Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother convicted of killing her two sons by pushing her car into a lake in 1994 while the boys were strapped into their seats inside, will ask the parole board to release her 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 was eligible for a parole hearing every two years after serving 30 years behind bars.
Smith will make her case for freedom before a seven-member parole board via video link from prison. She will then be cut off from the Internet, and her ex-husband and father of the children, as well as the prosecutor in her murder trial, will claim that she will remain detained.
Prosecutors said Smith killed 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex because the man she was having an affair with suggested the two boys were the reason they had no future together.
In an interview on NBC today On the program broadcast on Wednesday, ex-husband David Smith said 30 years is not enough, and that he does not believe she will ever be rehabilitated.
“God gives us free will, and it was her choice that night — and no one else’s. No one made it for her,” David Smith said. “She chose to kill Michael and Alex.”
The decision to grant parole requires approval by two-thirds of the board members present at the hearing, according to the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. In South Carolina, parole is granted only 8 percent of cases, and is less likely with a prisoner’s first appearance before the board, in high-profile cases or when prosecutors and victims’ families oppose it.
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Smith made international headlines in October 1994 when she said she was robbed late at night near Union City and that a man drove her away with her sons inside.
For nine days, Smith made numerous, sometimes tearful, pleas asking for Michael and Alex to be returned safely. The boys were all the time in Smith’s car at the bottom of nearby John D. Long Lake, authorities said.
Investigators said Smith’s story didn’t make sense. Carjackers usually only want a car, so investigators asked why they would let Smith out but not her children. The traffic light that Smith said she stopped at when her car was taken would only be red if there was another car waiting to cross, and Smith said there were no other cars around. Other parts of the story didn’t make any sense.
Smith eventually admitted that she had left her car rolling down the boat ramp into the lake. The investigators’ reconstruction showed that it took six minutes for the Mazda to sink below the surface, while cameras inside the car showed water flowing through the vents and rising steadily. The boys’ bodies were found dangling upside down in the car seats, with one small hand pressed against the window.
Prosecutors said Smith was having an affair with the wealthy son of her employer. He broke it off because she had given birth to two young sons.
Smith’s lawyers said she felt remorse, was suffering a mental breakdown and intended to die alongside her children but left the car at the last minute.
Susan Smith was convicted on July 22, 1995, of murdering her two sons, 3-year-old Michael Daniel Smith, born October 10, 1991, and 14-month-old Alexander Tyler Smith. David Smith, the boys’ father, leaves the church after the funeral service.
Greg Smith/Corbis via Getty Images
The 1995 trial of the young mother became a national sensation and a true crime touchstone even though it was not televised by a judge who was concerned about what the cameras were doing in the O. J. Simpson murder trial underway at the same time. Her lawyers worked to save her life, pointing out that Smith’s father committed suicide and that her stepfather was having sex with her employer.
From prison, Smith can make phone calls and respond to text messages, many of which come from journalists and interested men. These letters and phone calls were released under South Carolina’s open records law, something Smith initially did not realize could happen. She said the invasion of her privacy upset her, along with the public revelation that she was having conversations about the future with several men.
Some guys know why she’s so popular. Others are more shy. One of them told her that he would use her birthday dates and the birth dates of her deceased children when he played the Powerball lottery. Others talked about their lives and sports. Many promised her a home abroad and a happy life.
In some letters, Smith says she still grieves for her children.
“I’m really sad today and I just want to stay in bed. Today is my youngest son’s birthday, he would have turned 30 today. Hard to believe,” Smith wrote in August 2023.
Smith also had sex with the guards. She violated prison policies by providing contact information for friends, family members and her ex-husband to a documentary producer who discussed paying her money for her help, according to former prosecutor Tommy Pope.
“The jury thought she was getting 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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