Susan Smith to ask parole board for her freedom after serving 30 years
for drowning her children
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 [November 20, 2024]
By JEFFREY COLLINS
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother convicted
of killing her two sons by rolling her car into a lake in 1994 with the
boys strapped in their seats inside, will ask a parole board for her
freedom on Wednesday.
Smith, 53, is serving a life sentence after a jury convicted her of
murder but decided not to sentence her to death. Under state law at the
time, she is eligible for a parole hearing every two years now that she
has spent 30 years behind bars.
Smith will make her case for freedom to the seven-member parole board by
video link from prison. Then she will go offline and her ex-husband and
father of the children, as well as the prosecutor at her murder trial,
will argue that she remain incarcerated.
Smith killed 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex because a man she
was having an affair with suggested the boys were the reason they didn’t
have a future together, prosecutors said.
A decision to grant parole requires a two-thirds vote of board members
present at the hearing, according to the state Department of Probation,
Parole and Pardon Services. Parole in South Carolina is granted only
about 8% of the time and is less likely with an inmate’s first
appearance before the board, in notorious cases or when prosecutors and
the families of victims are opposed.
Smith made international headlines in October 1994 when she said she was
carjacked late at night near the city of Union and that a man drove away
with her sons inside. Smith, who is white, said the carjacker was Black.
For nine days, Smith made numerous and sometimes tearful pleas asking
that Michael and Alex be returned safely. The whole time, the boys were
in Smith’s car at the bottom of nearby John D. Long Lake, authorities
said.
Investigators said Smith’s story didn’t add up. Carjackers usually just
want a vehicle, so investigators asked why would they let Smith out but
not her kids. The traffic light where Smith said she had stopped when
her car was taken would only be red if another car was waiting to cross,
and Smith said no other cars were around. Other bits and pieces of the
story did not make sense.
Smith ultimately confessed to letting her car roll down a boat ramp and
into the lake. A re-creation by investigators showed it took six minutes
for the Mazda to dip below the surface, while cameras inside the vehicle
showed water pouring in through the vents and steadily rising. The boys’
bodies were found dangling upside-down in their car seats, one tiny hand
pressed against a window,
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This May 24, 2021 mage provided by the South Carolina Department of
Corrections shows Susan Smith. (South Carolina Department of
Corrections via AP)
Prosecutors said Smith was having an affair with the wealthy son of
the owner of the business she worked at. He broke it off because she
had the two young sons.
Smith’s lawyers said she was remorseful, was suffering a mental
breakdown and intended to die alongside her children but left the
car at the last moment.
The 1995 trial of the young mother became a national sensation and a
true crime touchstone even though it wasn’t televised by a judge who
worried about what cameras were doing to the O.J. Simpson murder
trial going on at the same time. Her lawyers worked to save her
life, noting that Smith's father had killed himself and that her
stepfather was having sex with her along with the owner of the
business where she worked.
From prison, Smith can make phone calls and answer text messages,
many coming from journalists and interested men. Those messages and
phone calls were released under South Carolina’s open records act,
something Smith didn’t initially realize could happen. She said the
invasion of her privacy upset her along with the public revelation
that she was juggling conversations about the future with several
men.
Some men know why she is famous. Others are more coy. One told her
he was going to use the dates of her birthday and those of her dead
sons when he played the Powerball lottery. Others chatted about
their lives and sports. Many promised her a home on the outside and
a happy life.
Smith says in some of the messages she still grieves for her
children.
“I am really sad today and just want to hang out in the bed. Today
is my youngest son’s birthday, he would have been 30 today. Hard to
believe,” Smith wrote in August 2023.
Smith also had sex with guards. And she violated prison policies by
giving out contact information for friends, family members and her
ex-husband to a documentary producer who discussed paying her for
her help, according to former prosecutor Tommy Pope.
“The jury believed she got a life sentence and that’s what she
should serve,” Pope said last month shortly after the parole hearing
was announced.
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