case? We're going to find out what was the cause of death. That's the first thing.

Recendo's death certificates get new ones issued, get a new coroner's report issued, a new autopsy report issued, and then our investigators are going to hit the ground running. And whatever they find, we're going to turn over to SLED. And hopefully, hopefully, the dam will break. Somebody said something. One thing Chief Keele said is he believes that there's four or five people that they have targeted, that they believe have information that will lead to, possibly, the killer of Stephen. And he said the reason that they waited as long as they did was because the Murdochs had this kind of stranglehold in the community down there, that people were afraid to talk. And he thinks now with the conviction that there is a high likelihood that people are less reticent to talk.

What do you want to tell those people? I want to tell them, come forward. Have the courage and the decency. If you know information, I really do believe that the time is right for someone to come forward and really give that golden piece of information, because people talk. And I think there's things on phones. And there's things on computers. Stephen was dating some powerful people from what I understand. And there would be communications between them, whether it would be via email or via text, something.

And there was also something that was uncovered by SLED during the Murdoch murder investigation, which caused them in July of 2021 to reopen Stephen's investigation. So we shall see.