The end of a brand new relationship with a wealthy local man caused a woman to drive her two children into a lake since he didn’t want a “ready made” family.
October 25th 1994, a frantic mother reported that her car had been hijacked with her two young sons still strapped into the backseat. Michael Daniel Smith, age 3 years, and Alexander Tyler Smith, age 14 months, had been kidnapped. Susan could only tell the police that when she stopped at a traffic light, an African-American man rushed the car, forcing her out before speeding away.
Right away, Susan began making public pleas on TV, desperately calling for the safe return of her children. While she was in front of cameras, a nationwide search was taking place to find either the boys, the man who had taken them or the family car.
Teams were sent out to the lakes and ponds as a part of the publicised search efforts. Through basic maths, it was determined that the car would’ve only made it around 30 feet from the shoreline.
It would be nine days of hunting for a lead and rising racial tensions in Union, South Carolina, before Susan went to the investigators with a confession. She knew where her boys were.
On November 3rd, Susan confessed that she let her Mazda Protegé roll down a docking ramp at John D. Long Lake with Michael and Alexander in the back. The two boys had no chance of surviving the rising water, unable to undo the buckles holding them in their car seats; the thing meant to keep them safe signed their death certificates.
Susan claims she didn’t have a motive or a plan for the attack. However, it is widely reported that just before the murders, she received a letter from her at-the-time boyfriend. In the letter, he ended their relationship as he didn’t want a “ready made” family.
It was later revealed that the investigators had been suspicious of Susan and her story since the second day of the investigation. They suspected she knew where Michael and Alexander were located but weren’t confident they were alive.
On the second day of investigations, Susan and David, Michael and Alexander’s father, took polygraph tests. The results of Susan’s test came back inconclusive. Still, with investigators already keeping her under a watchful eye, they saw it as an indicator that she was lying about something in her story. A polygraph machine and an expert were present in her following interviews.
A big break in the case came through Susan’s retelling of what happened that night. She claimed to have stopped at a traffic light when the man hijacked her car, but the lights in the area she claimed it happened would have only turned red if another vehicle had been at the intersection. Susan said that no one else was in sight as far as she could see.
After Susan’s confession, a team returned to John D. Long Lake, pushing further out in the water. The Smith family car was found 120 feet from the shoreline; it had gone 60 feet upon entering and floated a further 30 feet. In the murky water, a diver pressed up against the back passenger window seeing a little hand against the glass; two bodies were still strapped in the backseat of the car.
Two theorised timelines were presented in court.
Susan’s defence lawyers tried to argue that Susan had contemplated taking her own life that night at the lake, releasing and resetting the handbrake multiple times. When she finally let go, and the car was rolling towards the water, survival instincts took over, and she bailed from the vehicle.
However, prosecuting lawyers pointed out a flaw in their theory. Susan’s clothes remained pristine. If she had dove from her car, her clothes would have been crumpled, dirty, and possibly ripped, but there wasn’t any marking on them. The prosecution said this meant Susan was standing outside the car when she released the handbrake, watching as the car with her sons in the back sunk into the lake.
In court, Susan was sentenced to life in prison over a death sentence as it was argued that she no longer wanted to live as she was “distraught” over her sons’ murders. Yet when it was revealed the jury wasn’t going for capital punishment, Susan appeared pleased.
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