She Drowned Her 3-Year-Old and Her 14-Month-Old.
The Parole Board Hears Her Again November 19, 2026.
- 3 yrsMichaeland 14-month-old Alexander, strapped in car seats and rolled into John D. Long Lake — Oct 25, 1994
- 9 daysfalse pleaduring which officers searched Black neighborhoods on her false carjacking story before her Nov 3 confession
- 30 yearsto paroleunder SC's 1994 sentencing law · jury rejected the death penalty · life with possibility of parole
- Nov 192026 hearingnext eligibility date · 2024 parole denied unanimously · disciplined Oct 2025 for unauthorized filmmaker contact
On the evening of October 25, 1994, Susan Smith — 22 years old, recently separated from her husband David Smith, and according to her later trial testimony reeling from a relationship with the son of a wealthy local employer who had told her he wasn’t interested in raising someone else’s children — drove from the parking lot of a Walmart in Union, South Carolina, toward John D. Long Lake. Michael, her 3-year-old, was strapped into a forward-facing car seat in the rear bench. Alexander, 14 months old, was rear-facing in the seat next to him.
Smith parked the car at the top of the boat ramp, got out, released the parking brake, and pushed the door shut. The car rolled forward, off the ramp, and into the lake. Forensics later established it took roughly six minutesfor water pressure to overcome the sealed cabin and submerge it fully — both children would have been conscious for most of that interval.
She then ran approximately a quarter-mile to the home of strangers, banged on the door, and asked them to call 911. She told the responding deputies that a Black man had jumped into her car at a red light, ordered her out, and driven off with her sons still in the back. Police, the FBI, and a national audience spent the next nine days believing her.
From October 25 to November 3, 1994, the case operated as a kidnapping investigation under a false racial premise that Smith had personally manufactured. Officers conducted door-to-door searches of Black neighborhoods across Union County and the surrounding region. They set up roadblocks. They questioned innocent men. The story was on every national broadcast. Smith appeared on Today, on CBS, on local affiliates, weeping for cameras and pleading for the safe return of her sons.
Lead prosecutor Tommy Pope (R-SC)— then the elected Solicitor for the South Carolina 16th Judicial Circuit, now a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives — later said in interviews that what haunts him most about the case is what Smith was willing to risk:
“Susan's description was so generic, if she had stuck with it and tried to identify somebody… it's terrifying to think if she had really named somebody.”
Tommy Pope (R-SC), lead prosecutor · then Solicitor, 16th Judicial Circuit · now a state representative
On November 3, after polygraph results contradicted her account, Smith confessed. She told sheriff’s investigators where to find the car. Divers recovered it that afternoon. The boys were still in their car seats.
The State of South Carolina sought the death penalty. Pope’s prosecution team argued that Smith’s actions were premeditated, that she had killed her sons because they were an obstacle to a relationship with a man who didn’t want them, and that no mitigating factor justified sparing her life. The defense, led by attorney David Bruck, argued that Smith was suicidal and mentally ill at the time of the killings, that she had been sexually abused by her stepfather as a teenager, and that the deaths were a botched murder-suicide. The jury convicted her on both counts of murder on July 22, 1995, after deliberating for 2.5 hours.
At sentencing, the same jury rejected the death penalty and recommended life. Under South Carolina law as it stood in 1994, life-with-possibility-of-parole meant a minimum of 30 years before first eligibility. That clock started in 1994. It expired in November 2024.
South Carolina’s mandatory life-without-parole standard for murder did not become law until 1996, two years after Smith’s crime. Her sentence is governed by 1994 statute. Under that statute, every two years she is statutorily entitled to a parole-board review.
She was reviewed in November 2024 (denied, unanimously). She is reviewed again November 19, 2026. If denied again, the next clock starts: November 2028. Then November 2030. Indefinitely.
This is the structural fact. Each hearing requires the family to relive it. Her ex-husband, David Smith, the boys’ father, was at the 2024 hearing. He has said publicly he will be at every one going forward.
On November 20, 2024, the South Carolina Parole Board met at the Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services in Columbia. Smith, 53, appeared via video link from Leath Correctional Institutionin Greenwood. Fifteen witnesses appeared in opposition, including David Smith, members of his and Susan’s extended families, and law-enforcement officers from the original investigation. Smith’s only supporting voice was her own.
“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.”
Susan Smith · statement to the South Carolina Parole Board · November 20, 2024
All voting members of the seven-member parole board denied parole. One member recused. The board cited two reasons in its written denial: “the nature and seriousness of the crime” and “Smith’s institutional record of offenses.”The institutional record matters because it is the only thing about Smith’s case that has changed since her conviction — and what has changed about it is not in her favor.
Smith’s prison disciplinary record across 31 years includes drug infractions and at least two consensual sexual relationships with prison staff — both of which led to firings and one criminal prosecution of a male officer. But the specific incident the parole board cited in 2024, and that flagged her again ahead of 2026, is more recent. In August 2025, South Carolina Department of Corrections internal investigators charged Smith with “communicating with a victim and/or witness of a crime” after she was caught speaking by phone with a documentary filmmaker. Per Post and Courier and Fox Carolina reporting on the disciplinary file:
The contact: Smith spoke by phone with a documentary filmmaker (name redacted by SCDC) over multiple calls.
The conversations: Smith and the filmmaker discussed how she could be paid for her participation in the documentary and discussed timing the documentary’s release for after her parole hearing.
The rule: South Carolina prison policy bars inmates from doing media interviews by phone or in person; only written correspondence is permitted.
The outcome: Smith was found guilty at an internal disciplinary hearing on October 3, 2025 and lost telephone, tablet, and canteen privileges for 90 days starting October 4, 2025.
The reading: A woman who killed her two children, told a national television audience that a Black man had stolen them, and is now eligible to walk every two years for the rest of her life was simultaneously running negotiations from a prison phone to monetize the story. The board read it the way it reads.
David Smith, Michael and Alexander’s father, was 24 years old when his sons were murdered. He has spent the 30 years since rebuilding a life around the absence and showing up at every legal proceeding the system has produced. He testified at the 1995 trial. He testified at the 2024 parole hearing. In a recent interview with NBC, asked what he would tell the parole board if it ever leaned the other way, he answered:
“You can't let her out. She killed two innocent children. There is no excuse, there is no rehabilitation, there is no time served. They were three and one. You can't let her out.”
David Smith, father of Michael (3) and Alexander (14 months) · NBC interview · 2024
The 1995 jury that spared Susan Smith’s life believed a story of mental illness and trauma. The 2024 parole board, with thirty years of additional record in front of it — including evidence she was using a contraband phone to negotiate the resale value of her own confession — voted unanimously against release. The November 19, 2026 board will read the same record. Under South Carolina’s 1994 sentencing law, every two years the family of Michael Daniel Smith (3) and Alexander Tyler Smith (14 months) is required to come back and explain again why the woman who strapped two babies into car seats and watched the lake take them should not be allowed to walk into the rest of her life. The hearing is on the calendar. The answer should be the same one.