Ep. 130 | The Kidnapping That Turned Into A Double Murder | Susan Smith

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  An empty road, a short drive home, and two kids in the backseat. In October 1994, a young mother in South Carolina set out on a drive just like that. But by the time it was over, she was standing alone on a dark road. And her car was gone. And her two little boys were gone with it. And within days, the whole nation was searching for those two little boys. It was the start of a story that would grip the country and hold on for years. This is the story of Michael Alexander and Susan Smith. Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder. All things that I love to consume, and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually-minded freak. And today, we're getting into a case that a lot of you have recommended.

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  So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts, go buckfiring down the highway, slam the brakes, and bust through the windshield into this case together.

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  And the link's at the top of the description and pinned in the comments. Thank you to Free Cash for sponsoring this video and supporting the channel. Now let's get back to it. Susan Lee Vaughn was born on September 26, 1971, in Union, South Carolina. And she was the only daughter and the youngest of three kids. And her mother, Linda, was a homemaker. And her father, Harry Ray, was a firefighter who later went to work in the textile mills. Now, her parents, Linda and Harry Ray Vaughn, had a marriage marked by violence, and in time, they would divorce. And on top of that, Harry drank, and he had convinced himself that Linda was being unfaithful. And the fighting would frighten the children, naturally.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  One playmate's mother remembered Susan as "unusual and sad", and would say Susan would stare in space like she wasn't there. But whenever her father was around, though, Susan would light up. Now, only two weeks after the divorce was final, Linda remarried. And her new husband was Beverly Russell Jr., a divorced father of three. And three weeks after that, on January 15, 1978, Harry Ray would take his own life. And at this point, Susan would only be six years old. And she had been close to her father and held on to pieces of him, including his coin collection and a recording of his voice. Now, Russell was a man of standing in Union. He owned an appliance store downtown and was a wealthy businessman.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  And he had sat on the executive committee of the state Republican Party and was a prominent member in the Christian Coalition. So Susan and her brothers would move out of their modest house and into Russell's home in one of the best parts of town. But behind that respectable public life, Russell was sexually abusing his stepdaughter. And it began when Susan was only 15 years old. And for a while, she would tell no one. And then in 1987, at 16, she told her high school guidance counselor and her mother. And Linda would confront him, and Russell admitted it and promised to stop. And the family went to counseling. But he would keep abusing her anyway. And by February of 1988, Susan came forward again

• 6:35Speaker 02

  and said it had continued straight through the counseling. And social services and the sheriff's office opened an investigation, and a caseworker interviewed Susan, her counselor, and her teachers. But no charges were filed, and Susan agreed not to press them. And Russell's lawyer and the solicitor worked out an argument instead. And on March 25, 1988, a judge sealed that agreement, and it never became public. But Susan was struggling and first tried to take her own life at 13 by swallowing aspirin. And she would try again on November 1988 at 17 years old. And while she worked at a Winn-Dixie supermarket part-time, she was drawn into an affair with an older, married coworker.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  And after he ended it, she was devastated and swallowed more aspirin and ended up in the hospital for about a week. And doctors would diagnose her behavior as part of an "adjustment disorder" and chalked it up to stress. And at 1989, she told a psychiatrist that what had happened with her stepfather had been consensual. And she resented that the male attention at home went to her mother instead of her. And all the while, despite the pain surrounding her, Susan seemed to be thriving. She did well in school and belonged to the Beta Club, along with math and Spanish and Red Cross Clubs. And she was president of the Junior Civiting Club and spent two years as a candy striper at the local hospital.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  And in her senior year, her classmates voted her the friendliest girl in school. And they remembered her as cheerful and down-to-earth. Now, Susan started at the Winn-Dixie in Union in the summer of 1988, the summer before her senior year. And she came in as a cashier and made head cashier within six months and was promoted again to the store's bookkeeper. And David Smith was a store clerk at the same store. Now, he was an average student who worked hard and had started working there after school when he was 16. And David had been dating his longtime girlfriend, Kristy Jennings, but their relationship eventually ended on good terms. And not long after that, he began dating Susan, drawn to her vivacity and million-dollar smile.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  And they dated about a year before they decided to get married. Now, Susan was only 19 years old at this point and two months pregnant as well. And David was 20. And 11 days before the wedding, David's older brother Danny would pass away at 22 of complications from Crohn's disease. But even with David's family in mourning, Linda, Susan's mom, insisted they hold the date so the pregnancy would not show. Everything's about image back then. Even is now, to be honest. So they married on March 15, 1991, at the United Methodist Church in Bogansville. And their first son was Michael Daniel Smith. And he was born at Mary Black Hospital in Spartanburg on October 10, 1991.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  And they gave him his middle name in honor of David's brother, Danny. Now David and Susan, soon after, bought a home together in the winter of 1993. And it was a small ranch house with dark red shutters. Now Beverly and Linda Russell put up the down payment for the house. And then soon after that, Alexander Tyler Smith was born on August 5, 1993, by emergency C-section. So by October of 1994, Michael had just turned three and Alex was 14 months old. And the boys had already become their own little people. Michael went by Mike Mike and Alex was Fat Rat. And Michael was sensitive and easily hurt, always in motion and quick to play.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  A sudden boo could set his lip quivering. And he was turning into a talker who loved being read to, the Snoopy comic strip most of all. And he liked to "help" his father in the shop at their home, toying with a little wrench at whatever David was fixing. And Alex was the easy one. Little would bother him and he stayed closest to his mother. And even so, Michael always looked out for his baby brother. He stepped in for Alex at the nursery if another kid took his toys and once ran off a stray cat that had frightened him. And both parents are remembered as very devoted to the boys. But they had separated multiple times by their third anniversary.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  And the first came in March 1992, when Susan restarted a relationship with a former boyfriend at the store. And David acknowledged the tension came from both sides. Quote, unquote, "I was a lousy husband. There was infidelity, but there was infidelity on her part, too. And money was a constant strain for them." Susan worried about the bills and borrowed from her mother, which angered David. And David had moved up in management by then, so at the store where they had both worked, he was Susan's supervisor. And employees there watched Susan come in crying, certain David was sleeping with one of the cashiers. And in June of 1993, while Susan was pregnant with Alex, David began a relationship with a cashier named Tiffany Moss.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  And within three weeks of Alex's birth, David moved out. And after Alex, Susan chose not to go back to the supermarket, because she would have been working under David alongside Tiffany Moss, who he was sleeping with. So instead, she got a job as a bookkeeper at Conso Products, the largest textile mill in Union. And in time, she became assistant to the executive secretary of the company, President J. Kerry Findley, earning $6.10 an hour. And she enjoyed the work. She would make travel arrangements, hotels for out-of-town clients, and ordered flowers, etc. And it put her close to a way of living she had never been near. Now Tom Findley, one of the J. Kerry Findley's three sons, was 27 and ran the graphic art

• 12:24Speaker 02

  department at his father's company. And his father had bought Conso in 1986, and it was likely no family in the county had more money. Now Tom lived in a guest house on the grounds of the family estate. And he was known for late-night hot tub parties and for swimming and golf at the Fairwood Country Club. And he was called "the catch" by the secretaries at Conso. Susan and Tom began seeing each other in January of 1994, during a separation moment in her marriage. And she hoped to leave Union with him for London, where his family was acquiring a plant. Now David did not let go quietly, though. He discovered the affair and threatened Findley.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  And Susan and Findley stopped seeing each other that spring. And in the spring and early summer of 1994, Susan and David tried to make the marriage work once more. So David moved back in and stopped seeing Tiffany Moss, the cashier. But at the end of July, Susan decided she was done, telling David she wanted to get a divorce. And in August, he rented a two-bedroom apartment two miles away. And he set up a room for the boys with a bed, a crib, and new toys. Now Susan started seeing Findley again in September, and in early October, she filed for divorce. So now they were officially separated. And that brings us to the night of the tragedy.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  So it was around 9 o'clock on the night of Tuesday, October 25, 1994, when Susan Smith came running up to Shirley McLeod's front door in Union, South Carolina. And she was frantic, pounding on the door. "Please help me," she cried out. "He's got my kids and my car. A black man has got my kids and my car." And from the house, the call went out to the sheriff's office. Quote, "I have a Susan Smith here," the dispatcher relayed, saying that someone has taken her children and her car. And she said she had been stopped at a red light on Highway 49 at the Monarch Mills intersection with both boys in the car, when a man opened the passenger door and got in.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  And he had a gun and he pressed it into her side, saying, "Shut up and drive." So Susan drove. And for five miles, she went down Highway 49 with the man beside her and her sons in the backseat. And then he told her to stop and get out. Quote, "Shut up and get out of the car, or I'm going to shoot you," unquote. And she said she begged to take her children, but he would say, quote, "Don't worry, lady. I'm not going to hurt your kids," unquote. And then he shoved her out onto the road and drove away. And at this point, Michael was three years old and Alex was 14 months, still inside the car. And that car was Susan's burgundy Mazda.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Now she described the man to the police as black, around 40, in a plaid jacket, a dark shirt, jeans, and a dark toboggan, or "touke" for my fellow Canadians. And a sketch artist turned her description into a face, and copies of it were soon taped up in shop windows all over town. Now David was working his shift as an assistant manager at the Winn-Dixie. And Susan called him there and he left the store in a panic to find his boys. And Sheriff Howard Wells of Union County took charge of the case. And local, state, and federal agents made the county courthouse their command center. And they searched immediately, but the first hours produced nothing. There was no sign of the car and no one matching the sketch, and no sign of the boys. So the search grew fast.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Volunteers came out to help on foot and from air alongside the police, and support arrived from around the county. And tips came in by the thousands, more than the investigators could keep count of. And the day after Susan reported the carjacking, the state law enforcement division put helicopters over John D. Long Lake and swept the neighboring Sumter National Forest with heat sensors. And police dogs worked the ground around Union. And the story became one of the biggest in the country. Families watched the news each night for word of the two boys, who came to be called "America's Children," and the coverage carried around the world. And Susan was in front of the cameras constantly.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  On NBC's Today Show, she said, quote, "As a mother, it's only a natural instinct to protect your children from any harm. And the hardest part of this whole ordeal is not knowing if your children are getting what they need to survive, and it hurts," unquote. And in another appearance, she spoke to Michael and Alex directly, as though they might be listening, saying, quote, "You guys have got to be so strong. I just feel in my heart that you're okay, but you got to take care of each other," unquote. And David would stand by her in the frenzy, and he pleaded, quote, "If the person who has mine and my wife's children see this, we come to you and we beg that you please do not hurt our children. Just find the compassion, find it somewhere in your heart to let them return home safely, and don't hurt them.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  You can take the car, whatever you want, just don't hurt our children," unquote. And the description of the perpetrator was general enough to fit a great many men. A black man around 40, that doesn't really narrow it down. So in Union, the search pressed hardest on black residents. And Mayor Harold Thompson spoke of men pulled from their homes and questioned because they matched what Susan had described. And the tension in town climbed through the nine days, even if it never fully boiled over. But away from the cameras, the investigators were beginning to doubt the carjacker even existed. And they brought Susan back in on October 26, and her account started to kind of come apart.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  And the problem was the intersection itself, because the light at Monarch stays green until a car on the cross street trips it. So with no other traffic around, it would have never actually turned red. And Susan had said she was sitting at that red light with no other cars in sight. And the friend she said she had been driving to see, a man named Mitch, had not been expecting her and was not home at that time of night. So she took a polygraph two days after the carjacking, and one question in particular gave her difficulty. And that question was, "Do you know where your boys are?" But as we know, polygraphs are not admissible in court. They're just something to gauge a possible suspect, essentially.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  And in public, Wells kept his footing, but the strain kind of showed. He would say, quote, "It's hard to imagine that the car just vanished, so we're doing all that we can backing ourselves up," unquote. But Susan wept through many television appearances. But up close, the investigator saw something that didn't match, because the tears never actually came. And the FBI agent who ran her polygraph, David Espy, noted that she made Fake sounds of crying with no tears in her eyes. And Roy Pascal, the artist who had drawn the carjacker from her description, came away doubting her as well. He felt she was generally vague while describing the kidnapper, but was pointed about certain tiny details in the sketch.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  And on the first night while riding to her mother's house, Susan told David that Findley might come by and she didn't want him upset. But with their sons missing, David couldn't make sense of a thought like that. And almost no one outside law enforcement knew it, but divers had already been in the lake. And on the night of the 25th, the same night Susan reported the carjacking, Wells called the state dive team and told them he had good reason to think a car was in John D. Long Lake. So they searched out from the boat ramp across the width of the launch and about 90 to 100 feet from shore. And a member of the dive team, Tim Baxley, said, "We got down to about 18 foot of water and we didn't run into anything, no car or person at the time."

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Unquote. Because it was as far out as they ever needed to look for a sunken car. So they packed up and went home because the Mazda was not in the stretch they had searched. All right, let's take a quick pause because I gotta be honest with you. Summer has completely wrecked my routine. Between trips, late nights and saying yes to everything, my eating has gone off the rails a little bit. Lot of eating out, lot of ordering in, lot of having girl dinners every single night of the week, like some pickles, a handful of shredded cheese with a bag of chips and some chocolate. The girls know what I'm talking about, but it's not sustainable, ladies. And now things are finally slowing down, but my to-do list isn't. And I needed a way to get back to eating real food

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• 22:29Speaker 02

  He said undercover officers had been working a drug investigation at the intersection where she said the carjacking happened and none of them had seen it. Quote, "This could not have happened as you said." And he also told her he would have to inform the press her story was a lie because her lie had caused undue pain to the black community and it was his duty to help end the division that came from it. And that carried real weight. And then Susan took his hands and asked him to pray. So Wells did. He prayed about the burden on her, her family, and the officers who had searched and asked God to lead them through it.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  He said that, quote, "In time, all this would be revealed." And then he looked at her and said, "It's time." And Susan broke. She dropped her head into her hands and sobbed. Quote, "I'm so ashamed. I'm so ashamed." And then she asked Wells for his gun and he softly asked her, "Why would you want to do that?" And through sobs, she answered, "You don't understand. My children are not all right." Because there had never been a black man in a plaid jacket. Susan had let her car roll into John D. Long Lake with Michael and Alex inside. And she told investigators she did not watch the car go under.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  She turned and ran with her hands pressed over her ears. And in her written confession, she described the moment, quote, "I dropped to the lowest point 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." And once she told them where the car was, Wells called the dive team back to the lake. And they now understood why they hadn't found anything in that same water days earlier. Baxley would explain, quote, "So we knew it wasn't within 100 feet of the ramp, which normally anytime we would have dove for a car before, we wouldn't have thought it would have gotten more than 100 feet out in the water."

• 24:36Speaker 02

  So Steve Morrow and another diver went back in the lake and found the Burgundy Mazda 122 feet from the edge. They, quote, "Actually laid hands on the car and determined the bodies were inside." They checked the windows to keep the scene sealed inside and hooked a wrecker cable and swam alongside as the car was drawn back to the shore. And Michael and Alex were in the backseat, each still strapped into his car seat. And Susan's wedding dress and photo album were in the car with them. And when the car came up out of the water that night, the people at the ramp came apart. Tommy Pope, the local prosecutor, was there and he would say, quote, "When that car is pulled out and in those two car seats

• 25:20Speaker 02

  are two precious boys who have been in the water for nine days. I saw men and women in law enforcement just crying." And Morrow had seen a great deal in his work, but not this, saying, quote, "There were a lot of seasoned law enforcement officers here that night and there were a lot of tears shed." And afterward, Morrow drove home to his own four-and-a-half-year-old son, saying, quote, "I hugged my wife. I don't think we spoke. And then I got in bed with my son and laid there for the rest of the night." So for nine days, the country had thrown itself behind Susan and David. Strangers held visuals, papered storefronts with flyers and flooded the police with tips about America's children.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  And now they had learned that the woman who had begged the cameras for her son's return was the one who had murdered them. And Pope said, quote, "The betrayal was worse than had there been a carjacker and that's what made it resonate. People were so drawn in to help and drawn in by Susan." And David learned the truth from a news report on TV. And he couldn't believe what he was seeing and hearing and he couldn't believe that he had to find out that way. He felt a swirl of emotions from sorrow to rage, saying, "I didn't know what to do. Everything I had planned on, my life with my kids, was gone." And he has since said the pain of the entire situation nearly took him with his sons, saying, quote,

• 26:47Speaker 02

  "What she did not only to Michael and Alex, she came pretty close to causing me to end my life because of the grief she brought upon me." And when Sheriff Wells finally arrived to deliver the news, he did so to the entire room of people at the Russell's house, including people that were essentially strangers to David. And despite the recognition Wells had received for his handling of the case, David still has not forgiven him for not delivering the news to him privately in that moment or even delivering it personally before the world heard. And for Union's black residents and for black Americans following it, the confession landed as its own kind of injury because the hunt for the perpetrator had pressed hardest on them and there had never even been a carjacking at all.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  And many in Union's black community had never believed the story to begin with. As columnist Gregory Kane put it, "A black man driving off with two little white boys, quote, "would have been caught within 15 minutes." And Vincent Dawson, a barber in Union, said, "When she pinpointed one of us, the authorities here were quick to start ransacking our community for a suspect. But since she confessed, no one has rushed forward to apologize. That doesn't make for a very strong community spirit." And Donald M. H., president of the National Association of Black County Officials, said the false accusation, quote, "Assaulted the character of every black male in America. This nation shamed that we accept such accusations without questions."

• 28:13Speaker 02

  But Susan's own family apologized to the black community. The situation pulled a long history into view. And Gloria Brown Marshall, a civil rights lawyer and law professor, said it against the lynchings. And black journalist Ida B. Wells had documented "many built on white women's word against a black man. It's a, quote, 'demonstrated position of power that white women have. It's a historical power play that still works today.'" So beneath the lie and everything it stirred, the story of how Susan reached the lake started eight days earlier with a letter. So on October 17th, 1994, Findley typed her a letter and handed it to her the next day at work.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  And he opened warmly, calling her intelligent, beautiful, sensitive and understanding. But the purpose of the letter was to end things and he told her why it couldn't work between them, saying, "Susan, I could really fall for you, but like I have told you before, there are some things about you that aren't suited for me. And yes, I am speaking..." "Your children," and he left no room to misread it, saying, "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." And Susan had carried that letter for a week when October 25th had come. And Finley

• 29:35Speaker 02

  said that he spoke with her three times that day. The first was frantic. She told Finley that David was threatening to tell others that she had slept with Finley's own father, Carrie, and with her stepfather, Beverly Russell. And the second time, she showed up to give his sweatshirt back, saying, "I want to give you this because I may not see you again." And Finley said, "It seemed very clear she was suicidal." And the third time, she came back with the boys and a friend, Susan Brown, and took back what she'd said about the relationship with Finley's father that David had threatened to reveal. And she was calmer than she had been in the morning at this point, even if she was still a bit shaken. But that evening, she drove the boys to John D. Long Lake,

• 30:17Speaker 02

  a little over five miles from home. She pulled onto the boat ramp, let off the emergency brake, and quietly shut the door. And both boys were apparently asleep behind her. And the car rolled into the water, and she ran. And by her own later account, her plan had been to hold both boys and jump from a bridge. But she changed course when one of them woke up. And the car stayed at the surface of the water for around six minutes before it went under, investigators would later find out. And then the rest of the evening unfolded, as we know. She ran to the McLeod house near the lake and raised the alarm. She told them a black man had taken her car at a stoplight and driven off with the boys inside. And

• 30:59Speaker 02

  that was a story she gave the police and then the whole country for nine days straight, while her boys were sitting deceased in the back of her car after she murdered them. And in her handwritten confession, she wrote about wanting to die and about not wanting to leave her boys behind. "I was very emotionally distraught. I didn't want to live anymore. I felt I couldn't be a good mom anymore, but I didn't want my children to grow up without a mom. I was in love with someone very much, but he didn't love me and never would. I had a very difficult time accepting that. When I was at John D. Long Lake, I had never felt so scared and unsure as I did then."

• 31:39Speaker 02

  And later, at trial, the two sides would read the same facts in opposite directions. Prosecutor Tommy Pope argued she killed the boys to win Finley back, pointing to the letter, because the man she wanted had told her the children were the obstacle. And then soon after that, she murdered two innocent babies. And then Sonny Hostin, a former federal prosecutor, described what Finley's testimony did to Susan's case. "Now you have someone saying, 'Yeah, I was in a relationship with her and broke it off because I didn't want the responsibility of children. Now the fingers pointed directly at her, I think it gives her the intent.'" And the defense, led by David Bruck, argued mental illness. A woman broken by her father's

• 32:23Speaker 02

  suicide, her stepfather's abuse, and repeated rejection, who had meant to die alongside her sons. And the defense said she lived with untreated depression and a dependent personality disorder. And as a teenager, when doctors raised the depression, her mother and father allegedly had refused to let her be treated. But to Pope, the lake was an erasure. Susan's wedding dress and photo album were in the car. So to him, she was packing away the life she wanted gone. "She basically packed up that whole part of her life and put it in that lake." And he never actually believed her claim that she ran without watching, saying, "Some of the best lies are wrapped up in truth." And years later, in a 2015 letter to South Carolina newspaper, she rejected the idea

• 33:08Speaker 02

  that she killed for a man, saying, "The thing that hurts me the most is that people think that I hurt my children in order to be with a man. That is so far from the truth. There was no motive, as it was not even a planned event. I was not in my right mind." Now, neither reading of the facts answers everything. If it was only about Finley, the confession's language about dying alongside her sons doesn't quite fit. And if it was only a failed suicide, the nine days of lies that followed don't look like a woman in collapse. However, what it is not, in dispute, is what Susan did at that lake and what it cost Michael and Alex.

• 33:49Speaker 03

  Susan Smith has been arrested and will be charged with two counts of murder in connection with the deaths of her children, Michael, three, and Alexander, 14 months.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Now, the same day Susan confessed, November 3rd, she was arrested. And the charge was two counts of murder, one for each boy. And she was taken southeast of Union to the South Carolina Women's Correctional Institution in Columbia and placed in an isolation cell with nothing but a blanket and a Bible. And guards watched her around the clock because of the risk she would take her own life. And the next day, she appeared at the Union County Courthouse for a bail hearing. And her parents put together a defense team, including David Bruck and Judy Clark, a Capitol Defense attorney already making a name for herself. And she'd actually later defend the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Boston Marathon Bomber Jakar Zarnyev, whom of which I will cover at some point, because a lot

• 34:45Speaker 02

  of you guys have asked. So on December 12th, a state grand jury indicted her on the two murder counts, and the charges could carry a death sentence. But before any of that could play out, Union had to bury the boys. And on November 6th, three days after the confession, the town gathered at Buffalo United Methodist Church, a short drive from the lake. And more than 1,000 people came. And the two boys were buried together in one white coffin. And their mother was not there. She was in her cell, unable to attend. And David, distraught, stayed by the casket through the morning, then went home to change and came back for the service. And so many flowers were ordered for the funeral home

• 35:26Speaker 02

  and the lakeside that the florist across the area completely ran out of flowers. And Reverend Mark Long, who led the service, spoke to the anger that had gripped the town since the confession. "They have to look beyond their own anger. It has to be dealt with in a positive way, knowing that it's all right to vent that kind of anger. But then it must be left in the hands of God." And at a service that Sunday, Long asked for something harder. He said that despite what she had done, Susan was still a child of God, and that God still loved her. And he asked for members of the community to, "Reach out to someone who has done a heinous crime and say, 'God forgives you, and we forgive you.'"

• 36:08Speaker 02

  And during the search, the town had tied up yellow ribbons everywhere in support of the missing boys. And after the funeral, the ribbons came down, and light blue and white ones went up in their place in honor of Michael and Alex. And at the boat ramp, where the car had gone into the water, the town set memorial markers and planted a young tree. Let's take a quick pause, because I want to tell you a little story. So, last weekend, I finally did the thing I've been avoiding all year, probably for the past two years, to be honest. I cleaned out my closet, and I found a whole rack of stuff I kept swearing I'd wear and just spent too much money on but never even wore. And I'm like, why do I even have this? Like, a jacket I bought for one event, or jeans that haven't seen

• 36:53Speaker 02

  the light of day, ever, and don't fit me. And it was a little embarrassing, because that's real money just hanging there. So, I tried out Vinted. And if you haven't heard of it, Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app that makes it easy for everyday sellers, people like you and me, to sell pre-loved fashion and earn some extra money. And listing on Vinted is quick and super simple. I am not tech savvy, and it is a very simple system. I just snapped a few photos, added a description, and listed a whole pile of clothes from the couch I was sitting on. Very simple. And once something sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. So there's literally no hassle figuring out postage.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  And the part that really got me is that there are no seller fees. So whatever you make, you actually keep. And that made me want to list even more stuff. It's very freeing, just getting rid of stuff. And it's a bonus, that you get a little extra cash from it. And yes, maybe I did put my first few sales toward a couple new pieces for fall, but my closet actually has some breathing room now. So see what's hiding in your closet. You might be surprised how much you can earn with Vinted. So download the Vinted app for free to start listing with no seller fees. Thank you so much to Vinted for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel, and let's get back to it. Now, Susan's trial opened on July 18th, 1995, in Union before Judge William Howard. And

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Tommy Pope led the prosecution, as we know, while David Bruck and Judy Clark defended her. And that same summer, the O.J. Simpson trial was running in Los Angeles under constant television coverage. But in Union, the judge kept cameras out of the courtroom. And guilt was never the question, because Susan had already confessed. The trial instead was about two things: why she did it, and what her punishment should be. The Pope's case came down to one argument. Susan killed the boys because they stood between her and Tom Finley, the man she wanted. And essential evidence was a two-page letter Finley had typed for Susan, pulled from the Mazda at the bottom of the lake. Yes, the letter was

• 39:01Speaker 02

  in the Mazda. So I think it's extremely relevant. And he showed the jury a videotaped reenactment of a car like Susan's rolling down the ramp and sinking beneath the surface. And he showed them photographs of the Mazda coming out of the lake with the boys still strapped in and clips of Susan on television during the nine days begging for the sons she had drowned already and diver Steve Morrow testified about reaching the car at the bottom of the lake saying quote I was able to see a small hand against the glass unquote now the Mazda had gone in nose first he said leaving Michael and Alex hanging upside down in their seats and the defense's answer was that this was not

• 39:41Speaker 02

  a calculated murder but a suicide that failed a woman whose mind had come apart after facing rejection from the man she loved and the state was asking the jury for death and Pope stood by that choice saying quote this community can begin to heal it's taken a tremendous toll but it's something that had to be done unquote but the town's mood had shifted right after the crime Union had wanted her executed but as Susan's history came out the abuse and the long depression sympathy started to grow and for the first time in the case Beverly Russell was called to the stand Russell her stepfather and a fixture

• 40:22Speaker 02

  in the community stood in front of the jury and wept he admitted molesting Susan from the age of 15 and said the sexual relationship had continued as recently as August 1994 two months before the death of her sons and then through tears he pulled out a letter he had sent her in jail and read it to the courtroom quote I want you to know you do not have all the guilt in this tragedy my heart breaks for what I have done to you unquote and a caseworker named Jenny Ward also testified for the defense about investigating Susan's abuse allegation quote that is child sexual abuse it is criminal in nature the child said it the perpetrator admitted it that's a case unquote but no charges were

• 41:07Speaker 02

  ever brought as we know and Ward believed the family had been intimidated by Russell's political standing and the file was sealed quote that's the only order I've sealed in 20 years unquote now under cross-examination Pope pushed her to concede that Susan had shown no sign of being suicidal at the time and Ward gave him that but held her ground saying quote I hold adults responsible for adult behavior unquote and a defense psychiatrist told the jury that after David left in August 1994 Susan sank into depression drinking more and sleeping with several men at once one of them being her stepfather and witnesses

• 41:47Speaker 02

  walked the jury through her two teenage attempts and her father's suicide when she was six and a prison guard Felicia Mungo said Susan often broke down crying over the boys behind bars and David testified for the prosecution and his account of losing his sons left several jurors in tears he had wanted the death penalty for her and under South Carolina law a life sentence could mean parole in 20 or 30 years and to David that was not nearly enough saying quote I feel she doesn't deserve another chance in society she gave up that right unquote Susan would never testify herself and also when the moment came for a closing statement she waved it and Judy Clark closed for the defense saying quote sadness is what

• 42:32Speaker 02

  brings us together not evil the love of Susan Smith for those two boys was unbelievable there was no evidence of anything but absolute unconditional love the only two people who loved her unconditionally are gone she made that decision with confused mind and heart that has no hope unquote and Brock argued that a life sentence would be its own punishment that Susan would carry the grief and the memory of what she had done for the rest of her days and then Pope closed for the state saying quote on the night of October 25 Susan Smith made a choice a horrible horrible choice she chose the love of a man over the

• 43:13Speaker 02

  love of those boys unquote and Pope told the jury that the instant Susan let that break off it was as if she had pulled the trigger and he spoke about the boys saying quote mercifully they truly never understood why it happened they knew it was dark they knew they were scared and they knew they were alone unquote so on July 22 after only two and a half hours the 12 jurors eight white and four black three women and nine men found Susan guilty on both counts and six days later on July 28 they came back from another two and a half hours with a unanimous decision on the sentence they rejected death and Susan would spend the rest of her life in prison and juror Deborah Benvenuti

• 43:57Speaker 02

  explained quote we all felt like Susan was a really disturbed person and we all felt that giving her the death penalty wouldn't serve justice unquote and Judge Howard called their choice the toughest moral decision anyone has to make and as the verdict was read Susan put her head on Brock's shoulder and patted his back then wept as the guards let her out and David sat stone-faced and he told reporters quote this is the most difficult thing I've had to do I guess since I buried Michael and Alex unquote and he said that he was disappointed with the outcome but respected the jury's decision and outside the courthouse the crowd was divided and back in her cell she went on suicide watch again

• 44:40Speaker 02

  with a camera on her at all times and a guard passing every 15 minutes with no visitors for the first days and under South Carolina law then her life sentence left open the possibility of parole after 30 years since then Susan has spent three decades in the South Carolina prison system and is now held at the Leith Correctional Institution in Greenwood County and her years inside have not been quiet she has been disciplined more than once for drug possession and for sexual encounters with correctional officers and in 2000 she picked up a sexually transmitted infection behind bars and an investigation found that two officers a lieutenant named Houston Kegel and a captain named Alfred

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Rowe had sex with her while she was in their custody and more disciplinary action came after she gave a documentary producer contact details for her relatives and for David and in August 2024 just before her first shot at parole she lost her canteen phone and other privileges for 90 days for contacting a victim or witness of a crime and in the time since these actions records show no further trouble and she has earned work credits as a ward keeper assistant since October of 2024 now under the law as it stood when she was sentenced Susan's life term did not mean life without parole South Carolina abolished parole for life sentences in 1996 but the change did not reach back to her

• 46:07Speaker 02

  case so on November 4 2024 after 30 years Susan Smith became eligible for parole for the first time and on November 20 she appeared before the state parole board by video and was unanimously denied and she will be eligible again in November of 2026 and every two years after that and Tommy Pope came to speak against her release saying quote Susan has always focused on Susan Susan made a horrible horrible choice to choose a man over her family if she could have put David in the car he would have been there too unquote and over the years Susan has given her own account of the night more than once and in a 2015 letter

• 46:49Speaker 02

  she wrote to a reporter at the state in Columbia she insisted that she was not the monster society thinks I am something went very wrong that night she wrote planned to kill myself first and leaving a note behind telling what happened but didn't believe I could face my family when the truth was revealed unquote and at the 2024 hearing she wept as she addressed the board quote I know that what I did was horrible and I would give anything if I could go back and change it I love Michael and Alex with all my heart unquote and the board asked how she would answer the responders and law enforcement she had misled and she said quote I'm sorry that I put them through that I didn't lie to get away with it I was just scared I didn't know how to tell people that love them that

• 47:34Speaker 02

  they'd never see them again I am Christian and God is a big part of my life and I know he has forgiven me unquote and her lawyer Tommy Thomas framed the case as one about quote the dangers of untreated mental health unquote pointing to an undiagnosed depression after Alex was born and he noted she had no prior record and said that if released on parole she would live with her brother David rebuilt his life as best he could he married again in 2003 to Tiffany Moss the cashier and they had a daughter and later another child but he has never accepted the sentence as enough saying quote she deliberately

• 48:14Speaker 02

  killed Michael and Alex and they can't let her out 30 years is not enough I wanted an eye for an eye but the jury saw different unquote and at the 2024 hearing he sat before the board in tears and asked them to keep her in prison saying quote this wasn't a tragic mistake she purposely meant to end their life unquote and she had served by his math 15 years for each boy and the others in the story went their separate ways Beverly Russell her stepfather resigned from the state Republican Party in April of 1995 once the abuse became public and he lived his last years quietly with his wife and would die at his home in April of 2018 at the age of 70 and Howard Wells the sheriff

• 48:57Speaker 02

  whose questioning had broken the case later fell into trouble of his own and in 2009 a federal grand jury indicted him for persuading a witness to mislead investigators in a loan inquiry and he pleaded guilty to lying to a federal agent about money he had loaned and in September of In 2010, he was sentenced to 90 days in prison. And Tom Findley, the man whose letter had sat at the center of it all, has kept out of the public eye in the years since. Over 30 years, this story has often been told as Susan's. But this last part belongs to her sons. Michael Daniel Smith, who was only three years old, and Alexander Tyler Smith, who was only 14 months. And David's clearest memory of the two of them

• 49:41Speaker 02

  was a simple game they played with blocks. Michael would build a tall tower, and Alex would come blazing through the construction, sending the blocks flying. And Alex would laugh, and Michael would join in with him. And it was a laugh, David wrote, quote unquote, "You could catch like spring fever." And even after he and Susan separated, David kept the boys' bedtimes the way they had always been. He would bring them back to her place at the end of the day and get them ready for sleep, giving Michael the bath he loved and the hair washing he couldn't stand. And after they had kissed Alex goodnight in his crib, the two parents and Michael would lie down together on a pallet on the floor until the boy drifted off. And Michael had fallen asleep between his mother and father since he was a baby.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Lying there in the dark beside his estranged wife was strange, David admitted, but it was all for the boys, he said. Michael was daddy's boy. And when David was no longer living with Susan, she told him Michael would wake in the night crying, saying, quote unquote, "I want my data." And Alex was still a baby, and David was trying to turn him into a daddy's boy, too. He fed Alex his baby food and took care of both boys if they ever got sick during the night. And whatever he had gotten wrong in the marriage, David believed he had been, quote unquote, "a good father to Michael and Alex." Two stone markers stand today as memorials to them off at Lockhart Highway, a short way up, a small road near the lake. And a visitor once called it

• 51:08Speaker 02

  "a quiet, well-kept place with a bit of serenity." And David has carried the weight of the loss for three decades, but he's done what he can to keep living. He built a new family, and he says that now he struggles to remember his boys. He has forgiven Susan, though forgiveness isn't forgetting. "I've forgiven her," he says, "but it still doesn't take away the act of what she did. It doesn't make it any less, any easier." Unquote. And he has promised to keep their memory alive by coming back to parole hearings every two years for as long as the hearings go on. But the case left a mark. Its name still calls up two things at once: a mother who drowned her own boys and the man she invented to carry the blame.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  But whatever it came to mean for people, none of it undoes the two boys that were lost. Michael and Alex were taken, along with every ordinary day that should have come afterwards. But that is the case of Michael and Alexander. And yeah, this is a very tough case. I know a lot of you asked for me to deep dive into this case, and I know a lot of you would like me to deep dive into others. So please let me know in the comments what other cases you would like me to look into. And until then, I will see your beautiful face. All right, please stay safe out there. Bye.

• 52:25Speaker 04

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