Horrific Abduction: The Lies of Susan Smith

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable.

0:50 Warning. Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey y'all, it's kJ You're back for another episode of Unspeakable. How is your Thanksgiving? I hope it was wonderful. Mine was fan frea fantastic. I had a great time. I got so many lovely messages from people just wishing me, you know, a happy holiday, and so I hope I was able to answer every single one of you because I was just so tickled. It means so much. And my family and I even went down to Grand Isle after we ate our Thanksgiving grub and we went crabbing and all that to put some pictures on Patreon if you want to check that out. But just a good time, and then I've been working my butt off on this episode that I'm about to start right now, because this is one that is all up in the news again. And so I said, hey, I got to give the people what they want, and so I pushed aside another episode I was going to do so I could nail this one for you. So get ready, because Susan Smith is a name that was in every single household in the early nineties, specifically nineteen ninety four.

1:49 You couldn't get away from her. It was everywhere. So let's back up if you don't know all the details of this case, and let's just start with when Susan was born. Okay, So she was born in September of nineteen seventy one, and she's from the South South Carolina, born as the youngest of three children to her parents, Linda and Harry Vaughan. Now. Her dad worked in a textile mill and her mom, I believe was a homemaker. I wasn't one hundred percent sure on that one, and didn't find a bunch of like real definitive stuff on there. And from the start, it was pretty obvious that this was just not a happy marriage. They were it was not going well. Literally from from the I do. It was kind of like the should I, you know, should I have done this? But Susan was super close with her dad and she was really young, only about six years old, when she was hit with the fact, look, we're divorcing and we're not going to be together anymore. And this brought, you know, about a major change in her life. But nothing would hurt as much as when her dad, just a few months later decided to commit suicide.

2:52 This was huge to her. This was a big blow to her life, and he shot himself in the chest and Susan and wasn't really involved in any discussion or any understanding of the situation. And I got the feeling that her family just kind of thought, Oh, she's a kid, so we don't have to really explain much to her, And that seemed to have a profound effect on her that it wasn't She didn't get to work through those feelings with her family. She was just basically told, Hey, my parents are divorcing, and then shortly thereafter, your dad's dead. Sorry. So after his suicide, she was left with. What seems to be a lack of a coping mechanism, and no one really helped her to cope with the situation, and so Susan really seemed to maladapt to the thought of death in general. It seemed like she almost became obsessed with suicide to some extent, and so much so that she would even try it herself on multiple occasions, unsuccessfully obviously, but the first time would have been when she was thirteen, when she oded on aspirin. So as if she wasn't struggling enough, Depression was an ever present theme in her life, and the more stress that was added, it seemed, the more depressed that she would get. And then to add to that stress and that maladaptive response to her parents or her father's suicide was that her mother seemed to rather quickly move on and get remarried to another man. So her mother named Beverly Rossel I believe is how you would pronounce that. In nineteen seventy nine,

4:25 and from the get go, Susan did not have a good relationship with her stepfather, which made complete sense when you fast forward it a few years when it was realized that he was actually molesting her. So this was about when she was fifteen. So when we say they didn't have a good relationship, they had a relationship. It just wasn't one that necessarily she wanted to be in with him. Now, this wasn't just a claim either, and I want to be very clear about that. Court records, like the actual court records, state that her stepdad admitted to kissing her and fondling her breasts. So this was a legitimate situation that was going on. This was not like a cry for help or a false accusation because she didn't like her stepdad.

5:08 It was legitimate. But incredibly, her mother did not press charges. And that seems to be something no matter what happens when I'm looking at cases, a lot of local cases and on all over, is that women who almost like depend on these men in these relationships don't press charges. And I just cannot get behind that. I just don't understand it. But she did separate from him, I'll give her that, but she did never actually press charges. Now why it went to court, I'm not really diving into here, but I know that she didn't seem to like be like gung ho about pressing charges against him. Three years later, at the age of eighteen, Susan attempted suicide again. Now this time it wasn't just you know aspirin. This time she took a combination of aspirin and annison, and so these drugs and this combo, this was a much stronger attempt than her younger age attempt. And this ended her in the hospital at Spartanburg Regional Hospital for an entire week.

6:12 So if you're down for a week, you had some problems to be staying in the hospital. So she clearly had poor coping skills combined with this severe emotional instability, and this feature in her life didn't change much as she grew into her adulthood. So about a year after Susan's second failed suicide attempt, she was working at a wind Dixie. Now she had worked there for a couple of years. I think it was like two years she had already worked there when she met twenty year old David Smith. And David knew who Susan was when he first started working there, and he honestly thought she was pretty. He thought that she was interesting and she was pretty, and he was also shocked that he found that she was messing around with this guy that was working at the wind Dixie and his words were or that he thought he was dorky. He thought that he was like below her league and why are you messed around with this dorky dude.

7:06 And matter of. Fact, David himself, even though he admits that he was attracted to Susan, he was actually engaged to someone else, but that attraction to Susan was just super strong, and so if being honest, okay, and I want to tell you every bit of my research. Susan, according to David, was often referred to as basically a slut at her job by everyone, and that really upset David because he thought she was nice and he thought that she was a good person and felt like people were just kind of being mean to her. Well, eventually their relationship turned into more and they began messing around together themselves. So in all honesty, you know, David would say that he was just trying to have fun with Susan. They both really enjoyed their sex life, and he was enjoying it so much so he even broke off his engagement wow with a gentleman there. But he broke off his engagement met with the other woman, and he and Susan continued their rendezvous even after the breakup of his engagement, and so they casually dated only briefly. Okay, so they were having sex, but it wasn't like this devoted relationship necessarily.

8:14 He thought it was very casual. Susan seemed to be pretty casual with people, and so that would spawn the rest of this story because she would accidentally become pregnant. It was not a planned pregnancy, and so obviously this was not an ideal situation. But the two of them decided they wanted to make an honest go of this, and so they really worked on this relationship. She was only two months pregnant though. When I say really worked, you know, for a couple of weeks, but they she was two months pregnant whenever they made the leap, and they got married in March of nineteen ninety one. Initially, the two of them would move into David's great grandmother's house and live there. David's own parents were struggling with the recent loss of an other son.

9:00 Who had just died of Crohn's disease, which was. Just another stresser on David's life as well, and his father was so overwhelmed by the loss of his brother that even David's father attempted suicide. Susan seemed to understand this struggle, and the two of them, David and Susan really leaned on each other really hard emotionally in the early, you know, just very early parts of their marriage. And you know, relationships are hard, especially when you're young. And they're just twenty years old and they're getting married due to pregnancy, not because they wanted to necessarily, and it just didn't seem like they were starting on the best foot forward, but it was what it.

9:46 Was, and they were going to do what they they could. So Michael Daniel was born first, and then two years later they had another baby, Alexander Tyler would be born into the world. And I have got to. Tell you you've probably seen of these kids by now, but such precious little fellas the epitome of a precious baby boy times two absolutely beautiful babies. Michael had this little bowl cut, his little dark brown hair, he had big brown eyes, and he was just three years old. Whenever this case takes place, happy, happy little boy. He was in love with his little brother or his Broda b r u dduh, his broda as he would refer to him, and that was his baby brother, Alex.

10:34 He adored him. Alex looks just like his older brother Michael, except his hair was much lighter. But they really do look like a little copy and paste of each other, just at different ages. Alex is only fourteen months old, so his hair was still short, like that little baby cut. But he's got those big brown eyes that were a standard in both of the boys, and their parents were lucky because both of their kids were These kids would draw attention. They're so cute, okay, and you know, I'm gonna put pictures on patreons. He can go look at them. But the family settled into South Carolina life. But the marriage, as I've already mentioned, was not built on a solid foundation, and this would just be very obvious very shortly into their marriage, kind of mimicking her parents' marriage. Money problems were there from the start, with Susan asking her mother for money, which when David would find out, he really resented the fact that she would do that because he wanted to be the household leader and this is my household.

11:34 Why are you asking your mom for money? Well, the answer was because Susan really liked material things and she liked shopping, while David was more in tune with providing the necessities for the family. The relationship was a rocky one at best. With Susan and David playing games on each other and kind of stepping out on one another cheating back and forth throughout the marriage. So this would lead to frequent separations and then making up, and then getting back together and then breaking up. So they even separated when she was pregnant with Alex, but they reunited for the sake of the baby, and Susan's mother at that time loaned them enough money to put a down payment on a home of their own so they wouldn't still be living in the grandmother's house. So they all hoped that together all of this would help the situation and they could you know, live their life on their own and be the actual quote unquote adults in their lives instead of leaning on everybody else. But this was really short lived.

12:34 So just three weeks after Alex was born, David ended up moving out of the house and they separated for what seemed like would be for good. So, I mean, this was just a shit show from the start. Well, during that separation, Susan wanted to work somewhere different than her estranged husband because they both worked together at the wynd Dixie, And so she went and took a job at Console Products, which was a large, wealthy business. This was not like some family owned small, little mind pop shop. It was big. And so she did a good job, and she was eventually promoted to the executive secretary of the CEO, like the top dog. And so that would introduce her to the CEO's son. And the CEO's son's name was Tom Findley, and he seemed to be absolutely everything that Susan's husband was not in her eyes. Okay, she just found him absolutely irresistible. She thought that he was the catch of her life, that she could never top him. Not to mention it didn't hurt that he was rich, or at least it's done. He was right, But it's in the family.

13:40 He's rich, you know, he's got this big company's and he's you know, affluent, and he's got access to money and trips and all the grander things in life. So they began a whirlwind romance. But Susan, from what I gather, was way more into him than he was in to her, which would set off a chain of events that would leave everyone in this nation shocked. When it all came to be. Susan believed that she and Tom were meant to be and that this relationship was one of a lifetime and that they were going to last forever. But this dream that she had built up in her mind would soon be dashed whenever Tom wrote her a letter, and this was in October of nineteen ninety four, and basically he broke up with her, but with reasons.

14:31 He didn't do the. Whole it's not you, it's me bullshit. Nope, Tom, he was pretty pretty direct with her. So the letter starts and I'm reading directly from the letter, but you know, you will, without a doubt make some lucky man a great wife, but unfortunately it won't be me, like. Uh, you know, dagger to the heart. And his whole argument became, he just felt like they were too different, they came from too different of backgro that they weren't going to have long term things in common. Maybe they weren't gonna have long term goals. But his biggest hang up with her was that he wasn't thrilled with her behavior around other men, and this was in reference to her messing with a married man in a hot tub, which, mind you, she was still married messing around with him, but whatever double standards, I guess, but he didn't like the way that she acted in a hot tub with a married man. Now I didn't list out exactly what was going on, but from what I gathered, the two of them ended up naked, meaning Susan and this married man, and there was a whole bunch of rubbing and touching in whatever going on in that hot tub, and you know, Tom didn't like that. Lastly, and likely most eye opening to her was that he also made it very clear he didn't want someone else's children.

15:51 He wanted to make his own family, and he didn't want this prebade family with Susan. Those were someone else's children. So basically what he was saying was you're fun to be around, and I like having sex with you, but you're not the lady that I want to marry and be with for the rest of my life. And in a shocking revelation and basically a desperate attempt to gain sympathy and or I would argue anger from Tom, Susan looks at him, I say, looks at him, but comes back at him and says, well, you know, I guess I knew this wasn't gonna work out, but sorry, I'm still having sex with my stepdad.

16:36 So I don't know what. Exactually exactly she thought she was going to gain by coming at him from that direction. I think maybe the sympathy card that she was an abused woman and that he could come in and rescue her, but then she couldn't leave well enough alone. She also tells him, Oh, and guess what, I've also been screwing your dad. Ho lye shit batman, damn Okay. So I'm not sure whether she wanted sympathy or anger. I'm sure she got a combination of both. But then you're gonna say you're sleeping with his dad. Well, that didn't go over too well, as you can imagine, and Tom basically just threw his hands up at the whole damn show, shit show and was like, I'm done. I'm done. I'm not even gonna deal with this now.

17:16 Whether she was actually messing with Tom's father, I'm not really sure of. But multiple reports did say that she was in fact still sleeping with her stepdad. So there's a lot going on here, a whole lot going on here. But on October twenty fifth, Susan's baby boys were at daycare when she went to go pick them up. This was kind of the standard thing. The kids went to daycare and then she would go and pick them up. But she was just still beside herself, knowing that she was losing Tom, and she really couldn't let it go. It was just not something that she was gonna let go easily either. So she did call him at work a few times, but their conversations.

18:02 Were pointless, very flat. He didn't really have much to say to her. Tom was not budging at all, and he didn't want to continue the relationship with her. No matter what she said, it wasn't budging him. He was done. So Susan eventually took the boys to a friend of hers who agreed to watch them, and then she showed up at Tom's work because she wanted to talk to him in person. But he didn't greet her with the open arms that she was hoping for in this romance and that she thought was gonna be able. To be continued. And she tried telling him, look, I lied, I didn't sleep with your dad. I was just angry, and no matter what she said at this point, Tom was just aggravated and very direct that you need to leave, and you need to leave now. This is ridiculous. It's over and there is no makeup between us. I don't want to be with you, I don't want to have someone other man's children, and you need to just be gone, go find somebody else.

19:00 Left. She didn't want to, but she left, and she returned to pick up her boys from that friend, and then she decided to go home. So once she got home, she had plans in her own mind really that she was going to bring her boys to her mother's house so that she could watch them for that evening. So she packed them a bag and then she went to go bring her kids to her mom. But there was a miscommunication at some point there because when she got there, or when she went to go bring the boys to her mom, her mom was like, I can't watch them. I'm heading to a tee ball game, and this is a tee ball game for another one of her other grandsons. So she's like, I'm sorry, I can't watch the boys. I've got this prior engagement. So Susan decided to take the boys for a drive and just go driving through the countryside while she really mulled over and contemplated everything that was just going wrong with her life. Now she's young, right, she's just twenty three years old. She's in a miserable relationship or a miserable marriage, while in love with a man who now no longer wanted her. Three year old Michael and fourteen month old Alex were strapped into their car seats and they're just in the back, riding along with mama. They were looking out the window, none the wiser that their mom was desperately frustrated and very unhappy.

20:16 All they knew was that they were riding with their mommy, and they loved their mommy, and she loved them, and they were just gonna go hang out and drive around the countryside. So it was about nine pm that night, so some hours had gone by when Rick and Shirley McLeod were enjoying their evening at home and they heard someone screaming and crying and banging. On their door on their porch. So alarmed, Shirley opened the door and there she found a young woman sobbing and yelling, Oh my God, please help me. You've got to help me. She was out of breath and she was yelling, and she was screaming something about someone stole her car and her kids were inside.

20:57 She needed help, So Shirley asked her, you know who and what happened and where and what and explain what do you mean what happened? Where were you? And that's when Susan said, a black man, a black man. He carjacked me and he took my babies. He's got my car and my babies are inside of the car. Please help me. Oh my god, you've got to help me. So horrified at the thought of children being just ripped from the safety of their mother all, you know, just all stopped at a stop sign basically, and their car being stolen with the babies inside, it was just beyond her. She freaked out and so she ran to her phone, she grabbed it. She immediately called police, and she's just praying, oh my God, please protect these children, Please let them be found safe. And she didn't know these children at all, actually, but Shirley certainly understood the gravity of the situation and she wanted to help in any way that she could.

21:50 So when the police arrived, as you can imagine, they had some very specific and very direct questions for Susan about what happened so that they could kind of get their plan together of how to find the boys. And Susan is just sobbing as she recounted the moment that her kids were kidnapped and taken from her. She said that she had stopped at a red light, and this was at the Monarch Mills light where a black mail approached the car and he put a gun to her head. So she said that he had jumped into the car and told her to drive. So he jumped in the passenger seat, put the gun to her and said drive. So she drove a little bit, but then he made her stop the car and he made her get out.

22:33 He demanded get out of the car, so she gets out, and before she can open the back door, he took off with her kids still inside. And her boys were crying and screaming for her, and she could hear the screams as the car tore away from her, and there was nothing she could do. Her babies were gone, and she was just inconsolable at the loss of her children and the stranger. And why would this man take my kids? I was willing to give him the car. Why do you have to take my kids? So by midnight. It was suggested by the police that Susan and her family, who by now all these people had shown up at the McLeod's house, you know, maybe we need to relocate y'all to your own residence or somewhere else and let these people, you know, have their home back. And so Susan said, look, let's just go to my mom's house, and everyone agreed. Sure, we'll go to your mom's house and we'll reconvene there. Now, the police were still in the early, very early points of this investigative investigative process, and so they needed to collect their thoughts, really derive a plan, figure out their perimeter check and all all of that. So the police immediately did set out, okay and start looking for the vehicle and the man that had taken it. A bolo a be on the lookout that was issued for her nineteen ninety Mazda. It was a reddish color of Mazda, and the police spread out in all directions, all hands on debck on deck to try and intercept this and hopefully the boys before they could be injured or you know, tossed out of the car.

24:06 So it didn't take long at all before Michael and Alex's photos were up on the local news everywhere, I mean anywhere and everywhere. People really wanted to find these babies and the story was so breathtaking at the thought that the word spread about the situation so fast. Even national news picked up this story. And the problem now is that the man could be anywhere. I mean, he could even be across state lines. So the thought here is the more coverage the better. The more eyes that are looking for this car, maybe they can find the car. So everyone was looking. People looked and searched for this vehicle all night, but there was not one sighting of the car. Her car was gone and so were the kids.

24:53 So police asked Susan to sit with a sketch artist and I need you to to, you know, to describe the carjacker and give us who are we looking for. Basically, we need to know what he looks like. And so an image was made and you know, she gave the details as this sketch artist, you know, painstakingly worked to make it as accurate as possible so people could really get a glimpse of what this guy might look like. And so her description of him was from a side profile and I've put this, uh this sketch on Patreon for you. But he was a blackmail with pretty generic features. He's roughly in his forties, so he was wearing blue jeans, a dark shirt with a plaid jacket, and a beanie on his head, which I know other areas of the country they call him skull caps. I even found out that in Canada they call him tuks, is what I learned, So we don't call him that called beanie, okay, But he had his eyes if you look at the picture too, they slightly bulge out, almost like he's got Graves disease or something like that. And then he has really thick lips.

25:58 His facial hair is really kind of short, it goes down his neck a bit, and he just had short hair that was basically covered by the beanie. The reality is, if you look at the picture, really could be anyone. There was nothing that just stood out that you could go, dang, that's that guy I'm looking for. So I mean, like I said, it could just be anyone, and so everyone's looking for anyone at this point. Now there was a lake nearby known as John D. Long Lake, and the investigators really decided to focus on that area to look for the boys because that was the area that the car was last in. So a helicopter was sent up. They put a bird in the sky and they searched with heat sensing gear, but it came up with nothing.

26:42 Then they said, okay, well, worst case scenario, let's throw some divers out there. They put divers in and the divers dove throughout the lake, but they found nothing in the lake, nothing in the areas around the lake. They found nothing to do with the lake. So in October twenty sixth, the Smiths were blessed with help from the Adam Walsh Center as well as some people that worked alongside them who extended their services to help find the boys and the If you're not familiar with the Adam Walsh Center, you know America's Most Wanted. Walsh, the host of that show. His son was a victim of crime and ended up being murdered, and that's how that whole America's Most Wanted thing and all that came to be.

27:31 So for this agency, the Adam Welsh you know agency, for them to come forward and say we want to help you is the biggest blessing I could think of. I would be just stoked. So they come in and they were integral in flyers being printed with pictures of the boys on it. I mean they were working night, day and night to get all of this information out. And they also sent two representatives their names were Margaret Margaret Frierson and Charlotte Foster to the hunt where Susan and her family were because they wanted to discuss a game plan of how can we help you, what all can we do to assist you, And this included their ability that they told the family, we can act as a liaison for you with the media, so we can set up scheduled interviews with them. We can help, you know, navigate them and control that whole thing.

28:22 Because this is going to be overwhelming for anybody if you've never been through a traumatic situation, and I pray to God most of us never are. But of this magnitude, the media is everywhere. Your home is no longer your home. They're all going to be, you know, staked out front, watching you and trying to get video and yelling at you, and the whole time you're trying to deal with this traumatic situation. And so they said, look, we will help you, and we will work as the liaison here. So as they discussed everything and they're continue to try to make a plan. Susan and David left the home and they were going to go to the Sheriff's office for a follow up interview to try to give more information for the investigation. So while Susan was being questioned, David spoke with Margaret and the police. Because Margaret went with them, David spoke with Margaret and the police about pleaing for the boy's return in a televised appeal. Their whole thing was that if you just let's get you in front of the camera. We want the boys back. We don't need any answers or anything like that. We just want our boys back. Please dump them, not dump them, that's a bad term, but please leave them somewhere or whatever.

29:25 But let's make a plea for them. And David was super nervous about this. He did not want to go in front of the camera, but ultimately he said, fine, I'll do it anything. For my kids. I just want my babies back. But super super super nervous. So they really kind of coached him and gave him pointers on what to do when he got in front of the camera. So Susan and David had been held or separated, but you know, in their marriage. I mean they had been separated, but for obvious reasons. At this point they kind of put their differences aside in an effort to find their babies. They needed to be on a united front. So when the media all descended on the Sheriff's office to hear the plea, David did the speaking while Susan just stood, you know, quietly, and listened next to him. They wanted the dad being the voice to really hammer home we want.

30:14 Our babies back. And so this is what he said. To whoever has our boys. We ask that you please don't hurt them and bring them back. We love them very much. I plead to the guy, please return our children to us, safe and unharmed. Everywhere I look, I see their play toys and pictures. They're both wonderful children. I don't know how else to put it. And I can't imagine my life without them. And I thought, you know, with a dad under a great amount of duress, I guess what else can you say? We love them, give them back. I can't live without them. So after this statement was given and the media got something to throw out on the news. Susan went back in and she was questioned again for another roughly like six hours by the police, trying to figure out anything and everything that they could.

31:09 The more time that passed, though, the more desperate this situation became, and the stress and the aching for the boys was just unbearable for their parents and their family, and the thoughts, I mean, I just I really thought about this, and just you know, you're thinking about your babies. You're itty biddies. You know, these aren't teenagers. These are itty biddies and they depend on you for everything. Are they scared? Are they being fed? Are they thirsty? Are they hurt? Were they dumped on the side of the road, and they're lost in the woods? You know anything? Your thoughts just run wild when there's so many unknowns at play in their teep tinies, you know, they depend on adults. So the generosity of strangers and humanity really started to shine in the days to come as well.

32:00 In this case, people from across the country did what they could tried to do their part to help search for the boys. This included vigils were held all over the place, Prayers were a constant for these babies to be returned. People continued to call the police with tips, anything that they could complete. Strangers took to the streets, they posted flyers, and in an effort to ensure everyone remained aware and abreast of the situation, it was constantly out in everybody's face. But no matter their efforts, the boys simply seemed to have disappeared without a trace. So Susan spoke with news for WYFF and she told them what she could. When she was speaking to the reporter, I want you to listen to her talk to this reporter in her own words.

32:53 At this point, based on what happened last night, do you know anything better about it now than you did last night? Name I mean they, I mean they've got it people everywhere looking for him. I mean, you know, you can hear the helicopters that they are, and but they they haven't seen anything. And it's just it's crazy. I U s and it's been since nine o'clock last night, and you know, and I I really thought that when it got daylight they would find him, just in the Harvey. But was there anything about the demeanor of the man that that gives you concern? No. In fact, when he made me get out of the car, I you know, I tried to get my children.

33:36 I was you They just begging him, please let me take 'em, and he said no, we didn't have time because they were in car seats and it was gonna take time for me to get him out of the car seat. And they just told me, he said, but I won't hurt 'em. And he just took call. But he had a gun. And then my my big thing is they were screaming, hollering and crying, and I'm just scared that he just lost his patience or something, you know. And I don't know, I don't know. I all I'm doing is just praying and just keeping my faith that they're gonna be okay. You've never seen this guy before, that sir, never, And he just came out of the blue.

34:17 I was stopped at the red light and I was looking this way, looking toward the left, and it was just like this. In a second, he was in my car. It just tap in the car door and I just screamed, I said, what are you doing? He just shut up and drive and he had a gun and it was poking it in my side. You know, told me to drive, and uh so I drove and I was trying to ask them one time, you know, why, why what do you want? You know, please just you know, don't hurt me or the children, he said, and and and he never said things. All he ever told me he was shut up or I'll kill you. He said, don't say anything else. And my children were crying, and I was trying to tell him, you know, and it was okay that, you know, don't worry, and he would, you know, and he let me talk to them. Wow. And then we just got maybe three or four miles out right and he told me, he said, I want you to stop.

35:03 And I said stop right here. He said, yes, stop right here. And it was just a middle of the raid, I mean, you know. And I stopped and he teld me get out. And I was in the driver's side. He was in pastor's side, and so I opened the door. I said, I'm gonna get my children from I get He said, no, you can't have haesy, I don't have time for that, you know. He just and sort of pushed me on out of the door, helped me get on out of the door. And he's not doing took off and I ran to the closest house I could, and. I'm really sorry you couldn't help, but hurt for this woman. I mean, it's just a tragedy on all fronts.

35:43 So two more days would pass since the carjacking took place, and police had to start where we know they always start, which is the inside and out. And so the closest people to the kids are the parents, and so they wanted to rule out the parents, so they asked Susan and David. To both polygraph tests. So a polygraph test, by the way, is commonly referred to as a light detector test. It cannot be used in court. It's just kind of an investigative tool to kind of decide, you know, do we see this person's telling the truth or not. So on Thursday, October twenty seventh, both of them took the test. David passed the test with flying colors, no issues. He wanted to find his boys. Susan didn't fare as well. When specifically asked the question do you know where your children are? Her test showed straight deception, straight deception. Now, like I said, it's only an investigative tool, but it does raise eyebrows that your kids were taken from you in a carjacking, and then we ask specifically, do you know where they are?

36:49 You fail that question. So investigators continued to interview Susan, and on multiple occasions they had her start with the morning of the kidnapping and go straight through the day, and she recounted the same thing. She got the boys they were at daycare. She said, I went to work after work, I got the boys. I went home. I called my mom. I wanted we were gonna go visit her. Later mom had plans to go to the t ball game, so she said, I went home. I made dinner for the boys, but they were really fussy and they wouldn't eat. David even called. She said. He called me around the time that I was feeding the boys, and we spoke on the phone. The police checked that checked out. He did call whenever they were feeding the boys, she said, or when she was feeding the boys. At seven thirty pm, she said, she went to Walmart and then she decided to drive to Foster Park, where she stayed until about eight forty pm. During that drive around and that's when she said she realized that at some point she had dropped the baby's bottle the baby had dropped the bottle and she couldn't find it on the floorboard. So she said, I drove back to Walmart in the parking lot right there because those big bright lights and I could see better. So I drove back to go and find the baby bottle. After I got the baby bottle situation, she said that she wanted to go and visit a man named Mitchell Sinclair. And they're like, okay, well, wait a minute, who is this Mitchell Sinclair guy? And she said, well, he is the fiance of my best friend. Her best friend's name was Donna.

38:23 So police are like, okay, well, maybe we need to look into that some more so Mitch looking at where he lived. Mitch lived less than a mile north of the intersection where Susan had stopped at the red light, and so she had told police, look, I didn't see any other cars at the intersection when I stopped. I waited, then the light turned green, and right when the light turned green, that's whenever the man jumped in my car and he took the boys. And she said that this was the intersection that the Monarch intersection. But there was an issue with the story. Even though this was this story. I know. I added a few more details for you at this point, but it was the same story over and over again.

39:04 But there was an issue with it. Police had already spoken with Mitch and he had no clue that she was going to be coming by. And the bigger problem was that not only did he not know she wasn't going to be that she wanted to come by. He said, I wasn't even home until after nine pm that night. Anyway, it wouldn't have made sense for her to come by, and she didn't call me, and I didn't have any plans for her to come. So they had also already gone to the Walmart. There was no record of her ever having been at the Walmart. So, as you can imagine, this is a big problem, huge problem. So when faced with this information, Susan adjusted her story and she said, Okay, look, the reality is I just went driving around. I lied about it because I felt like I look suspicious if I just say I'm driving around and somebody carjacked me, you know, and I'm just I didn't want to look suspicious. And well I'm over here light well too late, honey, I mean shit, I'm not lying about a damn thing.

40:06 If my kids are missing, I. Will tell you things I don't even think you need to know or want to know. I'll tell you whatever. I'll tell you the color of Madama underwear if it'll help you find you know my children. I'm not gonna lie about anything. So police are like, hmm, we're not believing you, sus We've got some trust issues here. So they started breaking down her story step by step by step, and that's when they made a realization about a red light that would prove crucial to this story. That specific intersection where she says she stopped at the red light and then when it turned green, the black man jumped in. That light was set to always have a green light. So I know what you're thinking, Wait, what why would you have a red light that was always green? Okay to Shae, good question. It wasn't a popular intersection necessarily, so it was popular. One way. It was always set to have a green light. The only way that that light would change colors is if a car were to come up and trigger a light change. That means even though she had recounted this story multiple times that she stopped for the red light, but she said on multiple times there were no other cars at the intersection. That means her light would have been green and she never would have had to stop. We have a huge lie. Now, you would have never stopped at that light. It doesn't work

41:37 that way, honey, if she was really carjacked. It also stood out to police that in a typical carjacking, the assailant usually just wants the car, y'all. They it makes no sense that he would say, no, you can't take your kids. I don't have time for that and drive off with the kids. Kids are a hindrance and a man a line. I want to have these kids with him during a pard jacking. That just doesn't That doesn't fit the typical situation. In the meantime, while they're going through all of these things that aren't adding up, David was also being questioned by investigators. He's in a different room and they wanted the names of all of the people that Susan may have been dating. So what name does he bring up? Tom Findley, the CEO's son. He says, look, she's dating this dude, Tom Finley, and he kind of got irritated with it, and he's like, I don't know why everybody's so freaking fixated on this guy. I want to find my fucking kids. Why do we keep having to talk about this guy? My wife's screwing. Okay, that's kind of the gist of how this went. And then he added something that kind of made his irritation make sense.

42:47 He said, I mean, hell, you know, when Susan was riding home with me, or riding with me to go to her mother's house the night of the kidnapping, she said something that pissed me off to no end, and they're like, okay, what happened? He said, We are driving from the McLeod home to Susan's mother home, mother mother's home. Sorry, and all I can think about are my babies have been taken. And she looks at me and. She says, look, Tom Finley may come visit me tonight, and I don't want you to get mad about it. David did get mad, though, but not about Tom Finley. He was mad that how in the hell are you sitting here talking to me about some dude you're dating when our children are missing. Why in the world does that happen? He's like, I didn't give a shit if the President of the United States showed up. I want my kids. I don't care about Tom Finley. Plus Tom had broken up with her anyway, he was irrelevant. You know, everyone needed to focus on his son's, not this Tom Finley dude. So I really do understand why David was pissed and tired of bringing up the Tom dude. So police then went to Susan and they directly asked her if the breakup with Tom Finley may somehow be related to her boy's disappearance, and her exact response was quote, no man would ever make me hurt my children.

44:15 They were my life. Well guess what. Eyebrows went straight up when she said that, What do you mean they were your life? Because any woman right now worth her salt, me included that's listening to this, would tell you our children. Are our lives. They are our lives. I would never say my children were my life. They are my life and they will always be my life. So the detectives are like, what is going on here? So eventually Susan was just point blank confronted by a detective. His they was Detective Caldwell, with all of the inconsistencies in her story, and when she mentions how fussy the boys were with that invest during this interrogation, he just kind of callously goes, not callous, that's not the word, but kind of like matter of factly goes, is that why you killed him?

45:08 And Susan became. Irate and she started slamming her fists on the table and she started yelling at the detective, you son of a bitch, how could you think that? I can't believe you'd think that I did it? Well, Detective Caldwell wasn't moved by this outburst, and he even had a note that he took like in his handwritten notes that during questioning, when Susan would cry, he would sit back and watch her and no tears would fall, not one, no tears would fall at all. And this notation seemed important compared to the polygraphic examiner's notes because he made a note like completely separate on his own while he was doing the test, and he wrote direct quote fake sounds of crying with no tears in her eyes. So two men with two different tasks are finding a very similar commonality here.

46:03 So this led police to wonder, what is a homicidal mother? What would she look like if we had to make a profile of such a woman. Does Susan fit the bill. They worried and wondered about this so much that they got well, they're not they but the sheriff, Sheriff Wells contacted the FBI and he asked them, can you create a profile for comparison to Susan of what a homicidal mother would look like? And so the FBI made a profile and their results were nothing short of eye opening. Okay, so you know, you're in a very serious predicament here. We have a mother whose kids are gone. Clearly they're carjacked or taken because they're not here. But it's a fine line that you tread. Do you blame a mother and say, oh my god, what you know if she's a victim, we don't want to put this undu, you.

46:59 Know, hurt and her and accused her of it. So they're kind of really trying to feel out are we all on the track here at all? Well, here's a couple of the bullet points. This is not all inclusive, just a few of them. They said, this will be a woman in her twenties, under educated, a history of either physical or sexual abuse or both. Remember her stepdad had depressive and suicidal tendencies. And was probably experiencing rejection by a male lover. At the time of murdering her children. Oh what holy shit. Okay, we've got bingo card. Okay, here it fits. And that really kind of sealed the deal for the police that they were in the right direction and they needed to keep going down this direction.

47:52 So by now it had been three days of the boys being missing, and that Sheriff Wells went on Larry King Live. He went, now, he's doing like a media blitz. He went on Larry King Live as well as the Today Show to draw attention to the case. And he even openly said after vetting over a thousand calls of tips and leads, nothing of value had materialized. Nothing. On Friday, October twenty eighth, tons of deputies and volunteers decided, all right, we're going to do another foot search. We're now going to walk out together and search the grounds. And they searched both sides of Highway forty nine, which is near John D. Long Lake, but they found nothing on either side of the highway. So he held another press conference and he told the public that nothing had been found, and now he was open and said, look, we're trying to sort out some discrepancies in Susan's statements.

48:51 The next day, a pretty spicy story was published that detailed the discrepancies in Susan's story, and the public was beginning to feel like Susan knew more than she was sharing. You know, it's not just the police that start figuring. Stuff out sometimes, you know, in big situations like this, the public kind of starts going, hmm, you know, it just it just didn't working out. But let me tell you else had turned up their nose to her story, and that was the local black community. They had questions too. Most pressing was how the hell is a black man gonna possibly be driving around with two little white toddlers and nobody take notice of it considering the massive search that's going on looking for this specific oddity. Now, y'all don't come at me and say a black man can drive a with white children, No shit, Su're like, okay, I got that. What I'm trying to say is, in that time and in that moment, it just isn't jiving.

49:55 That would have been seen. Somebody would have seen that. So there was another somewhat high profile person who offered his assistance in this case, and his name was Mark Class. And if you're a true crime you know, big time true crime junkie like me, then you'll know about the poly Class case. And Mark Class is poly Class father. She was a young girl that was abducted from her home and ended up being murdered. Well, he started this, you know, the whole foundation, and that he really wanted to help children that were missing. And he's very devoted to this. He's lived it. He knows what it's like for your child to go missing.

50:36 So devoted in this, he flew He flew in and was ready to offer help and went straight to the home of Susan's mother to say, I'm here, I have experience with this, I can help you. And he was met by a woman by the name of Margaret Gregory in the driveway of Susan's mother's home. Now, let's talk about Margaret for a second. Margaret worked for the Sheriff's Office number one. She was their PIO, their public information officer, but she was also married to Susan's cousin, so she was related to them. So Margaret had been appointed by the family as the official family spokesperson because held, I mean that was her job was dealing with the media as the public information officer, so they felt that she could do a good job. So as mister Class is walking up the driveway to come help, she approaches him and she flat out looks him in the face and says, Susan is not interested in your help. What in the world I would take the help of Putin if he offered it. If my children were missing, I wouldn't care who wanted to help. Somebody help me find my babies. So, just dumbfounded by this, mister Class didn't leave. He stayed out front of the hull and he talked with a good friend of his. Her name was Genie Boyton, and

52:06 their talk would prove very important in this case. So mister Class's out front, He's sitting with all the media staring at the house just and cannot understand why you wouldn't want more help, especially from someone who's been in your shoes before with a very bad outcome. And when he calls Genie, this is going to be important. Genie Boyton was a cognitive graphic artist and her friendship with Mark was a very close one because she was the very person who drew the sketch of the man ultimately caught and convicted for killing Mark Class's daughter Polly. This woman knew what she was doing, and Genie and Mark were discussing the fact that Jeanie had looked at the sketch of the black Man and she felt in her there was something wrong with that sketch, and so basically, while they're discussing it, she's just calling bullshit on the carjacking altogether. Through her vast experience doing sketches, she is telling Mark, Mark, I expect something far more detailed than this generic side view sketch that we got. She was so convinced about this that she carried her happy ass there that Jeanie flew in there, and she went to the sheriff's office and she told them specifically who she was, what she does for a living, and the problems that

53:36 she has with the sketch that they are putting out to the media. Number one on her list was she said the sketch had no emotion. She said, that's not normal. This person looked passive and not like someone actively worked up, full of adrenaline, stealing a car, putting a gun to someone's head, and think about it, that is what that is what a victim would see if someone puts a gun in your face. Trust, a lot of your victims are gonna tell you that. If you ask them what kind of gun was it? You know what their answer is a big one. Why because there's a fucking gun in their face. But number two, the person is not emotionless that is doing this deed. They're worked up. They've got a drill in pumping too. They're not gonna.

54:24 Say give me your car. All polite and not be with emotion that would be built in to their drawing. So Mark Class while she's up there pleading her case to the police. Mark Class was eventually able to speak with David's father, who loved the idea of him helping was thrilled to have him come in, and so he set up a meeting for the next morning. But again, whenever Mark Class got there, Margaret Gregory told him to leave and that Susan and David did not want to meet with him. So Mark and Jeannie tried for another four days to make contact with Susan to help them, till finally they were like, to hell with this and they left. You don't want help finding your kids, we will leave. But they did invest a full week in trying to help these people.

55:15 Can you imagine wasting such a large resource when your children are missing and have been missing for days? No frickin' way. But amazingly a glimmer of hope came in. On the sixth day of the boy's disappearance, police in Seattle had found none other than an abandoned, approximately fourteen month old white baby that matched Alex's exact description. So the other cool part about this is that they were able to catch the plates the car license plate of the man who dumped the child. The child had been dumped at a motel and sure enough, guess where those plates were? Out of South carol So the sheriff got really excited, called the family, Susan, David, I've got to let you know the subdate. They found a baby and we think it's Alex and the plates were from South Carolina.

56:16 But by ten am, Seattle police called back and said, sorry, we've actually idd this baby. It's not Alex. So Susan and David held another short press conference that afternoon, but by now police just didn't believe Susan, but proving that she had done something was becoming an issue. They continued to question Susan daily, but they would hint at the fact that they weren't believing her, but they didn't quite jump in her face yet about it. But the thing that bothered the police the most, the thing that was holding them back, was the case of Susan's car or lack thereof. You know, cars don't just disappear. They felt that she worked alone in whatever had happened, you know, in terms of the disappearance of the children, But the disappearance of an entire vehicle made it really hard to understand what happened. You know, she would have had to have been in walking distance of leaving the car, you know, to the Mcloud's house. But the police had searched everywhere the car was not there. They would have found it.

57:30 The car was not anywhere, So how did she get to the Mcloud's house and make a car disappear? Going on that idea that she had to have been in walking distance, they returned back to the McLoud house and they did a search for the car in a two mile area, figuring that would be the distance that she would be able to. Get back to the house. So they also went back to the lake area searched the lake, found nothing, so they would have to rely on just good old fashioned interrogation techniques to try to break Susan. And she was proving really really hard to crack, much harder than the police had anticipated. So Sheriff Wells and an agent named Pete Logan decided they were gonna do like this good cop bad cop type thing, and they were going to be the good cops. So agent Logan was a thirty five year veteran of law enforcement and this was not gonna be his first rodeo. He had done this a long time. I think he even had experience in the FBI prior to that. So the goal his goal was to earn Susan's trust and then break her into confessing. So he was slow and steady in his questioning with just a little pressure applied to try to build that trust. So Agent Caldwell during this time is really studying Susan, and this is while this questioning is going on, and he decided, you know what, I really want to go back and talk to this Tom Finley guy, this guy that had broken up with Susan.

58:58 So specifically he was in interested in the letter that Tom had written Susan to break up with her, and what he had to offer that Susan was just what did he have to offer that Susan was just not willing to lose, that she would be willing to do something to her kids. Tom himself admitted that Susan's reaction to the breakup really shook him and it freaked him out because her behavior was like over the top with the breakup, and so he also gave police a copy of the letter for them to see what he had written her. So when that happened. Learning of Tom Finley's financial status and Susan's propensity to lash out whenever she felt threatened, the police developed this running motive. They believed that greed, just pure greed, and the desire to climb the status ladder, both financially and in society, led Susan to murder her children because they were just flat out in her way. The tactic of gaining the confession became media pressure. They decided to do intense media pressure on Susan so to build this stressor listen to this to build this stressor, investigators went so far as to contact the producers of America's Most Wanted and had them come film an entire episode on the missing brothers. On top of this, they called all the

1:00:33 most influential ministers in the area and they had them do their own press you know, own press conference, really trying to pull the religion aspect into the mix and get a whole lot of attention from a religious standpoint. And then the police themselves went to extremes. They created a very realistic looking newspaper article with some software that they had. About a young mother who had killed her kids. And this fake article really focused on the fact that this mother served a really short sentence in prison and then got out and was eventually able to marry a rich doctor. And it was a total game of psychology where they hoped that Susan would read the article and then kind of believe, oh, well, this could be me too, you know, I can just go to a little prison time and then get out and maybe I can slay Tom again or whatever. So they did all of this and hoped that they might could just break a confession out of her through all of this pressure. On the ninth day of searching for the boys, the tactics used by the police worked, and Susan Smith confessed to what had actually happened and where police could find her baby boys.

1:01:51 The truth was that Susan Smith had taken her two baby boys, the ones that loved their mama and trusted her unconditionally, and she strapped them both into their car seats in the back of her car to take them for the car ride. And then she started to drive her car and she drove to John D. Long Lake. When she got. There, she looked at the lake, and she looked at the boat ramp, and that boat ramp led to the water. She said, it was dark outside. It was about nine pm, and so she drove her vehicle straight to that ramp where she came to a stop, and while holding the brake down on the car, she got out. And once she got out, she let off the brake, closed the door, and watched as her vehicle drove into the dark water and her babies were strapped into the car, completely unaware that their fates had just been sealed. And as the water came flowing in through the doors and through the air vents, those babies were terrified and they were screaming out for their mommy. As the car slowly floated out

1:03:22 into the lake and began to fill with the freezing cold water, and they couldn't get out without help. All they could do was scream and cry for their mommy in their car seats in the pitch black, as the water slowly covered their tiny bodies and ultimately their faces where they were gasping for air but only could inhale water. And as those baby boys drowned a scary and slow death, the car sunk to the bottom of the lake. And once the car was completely submerged and the surface of the lake stilled, Susan then turned around and walked to find a house to begin her charade as a victim whose children were taken from her, and to really grasp the gravity of this, because most normal people like me and you can't fathom this, like our brains won't let us envision it. So a recreation by investigators was done to really understand what the boys went through. And I'm going to tell y'all something, it's terrifying. They took a Mazda and they rigged it up with cameras to recreate those babies last minutes, and it showed water pouring in through those vents and the water steadily rising in the car,

1:04:53 and it takes six minutes for that Mazda to completely go beneath the surface. It's unconscionable. It's unspeakable, and it is damn near unbelievable. If she hadn't said it, you wouldn't believe it. So once the confession was made, police immediately went back to out to this lake and they're like, how could we miss a whole car? We dove for it, we searched for it. How did we miss a car? And I want to explain to you what happened. Well, the assumption was that the car would have been driven when they first searched the lake when they weren't really telling people, we want to see if they're in the lake. The assumption was that the car would have been driven at a high rate of speed, which would make big waves.

1:05:42 Imagine that car crashing into the lake in that huge wall of water right would hit back on the car. Well, when that happens, that would slow the momentum of the car. So the divers had searched the areas around the river banks, you know, within reason, around the bank where the car would have slammed and hit water, floated a little bit, and then sunk down. They never considered that a mother, nonetheless would have slowly rolled her car into that lake, which would have made no waves, or relatively no waves, which means that that Mazda actually drifted out over one hundred feet into the lake before, just like the Titanic, the engine went down and it bobbed with those babies in those car seats, and then it started to bubble and go down. They never could have imagined the car would have gone out that far, And when they located that car, the divers were sickened to find it flipped over upside down and the baby boys were dangling upside down, still strapped in their car seats. Susan Smith was promptly arrested and she was charged with the murder of her two baby boy. After her arrest, David, who had nothing to do with this, filed for divorce and he was granted it in May of nineteen ninety five, and then two months later Susan went on trial and the prosecution

1:07:13 laid out their case, and their case was that Susan Smith looked our country in the eye and lied over and over again, playing on the emotions and the feelings of everyone that listened. She continuously was quoted saying just begging God to return her children to safety, and the whole time for those days, nine days she knew that her babies were strapped into a car, soaked in freezing cold water, lying dead on the bottom of a lake, and their case, my friends, was received loud and clear, and she was ultimately convicted in July of nineteen ninety five on both counts of murder. It only took the jury ninety minutes to come back with that guilty verdict.

1:08:03 Ninety minutes they gave her, which I'd like to argue is a whole lot more time and thought that she was afforded on whether she should live or die in prison, a whole lot more time than she gave her baby boys. And Susan was spared the death penalty unlike her children, and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, which guess when she went up for parole this week of this recording, twenty twenty four. Now, so many listeners have been tuning into her parole. And I know that because they're talking to me. They're messaging me, oh my god, you're gonna cover this case. So many people have been tuning in to her parole that she just went up for, and before I get to the outcome, I thought I would give you some insight to her behavior behind bars for the last years. Let's put a side fact she murdered two innocent children. Okay, let's talk about her behavior behind bars for the last thirty years. And I'm gonna start with once a slut, always a fucking slut. That's how this seems, because not one, but two prison guards have been fired for having sex with Susan behind bars, one of them being the rank of captain, So she's still playing her slut.

1:09:24 Games behind bars. Her account, by the way of that situation was that she was being beaten and mistreated, so they opened a full fledged investigation on this and found that these were completely unsubstantiated claims with no evidence of maltreatment. She has been transferred. Multiple times to different facilities because of this type of misbehavior. In twenty ten, she wrote the courts requesting a new trial, saying her attorney was bad and the trial was quote unquote unfair, which a judge promptly rejected. She was disciplined into ten for using drugs where she clearly learned her lesson when just a month later she was disciplined again for the exact same thing, using drugs. And then she was disciplined a little while later that year for body mutilation, which I'm gonna guess means that she got a prison tattoo, because that sounds like how.

1:10:17 We would write it up. In twenty twelve, she was disciplined for the unauthorized use of an inmate's pen. That's pim like pen number, not a writing pen, which means she was doing fraud behind bars. Twenty fifteen, she was disciplined again for drug use, and then in twenty twenty four she was disciplined because she talked to a documentary filmmaker and provided contact information not only for her family, but for her ex husband, you know, the living victim in her case, the children, the father of the children she murdered. She gave his contact information to them so they could harass him. So November fourth of this year marked exactly thirty years of her and based on her sentencing, that means that she's now eligible for parole every two years. She was fifty three years old when she went before the parole board on November twentieth and guess who was there. David was there, and I have so much respect for that man because he wasn't there for anything to do with Susan, but to advocate for his boys, who no longer have a voice because of that woman, and the parole board, I'm happy to say, unanimously denied her release. To kill your babies over a man's attention, and then to blame a ghost of a black man that could have very seriously legitimately resulted in someone going to prison who was innocent, is abhorrent.

1:11:49 She cried, by the way, y'all through her parole hearing, and I want you to know I felt nothing for that woman. Cry me a fucking river, Susan or a lake. Considering your affinity for those forgiveness, I know it's not mine to give, but I will never forget what she did to those baby boys. The callousness and the selfishness it takes to terrify your screaming babies as they slowly drown and you stand there and you watch. Thirty years means nothing to me when I reflect on this situation. I don't even know these children, and I'm pissed about what they had to go through. So I hope you cry until you take your last breath. And when I think about poor David, all I can say is, you know what my daddy's always said to me is that Jesus may forgive her, but a daddy don't forget, and I believe David falls in that category. I loathe this woman for multiple reasons, but it boils down to the fact that to me, the elderly, disabled and children are off limits. They are off limits in this world. They are off limits, and this is non negotiable. And I mean this with such since airity that if I was in a room with Hitler and bid Lawden and I only had two bullets, I consider shooting her ash twice