COLUMBIA, S.C. (Court TV) — All voting members of the South Carolina parole board denied killer mom Susan Smith‘s bid to be released from prison after serving 30 years.
Smith appeared before the parole board for the first time after reaching eligibility. She was sentenced to life in prison in 1995 for killing her sons, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex, by drowning them in the family car which she rolled into a lake.
“First of all, I want to say how very sorry I am,” Smith told the board, choked by tears. “I know what I did was horrible, and I would give anything if I could go back and change it. I loved Michael and Alex with all my heart.”
Susan Smith cries into a tissue during a parole board hearing on Nov. 20, 2024. (Court TV)
When the board asked Smith whether she had a message for those who searched for the boys after she initially lied and said they were kidnapped during a carjacking, Smith said, “I’m sorry that I put them through that. … I’m especially sorry to the divers that had to find them. I wish I could take that back, I really do. I was just scared.”
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Smith’s attorney, Tommy Thomas, spoke on her behalf at the hearing and told the panel, “It’s a mental health story. It’s about the dangers of untreated mental health. It’s about the lack of insight, the lack of diagnosis into mental health, and it’s about stigmas.” Thomas told the board that Smith had attempted to take her own life several times, both before she killed her children and while behind bars for their murders.
Thomas said that part of Smith’s motivation to appear at the hearing, beyond seeking freedom, was a desire to “get the truth out,” saying that the murders were “not about the love of another man.” At Smith’s 1995 trial, prosecutors suggested that the reason she killed her children was because she was having an affair with a wealthy man who did not want kids. But Thomas said that the motive was never proven at trial and was, in fact, abandoned by the state. Rather, Thomas said, the murders were the result of “multiple stress points that converged all at the same time,” but did not offer any further explanation.
As for what she might do after leaving prison, Thomas told the board that Smith would like to work with animals and wants to “live a quiet life.”
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Tommy Pope, who prosecuted the case in 1995, spoke at the hearing and urged the board to keep Smith behind bars. While Pope had asked the jury to sentence Smith to death, the jury elected to spare her life and sentenced her to life in prison. But, Pope said, the jurors didn’t know that she would ever be eligible for parole. “Susan has always focused on Susan,” Pope told the board. “[The jury] believed Susan should have to reflect on what she did to Michael and Alex, that she should have to spend the rest of her life thinking about what she’d done.”
David Smith, Susan’s ex-husband and the father of the two boys, urged the panel to keep her in prison, saying the grief over losing his children nearly drove him to take his own life. “I understand back in ’95 that the state’s law meant life in prison meant 30 to life and now that’s different, but at that time that’s what counts. But ultimately to me, it’s only 15 years per child. Her own children. It’s just not enough.”
Under South Carolina law, Susan will be eligible to appear for a parole hearing every two years. David told the board he planned to see them in the future: “I will be here every two years going forward to ensure that their death doesn’t go in vain.”
