Visitors walk down the ramp where Alex and Michael Smith were drowned in a car in 1994 in Union, S.C., on Sunday, July 9, 1995. Their mother, Susan Smith, was sentenced to life in prison for drowning the children by driving her car into John D. Long Lake. She is up for parole in November 2024. (File/AP Photo/Lou Krasky)
Susan Smith, a mother convicted of murdering her two children three decades ago in a high-profile case that garnered national attention, will go before the state parole board Nov. 20.
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, located in Upstate South Carolina.
Smith, for nine days, claimed a Black man carjacked her and drove off with her sons, tearfully pleading on national television for their return, before eventually admitting to investigators what she had done.
Susan Smith, as of May 24, 2021. (Official S.C. Department of Corrections inmate photo)
At the time of the trial, state Speaker Pro Tem Tommy Pope was the chief prosecutor the 16th Judicial Circuit, which covers Union and York counties. As solicitor, Pope sought the death penalty for Smith, who is now 53.
“The jury thought the greater punishment would be for her to spend the rest of her life incarcerated thinking about Michael and Alex,” the York Republican told the SC Daily Gazette.
But in 1995, when Smith was tried and sentenced, life in prison did not mean life, Pope said. She could seek parole after 30 years.
Legislators would change the law the next year, making those with life sentences ineligible for parole.
Pope said he plans to testify in November, alongside Smith’s ex-husband David Smith and Kevin Brackett, Pope’s chief deputy during the trial, who became solicitor in 2006.
Pope said he will tell the parole board what jury members told him they thought should happen — that Smith should remain in prison.
The six-member state parole board approves only about 6% of parole applications.
Prison record
Pope said Smith’s behavior in prison shows she’s not focused on remorse for killing her children.
House Speaker Pro Tem Tommy Pope, R-York, during a House session on Tuesday, March 14, 2023. (Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA/Special to the SC Daily Gazette)
“She’s focused on Susan Smith,” he said.
Pope said that’s evidenced by a pair of prison guards convicted of having sex with Smith in 2000. One of them received probation. The other was sentenced to three months.
And most recently, on news reports that Smith has “sugar daddies waiting on her to get out,” Pope said.
The State newspaper, through the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act, obtained recordings of calls between Smith and at least three men while she has been at Leath Correctional Institution in Greenwood County.
Smith’s conversations with the men ranged from movies they like to the men telling her what a great person she is.
“I’ve never had phone sex until you pulled me in,” one man said, calling Smith “extremely fascinating.”
At least one of the men deposited money in Smith’s prison account.
But the conversations that have led to recent discipline for Smith are ones she had with a documentary filmmaker about her crimes, according to a report provided by the Department of Corrections.
The state Department of Corrections does not allow inmates to do media interviews by phone or in person. Inmates may only write letters, as per prison policy, according to spokeswoman Chrysti Shain.
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.
“This rule violation includes attempting, conspiring, aiding or acting in collusion … with the intent of communicating,” the report continues.
Smith provided the filmmaker with details such as “what was in the trunk of the car when it went into the water and her plans to jump from a bridge while holding the boys but one woke up,” the report said. Smith discussed ways to get paid for the documentary and the filmmaker deposited money in her prison account. The report did not specify how much money was deposited.
At an internal disciplinary hearing, she lost her telephone, tablet and canteen privileges for 90 days, beginning Oct. 4, Shain 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.
‘Her lies would unravel’
Pope was 32 years old when he prosecuted Smith 30 years ago. He thinks it remained South Carolina’s most intense case in terms of media coverage until the recent trials of Alex Murdaugh in the Lowcountry.
“I never had any inkling, especially in little Union County, that I would have a case of this magnitude,” said Pope, who was first elected to the state House in 2010.
But it was time when television was really coming into the court system. The O.J. Simpson trial was being broadcast around the same time, drawing the public in to the inner workings of the court, Pope said.
“In addition to the shock of a mother taking her children’s lives was the way Susan had, for nine days, used the national and international media attention to deceive the public,” Pope said.
She temporarily had the world’s sympathy as she played on racial stereotypes, accusing a Black man of the crime.
Her pleas for help sent officials on a search for her car and a carjacker who did not exist. A drawing of the man she made up was publicly released. But at the same time, law enforcement officers were also investigating Smith, Pope said.
“Slowly, her lies would unravel,” he said.
It started with her claims that she was carjacked at a stoplight. But the light where she claimed it occurred was equiped with pressure plates in the road, Pope said, meaning there would have had to have been a second care present.
The inconsistencies continued: The friend she said she was going to visit wasn’t home that night. And she struggled to answer the question: “Do you know where your boys are?” during a lie-detector test.
In a written confession to investigators, Smith said she was in love with someone who did not reciprocate.
Smith was allegedly having an affair with a man who told her he was not ready for children, prompting her to drown her sons to be with him.
In July 2015, days before the 20th anniversary of her conviction, The State published a letter it had received from Smith earlier that year after contacting her to ask her side of the story.
“I am not the monster society thinks I am. I am far from it,” she wrote to the reporter.
“Something went very wrong that night. I was not myself,” Smith said. “I was a good mother and I loved my boys. … There was no motive as it was not even a planned event. I was not in my right mind.
“The thing that hurts me the most is that people think I hurt my children in order to be with a man,” the letter continued. “That is so far from the truth.”
But Pope said he will urge the parole board to listen to what Smith’s ex-husband David has to say.
In an interview last month with Court TV, David Smith recorded this message:
“I would just tell her — that you have no idea of how much damage you have done to so many people,” he said. “I would tell her that, in my capabilities, I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you stay behind bars.”