It happens all the time, one minute you’re driving along minding your own business and the next, you find yourself in a life or death situation.
The young mother in this story thought it was going to be just another normal day. She was driving along the highway, her two sons in the back seat, when she stopped, as usual at a traffic light. A few moments later, her life would change forever, though not in a way she ever expected.
Frantic Call
It was a cold day at the end of October when the Union City police department received a frantic call from a hysterical woman. She told them that she had been carjacked on Highway 49 and that the thief had forced her out of the vehicle and driven off with her kids still in the backseat.
Single Mom
The caller, Susan Smith was a mere 23 years old and already a single mom with two young sons: three-year-old Michael, and his younger brother, 13-month-old Alexander. She had only been a single mother for about three months, having been recently separated when her husband Michael decided that he’d had enough…
Separation
For the first several years of their young marriage, Michael and Susan were the happiest of couples, but as they often do, children complicated things, and their marriage soon fell apart. Still, even though they were separated, both parents were successfully co-parenting their sons without any real issues.
New Love
Meanwhile, despite her situation, Susan had begun dating someone new: the handsome son of a prominent business owner. A few weeks into the relationship, he ended things on the pretense that he didn’t want a long-term relationship, let alone one that came with the prospect of kids. Susan was heartbroken, but moved on. Then, some weeks later, life threw her another curve ball…
The Carjacking
That October, Susan Smith was driving through Union City on Highway 49, when she stopped at a stoplight. Before she knew what was happening, a man had come up to her car with a gun, demanded she get out, then drove off with the car and her two young son’s still strapped in their car-seats in the back.
National Manhunt
Susan called the police and before long, a massive manhunt ensued. She and her husband went on TV numerous times and pleaded for Michael and Alex’s safe return. She begged the abductor to bring her boys home, but to no avail. The police, meanwhile, were trying to piece together her story…
Something Was Off…
Though they didn’t make their feelings public, the police were skeptical of Susan Smith’s story almost from the get-go. She may have acted like a worried mother when she was in front of the camera, but many of the detectives assigned to the case noticed that her mannerisms betrayed a woman who wasn’t quite sure what had happened to her missing boys.
Changing Tales
She also kept changing her story every time she was asked about it, which of course didn’t help her case. The biggest red flag of all came when police looked into the intersection where Smith had told them the carjacking took place. According to her, there were no other cars around at the time of the kidnapping. Based on the evidence, that wasn’t possible…
No Pressure
You see, in order for the light at that particular intersection to have been red, the pressure pad beneath the road on the intersecting street would have had to been pressed. Otherwise, the light wouldn’t have turned red. There was absolutely no way for her to have been forced to stop at a red light there. Perhaps though, she’d just gotten the street wrong.
A Lie … For Justice
Union County Sheriff Howard Wells didn’t think so. He was so suspicious of Smith’s story that he decided to try and catch her in her own lie, by telling one of his own. Nine days after her sons went missing, Sheriff Wells informed Smith that there were surveillance cameras in the area where she had told them the carjacking occurred, and that based on the footage, they knew she was lying…
Confession
Of course, Sheriff Wells had no idea if his tactic would work or not, so he decided to up the pressure a bit. He told her that he was going to take his findings to the media to possibly flush out the culprit. Smith, who was plainly lying, couldn’t allow that. So she did the only thing she could, she broke down and decided to tell him what really happened that October day.
Slipping Away
She told the sheriff that she had left her children strapped into the back seat of her red Mazda Protégé, then, once she knew they were secure, she took off the parking brake and let it roll down a boat ramp into Union City’s John D. Long Lake. She had killed her own children…
Not Alright
After that, the case was open-and-shut. Smith gave the police an oral and a written account of how she killed her children. The world was shocked. In every interview she had seemed so sincerely upset by the loss and so determined to have her boys back. When asked why she had done it, why she had killed two small children who were completely unable to help themselves, she replied with a curt and cryptic: “We’re not alright.”
Her Defense
Smith’s defense attorneys painted the picture of a distraught, mentally ill woman with suicidal tendencies who was forcibly coerced into giving a confession through lies. They went on to explain how she had been abused as a child by her stepfather and that this abuse continued into adulthood…
Childhood Abuse
Smith’s biological father had killed himself when she was only six and apparently this suicide created a long-term depression that she carried with her throughout her life. At her trial, Smith’s stepfather, Beverly Russell, took the stand and testified that he had molested her as a teen and that the two had also engaged in “consensual” sex when she’d reached adulthood.
Defending Her
Towards the end of his testimony, he even came clean about his behavior and apologized for having done it, stating: “Had I known what the result of my sin would be, I would have mustered the strength to behave according to my responsibility.” It all added up to a rather convincing argument for her insanity plea, but would it stick?
Heinous Crime
It didn’t matter that she had been abused, nor that she had been suicidal. In the end, the heinous and inhumane manner in which Smith murdered her young sons and the evidence the police had against her, proved enough to convict her. Smith was sentenced to serve 30 years to life in prison for the murder of her boys.
Not A Man
Prosecutors used the excuse that Smith had killed her children in part because of the breakup letter she had received from her ex-boyfriend. Yet, even today, more than two decades after she had been put away, she maintains that the crime had nothing to do with a man. In fact, according to Susan Smith, she was a good mother….
Good Mother
“I was a good mother and I loved my boys. … Something went very wrong that night. I was not myself. There was no motive as it was not even a planned event. I was not in my right mind,” she explained. Of course, her behavior over the past 23 years doesn’t exactly gel with this tacit expression of remorse. Indeed, the prisons she’s been in all express very matter-of-factly that she has never shown the slightest hint of reform since her incarceration began.
Model Inmate
Since the first day she was brought into prison, Smith has racked up numerous infractions which include violence and sexual contact with guards and officers. “Most murderers are one-time, crime-of-passion people, and they end up becoming good people. Susan Smith just hasn’t been able to fit that mold,” said prison director John Ozmint.
