by JENN WOOD
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In the hours after his wife and younger son were brutally gunned down in the South Carolina Lowcountry four years ago, multiple messages pinged across Alex Murdaugh‘s cell phone. Many of these messages are familiar to those who have followed this case from the very beginning. Others are not so familiar – especially the batch of messages which never made it into the 88-page “comprehensive” timeline (.pdf) prepared for Murdaugh’s jury by the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED).
We’ve written previously about what Murdaugh’s jurors didn’t see – and how those omissions could prove every bit as impactful as the alleged targeting of a juror who apparently didn’t see the case the same way her colleagues did.
The potential impact of these omissions only escalates in the event Murdaugh winds up receiving a new trial in the double homicide of his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, and younger son, Paul Murdaugh.
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Among the text records omitted from SLED’s timeline were repeated attempts by Murdaugh’s alleged drug dealer/check casher, Curtis “Eddie” Smith, and another unknown individual to reach an “unknown number” ending in 13.
According to Smith and the unknown individual, the number – which surfaced multiple times in the preserved texts obtained by FITSNews – wouldn’t connect.
Our review of records suggests the likely owner of the number was Barbara Ann Mixson, the beloved housekeeper who worked in the Almeda, S.C. home of former solicitor Randolph Murdaugh III and his wife, Elizabeth “Libby” Murdaugh, for more than four decades. If this link holds, it reframes several key moments in the 24 hours after the murders — and raises new questions about who Murdaugh was trying to reach, and why.
Is there an innocent explanation to these exchanges?
Was Murdaugh trying to score drugs to feed an escalating addiction?
Could he have been arranging a more permanent disposal of the murder weapons used to kill his wife and son (weapons which have still never been recovered)?
Did SLED investigators pursue any of these leads?
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“(IT) DON’T WORK”
One of the clearest examples of what jurors never saw is preserved in a string of messages exchanged on June 8, 2021 — the day after Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were murdered on the family’s hunting property, known locally as Moselle. Both Smith and the unidentified contact were actively trying to reach Murdaugh – with both informing him the same “unknown number” was refusing to connect.
If, as records suggest, this masked number belonged to the longtime Murdaugh family housekeeper, it meant people in Murdaugh’s orbit were urgently — and unsuccessfully — attempting to get through to the very household which would later be inexplicably tied to his alibi.
Here’s what those messages show:
June 8, 2021 — The day after the murders
- 7:48 a.m. — Smith: “Tell me what I heard is not true”
- 7:50 a.m. — Smith: “Call me please”
- 5:50 p.m. — Unidentified contact: “I’m ready”
- 6:24 p.m. — Smith: “At fishing hole”
- 7:09 p.m. — Unidentified contact: “Give me the # again. I cannot get through”
- 7:16 p.m. — Unidentified contact: “Don’t know what is going on with phones. I’m setting (sic) in parking lot across from where you told e (sic) to go”
- 7:17 p.m. — Unidentified contact: “803 *** **13 don’t work”
- 7:21 p.m. — Smith: “803 *** **13 it will not go through on my phone”
- 7:34 p.m. — Unidentified contact: “OK I’m headed home. I seen her and she has changed # but I have new ones. If you need anything you let me know. I know timing sucks but get me some soon.”
- 7:34 p.m. — Unidentified contact: “As soon as you can/ Love you Brother you know I’m just a phone call away”
That evening, less than 24 hours after the murders, two different contacts were circling the same number — one Alex’s alleged drug dealer, the other still unidentified — but both failing to connect. The frustration is plain: parked in a lot waiting, insisting on new numbers, professing loyalty.
Yet none of these exchanges appeared in the state’s 88-page timeline.
If the mysterious number was indeed Mixson’s line, the omissions cut directly into the heart of Murdaugh’s narrative: who he was contacting, the role his parents’ Almeda home played in the double homicide of his wife and child, and why investigators left this entire sequence out of the record shown to jurors.
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RELATED | WHAT THE MURDAUGH JURY DIDN’T HEAR
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WHAT JURORS SAW AND HEARD
In its official timeline, the state listed Mixson’s number as 843-842-0853 and logged multiple calls between Maggie and “Barbara” on June 7 — including attempts at 7:18 p.m. EDT, 7:39 p.m. EDT, and 7:50 p.m. EDT. The record also showed a 3:58 p.m. EDT call from Barbara to Alex about his agitated mother.
On paper, Mixson appeared as a steady caregiver, a routine presence in Murdaugh’s family life.
When she took the stand to testify in front of the jury on February 22, 2023, Mixson described Murdaugh as “like one of my kids.” She recalled her last conversation with Maggie the night of June 7, and confirmed she called Alex Murdaugh that afternoon when Libby was upset. She also testified that she never saw a blue tarp in the Almeda house, pushing back on testimony from another witness.
Importantly, she admitted she did not immediately report her June 7 call with Murdaugh and could not remember when she first told investigators about it.
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On the stand, Barbara Mixson painted a picture of loyalty and routine — a caregiver who loved the Murdaughs like her own family. To jurors, she came across as a steady, maternal presence who spent four decades tending to the family’s needs.
Just three months after the murders, though – in the aftermath of a bizarre roadside shooting incident involving Eddie Smith – Murdaugh gave investigators a vastly different account of Mixson’s role in his life. In a September 13, 2021 interview with SLED investigators, he placed her not only in his family’s household orbit – but also in his drug orbit. After naming Eddie Smith and Kenny Hughes as regular suppliers, Alex added Mixson to the list — admitting he had “on occasion” paid her for pills. It was a small but significant detail jurors never heard, and it casts her June 7 call to Murdaugh — and the frantic attempts to reach her number the following day — in a very different light.
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That contrast — the trusted housekeeper in open court versus the occasional pill supplier in private messages — reveals just how differently Barbara Mixson’s role was portrayed depending on the audience.
Does it reveal more than that, though?
The discrepancies don’t stop with calls, texts and testimony – the money trail also tells its own story.
As previously reported by FITSNews, bank records indicate Alex Murdaugh paid Mixson more than $278,000 over an eleven-year span — a staggering sum compared to what he paid other housekeepers who worked for the family (including the late Gloria Satterfield).
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RELATED | FOLLOWING ALEX MURDAUGH’S MONEY
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THE MISSING GUNS
Using ammunition signatures, prosecutors have compellingly argued Maggie and Paul were killed with family-owned firearms — a shotgun and a .300 Blackout rifle — yet investigators never recovered either of the weapons believed to have fired the fatal shots.
That’s where the June 8 text messages could take on a darker edge. An unidentified contact told Alex, “I’m ready,” then sat waiting in a parking lot before complaining that the number identified as potentially belonging to Mixson “don’t work.”
Hours later, the same contact messaged, “I seen her and she has changed # but I have new ones. If you need anything you let me know.”
Murdaugh left his family’s residence at 9:07 p.m. EDT on the evening of July 7 – moments after the murders – and drove to see his mother in Almeda, arriving just before 9:23 p.m. EDT. He stayed there for approximately 20 minutes and departed on his return trip to Moselle shortly after 9:43 p.m. EDT – returning to the property at around 10:00 p.m. EDT.
Shortly thereafter, he “discovered” the bodies of his family members – and called 911 at 10:06 p.m. EDT.
What happened during this critical hour of the timeline remains a matter of hotly contested conjecture – but we know what didn’t happen afterward.
Despite being granted blanket permission by the Murdaugh family to search all of its properties in the hours following the murders, SLED did not obtain a warrant to search Almeda for another three months.
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Entrance to the Murdaugh family property in Almeda, S.C. (Google Maps)
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“That was an opportunity missed?” Murdaugh’s attorney Jim Griffin asked lead SLED agent David Owen during the trial.
“Probably, yes,” Owen acknowledged.
SLED eventually searched the residence on the day Alex Murdaugh was arrested following the roadside shooting. During that search, its agents retrieved a blue, water-resistant rain jacket (or blue tarp) belonging to Murdaugh which was coated with gunshot residue. Prosecutors suggested the blue jacket was used to transport the murder weapons and other potentially incriminating evidence from the crime scene to Almeda for disposal at a later time.
More than a year after the murders, on August 30, 2022, SLED agents conducted another extensive search underneath the concrete bridge which carries Highway 278 (a.k.a. Grays Highway) over the Coosawhatchie River. This bridge is located approximately 2.13 miles south of Almeda.
As we reported at the time, this search came up empty.
Murdaugh’s attorneys have suggested the conversations tied to the number linked to Mixson on the day after the murders were related to pills – arguing Murdaugh disposed of the pills he had on him when he realized he was a suspect in the murder case and needed to replenish his stash.
Is that true, though?
Or were the individuals involved in the conversation up to something more sinister?
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Evidence presented in Alex Murdaugh’s trial for murder at the Colleton County Courthouse on Monday, January 30, 2023. Joshua Boucher/The State/Pool
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In addition to his alleged role in Murdaugh’s drug and money laundering operations, Smith was the star figure in a bizarre roadside shooting that took place 89 days after the murders on the side of Old Salkehatchie Road. Following that incident, Smith was accused of conspiring with Murdaugh to pull off a botched suicide attempt – one ostensibly intended to help Murdaugh’s surviving son, Buster Murdaugh, collect on a $10 million life insurance policy.
Smith has disputed that theory, arguing that if he had meant to kill Murdaugh – he’d be dead.
Prosecutors were expected to call Smith to the stand during Murdaugh’s trial, but never did. A month after the trial, Smith was granted bond on the charges he was facing related to the roadside shooting and released from jail after being detained for nearly nine months.
Assistant attorney general John Meadors told former circuit court judge Clifton Newman that Smith had “cooperated completely” with prosecutors during Murdaugh’s double homicide trial.
“We wouldn’t be back here for no reason,” Meadors told Newman, crediting Smith with spending “numerous hours” with prosecutors.
“He fully cooperated with us throughout this process,” Meadors said.
Four years later, prosecutors have yet to take Smith to trial – a delay which continues to raise suspicions.
Meanwhile, Murdaugh’s attorneys have said their decision not to call Smith to the stand might have changed had they known about the text messages we reported on this summer.
Prosecutors insist all of the texts were provided to the defense – but Murdaugh attorney Dick Harpootlian told Fox News this summer that the defense team was “not aware” of them.
Three years ago, Murdaugh’s attorneys dropped a bombshell pre-trial motion to compel asking the state to “produce all polygraph data, examiner notes, and quality control notes related to the polygraph examination of Curtis ‘Eddie’ Smith on May 5, 2022”
Smith failed a polygraph related to the double homicide on that date, Harpootlian and Griffin asserted. In fact, they took it one step further and accused him of being the killer of Maggie and Paul.
“The state is turning a blind eye to the obvious, that the reason Smith failed the polygraph when asked if he murdered Maggie and Paul is because he in fact did commit these heinous crimes,” the attorneys wrote at the time.
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WHY IT MATTERS
Taken together, these puzzle pieces form a pattern investigators and jurors never fully saw. The potential linkage of the mystery phone number to Mixson showed Alex’s inner circle scrambling to connect with someone tied to his alibi in the hours after the murders – someone Alex implicated as an occasional drug supplier.
None of this information — not the masked number, not the drug link, not the money trail, not the potential tie to missing firearms — appeared in the state’s so-called “comprehensive” timeline. Instead, jurors were handed a sanitized version of events, one that froze Mixson’s role as a loyal caregiver and kept out evidence that complicated Alex’s alibi.
That gap feeds directly into a narrative Murdaugh’s attorneys have hammered since day one: that SLED never seriously considered suspects outside of Alex Murdaugh. The omissions around Mixson don’t just raise questions about her role — they underscore broader questions about whether investigators pursued every lead, or whether they built their case inside a circle Alex was never allowed to escape.
During his testimony in the double homicide trial, Owen noted that SLED had conducted a cell phone analysis to determine whether Smith or any alleged gang members related to Murdaugh’s drug network were at or near Moselle on the night of the double homicide. Owen claimed he did not have any numbers and that gang members used burner phones, anyway.
Prosecutors have also repeatedly – and convincingly – pointed out gang members generally do not use family weapons during hits.
Owen stated SLED’s analysis did not identify any phones in the area other than first responders arriving on the scene after 10:25 p.m. EDT. However, multiple sources familiar with the investigation have confirmed Smith’s cell phone was turned off on the night of the murders.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Jenn Wood (Provided)
Jenn Wood is FITSNews’ incomparable research director. She’s also the producer of the FITSFiles and Cheer Incorporated podcasts and leading expert on all things Murdaugh/ South Carolina justice. A former private investigator with a criminal justice degree, evildoers beware, Jenn Wood is far from your average journalist! A deep dive researcher with a passion for truth and a heart for victims, this mom of two is pretty much a superhero in FITSNews country. Did we mention she’s married to a rocket scientist? (Lucky guy!) Got a story idea or a tip for Jenn? Email her at [email protected].
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