New details emerge about the close bond between a rich suspect and a police officer as questions arise about the disappearance of crucial evidence in a shooting case.

A man from South Carolina is accused of using his close connection with a local police officer to try to influence an investigation into a deadly shooting he was a part of, as per recently discovered recordings.

Weldon Boyd shot and killed Scott Spivey, 33, on September 9, 2023, following a road rage incident in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. 

The incident involved a intoxicated individual named Spivey who allegedly brandished his .45 caliber gun at Boyd and his companion Bradley Williams after a close call between their vehicles, which led them to swerve to avoid him.

After giving chase, Spivey eventually pulled over to tell the two to stop following him. A shootout ensued, with Spivey dying at the scene.  

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Boyd had called his close friend at the Horry County Police Department, Dept. Brandon Strickland. 

Reports suggest that the officer, who is presently under scrutiny concerning the matter, assured Boyd that he would address the situation personally and hand-selected detectives to look into the incident.

Detective Alan Jones would investigate the shooting and conclude the killing as a manner of self-defense under state laws. 

According to social media posts, Boyd and Strickland appear to know each other well – having shared images of themselves hunting and fishing together.

Boyd owns Buoys on the Boulevard, a popular restaurant that offers free meals to uniformed police and charges half-price for those who bring their families.

The restaurant is known for hosting police department functions and events. Strickland appears to have been a patron in the past. 

Boyd had been automatically recording all his phone calls amid a custody battle with his ex-fiancée and seemingly forgot that he’d also recorded the call to the cop.

Those recordings did not emerge until Spivey’s sister Jennifer Foley began pulling records into her brother’s killing and appear to seriously-undermine Boyd’s stand-your-ground claims. 

One hour of bodycam footage is also missing from the scene with questions arising about the content of what was captured. 

In a new report by the Wall Street Journal, the outlet said that Strickland explicitly told Boyd that he would protect him. 

At least 25 minutes have also been erased from the nine recorded calls between Boyd and Strickland in the police file that Horry County officials handed over to lawyers. 

From what calls have been salvaged, Strickland told Boyd: ‘I got the people coming that need to come’, telling him that he handpicked a detective for the case. 

The next day, Boyd again called Strickland telling him: ‘Thank you for what y’all did behind the scenes last night.’

Strickland said: ‘Alan’s a good dude, I wanted to send the right person down there’, adding that had Spivey been a black man it would have been more complicated. 

‘I’m glad it’s a white male, you would’ve really had people running their mouths then “white business owner shoots black male”, he added.

Strickland also told Boyd in a recorded call that he had picked Jones specifically, and told the captain overseeing that Boyd was ‘a good guy’.

He also told Boyd that he had been assured from Horry County Solicitor Jimmy Richardson that the prosecutor assigned in the case agreed with Jones’s view that he acted in self-defense. 

Richardson refuted this to the Wall Street Journal, saying: ‘Absolutely no assurances were ever made to or about Mr. Boyd by anyone in our office.’

Strickland informed Boyd that within a week the whole case would be wrapped up, and even apologized about his gun and truck being seized. 

They then laughed when Strickland offered to buy Boyd’s 2022 Dodge Ram truck for a fraction of the price. 

Strickland also inquired about buying a 5-carat diamond engagement ring from Boyd, after his ex-fiancée had returned it to him on the day of the shooting. 

Boyd said: ‘We’ll work something out’, before going on to speak about arranging a boy’s night with their other friends in law enforcement. 

Days after that call, Boyd then rang up Jones to complain about anonymous callers ringing his restaurant to accuse him of murder.

He asked the police department to put out a statement clearing his name, Jones told him: ‘Chill. Let everything kind of work itself out, bud.’

From what bodycam clips are available, Officer Kerry Higgs could be seen arriving on the scene with his lights and siren on.

Boyd tells him: ‘He shot us first’, before gesturing to other drivers saying: ‘They saw everything’. 

Higgs checks if Spivey was alive, before calling in for an update, saying: ‘I got multiple witnesses stating that the victim had jumped out and brandished a pistol.’

The outlet reported that Higgs had been on the scene for a matter of minutes and hadn’t interviewed anyone but Boyd, according to the clip. 

Paramedics and fire crews soon arrived on the scene, with four of them examining Spivey’s body, identifying a wound in his torso. 

According to Higgs bodycam footage, they started to question the wound as the bullet appeared to enter from his back. 

Paramedic Jeremiah Zimmerman asked Higgs: ‘A question, because I’m nosy. If Boyd shot him in the back, is he at fault now?’, Higgs told him no. 

Around 30 minutes passed before detectives and a local prosecutor arrived on the scene, with officer Damon Vescovi turning to Higgs.

He asks Higgs ‘are you off?’, referring to his body camera. There are no more bodycam clips for the next hour.

By the time officers turned their cameras back on Spivey’s truck had been towed to a police impound across the county, his body was still inside it. 

Prior to the incident, Spivey had been drinking it a local bar for several hours before deciding to get behind the wheel of his truck. 

Foley and her parents had arrived on the scene and were told the news, but the truck and Spivy were already 20 miles away across the county. 

A crime-scene investigator took photos of his body before rolling him out of the vehicle and onto a body bag on the ground. 

He was stripped in order to photograph his injuries, and rigor mortis had already stiffened his body. 

Jones watched on as Spivey was looked over at the impound before ruling a few hours later that Spivy had fired first and Williams and Boyd had acted in self defense. 

The witnesses that had the best look at what happened are Frank McMurrough and his wife, who have visiting the area from Virginia. 

McMurrough told officers that he saw Spivey get out clutching a pistol that was by his side. 

‘He told the guy [Boyd] do not follow me anymore. The guy in the black truck kind of moved his pistol and the guy in the white truck just unloaded a complete magazine’, he said.

He added that he never saw Spivey shoot, and recalled only seeing Boyd pointing his pistol at Spivey. 

Four days after the shooting, Foley found out via phone call that Boyd and Williams had been cooperating and they would be turning over their phones. 

Detective Jones had assured her in the call, that she recorded, saying: ‘Let me assure you of this. I was at that scene. 

‘Everybody was a victim, everybody was a suspect. Everybody still is a victim. Everybody still is a suspect.’

The next day, Strickland told Boyd on the phone: ‘I can’t officially tell you this, but I’m gonna tell you, you-all are good to go.’

In the days after the shooting, Boyd had also told his mother about his concerns of being labeled a murderer. 

He told her: ‘Spivey’s family might say that “I knew that the guy had a gun, but yet I still pursued him as if I was looking for a fight, and that Scott was scared and got out and thought he was defending himself against me.

‘They’re gonna make me out to be a murderer.’

Following a seven month investigation by local officers, the state attorney general’s office reviewed the file following complaints from the family of Spivey.

In April of last year, the family were called to meet with assistant general Heather Weiss who said she would be closing the case and not filing charges against Boyd.

The office cited a lack of evidence in the case in their decision to close the case.

Weiss said that Spivey had brandished his gun, and that under South Carolina’s stand-your-ground laws Boyd and Williams had the right to follow him.

Foley’s lawyer Mark Tinsley, told the outlet this idea was offensive – finding it hard to believe a person could follow a driver for 9 miles and claim self-defense. 

He said: ‘How do you stand your ground when you’re chasing someone else’s?’ 

Foley and Tinsley had been working through the trove of evidence that was handed over to them after filing their suit when she found the recordings. 

The next day, Tinsley started questioning Boyd, and did not let on that the recorded conversations had been uncovered. 

He asked him: ‘If you chased Mr. Spivey, do you think you can claim self-defense?’, Boyd responded: ‘I didn’t chase Mr. Spivey.’

Despite this, Tinsley was sitting on a recorded call of Boyd to his mother which portraits a different story. 

Boyd told her: ‘I was like, “he just ran me off the road and aimed a gun at Bradley’s head? F*** this guy. 

‘I chased him. Oh I was on his ass, and his truck couldn’t outrun my truck, and he knew it. So yeah he was terrified.’

Tinsley later asked him: ‘You’re not gonna apologize for anything, right?’, ‘No, sir’, he responded. 

‘Because you loved it?’, Tinsley asked. Boyd responded: ‘I wouldn’t say that. I might have – I mean, I might have made a comment that I’d like to see if you’d show it to me.’

A recording of Boyd telling Williams on the day of the shooting that ‘he had a f****** blast’, and that he ‘had a good time’. 

He also grilled Boyd over a dash-mounted tablet inside his truck, and whether it recorded the encounter with Spivey. Boyd said it did not. 

State investigators however said they received a screenshot last February of a text Boyd had sent his ex-fiancée. 

In it, he said that he ‘had a video’ of Spivey aiming at passing vehicles, according to the state law enforcement division. 

The state said that they passed this on to the police, but the outlet report that the text is noticeably absent from the case file handed over by cops. 

Tinsley then approached the Horry County Attorney David Jordan about the case, asking him: ‘Have you listened to all these calls? Because if you haven’t, you need to.’

Jordan called him back days later, questioning over ‘how the f*** weren’t these guys charged.’ He then informed the police chief about the recordings. 

Strickland was forced to resign from his job and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division now faces calls to reopen the investigation into Spivey’s death.  

His lawyers told the Wall Street Journal that the recorded conversations were all ‘braggadocio’ and that he hadn’t exerted any influence on the case. 

According to the outlet he had been unaware that he was recorded, his lawyer Bert von Herrmann said: ‘There’s a huge difference between public corruption and poor taste.’ 

Horry County leaders are now asking state officials to reopen the investigation into Spivey’s death. 

In a letter to Governor Henry McMaster dated April 17,  Councilman Johnny Gardner said he ‘felt there was an apparent conflict of interest with the shooter.’

Most recently, Boyd has removed his Facebook page after just last week saying that lawsuits would follow those sharing the ‘flat out lies’ about the case.

Despite his Facebook disappearing, he has continued to post on the Facebook of his restaurant. 

In a lengthy post, Boyd said ‘there are no secret recordings’ adding ‘there can be no cover up of a crime, when there was no crime’. 

The case is the biggest police corruption scandal to hit South Carolina since lawyer Alex Murdaugh murdered his wife Maggie and their 22 year-old son Paul at the family’s hunting lodge in 2021.

It subsequently emerged the Murdaugh family had been linked to three other horrific deaths, but gotten away with all of them.

Alex Murdaugh was heir to a legal dynasty which had held powerful prosecutorial positions in his native Coleton County for decades.

Locals said for decades that the Murdaughs had been too rich and powerful for justice, but Alex now rots in jail while the family’s reputation lies in tatters.