A Few Alleles Left: What Unidentified DNA Under Maggie Murdaugh's Fingernails Can — and Cannot

On the night of June 7, 2021, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and her son Paul Murdaugh, 22, were shot and killed near the dog kennels at Moselle, the family’s rural property near Islandton in Colleton County, South Carolina. More than five years later, the people who loved them are still waiting for something every family of a homicide victim deserves: answers that can withstand scrutiny.

That wait got longer in May 2026, when the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned Alex Murdaugh’s 2023 murder convictions, citing jury interference by former Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill. A retrial is set for April 5, 2027, in Sumter County before Judge Debra R. McCaslin. Under our system, that means Alex Murdaugh is once again presumed innocent of these killings, and the State once again carries the full burden of proof.

This post does not argue that he is innocent, and it does not argue that he is guilty. It asks a narrower question that matters to everyone involved, including Maggie and Paul’s family: what can a tiny amount of unidentified DNA under Maggie’s fingernails actually tell us, and what can it never tell us?

What was found, and what was already known

Fingernail scrapings and clippings are routinely collected in violent deaths because a victim who struggles may pick up biological material from an attacker. In this case, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) reported a limited, unidentified contributor in a partial DNA mixture from Maggie’s left-hand fingernail evidence. That result was known at the first trial.

What is new is the attempt to look more closely. In August 2026, Judge McCaslin allowed DNA extracts and reserve fingernail samples to be sent to the private lab Othram for an initial measurement, over objections from the State and SLED. Critically, the order was staged: any further testing that would consume material requires reporting back to the court first.

What Othram measured

According to reporting by WJCL and FITSNews, Othram measured four samples:

The previously tested extracts showed extremely low, small amounts of detectable Y-chromosome (male) DNA from both hands.
The reserve samples showed no detectable Y target.

That is the entire new finding so far. No profile has been developed from it. No person has been identified. No match, inclusion, or exclusion has been reported.

What male DNA can and cannot prove

It is worth saying plainly, because headlines tend not to: the presence of male DNA does not identify who deposited it, when it was deposited, or whether it has any connection to the killings.

DNA is not a timestamp. Material under a fingernail can arrive through ordinary daily contact with family members, objects, surfaces, and it can arrive indirectly through secondary transfer, where DNA moves from a person to an object and then to someone else. We have written about how this plays out in other cases, including Lukis Anderson’s near-prosecution and the broader risks of touch-transfer evidence. The David Butler case is a direct warning about fingernail DNA in particular: a trace result was treated as far more meaningful than the science supported.

The same humility cuts in both directions. A faint male signal is not proof that an unknown attacker was present. Equally, the inability so far to develop a profile is not proof that the material is innocent or meaningless. At this volume, the honest answer is that we do not yet know, and we may never know.

The dispute: test further, or preserve what is left?

The two sides now disagree over what should happen next.

The defense position

Murdaugh’s attorneys want further Y-STR testing, a technique that focuses on the male Y chromosome and can sometimes yield information when a male contributor is swamped by female DNA, through Othram or Sorenson. They argue SLED’s decisions, including dilution of samples, deserve scrutiny, and that differences between lab worksheets and published findings should be examined. They are also seeking phone swab material.

The State’s position

Prosecutors, led by Creighton Waters, argue the DNA levels are extremely low and that further testing is high-risk: it could consume all remaining material and might require combining the samples from both hands. They want the proposed method and its viability explained, and they want the State to have access to data and results. The State has offered STRmix and GeneMapper project files, the underlying software files from SLED’s analysis, to the defense.

Both concerns are legitimate. Consumptive testing is a one-way door: once the material is gone, no future lab, method, or court can revisit it. But untested evidence is also a one-way door of a different kind, because a jury cannot weigh information no one ever developed.

Why process matters more than the result

The questions that matter most here are about process, not about who the DNA belongs to:

Sequence: Why are these questions being litigated five years after the killings and after a full trial, rather than resolved before charges were tried the first time?
Documentation: If there are differences between bench worksheets and published conclusions, both sides and the jury deserve to understand why.
Preservation: How much material remains, how was it stored, and who decided how earlier extracts were used or diluted?
Combining samples: If left- and right-hand material were combined, what would be gained, and what interpretive clarity would be lost?
Transparency: Will the method, raw data, and results be shared with both sides so any conclusion can be independently checked?

These are the same questions we have asked about delayed or late-stage DNA work elsewhere, from Amanda Knox’s bra clasp, collected 47 days late, to Dell Crawford’s case, where DNA testing failed at the lab and again in the courtroom. They are also the questions we have raised about the Amber Spradlin investigation.

Where things stand

A hearing on the DNA and other evidence disputes was scheduled for October 16, 2026, according to WLTX and FITSNews, with a further motions hearing set for November 13, 2026. As this post was written, no ruling on further testing had been reported. Readers should check current coverage for any decision Judge McCaslin has made since.

What reliable answers would look like

Maggie and Paul Murdaugh cannot speak for themselves. The best thing the justice system can do for them is make sure any verdict in 2027 rests on evidence that has been handled carefully, disclosed fully, and explained honestly, including its limits.

For the fingernail DNA, that means resisting two temptations: treating a faint male signal as a breakthrough, or treating it as nothing worth understanding. The responsible path is a transparent decision, on the record, about whether and how to test, with both sides able to examine the data. Whatever the retrial jury decides, it should decide with eyes open about what this evidence can, and cannot, prove.

Sources

Featured image: Sumter County Courthouse, Sumter, S.C., by Blackoffee, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Latest Stories