Susan Smith: 20 years later, case still a shocker (She drove her kids into a lake)

[Are_grits_groceries]

Susan Smith: 20 years later, case still a shocker

Investigators were so determined 20 years ago to get a confession from South Carolina’s Susan Smith that they were willing to use anything, including deception, to get her to admit to drowning her two small children in an Upstate lake.

Then-SLED chief Robert Stewart said this month that investigators created a copy of a false newspaper article they were prepared to show Smith about a woman who had killed a family member. The fictional woman served her time in prison, got out, married a rich businessman and went on to lead a happy life. The plan: let Smith read the article and then speak with the woman. If the shame of killing her children didn’t persuade Smith to confess, agents reasoned, perhaps hope would – hope that her life could go on beyond prison.

Not only was the article false, the woman was an undercover State Law Enforcement Division agent. Fortunately, Stewart said, Smith did confess, and investigators never had to use the scheme.

Stewart described the plan, which he has never discussed publicly, as the 20th anniversary of the case approaches. Others looking back on the Oct. 25 anniversary recall the media convergence on the small city of Union. They remember the stresses – and scrutiny – of the sudden national attention and the decisions they had to make to get through it all.

Stewart knew that if the case hinged on using deception, it would be just another tool that law enforcement had in its arsenal of coaxing confessions from alleged murderers. SLED and the Union County Sheriff’s Office already were receiving help from seasoned behavioral scientists and a veteran interviewer and polygraph analyst from the FBI.
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Much more: http://www.thestate.com/2014/10/18/3753690/susan-smith-20-years-later-case.html

An article from the former SC Director of Prisons about Smith:
http://www.thestate.com/2014/10/18/3753666/former-sc-prisons-director-susan.html

I lived about an hour away from Union when this happened. Most of us never believed her story about the carjacking. I wasn't sure exactly what happened, but I told someone they needed to look for the car in one of the quarries fairly near there.
I had read a book about Diane Downs who shot her kids. I didn't put it past Smith having done something because I had read that.
It was and is one of the most horrible crimes ever.

[NaturalHigh]

1. Kicking to read later.

I remember seeing this case play out.

[MADem]

2. She blamed the "carjacking black guy."

And she laughed while pretending to cry at a press conference.

I was overseas at the time, but satellite TV was just getting big so they covered that story in Europe as well.

[Are_grits_groceries]

5. That story didn't fly.

I know they talked to some in the African-American community but they didn't roust gawd and everybody thankfully.

Later a carful of adults went out to the lake and their car slid down the landing and they all drowned. The authorities finally took the boat ramp out and put up a barrier or something.

A woman came into the bookstore where I worked who was from that area. She said she took her kids out there at Christmas because it was so spiritual. Smh...

[MADem]

16. It probably took some effort to reel in comment with your customer--spiritual?

Good gravy...what's "spiritual" about a crime scene?

You have to wonder what is in the head of someone who would kill two, from all accounts cheery and well behaved, kids like that. From what I remember, she thought she could snag some new guy who "didn't want kids." I mean, really? Say, I'll drown my children, that'll make ya love me!

[Are_grits_groceries]

17. Smith was a very scary person under her facade.

I don't know if she was always a psychopath or developed the traits over time.

As for that customer, since I taught school and worked retail for years I learned not to react to anything in a negative manner(I would jump at spurting blood but everything else was ho-hum with the students. If not, you'd get your chain jerked all the time.)
Later I would talk about it and roll my eyes. I thought a lot of unspoken things though especially with that customer.

[Mariana]

26. I think even that "reason" was bullshit.

She could have sent the kids to live with their father, if she didn't want them around. Then the new guy who "didn't want kids" wouldn't have had to deal with them.

[jwirr]

34. If she had not made up her story about the black man they might have thought that the same

thing happen as the carful of adults only she could not save the kids. She trapped herself.

[joshcryer]

22. My dad called it really early on.

My mom and him got into an argument over it (she is / was a lot more racist).

One of his rare vindicated moments when the truth came out.

[MADem]

25. Smart daddy.

I thought her protestations lacked the appropriate 'affect' too.

[tenderfoot]

37. I thought it was bee-ess from the moment go.

Because it smelled like the Charles Stuart case from a few years earlier. Another case where I knew it was bullshit - I got into several heated arguments over that one... until they fished his corpse out of the Mystic River months later.

A black guy carjacking a white woman and her kids in South Carolina? Bitch please...

Lo and behold.

[MADem]

41. Ah yes....that stereotypical "black carjacker on the bridge!" That mystery black guy was a busy

feller!

IIRC, Stuart's brother was involved, and he ratted his bro out...? That's why the guy took the dive into the Mystic...?

[Liberal_in_LA]

32. i recall the racial aspects of the story. yes, she blamed a black man

[Live and Learn]

3. She was a very sick woman but this does not justify

using deception (in other words lying) to get confessions. It is also used to get false confessions. Law enforcement should not be able to lie to citizens, period.

Why in the heck should anyone trust a law enforcement officer at all, knowing they are allowed to and in fact encouraged to lie?

[Stellar]

10. Many a black person has lost their live built apon a lie.

Their description fits a spooky made up black man in their mind. And of course everyone believe her and not him.

[Are_grits_groceries]

11. True

But in this case most didn't believe her. She became the only suspect fairly quickly.

[Stellar]

21. True Dat...

Back then I was watching it on 'Good Morning America' I remember this particular case well.

[Nay]

35. IIRC, the head investigator didn't believe her story for one minute. He of course

investigated every lead, but his instincts about who had actually done it were correct. Lots of us out in TV land didn't believe her story either.

[vlyons]

13. Rule #1 if arrested ...

Keep your mouth shut. Rule #2: ask for an attorney to be present during all questioning.

[sendero]

19. You are pretty ignorant..

... about how LE works. It is the rule, not the exception, that they lie and use other deceptions and the courts have ruled that it is ok for them to do so.

[Live and Learn]

38. I am not ignorant about they system at all.

I just said it was wrong. And, it is.

[sendero]

39. The courts disagree..

.... but fair enough. I just wanted everyone reading to know ... THIS (LYING TO SUSPECTS) is STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, it is done ALL THE TIME and if you are being questioned or are a suspect BE SKEPTICAL OF ANYTHING THEY SAY BECAUSE THEY LIE A LOT.

[LuvNewcastle]

4. That is one cold-hearted, evil woman.

She's stupid, too, because that cover story was about as lame as it gets. She did it because she was having a hard time finding a man since she already had two young children to raise. Essentially, she whacked her toddlers so she could have an easier life with a man who would take care of her. That's about as low as a person can go.

[Jamastiene]

6. What she did still horrifies me to this day,

but it doesn't surprise me. There are a lot of coldhearted, selfish people in the world, who would think nothing of hurting their kids to get what they want. Too many.

Also, I could not get over the part of the article where they admitted that Union would look like a bad place if they didn't train fake townspeople to talk to the media. I have suspected that towns in this area do that for ages now, but this is the first time I have seen them not only admit it, but go into detail about doing it publicly like that. I found it telling.

The first wave of media came as Smith appeared in front of television cameras asking for the community’s help in locating her children a few days after she reported them missing to police on Oct. 25, 1994. After she was arrested in November, Delk, who had worked in the media before and was asked to be the community’s liaison for the media, said he knew that when the trial started in the upcoming months, he and the community would need to know how to present Union in the best light.

“We created a community plan of action,” Delk said. “We got ministers and others in the community together who could be really good spokespeople for the community. The media crew will just pick someone out of the crowd, and they won’t present the community in the best light. So, we trained people and made them available to the media.”

Delk said there also were planned locations where news crews could interview the trained community spokespeople, with nice homes and green tree lines in the background.

“We had these places all programmed, and it was all aimed to make Union look like a really nice, beautiful, Southern community that has suffered this tragedy,” Delk said.

Delk also said some of his revitalization projects in Union’s downtown got a boost from the blast of media attention.

“We had an African-American hospital across the street from the county courthouse,” Delk said. “That hospital sat there empty for 25 years and was abandoned. I worked with NBC news to cut a deal where NBC put a new roof, heating and air in, so they could use that building for all their different divisions.”
http://www.thestate.com/2014/10/18/3753690/susan-smith-20-years-later-case.html#wgt=rcntnews

[Are_grits_groceries]

12. I can understand it.

Once people hear the accent and possibly the grammar it becomes an all out assault about rednecks and hicks.
I would want somebody who wouldn't sugarcoat anything about the town though.

BTW Tommy Pope is and was an asshole. He was the prosecutor, and I wouldn't be surprised if his demeanor played a part in the sentence even if nobody consciously realized it.

Sheriff Wells was a good representative for this crisis. He didn't wear a uniform and didn't bluster and blab.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. I remember that whole thing, pretty vividly.

What a horrible story.

[Fumesucker]

8. Just for the record: Her stepfather, a Republican offical, had been sexually abusing her for years

Not to distract from the horror of what she did but I don't think it came out of nowhere, the seeds of what she did were planted by her stepfather, IMO.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/28/us/defending-smith-stepfather-says-he-also-bears-blame.html

Susan Smith's stepfather, who admitted that he had molested her when she was a teen-ager and had consensual sex with her as an adult, told her and his town that he shared her guilt in the drowning deaths of her young sons.

Mrs. Smith's defense, which rested its case today in the penalty phase of her murder trial, did what many people in this small town have wondered about for months: it called to the stand her stepfather, Beverly Russell, to accept part of the blame for the deaths of the two little boys last Oct. 25.

Mr. Russell, a former member of the executive committee of the South Carolina Republican Party and a member of the Christian Coalition, read aloud from a letter he had written to Mrs. Smith in jail in which he said that his "heart breaks for what I have done to you."

"You don't have all the guilt in this tragedy," he wrote to her, on Father's Day.

[LeftOfWest]

9. Important. n/t

[IdaBriggs]

23. Did he ever go to jail for raping her?

I hope he is at least divorced now.

Sounds like her mother didn't protect her, then she took that destructive pattern to its ultimate extreme.

Poor babies.

[BeyondGeography]

29. Yes; More background on that and many other problems here:

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/smith/susan_3.html

Lots of underlying mayhem and difficulties in both families. It was an unthinkable crime, but it didn't come completely from nowhere.

[JHB]

30. He was also the local head of the 88 'Pat Robertson for President' campaign

For "Family values", naturally.

[jwirr]

33. I wonder if they children were his?

[ck4829]

14. She was raised on holier-than-thou hypocrisy

Beverly Russell, he had a sexual relationship with her starting when she was a teenager, and he continued with this into her adult life.

Susan Smith told police that Beverly Russell began molesting her in 1987, when she was 15 -- once after he'd returned from plastering the town with "Pat Robertson for President" posters. Their sexual encounters continued as Mr. Russell became county chairman of the Christian Coalition and county coordinator of the South Carolina Citizens for Life. Even as late as this April, six months after his stepdaughter's confession of murder had brought their sexual history to light, Mr. Russell continued to serve on the executive committee of the state G.O.P.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/02/opinion/journal-beverly-russell-s-prayers.html

[marym625]

15. I read about downs as well

It was the coldest thing I have ever read.

I can't believe it's been 20 years.

[Chemisse]

18. It's a rare parent who doesn't love their children above all else.

I'm thinking she was sociopathic, and not able to feel that kind of love.

[sendero]

20. Only a sociopath..

.. or psychopath could have done this. Not all socio/pyschopaths are men.

[logosoco]

24. I remember when this happened because I had just given birth on the 22nd

and I also had a 3 and a 4 year old. I remember sitting down to nurse the baby and this was on and I had to turn off the tv.
I read David Smith's book years later and it really broke my heart. All Susan really had to do was tell him to take the kids. I don't understand a mind like hers.

Years later a child murder hit even closer to home. That has been over a dozen years ago and I understand how a human mind thinks to do something like that even less.

[Laffy Kat]

27. I was nursing then, too.

For me emotions were magnified while I was lactating and this story made me cry for those baby boys.

If I'm remembering correctly, Smith found her biological father's body after he committed suicide. This was one messed-up family.

[JHB]

28. Can't leave out Newt Gingrich's smearing Democrats with it

Before Smith's lie had been exposed, The Most Loathsome Creature to Slither Across America's Political Landscape in a Century seized the opportunity to use the publicity around this horrible case to take a swipe at Democrats:

Here's what Gingrich said three days before last November's (1994) election -- in response to an Associated Press reporter who asked him how the campaign was going: "Slightly more moving our way. I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things." Gingrich concluded, "The only way you get change is to vote Republican. That's the message for the last three days." Two days later, less than 24 hours before the polls opened, Gingrich defended his comments on the Smith case as no different than what he'd been saying for years -- that violence and related ills arise from a Democratic-controlled political system: "We need very deep change if we're going to turn this country around." Asked if the change he was offering the country would stop killings like those in South Carolina, he replied, "Yes. In my judgment, there's no question."

http://www.alternet.org/story/8695/gingrich_%26_the_susan_smith_case

Newt will say ANYTHING to push whatever agenda he's trying to advance at a particular moment.

[Nye Bevan]

31. A sociopathic, narcissistic, race-baiting monster (nt)

[AwakeAtLast]

36. I was reminded of her when they interviewed the dad who left his kid in the hot car

He had the same look on his face, same creepy expression, totally dead eyes.

Because of her case, I was able to see through his scheme and called it before he was charged.

Gave me the same chills and made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

[malaise]

40. You know when she blamed some unknown African-American male

I said bet she killed those kids herself.