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Susan Smith seeking her freedom 30 years after drowning her 2 young sons in a car in a South Carolina lake
Columbia, S.C. — Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother convicted of killing her two sons by rolling her car into a lake in 1994 with the boys strapped in their seats inside, will ask a parole board for her freedom on Wednesday.
Smith, 53, is serving a life sentence after a jury convicted her of murder but decided not to sentence her to death. Under state law at the time, she is eligible for a parole hearing every two years now that she has spent 30 years behind bars.
South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP
Smith will make her case for freedom to the seven-member parole board by video link from prison. Then she will go offline and her ex-husband and father of the children, as well as the prosecutor at her murder trial, will argue that she remain incarcerated.
Smith killed 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex because a man she was having an affair with suggested the boys were the reason they didn’t have a future together, prosecutors said.
A decision to grant parole requires a two-thirds vote of board members present at the hearing, according to the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. Parole in South Carolina is granted only about 8% of the time and is less likely with an inmate’s first appearance before the board, in notorious cases or when prosecutors and the families of victims are opposed.
How the case unfolded
Smith made international headlines in October 1994 when she said she was carjacked late at night near the city of Union and that a man drove away with her sons inside. Smith, who is white, said the carjacker was Black.
For nine days, Smith made numerous and sometimes tearful pleas asking that Michael and Alex be returned safely. The whole time, the boys were in Smith’s car at the bottom of nearby John D. Long Lake, authorities said.
MARY ANN CHASTAIN / AP
Investigators said Smith’s story didn’t add up. Carjackers usually just want a vehicle, so investigators asked why would they let Smith out but not her kids. The traffic light where Smith said she had stopped when her car was taken would only be red if another car was waiting to cross, and Smith said no other cars were around. Other bits and pieces of the story didn’t make sense.
Smith ultimately confessed to letting her car roll down a boat ramp and into the lake. A re-creation by investigators showed it took six minutes for the Mazda to dip below the surface, while cameras inside the vehicle showed water pouring in through the vents and steadily rising. The boys’ bodies were found dangling upside-down in their car seats, one tiny hand pressed against a window,
Prosecutors said Smith was having an affair with the wealthy son of the owner of the business she worked at. He broke it off because she had the two young sons.
Lou Krasky / AP
Smith’s lawyers said she was remorseful, was suffering a mental breakdown and intended to die alongside her children but left the car at the last moment.
In July 2015, 20 years after her conviction, Smith told The State newspaper in Columbia she never planned to kill them and instead intended to end her own life.
The 1995 trial of the young mother became a national sensation and a true crime touchstone even though it wasn’t televised by a judge who worried about what cameras were doing to the O.J. Simpson murder trial going on at the same time. Her lawyers worked to save her life, noting that Smith’s father had killed himself and that her stepfather was having sex with her along with the owner of the business where she worked.
Unusual actions in prison
From prison, Smith can make phone calls and answer text messages, many coming from journalists and interested men. Those messages and phone calls were released under South Carolina’s open records act, something Smith didn’t initially realize could happen. She said the invasion of her privacy upset her along with the public revelation that she was juggling conversations about the future with several men.
Some men know why she is famous. Others are more coy. One told her he was going to use the dates of her birthday and those of her dead sons when he played the Powerball lottery. Others chatted about their lives and sports. Many promised her a home on the outside and a happy life.
Smith says in some of the messages she still grieves for her children.
“I am really sad today and just want to hang out in the bed. Today is my youngest son’s birthday, he would have been 30 today. Hard to believe,” Smith wrote in August 2023.
Smith also had sex with guards. And she violated prison policies by giving out contact information for friends, family members and her ex-husband to a documentary producer who discussed paying her for her help, according to former prosecutor Tommy Pope.
“The jury believed she got a life sentence and that’s what she should serve,” Pope said last month shortly after the parole hearing was announced.
Pope, who’s now a representative in the South Carolina legislature, told CBS Columbia affiliate WLTX-TV he doesn’t expect Smith to get parole — or want her to.
“She has been continually focused on Susan, not on Michael and Alex, I think Susan’s remorseful, but remorseful that she’s in her circumstances — not remorseful for the pain she caused Michael and Alex, or equally importantly David Smith (the boy’s father) and his family,” he said.
France’s anti-terrorism court on Friday convicted eight people of involvement in the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty outside his school near Paris four years ago, a horrific death that shocked the country.
Paty, 47, was killed by an Islamic extremist outside his school on Oct. 16, 2020, days after showing his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a debate on free expression. The assailant, an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origin, was shot to death by police.
Those who have been on trial on terrorism charges at a special court in Paris since the end of November were accused, in some cases, of providing assistance to the perpetrator and, in others, of organizing a hate campaign online before the murder took place.
STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images
The 540-seat courtroom was packed for the verdict, which marked the final chapter of the Paty trial. Heavy surveillance was in place, with more than 50 police officers guarding the proceedings.
Seated in the front row was Paty’s 9-year-old son, accompanied by family members. As the lead judge, Franck Zientara, delivered sentences one after the other, emotions in the room ran high.
“I am moved, and I am relieved,” said Gaëlle Paty, Samuel Paty’s sister, as she addressed a crowd of reporters after the verdict. “Hearing the word ‘guilty’ — that’s what I needed.”
“I spent this week listening to a lot of rewriting of what happened, and it was hard to hear, but now the judge has stated what really happened, and it feels good,” she added, her voice breaking as tears filled her eyes.
Families of the accused reacted with gasps, cries, shouts, and ironic clapping, prompting the judge to pause multiple times and call for silence.
“They lied about my brother,” shouted one relative. Another woman, sobbing, exclaimed, “They took my baby from me,” before being escorted out by police officers.
The seven-judge panel met or went above most of the terms requested by prosecutors, citing “the exceptional gravity of the facts.”
Naïm Boudaoud, 22, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, friends of the attacker, were convicted of complicity in murder and sentenced to 16 years in prison each. Neither can be paroled for two thirds of their term, about 10 years. Boudaoud was accused of driving the attacker to the school, while Epsirkhanov helped him procure weapons.
Brahim Chnina, 52, the Muslim father of the schoolgirl whose lies sparked the events leading to Paty’s death, was sentenced to 13 years for association with a terrorist enterprise. Prosecutors had sought 10 years for him.
Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a Muslim preacher, was given 15 years for organizing a hate campaign online against Paty.
The shocking death of the 47-year-old teacher left an indelible mark on France, with several schools now named after him.
The trial had begun in late November. The defendants were accused of assisting a perpetrator or organizing a hate campaign online in lead-up to the murder.
At the time of the attack, there were protests in many Muslim countries and calls online for violence targeting France and the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The newspaper had republished its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad a few weeks before Paty’s death to mark the opening of the trial over deadly 2015 attacks on its newsroom by Islamic extremists.
The cartoon images deeply offended many Muslims, who saw them as sacrilegious. But the fallout from Paty’s killing reinforced the French state’s commitment to freedom of expression and its firm attachment to secularism in public life.
Chnina’s daughter, who was 13 at the time, claimed that she had been excluded from Paty’s class when he showed the caricatures on Oct. 5, 2020.
Chnina sent a series of messages to his contacts denouncing Paty, saying that “this sick man” needed to be fired, along with the address of the school in the Paris suburb of Conflans Saint-Honorine. In reality, Chnina’s daughter had lied to him and had never attended the lesson in question.
Paty was teaching a class mandated by the National Education Ministry on freedom of expression. He discussed the caricatures in this context, saying students who did not wish to see them could temporarily leave the classroom.
An online campaign against Paty snowballed, and 11 days after the lesson, Anzorov attacked the teacher with a knife as he walked home, and displayed the teacher’s head in a post on social media. Police later fatally shot Anzorov as he advanced toward them, armed.
Chnina’s daughter was tried last year in a juvenile court and given an 18-month suspended sentence. Four other students at Paty’s school were found guilty of involvement and given suspended sentences; a fifth, who pointed out Paty to Anzorov in exchange for money, was given a 6-month term with an electronic bracelet.
Sefrioui, the preacher on trial, had presented himself as a spokesperson for Imams of France although he had been dismissed from that role. He had filmed a video in front of the school with the father of the student. He referred to the teacher as a “thug” multiple times and sought to pressure the school administration via social media.
Some of the defendants expressed regrets and claimed their innocence on the eve of the verdict. They did not convince Paty’s family.
“It’s something that really shocks the family,” lawyer Virginie Le Roy said ahead of the verdicts. “You get the feeling that those in the box are absolutely unwilling to admit any responsibility whatsoever.”
“Apologies are pointless, they won’t bring Samuel back, but explanations are precious to us,” Le Roy said. “We haven’t had many explanations of the facts.”
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