As Her Parole Date Nears, Susan Smith Thinks She Would Make a “Good Stepmother”

Susan Smith killed her two children in 1994.
The murderer is currently serving a life sentence in a South Carolina prison.

Smith believes she will be a good stepmother and wants to be around kids.

One of her relatives has spoken out and said she doesn’t deserve to get out of prison.

(NewsReady.com) – Susan Smith is a name burned into the minds of many Americans who were alive in the late 1900s. The news played videos of her begging the country to help her find her children over and over again. She was later convicted of murdering the kids she cried for on national television. Three decades later, she’s nearing her parole date and made a wild claim.

The Crime

On October 25, 1994, Smith called the police in Union County, South Carolina, to report she’d been carjacked by a black man, and he’d stolen the car. She said her two children, 3-year-old Michael Daniel and 1-year-old Alexander Tyler, were in the vehicle at the time.

For nine days, she pleaded with the public to help her find her children. She begged the alleged assailant to return her boys to her. Police across the country launched a massive manhunt to find the little boys.

Then, on November 3, Smith confessed to police that she killed her children.

The 22-year-old mother strapped her sons into their car seats and drove her car into John D. Long Lake in Union County. The boys were trapped in her car and drowned. She told authorities that she killed her kids because she wanted a relationship with a wealthy man who broke up with her after telling her he didn’t want any kids.

In 1995, Smith was found guilty of murdering her sons. She was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole. That parole date is coming up soon, and she has expressed a desire to be a mom again.

A Good Stepmom?

The Messenger reported Smith is talking to several possible suitors ahead of her parole hearing at the Leath Correctional Institution in South Carolina. In one phone call recorded in October, she told one of them that she “could see [herself] around kids” and believed she would make a “good stepmom.” The man she was speaking to responded, “You’d be great, babe.”

Smith is now 52 years old. She’s lived inside a prison cell longer than she lived outside of one. In 2024, she will have the opportunity to go in front of the parole board and ask to be released. Although she thinks she should get out of prison, not everyone agrees.

In an interview in May, one of Smith’s relatives said, “She doesn’t deserve to get her life back.”