A South Carolina mother who killed her two young sons in 1994 by strapping them into car seats and driving into a lake has been denied release after serving 30 years in prison.
Susan Smith, 53, appeared via video feed from prison on Wednesday, pleading with a seven-member parole board for her release three decades after the deaths of Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months.
“First, I want to say how very sorry I am,” Smith said as she broke down crying. “I know what I did was horrible and I’d do anything to go back and change it.”
Smith went on to claim that while in prison, she made many incorrect decisions but learned from them.
“I am a Christian and God is a big part of my life and I know he has forgiven me,” she said. “I just ask that you show the same kind of mercy and yeah I guess that’s it.”
However, it was insufficient to persuade the board, which denied her parole application.
In 1995, a jury convicted Smith of murder but did not condemn her to death. She was eligible for a parole hearing every two years under state law at the time, having served 30 years in prison.
Smith’s ex-husband and children’s father, David Smith, promised to attend his boys’ parole hearings every two years in the future to “ensure that their death doesn’t go in vain.”
“I’m here to advocate on Michael and Alex’s behalf as their father,” he told the parole panel. “God grants us free will. She made this decision. This was not a tragic mistake. She intended to end their lives.”
Regarding her 30 years in prison, he stated, “Ultimately, to me, that’s only 15 years per child.” She has her own children. It’s simply not enough.”
Smith made international headlines in October 1994 when she claimed to have been carjacked late at night by a black guy who then drove away with her sons inside.
According to the Associated Press, Smith’s statements played into a centuries-old racist cliché of Black males being a threat to white women and fueled anxieties about crime that were widespread in 1990s America and continue to be so now.
Smith and her husband pleaded with the public for their children’s safe return over nine days. However, the guys spent the entire time in Smith’s automobile at the bottom of nearby John D. Long Lake.
Smith ultimately admitted to letting her car roll down a boat ramp and into the lake.
Investigators recreated the Mazda’s descent below the surface, which took six minutes, while cameras inside the vehicle showed water flowing in via the vents and steadily rising.
They found the boys’ bodies hanging upside down in their car seats, one little hand pressed against a window.
Prosecutors claim Smith killed her sons because the guy she was having an affair with at the time stated that he did not want children.
At the time of the killings, Smith and her husband had a legal separation, but David joined forces with Smith to locate their boys. Everything changed once she admitted to killing their children.
A judge approved their divorce in May 1995, a few months before her trial.
“I am not the monster society thinks I am,” she later wrote in a letter to The State newspaper in 2015. “I am far from it.”
“Something went very wrong that night,” she added. “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.”
The New York Times reported that Smith’s attorneys stated she was experiencing a mental breakdown and desired to pass away with her children before making a last-minute effort to save herself.
The trial lasted less than a week, and after less than two and a half hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Smith guilty on two counts of first-degree murder.
Smith’s experience in prison over the previous 30 years has been fraught with controversy, from having sex with prison guards to breaking rules and chatting up a number of infatuated admirers on the outside.
According to People, she received at least five reprimands between 2010 and 2017 for issues like self-mutilation and drug use. She also had two infractions in 2000 for having sex with prison guards.
