Two weeks after South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdo was convicted of the brutal murder of his wife and son, the body of a teenager found dead on a country road near the scene of the murder six years earlier is now due to be exhumed.

Sandy Smith has confirmed that the remains of her son Stephen, who was 19 at the time of his death, will be subjected to a private autopsy after a GoFundMe campaign raised $43,000 to pay for the exhumation.

“It’s Steven’s Year”, Smith told NBC News and thanked the donors for “not letting Stephen’s story be swept under the rug.”

The death of Stephen Smith has long puzzled South Carolina investigators, who reopened what was initially thought to be an accident last year after Murdo, 54, was charged with the murders of his 52-year-old wife Maggie and 22-year-old son Paul. last year

Murdo’s trial for these murders captured the imagination of America – and the world – with its violence played out against the corrupt politics of small-town rural life in a dramatic piece from Deep South Gothic.

But the two murders weren’t the only deaths in the Murdo family circle, as the legions of online investigators involved in the lawsuit, along with numerous documentary makers, handled other clan-related cases.

The coroner’s report at the time of Smith’s death found that he had a “protective wound” on his arm and a murder investigation was launched. But the medical examiner wrote in the report that Smith’s cause of death was a blow to the head with a car mirror.

After Murdo was arrested on murder charges, South Carolina law enforcement agents, or Sled, said their investigation sparked an investigation into other mysterious deaths linked to the Murdo family.

State investigators said they were opening an investigation into Smith’s death “based on information gathered during the double homicide investigation.” They said last week that they had “made progress” on the investigation into Smith’s death and that it “remains active and ongoing.”

Smith’s body was found 15 miles from the Murdo estate, known as the Moselle. Questions were raised after it was noted that he was found in the middle of the road, far from where his car ran out of gas, and that he was still wearing loose-fitting sneakers, inconsistent with a violent car collision.

Separately, South Carolina Highway Patrol investigators said they had received intelligence that Buster Murdo’s son may have been involved.

Buster and Smith reportedly graduated from the same high school in 2014. According to reports, the traffic police report on Smith’s death contains interviews suggesting that Murdo’s eldest son be questioned.

Some have claimed that Smith, who was openly gay, and Buster were in a relationship. ABC 4. No member of the Murdo family has been directly identified as being involved in Smith’s death.

“We believe it is critical to seek a new target – an independent exhumation and autopsy – and we are launching justice for Stephen N. Smith with this immediate goal in mind,” Sandy Smith wrote on her fundraising page.

“We need a new, unbiased look at his body and an accurate, fact-based determination of the cause of his death. There was no debris on the road, and his injuries did not match the collision, ”she added.

Other deaths in the orbit of the once-powerful Murdo family that are currently being looked at more closely include those of family housekeeper Gloria Satterfield and 19-year-old Mallory Beach, both of whom died in a 2019 boating accident linked to Murdo’s murdered son Paul.

State investigators also said they would exhume Sutterfield’s body as part of the investigation.

Lawyers for convicted murderer Alex Murdo announced last week that they plan to appeal his convictions and life sentences over the June 2021 deaths of his wife and son. The notice of appeal made no arguments.

Yesterday, I praised Viola Davis’ Oscar speech for being memorable without being overtly political—for simply talking about her work in a touching and well-written way. Twitter quickly let me know that I missed something. On social media and on conservative news sites, Davis’ speech actually sparked outrage.

Explaining that she believed her mission was to “unearth… the stories of people who dreamed great things but never made those dreams come true, people who fell in love and lost,” Davis said:

This statement became one of the points of discussion of the right Internet after the Oscars ceremony. “Art is beautiful; art enriches; art can connect us to each other,” writes Ben Shapiro. V daily wire. “But the sheer arrogance of declaring that artists are “the only profession that celebrates what it means to live life” is simply amazing. How about doctors? What about stay-at-home mothers who help shape lives rather than pursue their own career interests? How about undertakers? How about if almost everyone in a free market economy gives themselves to others to improve life?

Variations of this sentiment have ricocheted online, with Davis sometimes being misquoted as saying that only “actors” celebrate what it means to live life, or worse, are the only ones who “know” what it means to live life. .

Do people have the right to be offended? Did they say that artists are better than everyone else? If you read her words literally, in the context of her speech, and give her the slightest benefit of doubt, it’s hard to see the backlash against Davis as anything but a symptom of our overblown culture wars.

Everyone “celebrates what it means to live life” in their own way, but for whom can this be the main function of their profession? Artists, definitely. The clergy, perhaps. Doctors Keep life, not to glorify them, and it does not humiliate them if they talk about it. Stay home parents help others, and Davis might even agree that it is more noble, important and necessary than “glorifying” the meaning of life.

Her point was simply that artists have a unique role to play in telling stories about the human experience and that she is glad to be a part of it.

Of course, she could have edited herself to be less controversial, though perhaps less interesting., statements. If she had simply said, “I became an artist—and thank God I did—because we are celebrating what it means to live life,” the complaints might have been more difficult. The word “one” emphasizes the special feature of the artists, but it is also a whistle for anyone who has a strong resentment of Hollywood elitism and condescension. And there has rarely been a better time to express such outrage than now.

On the right, reflective aversion to the entertainment industry has taken on a new dimension under Donald Trump. during Fox and friends after Oscarthe confusion that la la country Wrongly declared “Best Picture” Steve Doucey called “Hollywood got the election wrong, and last night Hollywood got the Oscar wrong.” Guest Tucker Carlson agreed, but added that Moonlight “should have won” because that’s what the moralizing, politically correct establishment wanted. Yes, the Oscars were both a disaster out of touch with reality and a cunningly rigged game.

Donald Trump interpreted the Academy’s failure in his own way: “I think they were so focused on politics that at the end they couldn’t come together,” he said. beardas if the accountant of PricewaterhouseCoopers, who handed Warren Beatty the wrong envelope did so because he cursed too hard at Kimmel, who tweeted the president “are you okay?”

Liberals may moan when Trump attributes a logistical error to his critics. But of course, both sides today see a lot of politics in entertainment: see below. all takes do like Dusi and compare the end of the Oscars to election night.

To many viewers on Sunday, Davis’s speech was remarkable in that she almost went beyond the partisan strife and just spoke passionately about acting. But one word – “only” – was enough to make it a culture war litmus test. Maybe she wanted to argue about the place of art in society, or maybe she just portrayed her profession as she really sees it. In any case, it was a defiant move in an age where artists are increasingly being held to the same standards as candidates for office: they are expected to choose their words not for truth, but for politics.