Share and Follow
In South Carolina, Susan Smith, the woman found guilty of drowning her two young children by driving her car into a lake, is once more eligible for parole consideration.
Susan Smith has been incarcerated since her conviction in 1995. She received a life sentence after confessing to securing her infant and three-year-old in their car seats before submerging the vehicle in a lake. Initially, Smith misled authorities by claiming she had been carjacked with her children still inside.
RELATED: South Carolina Mother Serving Life Sentence for Drowning Her Sons Faces Parole Hearing in November
In her initial police interview, Smith recounted a fabricated story, saying, “I was at a red light when, out of nowhere, a Black man approached, opened the door, and jumped into the car. He had a gun pointed at me and told me to drive. When I tried to ask why, he threatened to kill me if I didn’t ‘shut up.’”
“I was stopped at a red light. And this — out of nowhere — this Black guy came up, just opened the door, and jumped in the car. And he had a gun, and he had it pointed in my side and he told me to drive, and so I did. And when I tried to ask him why he was doing this or whatever, he just told me to ‘shut up’ or he’d kill me,” said Smith in that initial interview.
The bodies of Michael and Alex Smith were found in Smith’s car, which was located in John D. Long Lake. On the night of November 3, 1994, a press conference was held in downtown Union, where the sheriff at the time announced that Smith had been charged with murdering her two sons.
MORE | Susan Smith denied parole 30 years after drowning sons by rolling car into lake
Since being in prison, Smith has had trouble. Initially imprisoned in Columbia, S.C., two guards were later charged with having sex with her. Since that time, she’s been located at a state correctional facility in Greenwood.
More recently, she was charged with communicating with a documentary filmmaker while in prison and receiving money from that filmmaker, which is a violation of South Carolina Department of Corrections policy.
In 2024, Smith was denied parole. Her new hearing is set for this November.