COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina mother convicted in 1995 of killing her two sons by rolling her car into a lake has a parole hearing set for Nov. 20, according to the state's parole board.
In Monday's announcement, officials said they have "noted an escalation in media and public attention related to the parole eligibility and hearing of inmate Susan Smith."
Susan Smith is serving a life sentence following her murder conviction nearly 30 years ago.
She captured the national spotlight when her boys, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex, disappeared Oct. 25, 1994.
But in the hours after the killing, Smith began a nefarious lie: she told police, the media, and anyone else who would listen that her vehicle had been carjacked by a black man, and it was that person who had kidnapped her children.
In tearful TV interviews, sitting behind her husband at the time, she begged for the "kidnapper" to bring her babies back. But all the while, she knew the truth: it was her who'd killed her own children.
"She was very conniving," former South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Chief Robert Stewart recalled in a 2014 interview with News19. "We felt very strongly her interviews on TV were not sincere. She was faking some of her reactions on TV."
Stewart said that from the beginning, law enforcement was skeptical of her account.
"We got our first break when she said the abduction happened at a traffic light in Union and that she stopped for a red light, and just out of nowhere, this black guy just came up and just opened the door and jumped in the car and he had a gun,"Stewart said. "We learned from the Department of Transportation that's not possible because the route she was taking was always green unless cross traffic came across."
Nine days later, after repeated questioning from law enforcement, she finally finally confessed. The sheriff of Union County at the time, Howard Wells, announced the news in a news conference that night. As he did, gasps could be heard from the audience of townspeople and media learned the horror of what happened.
The boys' bodies were found in the car, submerged a few feet from a boat ramp at John D. Long Lake in Union County.
During her trial, her defense tried to present her as a woman with a troubled past. They told jurors she'd been sexually molested for years as a child, dealt with the suicide of her father at age six, and tried to kill herself twice as a teenager.
Earlier in October 2024, Smith was charged for speaking with a filmmaker. She was convicted of an internal disciplinary charge of communicating with a victim or witness.
A press conference is expected to be held immediately following the hearing in November.
