Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents by Carol Anne Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

up. She failed two polygraphs and, despite careful questioning, could give only the vaguest details of the supposed carjacker. Still she stuck to her story, telling reporters that ‘whoever did this is a sick and emotionally unstable person.’ After lots more religious rhetoric, she added that she had ‘put her faith in the Lord.’
    Finally, Sheriff Howard Wells, who had been outwardly supportive, told her that her story didn’t add up. Why were three hours of her evening unaccounted for? Why was she allegedly driving to a friend’s house when she was carjacked, on a night when her friend was out? Why had no one else seen a black man acting suspiciously in this overwhelmingly-white community? He said that they were going to have to contact the media and tell them the truth.
    At this stage, Susan broke down and asked if she could have his gun so that she could shoot herself. She confessed and showed detectives where the car had entered the water: they fished it, still containing the children strapped into their car seats, from the bottom of the lake. The toddlers’ faces were so bloated after nine days in the water that they had to have closed caskets and their distraught father was unable to kiss them goodbye. His mother, a Jehovah’s Witness, tried to console him by saying that he’d ‘see them again on Resurrection Day.’
    Sheriff Wells also looked for a supernatural solution, saying on national television: ‘I think we need to continue to pray for these two children, and pray for this mother and this family.’
    The public were incensed that Smith had blamed a black man for the carjacking, seeing this as act of racism. But Susan hadn’t previously been racist, and had briefly dated a black man during her teenage years, despite the fact that this was frowned upon in her racist neighbourhood.
    As well as wrongly labelling her a racist, sectors of the media also said that she’d lied about being sexually abused as a teenager. They came to this conclusion as Susan had apparently retracted her claims of abuse. In reality, she was probably trying to spare her mother the shame of being married to an adulterer, for appearances were vitally important to Susan’s religious family.
    Awaiting trial, the double killer spent her time reading the Bible in her cell in the Women’s Correctional Centre in Columbia. She wrote David a note saying that her life would be hell from now on and that no one cared a damn about her. He visited her and she said that, when she got out, she’d like to have further children with him. He was lost for words.
    After much thought, he gave his support to a campaign to seek the death penalty for his wife. He explained this decision in a later book,
Beyond All Reason,
writing that Michael and Alex – not their mother – were the victims. ‘They are the ones who died awful, unspeakable, senseless deaths, suspended upside down in their car seats, as the water seeped into the Mazda and rose above their little heads.’
TRIAL
    Six months after the murders, Susan Smith went to trial. The defence portrayed her as a victim of her unhappy childhood and cheating husband. David Smith was understandably enraged at being painted as the bad one – after all, he had been a loving parent to his sons.
    Her stepfather, Bev Russell, took the stand and admittedabusing her when she was 15 and continuing an incestuous relationship with her. He said that it had ended shortly before she drowned her sons. Looking at Susan, he said ‘My heart breaks for what I have done to you.’ The prosecution, determined not to paint Susan as a victim, got him to admit that the sex had been consensual though this didn’t make it right on account of her age and the fact that he was
in loco parentis
and married to her mother.
    Susan’s attorneys alleged that she’d planned to die with her boys, but had jumped out of the car at the last minute. She’d told them that she’d had second thoughts but that the car had sunk