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COLUMBIA — The state parole board denied parole for Susan Smith, a mother convicted of murdering her two young sons three decades ago in South Carolina’s Upstate.
On Oct. 25, 1994, Smith left her sons — 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex — buckled in their car seats and rolled her car into John D. Long Lake in Union County.
“I just want to say how very sorry I am,” Smith said sobbing, her head in her hands. “I know that what I did was horrible, and I would give anything if I could go back and change it.”
The high-profile case garnered national attention when Smith, for nine days, claimed a Black man carjacked her and drove off with her sons. She tearfully pleaded on national television for their return, before eventually admitting to investigators what she had done.
The decision to deny was unanimous, though one of the six board members did not vote. Geraldine Miro, a former warden in the prison where Smith was originally housed, recused herself.
Her plea
Smith, wearing a green prison jumpsuit, sat with a straight face as her Columbia-area lawyer, Tommy Thomas, pleaded her case over a live-streamed video feed.
Thomas spoke about her history of mental illness that started as a 6-year-old after her father committed suicide, her own suicide attempts in prison and the undiagnosed post-partum depression he believes she experienced after the birth of her youngest son.
Thomas told the board Smith would have support and living arrangements with her brother if released. And he said she is working on a counseling degree from an online Christian college.
Finally, Thomas read from a letter written by Smith and passed on to him when he took her case.
“I lost touch with reality,” she wrote. “My thoughts were not rational nor logical. I don’t think I understood that if I allowed that car to go into the lake that I would never see my children again. The finality of it was not real to me.”
Smith wrote that she was not in her right mind and thought she was doing what was best for her two sons.
“I knew Jesus would take better care of them than I could,” she wrote.
The pleas for denial
But the people who came to oppose her release countered her explanations, saying Smith intended to cease being a mother.
The 15 who testified in opposition included her ex-husband, David Smith, and state House Speaker Pro Tem Tommy Pope of York — who was the chief prosecutor in the case.
The family members, friends and law enforcement united in their opposition all wore a photo of the boys pinned to their shirts.
“I’m just here to advocate for Michael and Alex as their father,” David Smith told the board. “She (Susan) made a free choice that night to end their life. It was no tragic mistake.”
Kevin Brackett, Pope’s chief deputy during the trial (who became solicitor himself in 2006), said he reviewed the case file, which he keeps in a closet just off his office, ahead of Wednesday’s hearing.
The file includes a letter from the man Smith was allegedly having an affair with. He wrote that he was not ready for children, prompting her to drown her sons to be with him, Brackett said. Smith, however, continues to deny that claim.
“She betrayed her children, against the laws of nature, when she left them in the seat and rolled that car down,” Brackett said. “And she was not trying to commit suicide; she was trying to change her life. She wanted to kill her old life and start anew.”
Smith also intentionally played on racial stereotypes, accusing a Black man of the crime, Brackett and Pope said, both during the parole hearing and in an impromptu press conference outside the agency building afterward.
“How many Black men in red Mazdas got pulled over across the country because they were looking for those two kids and they were looking for this fictitious man?” Brackett asked.
As solicitor, Pope sought the death penalty, but the jury ultimately recommended life imprisonment.
In 1995, when Smith was tried and sentenced, life in prison did not mean life, Pope said. She could seek parole after 30 years, allowing Wednesday’s hearing.
Had she been sentenced a year later, after legislators changed the law, she would be ineligible for parole.
Pope said he sought to put Smith on death row because if a Black stranger had indeed killed the children, “people would have expected the death penalty.” They’d expect the same for David Smith had their father been the killer.
Indeed, the last person sent to death row in South Carolina was a white man who killed his five children.
A mother killing her own children is almost unthinkable, the prosecutors said.
“We leave our kids at home every day with our mothers, and we don’t think about it,” Pope told reporters after the decision. “I think it was unsettling.”
“And it’s precisely that betrayal that makes this case so disturbing,” Brackett added.
A ‘haunting’ memory
During the hearing, parole board Chairwoman Kim Frederick asked Smith if there was anything she would like to say to the immense number of law enforcement officers who searched for her sons after she lied about what she’d done.
Smith apologized, specifically to the dive team that found the boys’ bodies.
“I didn’t lie to get away with it. I was just scared,” Smith told the board. “I did not know how to tell Dave he couldn’t see his sons again … I know they just might sound like words, but they come from my heart.”
Brackett spoke about standing in the crowd on the banks of the lake as the car was pulled out, calling it “one of the most haunting memories of my life.”
“It traumatized Union. It traumatized South Carolina. The entire country was in the grips of her lie and her treachery,” Brackett said. “On behalf of the community I now represent, I don’t believe she should ever be released.”
Standing beside David Smith, Brackett told the board, “His hopes and dreams were dashed. I hope you dash hers today.”
Smith said the grief made him contemplate suicide at times. But he managed to keep going, eventually remarrying and starting a new family.
After the vote, Smith said the board made the right decision.
“At least I know, for now, she’ll still be behind bars,” he told reporters. “And for two more years, there will still be justice for Michael and Alex.”
He vowed to return every two years to oppose his ex-wife’s parole.
Discipline record
In denying it this time, the board cited the violent nature of the crime and Smith’s behavior in prison.
Most recently, Smith was disciplined for speaking with a documentary filmmaker about her crimes. For punishment, she lost her telephone, tablet and canteen privileges for 90 days, beginning Oct. 4, according to a report provided by the Department of Corrections.
The prisons agency does not allow inmates to do media interviews by phone or in person. Inmates may only write letters, as per a policy upheld last month by a federal judge.
SC mother Susan Smith, convicted of murdering her 2 sons 3 decades ago, is up for parole
In those conversations, she agreed to provide contact information of friends, family and victims, including her former husband and father of her sons.
Inmates cannot communicate “directly or indirectly” or “through a third party, in any form” with victims’ family or friends, the report said.
It marked her first disciplinary issue in nearly 10 years. Other past offenses were related to drugs and mutilation.
In 2010, she lost canteen, phone and visitation privileges for an entire year — 365 days — for drug use. Online inmate reports don’t show sanctions before 2009.
Asked why she should be trusted to follow the rules if released given she broke them while in prison, Smith attributed her past mistakes to “stupidity.”
When it comes to speaking with the filmmaker, she said, she “trusted the wrong person.” She claimed she thought the film would be a documentary on mental health issues. She said she is appealing that case against her.
Smith said prison has taught her that her decisions do not just affect her personally. They impact those she loves and that family and forgiveness should not be taken for granted.
“I am a Christian and God is a big part of my life,” she said. “I know He’s forgiven me. I just ask that you show that same kind of mercy as well.”
She is next eligible for parole in 2026.
