Notorious South Carolina mother Susan Smith, who drowned her two young children after initially claiming a Black man had kidnapped them, was denied parole Wednesday.
“I wish I could take that back, I really do,” said Smith, now 53. “I didn’t lie to get away with it. … I was just scared. I didn’t know how to tell the people that love them that they’d never see them again.”
Smith said she is at some peace because of her Christian faith. God is a big part of her life, she testified Wednesday, “and I know he has forgiven me.”
It was her first appearance before the state’s parole board, which unanimously voted to keep her in prison for the rest of her life. Smith can apply for parole every two years now that she’s served 30 years in prison.
“I know that what I did was horrible,” she said in her testimony, delivered via Zoom. “And I would give anything if I could go back and change it.”
“I love Michael and Alex with all my heart,” she said openly weeping and wiping away tears.
The disappearance of 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex captured national headlines after their mother told a chilling story about how a Black man had stopped her car and taken her children. She appeared frequently on television, appearing every bit the distraught mom, and the search for her boys lasted nine excruciating days.