CASE 384South Carolina
2023
Davis McClendon
Davis McClendon died after being struck by a vehicle. Investigators examined the driver’s relationship to McClendon’s partner and used vehicle data and other evidence to reconstruct the killing.
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Showing 1–9 of 9CASE 102South Carolina
2021
Maggie & Paul Murdaugh
Maggie Murdaugh and her son Paul were shot and killed at the family’s South Carolina property in June 2021. Alex Murdaugh’s 2023 murder convictions were set aside in May 2026 and a retrial was ordered. At the October 16, 2026 hearing, the court allowed additional defense DNA testing ahead of the scheduled April 2027 retrial. His separate financial-crime sentences remain in effect.
CASE 431Columbia, South Carolina
2019
Samantha Josephson
Samantha Josephson, a University of South Carolina senior preparing for law school, disappeared after leaving Columbia’s Five Points district in March 2019. She entered a car she believed was her requested ride and was killed. Investigators used vehicle evidence, surveillance and forensic testing to build the case against Nathaniel Rowland. A jury convicted him in 2021, and he received a life sentence. South Carolina’s appeals court upheld the convictions in 2024 and subsequently declined rehearing.
CASE 166Lugoff, South Carolina
2006
Elizabeth Shoaf
Fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Shoaf was abducted in South Carolina in 2006 by Vinson Filyaw, who posed as a police officer. While held in an underground enclosure, she obtained access to his phone and contacted her family. Her messages helped bring about her rescue.
CASE 458Clemson, South Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia
2006
Ray & Fahmarr McElrathbey
While playing football and studying at Clemson, Ray McElrathbey took responsibility for his eleven-year-old brother Fahmarr in 2006 amid difficulties at home. Teammates and the wider community helped him manage school, football and caregiving. Safety dramatizes the brothers’ experience, with Clemson’s historical reporting offering a separate account.
CASE 005Union, South Carolina
1994
Susan Smith
Susan Smith told police that a carjacker had driven away with her two sons, three-year-old Michael and one-year-old Alex. After nine days of televised appeals in 1994, she admitted letting her car roll into a South Carolina lake with the boys inside. Both children drowned. She was convicted of their murders.
CASE 321Gaffney, South Carolina
1967–1968
Lee Roy Martin
A caller claiming responsibility for killings contacted a South Carolina reporter and described where bodies could be found. The investigation identified Lee Roy Martin in a series of murders of young women.
CASE 197Washington, D.C., Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi
1961
The Freedom Riders
Photo credit
Federal Bureau of Investigation / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain. Cropped/resized.Interracial groups rode buses through the South to challenge segregation in interstate travel. Riders endured mob attacks, arrests and imprisonment while demanding enforcement of existing court rulings. The campaign helped force federal action against segregated interstate bus facilities.
CASE 193Topeka, Kansas; South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware
1951–1954
The families behind Brown v. Board of Education
Families and NAACP lawyers challenged segregated public schooling through cases that reached the Supreme Court together. Brown v. Board of Education rejected racial segregation in public schools in 1954. Simple Justice follows the legal strategy and the people behind that constitutional decision.
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