Convicted of killing her sons in SC, Susan Smith asks the state again to set her free
Convicted child killer Susan Smith has applied for parole again.
The South Carolina Probation and Parole Board unanimously denied her first application in November 2024 after she served 30 years for drowning her young sons, Michael and Alex, in Union.
State law requires an inmate convicted of a violent crime to wait two years before applying again.
Her new hearing is scheduled for Nov. 19, 2026.
“I want to say how very sorry I am. I know that what I did was horrible and I would give anything if I could go back and change it,”Smith said during her 2024 parole hearing.
But the people who spoke against her release, including her ex-husband and father of the boys David Smith, said not only should she not be released, but should spend the rest of her life in prison.
“God gave us free choice. She made free choice that night to end their lives,” David Smith said. “She changed my life for the rest of my life that night.”
Six of the 471 letters and emails received by the parole board supported her release, the department said.
Her attorney Tommy Thomas said during the hearing that Smith’s actions were the result of untreated mental health issues, caused by among other things her father’s suicide when she was 6 years old. He said she had attempted suicide multiple times.
At her 1995 trial, it was revealed that Smith had been molested as a teenager by her stepfather, Beverly Russell, a leader in the local Republican Party and member of the Christian Coalition.
Smith was sentenced before state law changed to require that a life sentence meant serving out the rest of an inmate’s life in prison.
Smith let her car roll into John D. Long Lake in Union County with her boys strapped into car seats on Oct. 25, 1994.
She lied that a black man had taken her car with the boys inside at a stoplight, a story she maintained for 10 days before confessing to Union County Sheriff Howard Wells what she in fact had done.
Smith was convicted of two counts of murder. Prosecutor Tommy Pope sought the death penalty, but the jury instead sentenced her to life.
While in prison, Smith was cited for possession of drugs, using another inmate’s PIN and mutilation. She had no infractions for 10 years until not long before her parole hearing when she was disciplined for speaking with a documentary film company.
She has not had any disciplinary actions since her parole hearing, according to her record listed on the South Carolina Department of Corrections website.