Thirty years ago the story of a young white mother from South Carolina captured the nation’s attention when she claimed to have been carjacked by a Black man who forced her out of the vehicle and drove away with her two young sons in the car.
For nine days in October 1994, the community rallied behind Susan Smith, then 23, and her then-husband David, as they stood in front of TV cameras and tearfully pleaded for the safe return of their boys – Michael, 3, and Alexander, 14 months.
But the whole time, the bodies of the two little boys were at the bottom of a South Carolina lake, still strapped in their car seats inside their mother’s car.
The boys’ mother knew exactly where they were the whole time.
On November 3, 1994, Smith confessed that she had strapped her toddlers into their car seats, driven to a boat ramp, put her car in neutral and let it roll into the lake. She watched the car sink beneath the surface, with her children trapped inside.