It’s Mother’s Day Weekend and we’re all about bad Moms here at Memento Mori Ink, and nothing says bad Mom like Susan Smith, who just happens to be up for parole this week!
Hey there, true crime lovers! It is your favorite investigator, Ninetoes, coming to you from Ninetoes HQ, and I am on the beat with The Case of Susan Smith. I have my notebook in hand and coffee in my system, so let’s get to it!
Susan Smith (nee Vaughn) was born September 26, 1971, to Harry and Linda Vaughn. When she was six years old, her father died by suicide. Her mother would go on to marry Beverly C. Russell Jr. Russell was a local businessman who was gaining traction in South Carolina’s Republican Party as well as the Christian Coalition. He also started molesting Susan Smith as a teenager, and according to both, the sexual relations continued until a few months before she murdered her children.
Susan would marry David Smith in 1991. They had two sons: Michael Daniel (born in 1991) and Alexander Tyler (born in 1993).
On October 25, 1994, Susan Smith called the police and reported that she had been the victim of a carjacking by a black man. She was driving a 1990 Mazda Protégé, and her sons were in the back seat of the car. A nationwide search was launched to find her children, which lasted nine days. During this time, she appeared on television pleading for their safe return. An intensive investigation was launched, and on November 3, 1994, she confessed to letting her car roll into John D. Long Lake, with her children secured in the backseat, drowning them.
Although she claimed there was no motive and that she was not in her right mind, police suspected she murdered her children to get into a relationship with a wealthy man named Tom Findlay. Before the murders, he sent Susan a letter breaking things off and told her he did not want children.
It would be later revealed that the police did not believe Susan’s story, and they believed she had murdered her sons. Investigators started searching nearby lakes and ponds, including John D. Long Lake, thinking that the children would be within thirty feet of the shore (the boys would be found 122 feet from shore). On the second day, Susan Smith was subjected to a polygraph.
Susan Smith was arrested after her confession. Her husband divorced her in May 1995.
Smith’s trial began in July 1995. Her attorneys were David Bruck and Judy Clarke. In their opening statement, they told the jury that Smith was deeply troubled and experienced severe depression. Judy Clarke told the jury, “This is not a case about evil. This is a case about despair and sadness.” The defense’s theory was that Smith went to the lake to kill herself and her children, and at the last minute, her body willed itself out of the car.
The prosecution had a different theory. They told the jury that Smith killed her children in order to begin a life with her former lover, Tom Findlay.
It took the jury 2 ½ hours to convict Susan Smith on both counts of murder. The prosecution pushed for the death sentence. The jury instead gave Susan Smith two consecutive life sentences with the possibility of parole after thirty years.
Her first parole hearing was in November 2024. She was denied parole.
Susan Smith was originally serving her sentence in the Camille Griffin Graham Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina. However, in the year 2000, two correctional officers were charged after having sex with her.
She was moved to the Leath Correctional Institution in Greenwood, South Carolina, where she currently resides.
Until the next time, fellow investigators, keep your pencils sharp and your paper dry! I bid you successful investigations.
PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing. Thank you for understanding.