Killer mom Susan Smith denied parole 30 years after drowning sons
Thirty years after South Carolina killer mom Susan Smith was put behind bars for drowning her two toddler sons, a board unanimously voted to deny her parole after she appeared on a jailhouse court feed on Wednesday morning.
Smith appeared emotional and crying on the feed.
“I know that what I did was horrible…I’m sorry that I put them through that…I wish I could take that back, I really do…I was just scared,” she said. “I didn’t know how to tell the people that loved them that they would never see them again…I’m sorry, I know that’s not enough…just words, but they come from my heart.”
The reasons for the parole board’s denial were the nature and seriousness of the crime and Smith’s institutional record of offenses.
South Carolina killer mom Susan Smith appeared emotional and crying on a jailhouse court feed for her first parole hearing on Wednesday morning
Susan Smith’s attorney, Tommy Thomas, told the parole board that the suicide of Smith’s father “set the stage for some serious mental health issues,” listing “postpartum depression” as an example. “I could see the pain on her face…I think that she is truly remorseful for what happened…and that she would do anything in the world to bring these children back.”
He added that if Smith were granted parole, she would be living with her brother.
The 53-year-old’s ex-husband, David Smith, arrived at the parole hearing to face the woman who killed his children, wearing a pin showing his two toddler sons.
David Smith arrives at the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services in Columbia, SC on November 20, 2024. Smith’s ex-wife, Susan Smith, was denied parole today for her life sentence in the 1995 drowning murders of her two toddlers. (Matthew Symons for Fox News Digital)
“I’m here to advocate on Michael and Alex’s behalf and as their father,” David Smith said as he spoke at the hearing. “God gives us free choice, and she made free choice that night to end their life. This wasn’t a tragic mistake…she purposely meant to end their life.”
“I’m asking that you please deny her parole today,” he said emotionally, holding back tears.
David Smith with his wife, Tiffany Smith, leave the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services in Columbia, SC on November 20, 2024. Smith’s ex-wife, Susan Smith, was denied parole today for her life sentence in the 1995 drowning murders of her two toddlers. (Matthew Symons for Fox News Digital)
David Smith holds up a picture of his murdered sons Michael and Alex and smiles July 28 after his ex-wife [Susan] Smith was sentenced to life imprisonment on two counts of murder in Union, South Carolina. A relative of Smith’s former husband said that the man intends to oppose Smith’s parole next year. (Reuters)
Susan Smith’s ex-husband and father of Michael and Alex, David Smith, attended the parole hearing Wednesday, along with his wife and daughter and Tommy Pope, the prosecutor on the case.
“I believe the jury intended for her to serve a full life sentence,” Tommy Pope, the prosecutor who helped convict Smith in her case, told Fox News Digital. “They wanted her to spend her life and remorse for Michael and Alex and what she had done, and she has time focused on herself having sex with guards, etc.”
Pope also attended Wednesday’s parole hearing, and he asked the board to deny Smith’s parole.
Pope, along with a former director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections and one of Smith’s former lovers spoke out in Fox Nation’s latest special on the case and Smith’s time in prison, “Susan Smith, The Killer Mom: 30 Years Later.”
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Susan Smith Prosecutor Tommy Pope speaking at her parole hearing before asking the board to deny her parole
Legal identity photograph of Susan Smith. She was convicted on July 22, 1995 of murdering her two sons, 3-year-old Michael Daniel Smith, born October 10, 1991, and 14-month-old Alexander Tyler Smith, born August 5, 1993. Susan Smith when she was first arrested in 1994. (Photo by Brooks Kraft LLC/Sygma via Getty Images)
Susan Smith strapped her sons, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander Smith, into the back seat of her car and let it roll down a ramp into John D. Long Lake in Union, South Carolina. (Tommy Pope)
“The South Carolina State House has a better chance of getting hit with a meteor tonight than Susan Smith will have at getting parole tomorrow,” Attorney Eric Bland, who has represented victims of Alex Murdaugh, another notorious South Carolina murder case, told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
“She never showed real contrition for murdering her children.”
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David Smith with his wife, Tiffany Smith, arrives at the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services in Columbia, SC on November 20, 2024. Smith’s ex-wife, Susan Smith, was denied parole today for her life sentence in the 1995 drowning murders of her two toddlers. (Matthew Symons for Fox News Digital)
Bland said Susan Smith contacted her ex-husband at one point over the last several months, asking him if he’d be willing not to oppose her parole and to speak to other family members and see if they too would be willing not to oppose.
“He was livid, like, ‘Are you out of your mind?’,” Bland added, noting that up until she reached out to her former husband, she might have had a chance of getting parole. “She’s delusional… It’s his children, you know, and he lost them. I mean, the wound is still as raw as I’m sure it was on the first day that they were murdered.”
Susan Smith prosecutor Tommy Pope during the 1995 trial (Tommy Pope)
“Under normal circumstances… it’s been 30 years… and oftentimes, victims’ families themselves say, ‘Look, has she served enough?’ You know, we’re a very Christian state, so people believe in forgiveness,” Bland said. “Nobody I’ve spoken to… has ever had any sympathy for her whatsoever.”
Here is a timeline, detailing the events leading up to, during and after Smith’s horrific crime all the way through her decades in prison:
Oct. 25, 1994
Susan Smith strapped her sons, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander Smith, into the back seat of her car and let it roll down a ramp into John D. Long Lake in Union, South Carolina.
Smith, 22 at the time, watched as it took six minutes for water to fill the car, drown her boys and sink the car to the bottom of the lake.
She ran to a house near John D. Long Lake, falsely telling the homeowners that a “Black man” had stolen her car with her two sons inside. The homeowners called 911.
Oct. 26-Nov. 2, 1994
For nine days, the young faces of Michael and Alexander Smith spread across national headlines, while authorities searched for the man Susan said kidnapped the boys. Susan and David Smith pleaded on national television for the return of their children.
Pope watched the news unfold at the time and received updates from SLED on the case.
“The whole story sounded highly unlikely,” Pope said in the Fox Nation special, “Never are you hearing a carjacker taking children normally.”
David Smith with his wife, Tiffany Smith, leave the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services in Columbia, SC on November 20, 2024. Smith’s ex-wife, Susan Smith, was denied parole today for her life sentence in the 1995 drowning murders of her two toddlers. (Matthew Symons for Fox News Digital)
Nov. 3, 1994
After failing a polygraph test, Susan Smith retracted her lie about the kidnapping and confessed to killing her two sons. She was charged with two counts of murder.
KILLER MOM SUSAN SMITH DISCIPLINED BEHIND BARS WEEKS BEFORE PAROLE HEARING
3 unident. law enforcement officials, 1 clad in scuba gear, talking lakeside as they comb the water’s bottom for the car of Susan Smith, who admitted to drowning her sons Michael & Alex in her car in John D. Long Lake. (Photo by Thomas S. England/Getty Images)
Nov. 6, 1994
Hundreds attended the funeral of Michael and Alexander Smith.
July 17, 1995
Susan Smith’s trial began less than a year after she drowned her sons. While prosecutors argued her motive for killing the boys was that a man she was seeing at the time didn’t want children, Smith’s defense said she was suicidal and originally planned to drown with her sons before somehow pulling herself out of it.
“I was very emotionally distraught. I didn’t want to live anymore! I felt like things could never get any worse,” Smith wrote in her confession letter, obtained by Fox News Digital. “I felt I couldn’t be a good mom anymore but I didn’t want my children to grow up without a mom. I felt I had to end our lives to protect us all from any grief or harm.”
“I wanted to end my life so bad and was in my car ready to go down that ramp into the water and I did go part way, but I stopped. I went again and stopped…I dropped to the lowest when I allowed my children to go down that ramp into the water without me. I took off running and screaming ‘Oh God! Oh God, NO!’ What have I done?”
July 22, 1995
Susan Smith was convicted in the murder of her two sons, Michael and Alexander.
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Susan Smith was convicted on July 22, 1995 of murdering her two sons, 3-year-old Michael Daniel Smith and 14-month-old Alexander Tyler Smith. Initially, Smith claimed that a Black man carjacked her with the two boys still inside her vehicle. But her story unraveled, and the woman admitted that she let her vehicle roll into a lake with the boys strapped inside. (Getty Images)
July 28, 1995
Though prosecutors argued that Susan Smith should receive the death penalty, she was ultimately sentenced to life in prison.
Susan Smith told a suitor over the phone that she would be a “good stepmom” and could “see [herself] around kids” in a recorded phone call. Grief-stricken David Smith, the inmate’s former husband, is pictured weeping amidst a crowd of mourners as he leaves funeral for his kids Michael and Alex. (Thomas S. England/Getty Images)
July, 1995-March, 2015
Smith received 10 disciplinary sanctions, including one for having sex with a prison guard and others for repeated drug use.
David Smith with his wife, Tiffany Smith, leave the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services in Columbia, SC on November 20, 2024. Smith’s ex-wife, Susan Smith, was denied parole today for her life sentence in the 1995 drowning murders of her two toddlers. (Matthew Symons for Fox News Digital)
Aug. 26, 2024 and Oct. 3, 2024
Smith was charged on Aug. 26 and subsequently convicted on Oct. 3 for communicating with a victim/and or witness after speaking to a documentary filmmaker. South Carolina Department of Corrections inmates are not allowed to do interviews on the telephone or in person, according to SCDC policy, but they may write letters. Smith lost her telephone, tablet and canteen privileges for 90 days.
Susan Smith, pictured in a recent mugshot at left and at 22-year-old in 1994 at right, has been incarcerated in South Carolina for nearly 30 years for the murder of her two sons. (South Carolina Department of Corrections)
In her talks with the filmmaker, Smith discussed her crime in depth and the events leading up to and after it, including details like “what was in the trunk of the car when it went into the water and her plans to jump from a bridge while holding the boys, but one woke up,” the incident report says.
Nov. 4, 2024
On Nov. 4, Susan Smith had spent 30 years behind bars, making her eligible for parole.
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Nov. 20, 2024
Smith appeared on a jailhouse court feed for her first parole hearing on Nov. 20.
Her parole was unanimously denied at the end of the hearing. One parole board member recused herself from the hearing due to the fact that she had previously been a warden at a facility where Smith was housed.
Smith will be eligible for parole again in two years.
Fox News’ Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.
