Killer mom Susan Smith denied parole 30 years after drowning sons
30 years after South Carolina killer mom Susan Smith was put behind bars for drowning her two toddler sons, she will appear for her first parole hearing on Wednesday morning.
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.
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.
"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."
"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."
WATCH "SUSAN SMITH, THE KILLER MOM: 30 YEARS LATER" ON FOX NATION
"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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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."
"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:
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.
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."
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
Hundreds attended the funeral of Michael and Alexander Smith.
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?"
Susan Smith was convicted in the murder of her two sons, Michael and Alexander.
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Though prosecutors argued that Susan Smith should receive the death penalty, she was ultimately sentenced to life in prison.
Smith received 10 disciplinary sanctions, including one for having sex with a prison guard and others for repeated drug use.
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.
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.
On Nov. 4, Susan Smith had spent 30 years behind bars, making her eligible for parole.
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.
