Thirty years ago, Susan Smith stunned the world with a confession that remains etched in the annals of true crime: she admitted to drowning her two young sons in a South Carolina lake after initially claiming they had been kidnapped. Convicted of murder, Smith received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. However, her former husband is determined to ensure she never leaves prison.

“I wanted an eye for an eye,” recalled David Smith, father of the victims—3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex—during an episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered aired on March 4. “But the jury saw different.”

David and Susan, who were high school sweethearts, wed in 1992 and settled in the tranquil town of Union to start their family. As David recounted to Dateline, their marriage fell apart, partly due to infidelity on both sides.

“I was a lousy husband,” David admitted to Dateline. “There was infidelity, but there was infidelity on her part, too.” By 1994, the couple had separated. Susan began dating a co-worker, Tom Findlay, while David entered a new relationship with his former colleague, Tiffany Moss.

A Parent’s Worst Nightmare

Amid their divorce proceedings in October 1994, tragedy struck when their children appeared to be abducted—at least, according to Susan’s initial story.

Susan told authorities that a gun-wielding man approached her vehicle one evening while she was stopped at a red light, with her sons secured in the backseat. She claimed the man forced his way into her car, ordered her to drive, then ejected her from the vehicle before speeding away with the children.

Police launched a search for the suspect, who Susan described as a tall Black man wearing a knit hat. As the case dominated national media headlines, Susan and David made public pleas to the kidnapper. 

“I would like to say to whoever has my children…please bring them home to us where they belong,” Susan said during one televised press conference. “Our lives have been torn apart by this tragic event. I can’t express how much they are wanted back home, how much we love them, we miss them.”   

Over the nine-day manhunt for Michael and Alex, Susan’s carjacking narrative started coming loose at the seams and when authorities pressed her on discrepancies, Susan admitted to fabricating the entire story—and to killing her children. 

Susan told authorities that she had strapped the sleeping boys into their car seats and pushed her 1990 Mazda down a boat ramp and into the John D. Long Lake. Hours after her confession, police found Susan’s car at the bottom of the lake with the children inside. Experts would later testify in court that it took approximately six minutes for the car to sink. 

On Nov. 3, 1994, Susan was arrested and charged with two counts of murder, to which she pleaded not guilty. 

According to David, when he demanded answers from Susan, she offered only two words: “I’m sorry.” 

Murder or Murder-Suicide  

The prosecution sought the death penalty for Susan, arguing that the murders were premeditated and driven by an age-old motive: Romantic love, pointing to a letter from Susan’s boyfriend in which he allegedly explained that he had ended their relationship because he didn’t want children.  

The defense, however, said the deaths of Michael and Alex were a failed murder-suicide, citing her past attempts and interviews with police officers. Agent Pete Logan, who was interviewed by Dateline, said that be believed Susan when she told him she had tried to commit suicide that night at the lake but didn’t go through with it.

Susan was depressed and suicidal, claimed her lawyers, after a traumatic childhood formed by sexual abuse by her stepfather Beverly Russell, allegations to which Russell has publicly admitted, though criminal charges were never filed. 

She felt particularly desperate, claimed Susan’s defense, because she was terrified of David discovering that she and Russell had started a sexual relationship in the year before Michael and Alex died. 

David insisted that he never suspected Susan of being suicidal, telling Dateline, “Nothing gives you the right to kill your children.” 

During court, David fantasized about taking revenge on Susan. 

“I used to sit there and look at the back of her head,” David told Dateline, “And think about killing her.” 

On July 22, 1995, a jury found Susan guilty of two counts of murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole.  

David objects to the terms of Susan’s sentence, telling Dateline, “She deliberately killed Michael and Alex. I can’t let her out.”  

“I’m Not a Horrible Person”

After Susan went to prison, David moved on with his life, marrying girlfriend Tiffany Moss in 2003.

Meanwhile, in 2004, Dateline producer Carol Gable wrote a letter to Susan, requesting an interview. While the prison didn’t allow it, the women started a pen-pal relationship that would span 20 years. 

“I’m not a horrible person, Carol,” Susan wrote in one letter to Gable, according to Dateline. “I’m a human being who made a horrible decision. I grieve daily for my boys.” 

Susan wrote to Gable that she had attempted suicide three times while in prison. “When they found me, there was a big puddle of blood,” read one letter from Susan, per Dateline. “I had written with my blood, ‘Let me die.’” 

In another letter, per Dateline, Susan told Gable that she stopped her car from going into the lake several times before jumping out of the car and letting it roll into the water. 

“I never saw the car go into the lake,” wrote Susan. “When I reached the top of the hill, I stopped and looked back and all I could see was a dark lake. You’d never have thought that two little boys had just drowned at their mother’s hand.”  

In November 2024, after serving 30 years in prison, Susan advocated for her release at a parole hearing.

“I want to say how very sorry I am,” Susan tearfully told the board in footage included in the Dateline episode. “I know that what I did was horrible and I would give anything if I could go back and change it. I love Michael and Alex with all my heart.” 

David wore a pin, bearing a photo of Michael and Alex, to the meeting. 

“God gives us free choice, and she made a free choice to end their life,” he told the board in the footage. “This wasn’t a tragic mistake…she purposely meant to end their lives.” 

According to Susan’s trial attorney David Brock, his client does not pose a danger to society and should be released. 

“I don’t see what punishing her, year after year after year in prison does to help anyone,” Brock told Dateline. “Michael and Alex are beyond harm or help.” 

Susan’s parole was denied, but she will be up for release every two years, with her next opportunity slated for November 2026. 

David views Susan’s potential freedom as an opportunity.

“It’s going to give me another chance to stand up for Michael and Alex,” David told Dateline. “To defend them and try to keep the sympathy off of her that she keeps trying to conjure.” 

To learn about more true crime investigations, watch Dateline: Secrets Uncovered Wednesday at 8/7c on Oxygen.