``If I had known at the time what the results of my sins would be, I would have mustered the strength to behave according to my responsibility, he wrote. Susan Smith, 43, was convicted in 1995 of murdering 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex by strapping them into their car seats in her burgundy Mazda and then letting her car roll into a lake . Garner, who has known Ms. Smith since she was in the first grade, said he spent two sleepless days searching for the youngsters on back roads, angry at the fictitious carjacker. She knows that her parole date is four years away and she cant get parole if she isnt being good., In 2020, Melissa Moore, a crime correspondent for The Dr. Oz Show, said that while communicating with Smith in prison, she realized Smith was a joy to talk to, saying, If she did not commit those crimes, she would be your best friend.. It is highly unlikely Susan will make paroleat least not the first time, Ozmint noted. I was not in my right mind.. Even one of the more curious moments of their relationship -- her telling him on the day of the drownings that she had once slept with his father -- did not seem to have left him with any ill will toward her. He also testified that Susan Smith was intimidated by her husband. Did Prince Andrew fly on Jeffrey Epsteins plane Lolita Express? What Is Chris Watts Life in Prison Like? Chances are you or someone you love has experienced what its like to be a caregiver while juggling lifes bills and responsibilities. Susan Smith (born Susan Vaughan) led a troubled childhood, though nobody at her high school would have noticed. "I was a good mother and I loved my boys. The 19-year-old bride was already two months pregnant with her first son Michael, while her 20-year-old groom lost a brother to Crohns disease and had his father attempt suicide within a year. The case attracted international attention because of her false claim that a black man had kidnapped her sons during a carjacking, but instead. Findlay, who The New York Times described at the time of Smith's trial as "the son of a rich industrialist," was indeed connected to the place Smith herself worked. On October 25, 1994, Susan Smith trapped her 3-year-old son Michael and 14-month old son Alex in her car and rolled them into John D. Long Lake in Union County. Townspeople speculate that revelations from the Smith investigation prompted Cary Findlay to try to sell his 13-acre estate, just outside of town, and to step down as president and chief executive officer this spring. Under South Carolina law, Smith will be eligible for parole in 30 years, although the notorious nature of her crime makes it unlikely she will ever be released. They portray the drownings as a failed suicide. The two boys were strapped into their car seats inside the vehicle at the time. Life in prison would make her eligible for parole in 30 years. . Susan Knick Smith, 67. Findlay said he felt so threatened, he slept with a handgun under his pillow. As the car was removed from the lake, the bodies of two children remained in their car seats, grossly deformed from being underwater too long. Susan Smiths most intense extramarital affair was with a newfound employee at Conso Products in 1993. Discover amazing horror stories, conspiracy theories, Murder Mysteries, Alien Life, Unsolved Mysteries, latest breakthrough Science news, and much more on Bugged Space ! Today Susan Smith is incarcerated at Leath Correctional Institution in Greenwood, South Carolina. Findlay told of an encounter with David Smith in March 1994, when David and Susan were separated and she and Findlay were just starting to date. So what has Susan Smith's life been like for well over two decades? David Smith Sr. mourning his grandsons at John D. Long Lake. Susan rarely had a stable home life growing up. Susan navigated that grief by keeping his coin collection and an audio recording of her fathers voice, but tried to kill herself at 13. Susan Smith. Distraught, Smith got her children into her car and began to drive toward her mothers house. UNION, S.C. (AP) _ Years after admitting he molested his stepdaughter Susan Smith when she was 16, Beverly Russell testified that they had consensual sex two months before she drowned her sons. Tom Begaye Jr. left the 11-year-old child to die in the desert after "repeatedly hitting her on the head and face with a tire iron." . UNION, S.C. Susan Smith's stepfather, who molested her as a teenager and then resumed their sexual encounters after she married, came to court Thursday to claim partial responsibility for the. (AP/Wide World Photos) Findlay admitted seeing Smith three times on that fateful day, and that she had been overwrought. She claimed it wasnt her lovers demands that prompted the violent acts, writing: The thing that hurts me the most is that people think that I hurt my children in order to be with a man. She reddened slightly and stared back at him. Williams testified about a conversation with Susan Smith on Oct. 17, eight days before the murders: "I have a problem," Smith said. She is serving a life sentence in Leath Correctional institute in North Carolina after she eventually confessed to the murder of her children. She and David finally filed for divorce in September of 1994, and Smith put all her attention on Tom. If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 18007997233 or TTY 18007873224. Then, after insulting Findlay by claiming she slept with his father, he asked her to leave. Smith interacted with young women who had risen through the company's ranks to sales and marketing jobs paying more than $30,000. You dont have all the guilt of this tragedy, he read from a letter he wrote Ms. Smith this past Fathers Day. I was not in my right mind. She also noted, in something of a contradiction, that she had planned to kill myself first and leave a note behind telling what had happened., In the same letter, Smith also wrote that shed concocted the false story about the kids abductions because she didnt know how to tell the people who loved Michael & Alex that they would never see them again.. Smith became obsessive about Tom. Smiths defense attorney David Bruck argued that her actions were rooted in mental illness spurred by the suicide of her father, sexual abuses, and emotional rejections. A death sentence means a choice of electrocution or injection. The composite drawing of the carjacker was so generic that it raised suspicion. The lake where Smith killed Michael and Alex went on to become a macabre tourist attraction. For nine days a search for her children took place. I was not in my right mind.. In the letter she claimed that she intended to kill herself with her children, but she changed her plan in the final moment. On top of that, Ms. Smith later said that a cause of her depression was her breakup with Conso employee Tom . Snort, booty bump, swallow, shoot. In 2015, she broke the silence with a letter written to the State Newspaper. . The friend she said she was going to visit was not at her home that evening. Howd that go? David Smith describes his marriage with convicted murderer Susan, his coming to terms with the tragedy that cost him his two young sons, and the painful healing process of putting his life back together. They married on March 15th in 1991 due to Smith being pregnant. That night Susan Smith called a friend who she knew Tom was having dinner with, to ask if he spoke of her. For the unfamiliar, the murders for which Susan Smith was convicted took place in 1994, when she was 23. Refine Your Search Results. ``I think the real focus is not the nature of the crime, he said, ``but what is the right thing to do.. UNION, S.C., July 25 -- A sobbing Susan Smith apologized Tuesday to her ex-husband for killing their children after he twice broke down in tears while testifying in the sentencing phase of her. On that occasion, Mr. Findlay said, Mr. Smith threatened to hurt him if he ever called again. I was not myself," she continued. As NYT summarized, Smith eventually confessed to taking her children to a nearby lake and intentionally "rolling her car down a boat ramp and into the "body of water. As her story began to unravel, Smith admitted that there was no carjacker, and that she had let her car roll into a lake with Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, still strapped in their car seats. Susan Smith, now 50, is keeping herself down now and following the rules in jail. When Susan Smiths ex-boyfriend Tom Findlay climbed onto the witness stand Wednesday afternoon, he glanced quickly at her and smiled kindly. Tom Findlay and Smith were among five people who partied nude in a hot tub at Cary Findlay's estate Oct. 15, 10 days before the boys were drowned in a lake. As the daily interrogation proceeded, the police discovered inconsistencies in Susans story. (Mrs. Smith later told him that she had fabricated that story, an apparent effort to return some of the pain that he had instilled in her, "as a joke," Mr. Findlay testified.). Shop today Whats more, she told police that a Black man had carjacked her with the children inside. Due to a tumultuous marriage between her parents, full of aggression, they divorced when she was seven years old, and soon after, her father Harry, at the age of 37, committed suicide. In a July 9, 2021 episode of Lifetimes Cellmate Secrets focused on Smith, two of her former cellmates, Christie Smith (no relation) and Stephanie Hulsen, talk about what life was like behind bars with the convicted child killer. However, support would soon turn to . She does not deserve to walk on the earth in which she denied her children. She was heartbroken because Tom Findlay, her ex-boyfriend, had recently broken up with her. "Union is a small town, and Conso employs a lot of people in that small town. Prosecutors said Susan drowned her boys because she wanted to be with a local wealthy bachelor, Tom Findlay. They got married after only about a year of dating. According to aTIME, Smith attempted suicide when she was 13, though her mother and Smith's stepfather "refused" to hospitalize her. She says she was often a lookout for Susan when she would have sex with other inmates in the bathroom, cafeteria, shower and even in a dumpster. But Cooney said the hilltop estate has been on the market for 18 months. That is so far from the truth. Meanwhile, she and her older brothers were moving into the home of their new stepfather (Bev) with their mom. Tom Findlay's letter, as gentle as it tried to be, had brought Susan Smith in direct and brutal contact with her own lies, deceit, narcissism, and lust. The couple were very co-dependent on one another, the early days of their marriage being filled with comforting one another over their losses. A lot of people knew Susan.". For. Susan Smith, a mother from South Carolina, was convicted of murdering her two sons by drowning them in South Carolina Lake. Born on September 26, 1971, in Union, South Carolina, Susan Leigh Vaughan was the youngest of three children and the only girl. Reprint. Her sentence was thirty years to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after the thirty years are up. "This is an incredibly sad tale," Norwood said. Meet Gladys Presley, Elvis Presley's Mother And The 'Love Of His Life', The Baffling Mystery Of What Happened To John F. Kennedy's Brain, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. The prosecution introduced the letter and Mr. Findlay's testimony to portray Mrs. Smith as selfish and malicious, a woman prepared to trade the lives of her children for a chance to reclaim him. 1000s of new photos added daily. Smith's relationship with Findlay, the son of a wealthy mill owner, has provided the prosecution with its motive for the murders of her sons, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex. A staff writer for All Thats Interesting, Marco Margaritoff has also published work at outlets including People, VICE, and Complex, covering everything from film to finance to technology. Texas woman Andrea Yates drowning her kids to save them from the Devil, Alice Crimmins, the New York mom accused of killing her kids. Her trial began soon after. Her father killed himself when she was just six years old, and she tried to follow suit at age 13. A look at the notorious convicted murderer's life in prison after she drowned her two sons in 1994 By Steve Helling Updated on November 15, 2022 10:05 AM On October 25, 1994, Susan Smith told. "I am not the monster society thinks I am," she wrote. What Made a Mother Kill Her Young Son by Dropping Him Off a Bridge? Susan Smith killings: . Brooks Kraft LLC/Sygma/Getty ImagesSusan Smith was convicted of murdering her children on July 22, 1995. Everything came to a head on October 5, 1994, when Smith took her sons out for a ride on a South Carolina night. They both came from families tormented by tragedy. Susan Leigh Smith (nee' Vaughan) was an American killer who was responsible for the murders of her two children, Michael Daniel, and Alexander Tyler Smith, on October 24, 1994. Related To . The company recently donated that money to day-care centers in the area. At that point, says Rowe, "She could not longer get the male attention that she used as a drug.". Following the jury's decision, David Smith, expressed his disappointment with the sentence. As a teenager, Susan was well-liked and outgoing. Why did Susan Smith drive her two sons into a lake. However, Smith was seeing other men too. The prosecution claimed that since she killed her children it was easy for her to gain the sympathy of her former boyfriend Tom Findly. In 1994, Susan Smith told a tale of being carjacked by a black man who took off with her two young sons in the back seat. After getting to the location, divers found the car 122 feet from the shore upside down under 18 feet of water. Susan Smith's former cellmates and a prison guard who had sex with her are speaking out about the infamous woman's checkered time behind bars. I've seen her do it all," Smith says, before adding, "My main purpose was to bring her her pills.". Soon after the death of her father, her mother married Beverly Russell. The authorities questioned both Susan and David Smith in hopes of getting some answers. The parents loved their son very much, but their personality differences were putting a strain on the marriage. In a letter to Susan Smith, Tom declared he did not want kids, or to have a part in the life of Smiths kids, nor did he think she was a nice girl. Findlay admitted seeing Smith three times on that fateful day, and that she had been overwrought. The newlyweds soon started to have fights, and as a result they were separated seven months after their marriage. Resides in Danville, VA. 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