Stand Your Ground on Camp Swamp Road: The Scott Spivey Shooting

Summary

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Gone South – “Stand Your Ground on Camp Swamp Road: The Scott Spivey Shooting”

Date: February 25, 2026
Host: Jed Lipinski
Featured Guest: Valerie Bauerlein, Wall Street Journal Correspondent

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode of Gone South uncovers the fatal shooting of Scott Spivey on Camp Swamp Road, examining the intersection of “stand your ground” laws, small-town law enforcement, and the persistence of old Southern power structures. Host Jed Lipinski and journalist Valerie Bauerlein reconstruct the events surrounding Spivey’s death, the police investigation, and a family’s battle for answers, ultimately interrogating how history, law, and privilege shape outcomes in the modern South.

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Episode Breakdown

1. The Shooting on Camp Swamp Road

• [01:16–04:35]

  • Scott Spivey, a 33-year-old insurance adjuster, spends the afternoon drinking at Boardwalk Billy’s in North Myrtle Beach.
  • On his drive home, Spivey gets into a road rage incident with Weldon Boyd, a local restaurant owner.
  • According to Boyd, Spivey waved a gun and threatened him. Boyd chased Spivey for nine miles, calling 911 and warning, “If he points that gun at me again, I will shoot him.” (03:20)
  • In rural Horry County, Spivey pulls over, gun in hand, and is shot roughly 30 times by Boyd and his passenger, Bradley Williams. Spivey dies at the scene.
  • Police arrive quickly; the shooters claim self-defense under South Carolina’s stand your ground law and are allowed to go home the same night.

  “He’s stopping. Hey, we’re about to have a fucking shootout, dude. This dude’s got a gun. He’s got a fucking gun.”
  —Weldon Boyd (911 call, recounted by Jed Lipinski, 04:08)

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2. Immediate Investigation and “Stand Your Ground”

• [05:10–09:36]
  • Officers on scene express immediate support for the shooters’ self-defense claims, declaring the case “cut and dry” (05:25).
  • Under “stand your ground,” once self-defense is established, shooters receive criminal and civil immunity, almost closing the door on further investigation or lawsuits.
  • Mark Tinsley, a prominent attorney, is baffled: “I couldn’t understand how you could chase a man 9 miles and call it stand your ground.” (07:46)

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3. History and Context of “Stand Your Ground” Laws

• [09:45–10:51]

  • Explains expansion from castle doctrine (duty to retreat in your home) to “stand your ground” (no duty to retreat anywhere you’re allowed to be, including your vehicle).
  • Florida passes such a law in 2005, South Carolina and others follow suit.
  • Now, 28 states have similar statutes. These laws shift the burden onto the deceased, often short-circuiting traditional investigation and accountability.

  “We’re at a point now where there are 28 states…that have some type of stand your ground law. And it’s very broad.”
  —Jed Lipinski (10:49)

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4. The Family’s Ordeal and the Police Response

• [10:51–13:25]

  • Jennifer Foley, Scott’s sister, receives no information or victim’s rights after the shooting.
  • Police tell her that Spivey “road raged,” fired first, and that shooters acted in self-defense—presented as established fact, without investigation.
  • Jennifer, with background in criminal justice, is immediately suspicious and starts her own chronology while collecting communications from Boyd and his circle, noting irregularities in the official account.

  “From her perspective, the police had reached their conclusion way too quickly, especially in a case involving multiple vehicles, 911 calls and a 9 mile chase.”
  —Jed Lipinski (12:40)

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5. Jennifer Foley’s Citizen Investigation

• [16:22–18:37]

  • Jennifer presses police for evidence, finding numerous mishandlings:
    • Phones weren’t seized as evidence
    • Boyd was sharing photos from the scene, including of Scott’s body
    • Coroner’s forms incomplete; Spivey’s body left in truck unrefrigerated for hours, making tox screening impossible
    • Autopsy (delayed 4 days) shows Scott was shot in the back

  “The coroner made significant decisions that are outside official policy…you can’t know how drunk he was…there are just things you can’t know.”
  —Jed Lipinski (17:09, paraphrased)

  • Jennifer suspects the investigation is tainted by Boyd’s close ties to the Horry County police (free meals, honorary badges, hunting trips).

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6. Civil Lawsuit and Evidence Dump

• [19:55–22:15]
  • Mark Tinsley files a wrongful death suit, unusual because those found “standing their ground” have civil immunity.
  • Police turn over a massive trove—30,000 files—in civil discovery, so overwhelming that nothing is reviewed for months.
  • Jennifer personally begins combing through digital evidence as key depositions near.

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7. Shocking Discoveries in the Evidence

• [23:33–26:57]
  • Jennifer discovers Boyd used an app that recorded his phone calls, including those to senior police just after the shooting.
  • Boyd calls Deputy Chief Strickland, a close friend, immediately after the shooting. The deputy chief reassures, “We’re going to take care of this. Don’t worry.” (24:54)
  • The recordings show officials shaping a “self-defense” story before any basic investigation had occurred.
  • Boyd and Williams are heard joking about the killing later: “I know it’s fucked up to say, but I had a blast… It is what it is. I had a good time.” (25:58–26:07)
  • Evidence reveals the Deputy Chief had Scott’s body towed in the truck intentionally (“I did that for you, to help you. If the family ever came after you…” 25:28).
  • Jennifer provides these recordings to Tinsley, who presents them in depositions and to the press.

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8. Deep Dive into Police Malfeasance

• [26:57–32:49]

  • Body and dash cam footage shows initial officers taking Boyd’s word, failing to interview witnesses, and misrepresenting or mislabeling evidence files (“domestic violence” instead of “shooting” etc.).
  • Paramedics note entry wound in Scott’s back; an officer dismisses concerns with implausible explanations.
  • On body cam, a sergeant secretly slips Boyd a note: “Act like a victim. Camera.” (30:05–30:17)
  • Body cameras go dark for two hours in violation of policy.
  • Scott’s body is towed away before the coroner arrives—contrary to protocol.
  • The cover-up extends to mislabeling and burying evidence files, resulting in terminations but no new charges.

  “If I call my body camera ‘domestic violence’ instead of ‘shooting’, it doesn’t pop up the same way… One guy called it robbery. Robbery, you know.”
  —Jed Lipinski (32:31)

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9. Fallout and National Implications

• [33:18–35:47]

  • Despite exposure, state authorities refuse to bring murder charges, citing stand your ground law: “If Weldon Boyd and Bradley Williams stay in their truck where they have a right to be, and Scott Spivey gets out… that’s the salient fact.”
  • Public outcry follows damning Wall Street Journal pieces by Valerie Bauerlein.
  • Congresswoman Nancy Mace calls out the State Attorney General:

    “We’ve seen video, we’ve seen body cam where it was written handwritten on a note that said act like a victim.” (34:08)

  • Eventually, the Attorney General appoints a special prosecutor, and—just before episode airs—a judge rejects Weldon Boyd’s stand your ground claim in the civil suit, enabling a wrongful death suit to proceed and raising the odds of manslaughter or murder charges.
  • Discusses a broader national trend of rising homicide rates associated with stand your ground laws, especially in Southern states.

  “Since publishing her stories last year, Valerie has heard from people all over the country. They tell her that something strikingly similar happened to their son, their brother, their father, and they ask… Would she be willing to tell their story too?”
  —Jed Lipinski (35:47)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the logic of stand your ground immunity:

  “One, if you’re found to be standing your ground in the criminal context, you’re given civil immunity, meaning…there’s no ability of a family to even sue you.”
  —Jed Lipinski (08:50)

• Jennifer Foley’s persistence:

  “She starts building her own chronology, her own contemporaneous notes, organizing all of these tidbits that she gets… it becomes clear that the police have zero interest in investigating what really happened that night.”
  —Jed Lipinski (13:25)

• Racial aspect, as heard on call:

  “And the deputy chief says, I’m glad it was a white male. If he’d been black, that would have been a whole different story. And you’re like, is this happening?”
  —Jed Lipinski (27:37)

• Police coaching the shooter:

  “Act like a victim. Camera.”
  —Sergeant to Weldon Boyd (caught on body cam, 30:17)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:16–04:35 — Reconstruction of the shooting and immediate aftermath
• 05:10–05:25 — Police declare shooting self-defense
• 09:45–10:51 — History of stand your ground laws explained
• 16:22–18:09 — Jennifer Foley’s independent investigation
• 23:33–26:57 — Discovery of call recordings and evidence of police collusion
• 29:26–30:17 — Paramedics, body camera moments, police coaching
• 31:05–32:49 — Violations of policy; evidence mislabeling and cover-up
• 33:18–34:14 — National outcry and Congresswoman Nancy Mace’s intervention
• 34:14–35:47 — Rejection of stand your ground in civil court, implications for accountability

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Conclusion

The Scott Spivey shooting isn’t just a local tragedy—it exposes how “stand your ground” laws, deep-seated local connections, and a lack of independent oversight can allow violence to go unpunished, even in the face of damning evidence. The case's reopening, and the overturning of stand your ground in the civil context, signify a potentially pivotal moment for accountability in similar shootings across the South.

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For further information or to share your story, contact Gone South at gonesouthpodcastmail.com or follow their social accounts.

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Transcript

[Jed Lipinski]

Why have I asked my electrician I

[Valerie Bauerlein]

found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster Nibbles in our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires, I knew I could trust him to bury

[Jed Lipinski]

my sweet Nibbles after his untimely end.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

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[Jed Lipinski]

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[Valerie Bauerlein]

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[Jed Lipinski]

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[Valerie Bauerlein]

I think we should just say what happened. If you can just describe what happened that day.

[Jed Lipinski]

So Scott Spivey was a 33 year old insurance adjuster. He lived in Tabor City, North Carolina which is just north of the state line.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Journalist Valerie Bauerlein he was a young

[Jed Lipinski]

guy, good looking guy and he drove himself down to North Myrtle beach, which is about 30 minutes from his house on a Saturday in September, September 9, 2023. He drove himself down around lunchtime to sit at the bar at a place called Boardwalk Billy's, a very popular place right by the water and watch, you know, SEC ACC football afternoon, which he did.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Scott Spivey stayed at the bar for a few hours. He ate a cheeseburger, drank a half dozen Miller Lights and took some shots of Fireball whiskey.

[Jed Lipinski]

And finally about five o'. Clock. So five hours later, he starts his drive home.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

At the time, Spivey was living in a converted trailer on his family's land in Tabor City, about 35 minutes from the bar in North Myrtle beach where he'd spent the afternoon. He got into his black Chevy Silverado and headed west on Highway 9. But about 10 minutes into the drive, Spivey got into an altercation with another driver. Spivey's version of what happened will never be known, but according to the other driver, a 34 year old local restaurant owner named Weldon Boyd. Spivey swerved just inches from his truck and pointed a gun at his passenger. Spivey then cut in front of Boyd and slammed on the brakes, forcing Boyd to steer his truck onto the median. Boyd was furious. He decided to chase after him down Highway 9.

[Jed Lipinski]

This chase goes on for many miles, and several minutes into it, weldon boyd calls 911. And so we have sort of this running transcript of what's happening in real time. And he said, there's a guy out here, he's crazy. He's waving a gun. You need to send a trooper here. My location is xyz, but I'm going to keep after him. And if he points that gun at me again, I will shoot him. Hey, I've got a guy pointing a gun at me driving. We're armed as well. He keeps throwing the gun in our faces, acting like he's about to shoot us. If he keeps this up, I'm going to shoot him.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Boyd followed Spivey for roughly nine miles. Witnesses would later describe the two of them weaving in and out of traffic and cutting each other off. Finally, just shy of the North Carolina border, Spivey exited the highway. Boyd followed him.

[Jed Lipinski]

Scott Spivey turns in on a road called Camp Swamp Road. It's a country crossroads. They've gone from the suburbs of North Myrtle beach out into a very, very rural area, mostly farmland. And Weldon Boyd turns him after him. All right, so he's turning onto Camp Swap Road. Listen, this dude shoots at me, we're

[Valerie Bauerlein]

gonna put him down.

[Jed Lipinski]

I mean, this dude's insane.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Eventually, Spivey pulled over, got out of his truck and shouted something at the two men in the truck behind him. He had a gun in his hand.

[Jed Lipinski]

He's stopping. Hey, we're about to have a fucking shootout, dude. This dude's got a gun. He's got a fucking gun. And Weldon Boyd and his passenger, they're both armed and they shoot through the windshield of their truck about 30 times, roughly 30 times. And Scott Spivey is shot and falls back into his truck and collapses and dies.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

The shooting took place in Horry County, South Carolina, a mostly rural, low lying county of swamps, rivers, and long back roads just inland from Myrtle Beach. The Horry county police showed up within minutes, alerted by neighbors who'd heard the gunshots and called 911. The cops found Spivey slumped over the console of his truck. Weldon Boyd and his passenger, a friend named Bradley Williams, were standing on the road. Boyd told one of the officers that Spivey had shot first and that he and Williams had returned fire in self defense.

[Jed Lipinski]

And the police essentially said, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, I get it. There are a couple witnesses who had pulled over who had seen some part of this beef as it took place. And within minutes they're like, yep, this seems pretty cut and dry. They say it multiple times in the body and dash cam footage that we have.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

It sounds like self defense.

[Jed Lipinski]

And I got witnesses here that are

[Valerie Bauerlein]

backing that up as well. Just so you know, the officers took the two men's pistols and spoke with them for a few minutes. On the surface, the confrontation appeared to meet the criteria for South Carolina's stand your ground law. Around 9pm that night, about three hours after the shooting, Boyd and Williams were allowed to leave. Scott Spivey, meanwhile, was lying dead in his pickup instead of leaving in a coroner's van. His body was sealed inside his truck and then towed to the police department's impound lot. As it turned out, that was just one of many unusual things that happened that summer evening on Camp Swamp Road. It would take years and the intervention of Spivey's older sister before the truth was finally brought to light. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is Gone South. You may recognize Valerie Bowerlein from an episode we did last week. She's a national affairs correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and the author of Devil at His the definitive account of the fall of the Murdoch family dynasty in Hampton County, South Carolina. While Valerie was fact checking that book a few years ago, she spoke with a well known personal injury attorney named Mark Tinsley. Tinsley brought the first civil case that put Alex Murdoch's finances under a microscope, leading to the unraveling of his web of fraud and theft. But he told Valerie about a new case that had just come across his desk.

[Jed Lipinski]

And he said, you know, I just got the strangest call from a woman in North Carolina, like 200 miles away from where he lives in the southern part of South Carolina. And he said that he was interested in her case because what she said was that her brother got into a road rage altercation in Horry county, which is where Myrtle beach is, and the other driver chased him for nine miles down the highway, turned in after him on his shortcut home. And when her brother got out of the truck, shot and killed him. And he went home that night and was never charged with anything because it was a stand your ground case. And Mark Tinsley is an avid hunter. He can't even tell you how many guns he owns. And he said, you know, I couldn't understand how you could chase a man 9 miles and call it stand your ground.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

By the time Valerie spoke to Mark Tinsley, six months had passed since the shooting at Camp Swamp Road. The Horry County Police Department had closed its criminal investigation and ruled the killing self defense. The local solicitor or district attorney agreed, as did the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, known as sled. As Tinsley explained, the state's attorney general now had the file. But they'd reviewed it and found nothing new and were moving toward the same conclusion. From the state's point of view, the case was dead in the water. And yet Scott Spivey's sister had reason to believe the cops were hiding something. That certain evidence had not been reviewed. She'd contacted Tinsley in the hopes that he would file a civil lawsuit against the shooters. Mark Tinsley had never sued a defendant in a stand your ground case before. And as far as he knew, neither had any other attorney in South Carolina

[Jed Lipinski]

for a couple reasons. One, if you're found to be standing your ground in the criminal context, you're given civil immunity, meaning that there's no wrongful death, there's no ability of a family to even sue you.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

But also, Mark Tinsley, as we mentioned, was a personal injury attorney.

[Jed Lipinski]

If you're shot and killed in your car, that is not the fault of your insurer nine times out of 10. And so the insurers immediately get released from those claims, which means there's no money, there's no kind of big policy that would cover it. And if there's no possibility that any money will be recovered, Personal injury lawyers just don't get involved. But Mark Tinsley did. He has made many millions of dollars over the years in his practice, and he took the case because he wanted to.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Valerie was intrigued. She'd written about stand your ground cases before. She saw this case as a chance to write about the law's complicated legacy.

[Jed Lipinski]

We've had self defense laws in this country from the beginning. They came with English common law from the 1600s. This whole idea of the castle doctrine, right? A man's home is their castle. So a person would have the right to defend themselves with lethal force, with no duty to retreat in their home. That was the foundation of self defense law in this country. And in the early 2000s, the NRA in particular in Florida was pushing a more specific law, making self defense laws even more broad. And so in 2005, Florida passed the first modern self defense law called stand your Ground. And it enabled you to, to defend yourself with no duty to retreat, not just in your home, but in any place you had a right to be and primarily your vehicle. And immediately there was a wave of very similar laws in 2006 in several red states, including South Carolina. We're at a point now where there are 28 states roughly that have some type of stand your ground law. And it's very broad.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

A few days after her call with Mark Tinsley, Valerie called Scott Spivey's sister. Her name was Jennifer Foley, and she was a high school biology teacher in Tabor City, a 10 minute drive from where the shooting took place. The night of her brother's death, Jennifer was giving her two toddlers a bath when she got a call from her brother's best friend. He told her something had happened to Scott and that she needed to get to Camp Swamp Road right away.

[Jed Lipinski]

And so she and her husband bundle up the babies, take them to her mother in law and beat feed as fast as they can to Camp Swamp Road. But by the time they get there, it's 9:25. So three and a half hours after the shooting, Scott Spivey's truck has just been towed from the scene. The officers that are there are like, ma', am, we can't tell you anything. There's nothing we can tell you. You know, you'll get, expect a call from the coroner and that's pretty much it. She was treated the way that families commonly are in this scenario, which is that they don't have the rights to any information, including a courtesy phone call, that their loved one has been killed. She even says, where is he? Is he at the hospital, is he at the morgue? And they won't tell her.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Under South Carolina's stand you'd ground law, the person who claims self defense is legally considered the victim, while the person they shot is treated as the perpetrator. As a result, the deceased person's family is not afforded the same victim's rights that they'd have in a typical homicide case. After leaving the scene that night, Jennifer couldn't sleep. She spent hours refreshing the county jail's booking page, waiting to see if anyone had been arrested for her brother's killing. But no one had.

[Jed Lipinski]

And by the next morning, she hasn't slept. She's like, something is wrong here. My brother is killed. He has no criminal record, no record of violence, and nobody's been charged with anything.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

It wasn't until the next afternoon that Jennifer finally got a call from an Horry county detective. He told her that Scott had been, quote, road raging, that he'd pulled over on Camp Swamp Road, pointed a gun at the other men and fired first. The shooters, he said, acted in self defense. According to Jennifer, the detective spoke as if these were established facts. Jennifer wasn't a copy of, but she wasn't naive either. She'd minored in criminal justice in college and even interned at the North Carolina State Crime Lab in Raleigh. From her perspective, the police had reached their conclusion way too quickly, especially in a case involving multiple vehicles, 911 calls and a 9 mile chase.

[Jed Lipinski]

And from the beginning, she starts raising questions like what's going on here? It's a small town and some of Weldon Boyd's texts that he's sending to people about what happened are getting forwarded to her. She's getting screenshots, she's getting forwarded photos that Weldon Boyd took of the beef on the road. She hears that he took pictures of her brother's dead body. So she starts building her own chronology, her own contemporaneous notes, organizing all of these tidbits that she gets very early on. And it's a fortuitous decision because over time it becomes clear that the police have zero interest in investigating what really happened that night. Good, bad or indifferent. Just got a new puppy or kitten. Congrats. But also, yikes. Between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune. Which is where Lemonade pet insurance comes in. It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, sign up is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds. Lemonade offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a'llemonade.com pet your future self will thank you. Your pet won't. They don't know what insurance is. Hi, I'm Katie Ring and welcome to crime house 24 7. Throughout the day, we bring you up to the minute crime coverage as stories break with daytime episodes hosted by Vanessa Richardson, keeping you informed on the cases unfolding right now. And at night, I take you deeper with Night Watch episodes, examining the facts, the evidence, the people at the center of today's biggest cases. New episodes of Crime House 24. 7 drop every weekday. Listen to and follow Crime House 24 7, available now wherever you get your podcasts. A year from today, what would your dream private practice look like? Would you spend less time chasing claims or only working with clients who value your skill set what if you had a network to reach out to for questions or free continuing education? What if you had more time for yourself? ALMA empowers you to confidently accept insurance backed by an all in one EHR that simplifies scheduling, documentation and day to day practice operations. With a network of engaged providers and free CE resources, ALMA makes it easy for you to build the practice of your dreams on your terms. Alma believes that when therapists get the support they need, mental health care gets better for everyone. Learn more about [e-mail] get started. Your dream practice is closer than you think. Get started [e-mail] get started.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

In the days after her brother Scott Spivey's death, Jennifer Foley launched her own investigation into what happened, and what she found only deepened her suspicion that the Horry County Police Department had mishandled the case. Jennifer called the Horry county detective back and asked if they'd checked her brother's phone yet the detective seemed to suggest that they hadn't. She then mentioned something else. In the days after the shooting, Weldon Boyd had been texting people photos from the scene that suggested the shooters phones hadn't been seized as evidence. The detective told her they were still processing the case and that someone would get back to her in a few weeks. Jennifer spotted another red flag in the way the coroner handled her brother's body.

[Jed Lipinski]

The coroner made significant decisions that are outside official policy. There are important forms around the handling of a body that were just incomplete or not filled out at all. You know, Scott Spivey dies at 5:58. His body's not taken out of his truck until 1:00am there's no record of when he went into refrigeration, which means that it's impossible to take a blood alcohol sample that would tell you was he drunk? If he was drunk, how drunk was he? There are just things that you can't know.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Horry County's chief deputy coroner said only that Spivey had died from gunshot wounds and ruled his death a homicide. But the county doesn't have its own forensic autopsy facility, so Spivey's autopsy didn't take place until four days later. It was performed by a pathologist at the Medical University of South Carolina in in Charleston.

[Jed Lipinski]

And it's that pathologist who does the autopsy who writes clear as day Cause of death Gunshot wound to the back.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

The autopsy report noted that the fatal hollow point bullet entered under Spivey's right arm and traveled through his chest. Again, this information stood in contrast to Spivey as The aggressor charging at the two men with a gun. Finally, Jennifer saw a blatant conflict of interest at the heart of the investigation. As a lifelong resident of the area, she knew that the shooter, Weldon Boyd, was friendly with members of the police department.

[Jed Lipinski]

Weldon Boyd was very well known by all the police officers that were on the scene. As far as I can tell, police officers ate free at his restaurant in uniform, and their family ate half price. He cooked for the department frequently. He went hunting with those guys. He had an honorary SWAT team badge that he was given by Brandon Strickland.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Brandon Strickland was the deputy chief of Horry County. He was in charge of criminal investigations. Jennifer knew that he and Boyd were buddies. To Jennifer, all this suggested that the case had been compromised from the start. She felt she needed some outside oversight through friends and family. She connected with the Horry County Commission, which oversees the police department.

[Jed Lipinski]

So she had their ear within a week or two of the shooting, and they ask for some state oversight of the case. There's a long investigation that lasts from, like September to January before the attorney general gets the case file from the Horry county police and as well as the state investigators and takes, you know, some time to review it, but decides, you know, this was clearly a case of stand your ground on the part of Weldon Boyd and Bradley Williams. There's no evidence that any charges are warranted, and they closed the case in April of 2024.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

The State Attorney general's decision to close the Scott Spivey case was devastating for Jennifer and her family. By then, though, Jennifer was in touch with attorney mark Tinsley. And two months after the AG's decision, Tinsley filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the two shooters.

[Jed Lipinski]

What happens there is really fascinating because Scott was not a victim. He was the perpetrator. She didn't qualify for victims rights, like having access to the police file or an ombudsman to keep her informed about what was going on, which would be typical. And a violent crime for the family members of somebody that was involved in violent crime. But what happens in the civil case is that civil discovery is quite broad. It can be. And all of a sudden, she went from an absence of information to the Horry County Police Department turning over thousands and thousands of pages of files in civil discovery. And in fact, it was so much information. It was 30,000 items, 70 gig. It was so much information that her lawyers are working many other cases. They just didn't have the time to go through it.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

The files were a potential Treasure trove of information. They included 911 calls, body and dash cam videos, emails, internal reports, hundreds of photos. The problem was that they were completely disorganized. Data dumps of this kind are designed to overwhelm. It would take hundreds of hours to go through it all line by line. And Tinsley's office was both small and overstretched with other cases. So for the next six months, the files just sat at Tinsley's office unexplored.

[Jed Lipinski]

So the lawsuit is filed in June of 2024. It's this voluminous amount of discovery. It kind of sits there in that fall and into the winter until there's some key depositions coming up in the case. And that would be of Weldon Boyd and Bradley Williams. And Jennifer Foley realizes these are coming up, and she says, can I take a look at the evidence? So she drives herself down to the law office, picks up a thumb drive with all of this information. It takes a day to download it on her computer. And in super bowl weekend of 2025, in February 2025, she sends her husband and the babies to watch the game at her mother in law's house. And she stays home and ends up pulling an all nighter. Listening to all of this information, going through all these photos.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

What Jennifer found would change everything.

[Jed Lipinski]

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[Valerie Bauerlein]

Hey, Sal. Hank. What's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy. Too easy.

[Jed Lipinski]

Think something's up?

[Valerie Bauerlein]

You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right.

[Jed Lipinski]

Case closed. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Jennifer Foley learned many things from the Horry county case file and her brother's death. One of them was that around the time of the shooting, Weldon Boyd was having a hard time. Police reports indicated that Boyd had recently broken up with his fiance. On the day of the shooting, she had returned the new Toyota 4Runner. He bought her and left her five carat engagement ring in the cup holder. She was seven months pregnant and the two of them were in a messy custody dispute over their unborn child. To gather evidence that might help his custody case, Boyd had installed an app on his phone that recorded all of his incoming calls. To Jennifer's amazement, the app contained recordings of dozens of calls that Boyd had placed in the hours and days after he shot her brother.

[Jed Lipinski]

So he's recording all these calls, including the minutes after the shooting, when he calls the deputy chief of the Horry County Police, one of his best friends, and says, hey, man, I need you to come out here. I had to shoot somebody. What's up, man?

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Brandon, where you at?

[Jed Lipinski]

I'm in my house. Can you come to Camp Swamp road off of 9, like as fast as possible?

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Yeah.

[Jed Lipinski]

What's wrong?

[Valerie Bauerlein]

I had to shoot somebody. He held a gun at us.

[Jed Lipinski]

He ran us off the road.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

We stopped to try and get the stuff on the trailer because we were hauling a couch. He got out, pulled a gun, gun started shooting at us and we had to shoot back.

[Jed Lipinski]

And a few minutes later, you hear the deputy chief saying, I got the right ones coming. We're going to take care of this. Don't worry.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

The calls reveal something else, too. As Boyd waited on the roadside, the deputy chief was already helping shape the official story. He contacted the local prosecutor within minutes, framing the shooting as self defense. Before detectives had interviewed witnesses, collected phones, or even removed Scott's body from his truck. At one point, Boyd expressed surprise that the cops had towed Scott Spivey's body away instead of waiting for the coroner to get there.

[Jed Lipinski]

Weldon Boyd says to his friend the deputy chief, I thought it was weird they towed him in the truck. And he said, oh, no, man, I did that for you, to help you. If the family ever came after you, you know, if you want things done a certain way, you can do that.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

The recordings also include calls with Boyd's best friend, Bradley Williams, who was in the passenger seat of his truck that day and also fired shots at Scott Spivey.

[Jed Lipinski]

He's on the phone with Bradley Williams. They have a long call a couple nights after the shooting, and Boyd, he pauses and he says, bradley, I know

[Valerie Bauerlein]

it's up to say, but I had a blast. I know it's. But I'm a person, you know, it

[Jed Lipinski]

is what it is. I had a good time. And they laugh about it. And then they talk about getting teardrop tattoos to commemorate the killing.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Jennifer Foley couldn't believe what she'd heard in the Horry County's case file or the fact that no one else, including the state police and the Attorney General's office, seemed to have heard it. Mark Tinsley was due to depose Weldon Boyd and Bradley Williams. At 7am the next morning, hours before the deposition took place, Jennifer began forwarding Tinsley recordings from Boyd's phone. Tinsley wound up using some of them to build his questions. By this point, Jennifer had been talking with Valerie about her brother's case for close to a year. So days after discovering the call recordings, she sent them to Valerie.

[Jed Lipinski]

And it was, you know, you need to hear these calls. And so I started working. We started working through them together and comparing what we were hearing and piecing together what was actually happening behind the scenes. And it was actually like Rashomon, right? Like you think what the police are telling you in the official version on September 9th is completely upside down from what actually was happening. And Jennifer has said often, you know, you're hearing people's innermost thoughts when they think no one's listening. I can remember, you know, you hear Weldon Boyd and Brandon Strickland, the deputy chief. And the deputy chief says, I'm glad it was a white male. If he'd been black, that would have been a whole different story. And you're like, is this happening?

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Mark Tinsley was equally appalled by the recordings. He sent them to the county attorney and told him, please listen to these.

[Jed Lipinski]

And the county attorney was new in the job. He listens to the calls and calls Mark Tinsley back and said, how in the fuck were these guys charged?

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Of course, the Horry county evidence file contained a lot more than call recordings from Weldon Boyd's phone. As Jennifer discovered, they also contained around 20 hours of body and dash cam footage. Jennifer and Valerie spent days poring over it. What they found exposed a deeper level of police malfeasance than either of them had thought possible. For example, the first officer on the scene, a guy named Kerry Higgs, arrives 12 minutes after the shooting. On Higgs body cam, you can hear Weldon Boyd say, he shot us first, before waving at a few nearby drivers and saying they saw everything. But instead of actually interviewing those witnesses, Officer Higgs takes Boyd's word for it. He radios in that multiple witnesses saw the victim jump out of his truck and brandish a gun. Once the cops finally do talk to witnesses, they seem to willfully misinterpret what they say.

[Jed Lipinski]

You'll hear an officer tell his superior, oh, they were firing weapons way you know five miles down the road and saying there are five witnesses that bolster Weldon Boyd's story, when in fact, that's not true. And there's not a single soul, living soul, that saw the shooting itself, except for Weldon Boyd and Bradley Williams.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

When the paramedics arrive, they check on Spivey's body in his truck. They discover that one of the bullets had entered through his back, a finding that a pathologist in Charleston would later cite as the cause of death. The paramedics then pass this information to Officer Higgs.

[Jed Lipinski]

And one of the paramedics said, hey, he was shot in the back. If he's shot in the back, isn't the other guy at fault? So if he shot him in the

[Valerie Bauerlein]

back going this way, is he at fault now or no?

[Jed Lipinski]

And the officer says, oh, no, no. Clearly he was twisting around like some sort of, you know, something out of the movie. He contorting himself. And you can see the officer act it out.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Certain moments caught on the body cameras are almost comical, like something out of the movie Super Troopers. After a sergeant arrives on the scene, you can see him talking to Boyd and Boyd's attorney. He then scribbles something on a notepad off camera before walking over to Boyd and showing it to him.

[Jed Lipinski]

He's holding the notepad out of visibility, out of range of the body cam, but he flips the page, and if you slow it down, you can see that's what's written there. And it says, act like a victim camera.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Act like a victim camera. The officer seemed to be advising Boyd on how to behave, given that the scene is being recorded on body cameras. Then, close to an hour after the cops arrive, their body cameras all abruptly shut off. They remain shut off for the next two hours, even though state policy requires that body cameras remain on until an officer leaves the scene. According to police reports, a tow truck took Scott Spivey's black Silverado with his body still inside to the police impound lot at 9:11pm Two minutes later, the officer's body cameras suddenly flicker back to life. And the normal sequence of events would be that medics arrive, the coroner arrives, and the coroner takes the body to the morgue, correct?

[Jed Lipinski]

Correct. That's what the policies require with the police department. That's what state statute requires. A body must be in possession of the coroner or their deputy. That didn't happen here. The coroner shows up at the scene and leaves. Strangely, they call for a coroner's van, and it's never used. So there were many irregularities that were happening quickly.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

It's important to remember that by the time Jennifer and Valerie watched this disturbing footage, the case file had already been in the possession of both SLED and the state attorney general's office. And that the AG's office had officially closed the case months earlier, saying there was insufficient evidence to charge Boyd or Williams. And yet it appeared to Jennifer and Valerie that neither of those agencies had actually seen this footage before. In March of 2025, Jennifer and her attorney, Mark Tinsley, began sharing the body and dash cam footage with local media. A month later, Valerie published two big pieces in the Wall Street Journal, which took the story national. The reports created an outcry in Horry County. In response, the police chief held a press conference in which he admitted that some of the dash cam clips from the scene had been improperly mislabeled in the system and buried so deep that investigators never saw them.

[Jed Lipinski]

So if I call my body camera domestic violence instead of shooting, it doesn't pop up the same way. So there were efforts made by other officers to conceal footage that they had of that night as well. One guy called it robbery. Robbery, you know.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

The police chief noted that several officers had been terminated, including officer Higgs and Weldon Boyd's friend, the deputy chief. But even after viewing the footage, Jennifer unearthed sled and the attorney general's office still declined to press charges against Boyd and Williams. Yes, they seemed to say the Horry county cops had broken the law and they deserved to be investigated further. But that doesn't change the fact that Boyd and Williams were innocent under the state's stand your ground law.

[Jed Lipinski]

And the attorney general determined from the beginning that this was a clear cut case of self defense. And he continued to maintain that posture because of this simple argument. If Weldon Boyd and Bradley Williams stay in their truck where they have a right to be, and Scott Spivey gets out of his truck with a gun, that's the salient fact. The others are just kind of noise.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

On September 9, 2025, two years to the day after Scott Spivey was killed, Congresswoman Nancy Mace publicly blasted the state attorney general for his handling of the case and his decision not to prosecute the shooters.

[Jed Lipinski]

And there are tape recordings about the guy that shot him bragging about how terrified Scott Spivey was before he died.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

We've seen video, we've seen body cam

[Jed Lipinski]

where it was written handwritten on a note that said act like a victim.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

A note that was snuck to the shooter. A month later, the attorney general's office announced that it was appointing a special prosecutor to reopen the case and determine if charges should be brought for the killing or the mishandling of evidence. Then, just before this episode aired, something happened that almost nobody expected. A South Carolina judge rejected Weldon Boyd's stand your ground claim in the Spivey family's civil suit. That means Jennifer Spivey's wrongful death case can now move forward and could end up before a jury, according to Valerie. It also means that Weldon Boyd is much more likely to face either murder or manslaughter charges in the death of Scott Spivey. Still, for Valerie, the larger takeaway is what this story says about the state of America's gun laws. In March of 2024, South Carolina passed a constitutional carry law. The law allows most adults to carry handguns openly or concealed without a permit in most public places. Around the same time, a major study using federal data found that stand your ground laws are associated with significantly higher homicide rates, with some Southern states seeing increases of 10% or more.

[Jed Lipinski]

And that number is higher. But it's also increasing, right? The percentage is increasing. So you have places where, you know, standard ground deaths are 20%, 15, 20% of the homicide rate, which is incredible.

[Valerie Bauerlein]

Since publishing her stories last year, Valerie has heard from people all over the country. They tell her that something strikingly similar happened to their son, their brother, their father, and they ask the same question. Would she be willing to tell their story too? If you have information, story tips or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email [e-mail] that's gone southpodcastmail.com for bonus content. You can follow us on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram at Gone south podcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on substack at Gone south with Jed Lipinski Gone south is an Odyssey original podcast. It's created, written and narrated by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Leah Rees, Dennis, Maddy Sprung Keyser, and Lloyd Lockridge. Our story editor is Katie Mingle. Gone south is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basel. Production support from Ian Mont and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schuff. Thank you for listening to Gone South.

[Jed Lipinski]

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[Valerie Bauerlein]

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[Jed Lipinski]

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[Valerie Bauerlein]

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[Jed Lipinski]

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[Valerie Bauerlein]

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[Jed Lipinski]

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[Valerie Bauerlein]

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[Jed Lipinski]

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[Valerie Bauerlein]

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[Jed Lipinski]

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[Valerie Bauerlein]

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[Jed Lipinski]

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[Valerie Bauerlein]

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