Warning: The following article contains mentions of suicide, child abuse, and murder. Please read with caution.

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In 1994, Susan Smith of South Carolina reported a carjacking with her two sons inside. However, as the investigation revealed, Smith rolled her vehicle into a lake to drown her two children, Michael and Alex. When they died, Michael was 3, and Alex was just 14-months-old.

One year later, Smith was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for killing her children. According to her defense, Smith lived with depression and other mental health challenges. She said she planned to kill herself rather than her two kids when Michael and Alex were murdered. At that time, Smith was reportedly also having an affair with a man who ended the relationship because of her sons.

According to People, Smith wrote a letter from prison, published in 2015 in the Columbia, South Carolina newspaper The State. In it, Smith insisted she wasn’t a monster. “Something went very wrong that night. I was not myself,” she said. “I was a good mother and I loved my boys. There was no motive as it was not even a planned event. I was not in my right mind.”

Smith also denied in the letter she killed the boys over an affair. “I had planned to kill myself first and leave a note behind telling what had happened. I didn’t believe I could face my family when the truth was revealed,” she continued (via Daily Mail).

Smith is behind bars at Leath Correctional Institution in South Carolina

As of Nov. 2023, Susan Smith was serving her life sentence for the murder of her two children at Leath Correctional Institution in Greenwood, South Carolina. Smith is eligible for parole in 2024, but reportedly, she has a track record in prison that makes her parole unlikely. While in jail, she was sexually involved with a prison guard, and maintained contact with men outside of prison interested in romantic relationships. In one correspondence, Smith reportedly expressed her interest in becoming a mother again. At Smith’s trial, her stepfather admitted he sexually abused Smith as a teen, and that the relationship continued in Smith’s adult life.

Furthermore, in 2012, Smith tried to die by suicide while in custody, and several times while serving her sentence, she was caught with illicit substances. Smith’s ex-husband, the father of her two murdered children, reportedly does not support Smith’s potential parole. After Smith was sentenced, her husband said he supported the death penalty in the case and that he and his family would never forget his two children (via A&E).