Columbia, SC — Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother convicted of killing her two sons by driving her car into a lake in 1994 while the boys were strapped into their seats, will ask a parole board Wednesday for her freedom.
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 served 30 years behind bars.
South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP
Smith will make her case for freedom to the seven-member parole board via video link from prison. Then she will go offline and her ex-husband and father of the children, as well as the prosecutor in her murder case, will argue that she remains imprisoned.
Smith killed three-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex because a man she was having an affair with suggested the boys were the reason they had no future together, prosecutors said.
According to the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services, a decision to grant parole requires a two-thirds majority of the board members present at the hearing. In South Carolina, parole is granted only about 8% of the time, and that is less likely when an inmate is making his first court appearance, in notorious cases or when prosecutors and victims’ families resist.
How the case developed
Smith made international headlines in October 1994 when she said she was carjacked late at night near the town of Union and 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 for Michael and Alex to be returned safely. The boys were in Smith’s car at the bottom of nearby John D. Long Lake the entire time, authorities said.
MARY ANN CHASTAIN / AP
Investigators said Smith’s story did not add up. Carjackers usually just want a vehicle, so investigators wondered why they would release Smith but not her children. The traffic light where Smith said she stopped when her car was seized would only be red if there was another car waiting to cross, and Smith said there were no other cars around. Other bits and pieces of the story didn’t add up.
Smith eventually confessed to rolling her car off a boat ramp into the lake. A reconstruction by investigators showed that it took six minutes for the Mazda to dive below the surface, while cameras inside the vehicle showed water entering through the vents and steadily rising. The boys’ bodies were found dangling upside down in their car seats, with one small hand pressed against a window.
Prosecutors said Smith had an affair with the wealthy son of the owner of the company where she worked. He broke it off because she had two young sons.
Lou Krasky/AP
Smith’s lawyers said she was remorseful, had a nervous breakdown and planned to die with her children, but left the car at the last minute.
In July 2015, 20 years after her conviction, Smith told the State newspaper in Columbia she never intended to kill them and instead she planned to end her own life.
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 worried about what cameras were doing to the OJ Simpson murder trial that was taking place at the same time. Her lawyers tried to save her life, noting that Smith’s father had committed suicide and that her stepfather had sex with her along with the owner of the company where she worked.
Unusual actions in prison
From prison, Smith can make calls and answer text messages, many from journalists and interested men. Those messages and phone calls were released under South Carolina’s Open Records Act, something Smith initially didn’t 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 men know why she is famous. Others are more reserved. One told her he was going to use the dates of her birthday and those of her deceased sons when he played the Powerball lottery. Others talked about their lives and sports. Many promised her a home on the outside and a happy life.
Smith says in some messages that she is still grieving for her children.
“I’m really sad today and just want to hang out in 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 policy by giving contact information for friends, relatives and her ex-husband to a documentary producer who discussed whether to pay her for her help, according to former prosecutor Tommy Pope.
“The jury felt she received a life sentence and that is what she should serve,” Pope said last month, shortly after the parole hearing was announced.
Pope, who is now a representative in the South Carolina Legislature, told CBS Columbia affiliate WLTX-TV that he does not expect Smith to get parole — or want her to.
“She is constantly focused on Susan, not Michael and Alex. I think Susan is remorseful, but remorseful for being in her circumstances – not remorseful for the pain she caused Michael and Alex, or just as importantly David Smith (the boy’s father) and his family,” he said.
