Alex Murdaugh's lawyers accuse a police chief of concealing bloody clothing and murder weapons before his retrial

Murdaugh's defence team is casting doubt on a Yemassee police chief they allege reached the Colleton County estate before other officers and may have had a hand in concealing evidence tied to the 2021 murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh. The former attorney, 58, is due in a South Carolina courtroom Friday as both sides wrangle over DNA evidence and the location of missing weapons ahead of his April retrial. His original 2023 convictions were overturned after the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that a court clerk had wrongly guided jurors to scrutinise his body language. The murder weapons and any bloody clothing have never been found.

Murdaugh's lawyers contend that evidence pointing to a possible accomplice could unravel the prosecution's entire account of the killings.