A woman who murdered her two sons by rolling her car into a lake 30 years ago with them strapped inside is set to ask a parole board to be released.Â
Susan Smith, 53, is serving a life sentence for killing three-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex by letting her car roll down a boat ramp and into a South Carolina lake.
Prosecutors said she murdered the boys because the man she was having an affair with – the wealthy son of the owner of the business she worked at – broke off the relationship as she had two young children.
Smith made international headlines in October 1994 when she said she was carjacked late at night near the city of Union and that a black man drove away with her sons inside.
For nine days, Smith made several and sometimes tearful pleas asking that Michael and Alex be returned safely – but they had been in John D Lake the whole time.
Now, she will ask a seven-member parole board via video to release her from prison. She is eligible for a parole hearing every two years now that she has spent 30 years behind bars.
But Smith’s ex-husband and father of the children, David Smith, as well as the prosecutor at her murder trial, will urge that she remains behind bars.
A decision to grant parole requires two-thirds of board members to vote to release her.
Parole in South Carolina is granted 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 and her husband David during a news conference pleading for the safe return of their sons. Smith later admitted killing them. Pic: AP
Smith’s carjacking allegations, admission and subsequent trial in 1995 – which happened at the same time as the OJ Simpson trial – became one of the most talked about stories in the US.
Investigators at the time found that Smith’s story didn’t add up.
Carjackers usually want a vehicle, so investigators asked why they would 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 parts of her story also did not make sense.
Visitors walk down the ramp in 1995 where Alex and Michael Smith were drowned in a car in Union, South Carolina by their mother. Pic: AP
Smith ultimately confessed to the murders and admitted she watched them drown.
The boys’ bodies were found dangling upside-down in their car seats, with one hand pressed against a window.
She was saved from the death penalty, with her lawyers saying she was suffering a mental breakdown and intended to die alongside her children but left the car at the last moment. They also argued that she was the victim of sexual assault by her stepfather.
While in prison, Smith has continued to argue her defence. In a 2015 letter to The State newspaper in South Carolina, she wrote: “Something went very wrong that night. I was not myself. 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… I am not the monster society thinks I am.”
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Smith has had several disciplinary actions in her three decades in jail. She has been caught with contraband and drugs, as well as being disciplined for giving information to a documentary filmmaker.
In 2000, prison guards also pleaded guilty to having sexual encounters with her.
