JUST IN: Susan Smith Escaped Execution — Now Seeking Parole for the Drowning Death of her Two Kids..

30 years after she was convicted for drowning her little boys in her car, Susan Smith is asking a South Carolina parole board to free her from prison. Three decades ago, at her press conference seen around the world, Smith cried crocodile tears. And as Amber Kagiano reports, people are once again accusing her of faking her emotions.

 That was so horrible.  53-year-old Smith sobbed as she appeared via video before a parole board in South Carolina today. She escaped execution after committing one of the most monstrous acts a mother could ever commit. By 2024, she was asking for parole. This is the story of one of the most hated mothers of all time.

 A woman who cried on television, who begged on television, who pleaded with millions of Americans to help find her children. a four years old and 14 months old baby. But behind those tears was a secret so dark, so unthinkable that when the truth finally came out, it shocked the entire nation. Union, South Carolina, October 1994.

A small milltown where everybody knew everybody. the kind of place where people left their doors unlocked and neighbors looked out for each other’s kids. But on the night of October 25th, something happened in Union that would change this quiet community forever. A young mother appeared at a stranger’s door, hysterical, screaming that her children had been taken.

 She claimed a carjacker had stolen her car with her two young boys still strapped inside. For nine days, America watched this mother cry on every news channel. They watched her beg for her children’s safe return. They tied yellow ribbons around trees. They called in tips from across the country. They prayed for those little boys to come home.

 But here’s the twist that makes this case one of the most disturbing in American history. Those children were never taken by a stranger. The person responsible for their disappearance was the same woman crying on television, their own mother. Before we dive into this story, make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell, because what you’re about to hear will show you how a mother’s love can twist into something unimaginable.

This is the story of Susan Smith. To understand how Susan Smith became the most hated mother in America, we have to go back to the beginning. Because the monster she became didn’t appear overnight. It was created piece by piece through a childhood marked by tragedy and trauma. Susan Lee Vaughn was born on September 26th, 1971 in Union, South Carolina.

 She was the youngest of three children and the only daughter. Her father, Harry Ray Vaughn, was a firefighter and mill worker. Her mother, Linda, was a secretary. From the outside, the Vaughn family looked normal. A workingclass family in a small southern town. But behind closed doors, things were falling apart. When Susan was just 6 years old, her parents divorced.

 And just one month later, her father made a decision that would haunt Susan for the rest of her life. Harry Vaughn shot himself in the chest. Think about that for a moment. A six-year-old girl loses her father to suicide right after watching her parents’ marriage collapse. The man she looked up to, the man who was supposed to protect her, chose to leave her forever.

Susan kept two things from her father after his death. His coin collection and an audio recording of his voice. These were the only pieces of him she had left. But the trauma didn’t stop there. About a year and a half after her father’s suicide, Susan’s mother, Linda, remarried. Her new stepfather was Beverly Russell Jr.

, a local businessman who seemed like the perfect catch. He was a stockb broker, politically connected, active in the Republican party, and a prominent member of the Christian Coalition. On the surface, Beverly Russell was a pillar of the community. He sang in the church choir. He helped with political campaigns.

 He was respected by everyone in union. But behind closed doors, Beverly Russell had a dark secret. When Susan was 15 years old, her stepfather began molesting her. According to court records and testimony that would later emerge during Susan’s trial, Russell fondled Susan repeatedly. He engaged in inappropriate physical contact with his teenage step-daughter while the rest of the world saw him as an upstanding Christian family man.

In 1988, Susan finally told her high school guidance counselor and her mother what was happening. Beverly Russell didn’t deny it. The family entered counseling and Russell briefly moved out of the house. But here’s what makes this even more disturbing. No criminal charges were ever filed. Susan’s mother decided not to prosecute.

The case file was sealed because of Russell’s powerful position in the community and the abuse continued. During Susan’s murder trial, Beverly Russell would admit under oath that his sexual relationship with Susan continued even after she got married. Their last encounter happened just 2 months before the crime that would shock America.

Susan’s mental health was deteriorating rapidly during her teenage years. She attempted suicide twice. Once at 13 and again at 17 after an older married man she was having an affair with ended their relationship. Despite all this trauma, Susan somehow managed to maintain a public facade. She was an honors student.

 She volunteered at the Special Olympics. Her classmates voted her most friendly. Nobody knew the darkness that was building inside her. After graduating high school in 1989, Susan went to work at the local Wind Dixie supermarket. That’s where she met David Smith, a young man working in the produce department.

 David came from his own troubled background. His brother had recently died of a chronic illness and his father had attempted suicide. But despite their shared trauma, or maybe because of it, Susan and David fell for each other. In March 1991, when Susan was 19 and already 2 months pregnant, they got married. Their first son arrived in October 1991.

Their second son followed in August 1993. Susan and David were young parents, barely out of their teens, trying to build a life together. But the marriage was a disaster from the start. Both Susan and David cheated on each other. They would break up, make up, accuse each other of affairs, reconcile, and then start the whole cycle again.

Friends described them as immature and volatile. Neither of them was built for the responsibility of marriage or parenthood. By September 1994, Susan had filed for divorce. She and David were separated, fighting over custody of their boys. Susan was a mess emotionally, still carrying the scars of her father’s suicide and her stepfather’s abuse.

And that’s when she met someone who represented everything she thought she wanted. In 1993, Susan got a job as a secretary at Conso Products, the largest employer in Union. It was a textile mill that made decorative tassels, some of which even ended up in Buckingham Palace. Working at Conso meant being around the Finlay family.

 They owned the company and they represented everything Susan had never had. Wealth, status, security. Tom Finley was the owner’s son. He was 27 years old, good-looking by local standards, and considered the most eligible bachelor in union. He lived on his father’s 13 acre estate in a mansion called Fair Forest Manor. To Susan, a struggling single mother earning just over minimum wage.

 Tom Finley represented a fairy tale. If she could just be with him, all her problems would disappear. She could escape her broken marriage, her abusive stepfather, her painful memories. Susan and Tom began an affair in January 1994. They slept together multiple times over several months. Tom enjoyed the relationship, but he never saw Susan as someone he would marry.

 When Susan’s husband, David, discovered the affair, Tom backed off for a while. But in September 1994, when Susan told Tom she was finally getting divorced, they started seeing each other again. Susan was falling hard. She was convincing herself that Tom was her future, her escape, her happy ending. But Tom Finley had other plans. On October 17th, 1994, exactly 8 days before the night that would change everything, Tom sat down and wrote Susan a letter.

 The letter was typed, formal, almost like a business document. It was a breakup letter, but Tom tried to soften the blow with compliments. “You will without a doubt make some lucky man a great wife,” he wrote. “But unfortunately, it won’t be me.” Then came the words that would seal the fate of Susan’s children. Susan, I could really fall for you.

 You have some endearing qualities about you, and I think that you are a terrific person. But like I have told you before, there are some things about you that aren’t suited for me. And yes, I am speaking about your children. He continued, “I’m sure that your kids are good kids, but it really wouldn’t matter how good they may be.

 The fact is, I just don’t want children.” Tom ended the letter with some advice. If you want to catch a nice guy like me one day, you have to act like a nice girl. Susan was devastated. The man she thought was her ticket to a better life had just told her that her children were the obstacle. The one thing standing between her and happiness was her own sons.

That letter would later be found inside Susan’s car, recovered from the bottom of a lake. October 25th, 1994 started like any other day in Union, South Carolina. Susan saw Tom Finley three times that day. During one of their encounters, she was crying, emotionally unraveling. She confessed things to him.

 Painful secrets about her stepfather, claims about relationships with other men. She was desperate, grasping at anything to make him change his mind. Tom wasn’t moved. He told her clearly that the romantic part of their relationship was over. Later that day, Susan went back to Tom’s office to return a sweatshirt that belonged to him.

 Her words were chilling. “I’m going to give you this,” she said, “because I may not see you again.” Tom told her to keep the shirt. He didn’t understand what she was really saying. That evening, Susan fed her children dinner. She dressed them. She strapped them into their car seats in her burgundy 1990 Mazda Protegé. She also put something else in the car, her wedding dress, her photo album, everything that represented her failed life.

Around 9:00 p.m., Susan drove to John D. Long Lake about 5 miles from her home. It was a quiet, isolated spot with a boat ramp that sloped down into dark water. What happened next is something that even seasoned investigators struggle to comprehend. Susan got out of the car. Her children were still strapped in the back seat.

She released the parking brake and she watched the car roll down the boat ramp into the lake. Later, investigators would recreate the scene. They found that the car floated for approximately 6 minutes before sinking beneath the surface. 6 minutes. An eternity. Time enough to change her mind.

 Time enough to wade into the water and save her children. Susan didn’t save them. In her confession, she would later write, “I dropped to the lowest when I allowed my children to go down that ramp into the water without me. I wanted to turn around so bad and go back, but I knew it was too late. But was it?” For six whole minutes while that car floated on the surface of the lake, Susan could have saved her children. She chose not to.

After watching her car disappear into the lake, Susan ran to a nearby house owned by the Mloud family. She was hysterical, pounding on the door, screaming for help. “A black man has got my kids in my car,” she screamed. “Susan told the Mlouds and the police a detailed story. She claimed she had been stopped at a red light at the Monarch Mills intersection when a black man armed with a gun jumped into her car.

 He put the gun to her side and told her to shut up and drive. She said he forced her to drive several miles before ordering her to stop and get out. When she begged to take her children, he refused. “I don’t have time,” she claimed. He said, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt your kids.

” And just like that, one of the biggest manh hunts in American history began. Police distributed a sketch of Susan’s imaginary carjacker. A black man, about 40 years old, wearing a plaid jacket and dark toboggan. The sketch was posted in stores throughout Union and distributed nationwide. Innocent black men across the region were stopped and questioned by police.

Susan’s lie had racial implications that spread far beyond Union County. The FBI got involved. Helicopters flew over the area with heat sensors. Police dogs searched the woods. Divers explored nearby lakes, though they didn’t search far enough out in John D. Long Lake to find the car.

 The Adam Walsh Foundation, dedicated to finding missing children, joined the search. Tips poured in from across the country. Volunteers tied yellow ribbons around trees in Union. And through it all, Susan Smith cried on television. >> I want to say to my babies that your mama loves you so much. >> She appeared on every major news network. NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN.

She stood next to her aranged husband, David, who still believed her story, and they begged America to help find their children. “I just feel in my heart that you’re okay,” Susan said to the cameras, pretending to speak to her children. “But you got to take care of each other.” On the Today Show, she told America, “As a mother, it’s only a natural instinct to protect your children from any harm.

The hardest part of this whole ordeal is not knowing if your children are getting what they need to survive.” She was so convincing. Her tears seemed so real. Millions of Americans felt their hearts break for this desperate mother. But the whole time she was crying on camera, Susan knew exactly where her children were. They were at the bottom of John D.

Long Lake, still strapped into their car seats. From almost the very beginning, investigators had doubts about Susan’s story. Union County Sheriff Howard Wells, who was also Susan’s godfather and a family friend, noticed things that didn’t add up. First, there was the traffic light. That light was vehicle activated.

 It would only turn red if another car was waiting on the intersecting road. Susan had said there were no other cars around. So, why would the light have turned red? Second, there was the friend. Susan said she had been driving to visit a friend that night, but when police checked, that friend wasn’t even home. Third, there was the carjacker’s behavior.

 Detectives pointed out that carjackers want the car, not passengers. Why would a carjacker keep two young children in the vehicle? They would only slow him down and increase his risk of being caught. Fourth, there was Susan herself. When she arrived at the Mloud house, she wasn’t wet. She wasn’t disheveled. For someone who claimed to have just escaped a violent carjacking, she seemed remarkably composed.

FBI agent David Espie administered polygraph tests to both Susan and David Smith. David passed. His results showed he knew nothing about the children’s disappearance. Susan’s results were inconclusive. She had particular trouble with one question. Do you know where your boys are? Agent Espie later testified about something else he noticed during the interviews.

She would make sobbing noises, he said. But when I would look at her eyes, there was no water. There were no tears. By the sixth day of the search, investigators were privately convinced that Susan was lying. They believed she knew exactly where her children were. They just couldn’t prove it yet. Meanwhile, the whole country was still searching for a carjacker who didn’t exist.

On November 3rd, 1994, 9 days after Susan’s children disappeared, Sheriff Howard Wells decided it was time to confront her. Wells took Susan to a local Baptist church, just the two of them. He sat down with her, knee to knee, and told her what investigators had found. the inconsistencies, the failed polygraph, the physical evidence that didn’t match her story. And then Susan Smith broke.

She confessed to everything. Sled agent David Caldwell gave her a legal pad and told her to write down what had happened. At 5:05 p.m., Susan signed her handwritten confession. When I left my home on Tuesday, October 25th, I was very emotionally distraught, she wrote. I didn’t want to live anymore.

 I felt like things could never get any worse. She continued, 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 from any grief or harm. Susan wrote about her heartbreak over Tom Finley. I had never felt so lonely and so sad in my entire life.

 I was in love with someone very much, but he didn’t love me and never would. That same evening, divers returned to John D. Long Lake. This time, they searched farther from shore. 6 minutes into the dive, they found the car. It was upside down on the bottom of the lake about 122 ft from shore in 18 ft of water.

 Diver Steve Mororrow later testified about what he saw when he shined his flashlight through the murky water. I was able to see a small hand against the glass. Susan’s children were still inside, still strapped into their car seats. That night, Sheriff Wells held a press conference. The words he spoke shocked everyone who heard them. Susan Smith has been arrested and will be charged with two counts of murder in connection with the deaths of her children.

There were audible gasps from the crowd. The mother who had cried on television who had begged America to find her children had killed them herself. The most hated mother in America was finally exposed. Susan Smith’s trial began in July 1995. The prosecution was led by 32-year-old Tommy Pope, the youngest prosecutor in South Carolina at the time.

 He was determined to get the death penalty. The defense was led by David Brookke and Judy Clark, two attorneys who specialized in saving clients from execution. Clark would later go on to defend the Boston Marathon bomber and the Uni Bomber. Unlike the OJ Simpson trial happening at the same time in California, Judge William Howard banned cameras from the courtroom.

 But that didn’t diminish the public’s interest. Reporters from around the world packed into Union County. The prosecution’s case was devastating. They played Susan’s confession for the jury. They presented Tom Finley’s breakup letter, showing the jury exactly why Susan had decided her children were obstacles to her happiness.

Most powerfully, they showed a video recreation of the car sinking into John D. Long Lake. The jury watched as an identical car floated for six long minutes before disappearing beneath the surface. 6 minutes. The prosecutor let that sink in. 6 minutes when Susan could have saved her children.

 6 minutes when she chose to watch them die instead. Diver Steve Morrow testified about finding the car. His voice cracked as he described seeing that small hand pressed against the window glass. The defense tried a different approach. Judy Clark told the jury, “This is not a case about evil. This is a case about despair and sadness.

They argued that Susan was mentally ill. They brought up her father’s suicide, her stepfather’s abuse, her suicide attempts. They painted a picture of a woman who had been broken by life and snapped under pressure. The defense claimed that Susan had driven to the lake intending to kill herself along with her children.

 But at the last moment, her body willedled itself out of the car. It was a failed murder suicide, they argued, not coldblooded murder. But the prosecution had a devastating response. If Susan really wanted to die with her children, why did she run away? Why did she make up a fake carjacker? Why did she cry on television for 9 days? Why didn’t she just confess immediately? After just 2 and 1/2 hours of deliberation, the jury found Susan Smith guilty of two counts of murder.

 The trial then moved to the penalty phase. The same jury that had convicted Susan would now decide whether she should live or die. Prosecutor Tommy Pope argued passionately for the death penalty. He showed the jury images from the crime scene. He described in vivid detail what Susan’s children must have experienced as the water rose around them.

Susan Smith struck at the heart of every deep fear a child has. Pope told the jury when those boys went down that ramp they went into darkness. But the defense had a powerful weapon of their own. They called Beverly Russell to the stand. Susan’s stepfather, the man who had molested her for years, stood before the jury and admitted everything. He confessed to the abuse.

He acknowledged that his relationship with Susan had continued even after she was married, right up until 2 months before the murders. “I am responsible for and ashamed of what happened,” Russell said. He was claiming partial responsibility for creating the monster Susan had become. Two women in the gallery broke down crying.

 Susan herself became emotional for one of the few times during the trial, watching her abuser finally take some responsibility. David Smith, Susan’s ex-husband and the father of the children, also testified. His grief was so raw, so painful that several jurors wept as he spoke. State psychiatrists testified that Susan suffered from mental illness, including depression that had affected her judgment.

 One psychiatrist warned the court that Susan was still suicidal. After 2 and 1/2 hours of deliberation, the jury made their decision. They voted against the death penalty. Susan Smith was sentenced to life in prison. Under South Carolina law at the time, she would be eligible for parole after 30 years.

 The jury was never told about the parole possibility. They were instructed to take life in its plain and usual meaning. Later, jurors told reporters they believed life in prison was actually the harsher punishment. Susan would have to live the rest of her life thinking about what she had done. One juror said, “We all felt like Susan was a really disturbed person.

” The most hated mother in America had escaped execution. Susan Smith has now spent nearly three decades in prison. But her time behind bars has been far from quiet. In 2000, prison officials discovered that Susan had been having sexual encounters with two different prison guards. One guard, Houston Kaggel, pleaded guilty and spent 3 months in jail.

Both men lost their jobs. Susan was transferred to a different facility and special protocols were put in place. She’s never allowed to be alone with just one guard. Two or more staff members must be present whenever she’s being moved or supervised. But the scandals didn’t stop there. Susan has been disciplined multiple times for drug violations, including marijuana use.

 She’s been cited for self harm. She’s been caught using another inmate’s phone pin. And in 2024, just months before her parole hearing, she was caught communicating with a documentary filmmaker agreeing to provide contact information for her victim’s families in exchange for money. Prison records released under South Carolina’s Open Records Act revealed something else disturbing.

 Susan has been receiving romantic messages from multiple men, at least six different admirers, who promised her a home and a happy life if she ever gets out. One man told Susan he planned to use the birth dates of her dead children when playing the Powerball lottery. In 2015, on the 20th anniversary of her conviction, Susan wrote a letter to the state newspaper in South Carolina.

 In it, she continued to defend herself. “Something went very wrong that night,” she wrote. “I was not myself. I was a good mother, and I loved my boys. There was no motive, as it was not even a planned event. I was not in my right mind.” She ended the letter with words that infuriated many. “I am not the monster society thinks I am. I am far from it.

” Former prosecutor Tommy Pope, now a South Carolina state representative, had a blunt response. She has always taken a self-centered focus over the years. Pope said, “If you look at the letter, it’s still more about her, not about her sons, not about the regrets of the crime. It’s more about the way she’s perceived.

” On November 20th, 2024, exactly 30 years after her arrest, Susan Smith appeared before the South Carolina Board of Parles and Pardons for her first parole hearing. She testified via video link from prison. When she began to speak, she broke down in tears, her voice cracking. “I know what I did was horrible,” Susan said.

 and I would give anything if I could go back and change it. I love my sons with all my heart.” Her attorney argued that Susan was a victim of the dangers of untreated mental health. He noted she had no criminal history before the murders, making her low risk to the public. In her final statement, Susan invoked her faith.

 I am a Christian and God is a big part of my life and I know he has forgiven me. I just ask that you show that same kind of mercy as well. But 15 people showed up to oppose her release. David Smith, her ex-husband, stood before the board wearing a photo of his sons pinned to his jacket. He struggled to compose himself as he spoke. She changed my life for the rest of my life that night.

 David said this wasn’t a tragic mistake. She purposely meant to end their lives. I have never felt any remorse from her. Tommy Pope, the prosecutor who had sought the death penalty 30 years earlier, also testified against Susan’s release. Susan has always focused on Susan, Pope told the board. The evidence tells clearly that she has not focused on her sons.

 She only has and continues to focus on herself. When the parole board asked Susan about the law enforcement resources wasted searching for a carjacker who didn’t exist, her response was telling. “I didn’t lie to get away with it,” Susan said. “I was just scared. I didn’t know how to tell the people that loved them that they’d never see them again.

” The parole board’s decision was unanimous. Denied. In South Carolina, parole is granted to violent offenders only about 8% of the time. Susan’s chances were virtually zero from the start, given the notorious nature of her crime, her disciplinary record in prison, and the overwhelming opposition from the victim’s family.

Under state law, Susan can request another parole hearing in 2 years. David Smith has vowed to attend every single one. In two more years, we’ll go through this again,” David said after the hearing. “But at least I know for now, she’ll still be behind bars.” “It showed us that monsters don’t always look like monsters.

 Sometimes they look like crying mothers on television. Sometimes they look like the person begging you to help find their children. Susan’s lie about a black carjacker had lasting consequences. It reinforced harmful stereotypes. It wasted enormous law enforcement resources. It traumatized an entire community and caused innocent men to be stopped and questioned based on her false description.

After Susan’s arrest, her brother issued a public apology to the black community on behalf of the family, but the damage was already done. There’s one more tragic footnote to this story. In 1996, less than 2 years after Susan’s crime, seven more people died at John D. Long Lake.

 Two families had driven to the site to view the memorial markers for Susan’s children. While parked on the boat ramp, their vehicle somehow slipped into gear and rolled into the water. Three adults and four children drowned. It was the same divers who had recovered Susan’s car who had to pull these bodies from the water.

 It’s like it’s haunted or something. One local said, “It keeps taking lives.” Today, David Smith has rebuilt his life. He remarried, had two more children, and works in retail in Spartanberg, South Carolina. He says he still thinks about his sons every day. Beverly Russell, Susan’s stepfather, whose abuse contributed to her damaged psyche, resigned from his political positions after the trial.

 He eventually died, having acknowledged his role in the tragedy. Susan Smith remains at Leath Correctional Institution in South Carolina. She is now in her early 50s, having spent more than half her life in prison. Her next parole hearing will be in 2026. The questions this case raises don’t have easy answers.

 Does childhood trauma excuse what Susan did? No. But it might help explain how a person becomes capable of such horror. Should Susan ever be released? The parole board said no. The victim’s family says no. Most of America would probably agree. Was the death penalty the right punishment? The jury that heard all the evidence decided that life in prison was worse.

30 years of living with what she did. 30 years of being the most hated mother in America. But here’s the hardest question of all. How does a mother do something like this? The answer isn’t simple. It involves years of trauma, untreated mental illness, toxic relationships, and a moment of terrible desperation.

It involves a woman who valued the attention of a man more than the lives of her own children. Susan Smith cried on television. She begged on television. She pleaded with America to find her children. But the whole time she knew exactly where they were. And that’s what makes her one of the most hated mothers of all time.