Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, your host on Pushing Up Lilies. This week, we’re revisiting one of the most shocking and heartbreaking cases in true crime history—the story of Susan Smith, the mother who drove her car into a lake in 1994, drowning her two young sons. It’s a case that stunned the nation, and now, nearly 30 years later, Susan was up for parole. In this episode, I’ll take you through the tragic details of the crime, the trial that followed, and the impact it had on everyone involved. We’ll also discuss the emotions surrounding her recent parole hearing and the reactions from those who believe justice should or shouldn’t give her a second chance. Tune in as we explore this haunting case and the lingering questions it leaves behind. * Listener discretion is strongly advised.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly True Crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:31 Happy Wednesday.
0:32 Y'all.
0:32 I hope that everyone is ready for the hustle and bustle of the holidays.
0:38 I tell you what, I went to Kroger the other day to buy groceries, and I thought I was ahead of everyone else, and I was not, I mean, there were so many people in there and let me tell you the employees could not keep the shelves stocked.
0:55 It was crazy.
0:57 I just do not like the grocery store.
1:00 But I told my husband that day, I said, I don't know which I like least going to the grocery store or ordering on Instacart and getting the wrong thing and end up having to go anyway.
1:13 That's kind of what's aggravating.
1:14 Last time I ordered my groceries to be delivered, half of the contents rolled out of the sack into the driver's car.
1:24 And then I did not have all the ingredients to make what I set out to cook for dinner.
1:30 Kind of messed up my plans and their resolution is giving you your money back.
1:37 But yet you still don't have the product you need to cook what you wanted for dinner.
1:41 Anyway, that's aggravating.
1:43 But I do not like the grocery store, and everything is already picked over.
1:48 I was really surprised, hard to find and picked over.
1:52 But anyway, I'm not normally a complainer but who that was not fun.
1:57 Of course, I think I made the wrong decision by going on a Sunday because everyone's off and let me tell you they were all at the grocery store.
2:08 I was thinking this week about how ironic it is that some of the older cases are coming back into the news.
2:16 You know, the Menendez brothers trying to appeal their sentence based on people coming forward saying that there was sexual abuse in the family.
2:27 You know, that's been recently in the news.
2:29 There's a new documentary on the JonBenet Ramsey case.
2:34 So that has come back out.
2:36 And then most recently, Susan Smith came up for parole.
2:42 And so I thought I'd talk a little bit about Susan Smith this week.
2:46 Many of you may remember her story.
2:48 Many of you may be too young to remember her story.
2:51 But Susan Smith's car and this happened back in 1994 was pulled from the bottom of a South Carolina Lake inside.
3:02 Were the bodies of her two young boys, the most horrifying part of this story.
3:09 I mean, it's all horrifying, but the most horrifying part of this story is that they were still strapped into their car seats.
3:17 Michael was three and Alex was only 14 months old.
3:24 If you can imagine a three-year-old and a 14-month-old.
3:29 I don't even know that they would try to get out because they may not even know how, I don't know, a three-year-old maybe but a 14-month-old.
3:40 I mean, they're not even going to know they need to get out.
3:43 I don't know, it's just horrifying to think of what she put these kids through.
3:49 There were some other items in the car.
3:52 One being her wedding dress and the other being a photo album.
3:58 So she leaves her two kids strapped in the car seat, her wedding dress and a photo album.
4:04 And these were all pulled from the bottom of the lake.
4:07 Her husband stood behind her for nine days while she lied about a fictional carjacker and pleaded for the return of her Children.
4:20 And I can remember seeing this on TV.
4:25 I mean, we see this a lot with disappearances.
4:28 I mean, we saw Natalie Holloway's parents asking for help finding her and asking for leads when she went missing.
4:38 And then we all remember the Shanann Watts case when Chris Watts was on TV.
4:45 And he was begging for information on where Shanann was.
4:50 Although Chris Watts just seemed shady from the very beginning.
4:54 I don't know what y'all think, but, I mean, he never seemed sincere.
4:58 I believe he laughed a couple of times you could tell something was wrong with him.
5:04 And I guess I kind of felt all along that he had something to do with her disappearance.
5:10 Then again, you don't know their personality.
5:12 Anyway, I just did not have good feelings about Chris Watts from the very beginning, Susan Smith was on TV and was begging for the return of her Children and her husband even believed her story.
5:28 And like I said, I just remember, I mean it was on the news a lot and they still replay it to this day, her begging for the return of her two Children, Susan, who is now 53 was recently eligible for parole and she pled for her own mercy in front of the Pearl board.
5:50 Her parole was unanimously denied after her ex-husband and 14 other witnesses gave pretty emotional statements opposing her release.
6:02 You know, I'm always happy to see when family and friends and victims’ families show up at these parole hearings to try and fight release for people who have committed crimes like this.
6:18 Her ex-husband, David went to the parole hearing and spoke up.
6:23 Now at the time of this incident, Susan was 23.
6:29 It's hard to believe that it has been 30 years since this happened y'all because I can literally remember watching this on TV and feeling so bad for her because I mean, she cried boo hoo, ugly tears and I felt so bad for her.
6:43I was like, oh my gosh, someone stole her Children, and she must be devastated.
6:49 And yeah, I mean, suckered me right in course, 30 years ago, I was in my twenties too and was a little more gullible than I am now.
7:01 This was back in November of 1994.
7:04 Her story was that a black man carjacked her vehicle in the city of Union.
7:11 In late October, people across the country phoned the police with tips and they set up vigils.
7:20 They searched for these boys, which like I said, she was very believable.
7:25 She was on TV, she was crying, she was begging for her Children to be returned.
7:31 And of course, none of us knew her and we had no reason to believe that she wasn't telling the truth.
7:38 The boys had been in the water for nine days.
7:43 Investigators were skeptical of her story from the start.
7:48 I mean, they knew more than we did.
7:49 You know, we were just the public watching this mom on TV, whose Children were missing.
7:56 Investigators knew more.
7:57 And they were always skeptical, Susan eventually confessed to rolling her car into the lake at the 1995 murder trial.
8:11 It was revealed that she was having an affair with her boss's rich son, and he had broken up with her because he didn't want Children.
8:24 Now, I don't know how many of you are single, but I can remember back in my single days, issues coming up with boyfriends or you know, when I was in relationships where they would say things about my Children or make comments about my Children and you know what dude like my Children trump you like, I'm sorry.
8:45 But if this is a contest like you're going to lose, I don't understand the whole concept of putting a man before your kids.
8:57 I know many people have done that.
8:58 I know Susan Smith's story is not the first and the last story about a woman who would risk losing her Children or even kill her Children for a relationship.
9:10 I mean, they're obviously not thinking straight.
9:13 I just, I do not understand it, but it happens every day.
9:17 I mean, it happens every day where, you know, women abandon their husbands and kids to be with somebody else who doesn't want kids.
9:25 And I mean, I couldn't imagine going my whole life without having my kids around.
9:31 I mean, it was never a question like I said when I was dating before I got married, if you said something about my kids, like you're pretty much out, you know, I mean, this is not going to be a relationship.
9:44 If you can't get along with my Children, they come with me and we're a package deal and by Felicia, I'm not going to do it anyway.
9:54 He broke up with her because he did not want Children.
9:58 Smith's attorney claimed, and this was kind of her story that it was a botched murder suicide that Susan was suicidal and depressed because of the breakup and she intended to stay in the car and kill herself and her two Children.
10:17 But the car, you know, during the investigation, they found that the car floated for about six minutes that helped them with the determination during the trial that she had time to save the kids.
10:30 She could have gotten the kids out of the car in that amount of time.
10:37 David, her ex-husband said that he knew that she purposefully meant to end their lives.
10:46 And, you know, we all know that, I mean, a defense attorney is going to try to come up with a story that makes sense and kind of pulls at the heartstrings of the jury, you know?
10:56 Oh, this poor girl, like somebody just broke up with her.
10:59 She was so sad.
11:00 She was depressed.
11:01 She was going to kill herself and her Children and she backed out at the last minute and didn't have time to save them.
11:09 You know, there may have been some people on the jury who bought that story.
11:12 I mean, who knows?
11:14 You know, we get people of all ages, all backgrounds, different ethnicities.
11:19 I mean, everyone has life experiences that are going to make them feel certain ways about the situation in the nineties, Susan worked at a local textile meal with her lover, with this man that didn't want Children, and she received a breakup letter from him.
11:41 And then honestly believe that if she didn't have the kids, they would be able to work things out that this would work out.
11:49 We can be a couple.
11:51 And you know, those of us who think normally, I like to think, I think normally most of the time, but those of us who think normally would never be like, oh, if I didn't have my kids, I could be with this guy.
12:03 And I mean, I don't know what the guy looked like.
12:05 I don't, he may have been amazingly good looking, which still would not be enough to kill your Children.
12:13 He obviously had money.
12:14 I think a lot of the stories that I read said that he was her boss's rich son, and they definitely made note of the word rich.
12:23 I believe that was probably part of the reason that she wanted to have this relationship with him.
12:33 Now, the death penalty was sought, but the jury opted to give her a life sentence.
12:39 You know, many people are like, why didn't they just give her the death penalty?
12:43 But you know what if they had given her the death penalty, she'd probably still be alive anyway.
12:49 It takes a while for that to kick in so that they carry out the jury's wishes.
12:55 And the jury really felt that if she spent life in prison, that she could reflect on her actions and that that punishment would be worse than death.
13:07 But I don't think she ever felt remorse.
13:10 I mean, even her ex-husband, David said he never really felt that she was remorseful about what she did as of the first week of November.
13:20 And this is this year because she was coming up for parole.
13:24 The office of Victim Services had received at least 360 letters emails and messages about her parole hearing all opposed her parole except for six, only six of those 360 letters, emails and messages that were received, all of them were like, no way, don't let her out.
13:48 Six of them felt like she should be released on parole.
13:53 Parole is only granted for violent offenders about 8% of the time.
13:58 That's not very often.
13:59 And I mean, this is a violent offense.
14:03 You killed someone, you didn't just kill one person, you killed two people, and they were innocent Children.
14:11 No, no parole for this lady.
14:13 If it's only granted 8% of the time, her chances were slim anyway, with all of the backlash that they received from people in the letters and with David stepping up at the parole hearing, there was absolutely no way.
14:30 I looked a little bit into Susan Smith's history.
14:34 I know that people struggle many times with mental health issues if they have a bad upbringing or issues with their family that caused, I don't know, maybe PTSD or something like that.
14:46 But Susan did have kind of a rough upbringing.
14:51 Her father died by suicide when she was only six.
14:55 And so Susan herself attempted suicide at the age of 13, her mother married a man, Beverly Russell Junior who it was revealed later that he molested Smith when she was a teenager.
15:11 I mean, she hadn't been without hardships, but I don't know.
15:14 I hate to be hardnosed but guess what?
15:16 We've all had hardships.
15:18 We've all had things happen in our lives that aren't exactly ideal that we couldn't control.
15:25 But at some point, you have to realize what's right and what's wrong and you have to walk that right path.
15:32 The weird thing is Beverly Russell, her mother's husband and Smith both have stated that sexual relations continued between the two of them until six months before the murders.
15:44 Hello?
15:46 Seriously, you're married with two young Children and you're sleeping with your stepdad.
15:53 I mean, gross.
15:55 But also, I don't know.
15:58 This is weird.
15:59 In 1989 Smith made a second suicide attempt after a married man she was in a relationship with ended their affair.
16:10 This is definitely a trend with her number one dating a married man.
16:16 And yeah, she did try to kill herself.
16:19 I don't know.
16:20 How, but apparently this married man tried to break up with her and she felt like that was the answer.
16:26 The interesting thing is while in prison, Susan had multiple internal punishments for sexual interactions with correctional guards.
16:37 I mean, we hear of this happening all the time.
16:41 Unfortunately, I have some friends who work in the prison system, and this happens frequently and I think that, you know, many times the guards who don't get a lot of attention at home start being manipulated and given attention by the inmates.
16:59 And for some reason or another, it's flattery to them and they start getting suckered.
17:08 And I, I don't know, I mean, I'm not saying that it's 100% the inmate's fault.
17:12 I mean, you should know right from wrong, but I think they get attention that they don't get at home maybe.
17:18 And the inmates learn, I mean, they learn from each other, but a lot of them are already manipulators and they know how to take advantage of people.
17:28 They know if they befriend a correctional officer or even a nurse at the prison that they may be able to get something smuggled in or they may be able to get some sort of special privileges.
17:39 And in this case, Susan's special privileges were sexual interactions with these correctional guards.
17:46 She also, while she was there had drug possession charges, while you're in prison, it's not like she was, you know, 100% on her best behavior while she was there.
17:58 It's like, let's don't do what's best to try to get out and then let's go before the parole board in 30 years and try to beg to be released when we haven't really been the most upstanding inmate.
18:12 Anyway, in 2002 correctional officers at the Camille Griffin Graham correctional institution, Lieutenant Houston Cagle and Captain Alfred Rowe Junior were charged with having sex with her.
18:27 I don't remember this story.
18:29 I don't remember this coming out in the news.
18:32 Maybe life was busy for me at that time and maybe it was televised, and I just never saw it or maybe I just didn't care.
18:40 Apparently, these two correctional officers did get in trouble for this.
18:44 Consequently, she was moved to Leith Correctional Institution in Greenwood because of this in 2001 Rowe, one of the correctional officers pleaded guilty to having sex with Smith and he received five years’ probation, and he was fired after working for the South Carolina Department of Corrections for 13 years.
19:09 She was also disciplined for having sex four times with 50-year-old guard Houston Cagle who plead guilty and spent three months in jail.
19:21 And this is because having sex with an inmate is a felony and it carries a possible 10-year prison sentence.
19:30 This is because there is no such thing as consensual sex between staff and inmates.
19:38 Susan qualifies for parole every two years now every two years, she's going to go before the parole board.
19:47 I'm sure that her ex-husband, David will be there to fight this every step of the way.
19:54 I think I had read somewhere that he told them that if she got out now after 30 years, that that would mean that she only served 15 years per child as punishment.
20:07 And he made the comment that that was not enough.
20:10 I mean, that's a good point.
20:12 That's not enough.
20:13 But I feel like that he will be there for every parole hearing, and he will fight this.
20:20 And I would too.
20:22 I mean, I don't know how y'all feel, but I would be there as long as I could and fight her getting out every step of the way.
20:29 She's been manipulative.
20:31 Not that having affairs with married men is illegal, but she obviously isn't a good decision maker, and I think she's just fine where she's at.
20:42 I don't think she needs to go anywhere.
20:44 Now, David has moved on, and he has been married to Tiffany Smith and they have a 23-year-old daughter.
20:55 I can only imagine like the grief that he went through losing two Children.
21:01 I mean, losing one is bad enough, but losing two and then realizing that your wife is responsible would be devastating.
21:10 That would be so hard to get past.
21:13 But it sounds like he is doing well, remarried, has a daughter that's grown, and he's fighting her getting out.
21:22 I'm glad of that.
21:23 I'm glad of that.
21:23 But I don't know.
21:25 I'm curious how y'all feel about, you know, the recent reports of the Menendez brothers trying to appeal their sentence and whether or not that'll go back to trial.
21:37 I'm kind of curious to see.
21:39 I saw this, like all these old cases are coming up again and I thought, man, these people have been in prison for 30 plus years.
21:46 I can't even remember how long the Menendez brothers have been in prison, but they've been there for a minute and now all of a sudden, it's like, let us out, we told the truth, but I don't know.
21:59 I mean, we'll see how that goes down.
22:00 I'm still kind of watching that.
22:02 There's a couple of new documentaries out on them.
22:05 I've seen one of them, but I think there's one that I have yet to watch anyway.
22:09 I am glad that she did not get out and that she is going to remain behind bars at least for another two years.
22:16 And we'll see what happens then but crossing my fingers that the parole board denies her parole again next time and the next time and the next time, I hope that y'all are gearing up.
22:25 I'm curious how many people have their tree up.
22:27 I put my tree up just because I wanted to be up when the kids came over for Thanksgiving, we're going to cook well, attempt to cook a traditional Thanksgiving meal this year.
22:37 I'm not the best cook in the world.
22:39 My mom couldn't cook.
22:41 And so I did not grow up in a household where she taught me how to make all these amazing recipes.
22:47 Like many of you may have.
22:49 I want to be.
22:50 But I just feel like nothing I cook really tastes good.
22:53 It just, it's not my grandma's food.
22:54 Nothing that I eat is my mother in law's food.
23:00 Any of my mother in laws, they were all amazing cooks or my grandma's food.
23:05 My mom's food was kind of out of a can.
23:08 That wasn’t exceptional as far as that goes.
23:12 But yeah, I kind of miss the holidays when you know, aunts and uncles and everybody came to grandparents’ house and now that we've all gotten older traditions have changed, I'm curious to see like what kind of family traditions everybody has.
23:29 I'm trying to come up with something new.
23:31 I have a five-year-old granddaughter and just want to come up with like new fun ideas.
23:36 I think this year we might all get matching pajamas and everyone's going to spend the night on Christmas Eve and we're going to stay up late watching Christmas movies and baking gingerbread cookies.
23:47 Couple of years ago, I wanted to start a tradition where we would take the carriage rides through downtown Dallas and look at all the beautiful Christmas lights in Highland Park.
23:58 And although I love that idea.
24:00 It, normally when we go it is really cold.
24:04 Sometimes drizzling rain miserable.
24:08 I mean, the lights are still pretty but you're miserable because you're freezing and it's super expensive.
24:15 There's that, I mean, I don't know, I think that just starting new traditions because things do change when you know, your parents pass away and your grandparents pass away and family dynamics change and people get older and then, you know, you start having kids and grandkids and starting your own traditions.
24:35 It's kind of fun to start over.
24:37 But then sometimes you miss the days when you were little and you could just show up at your grandparents’ house and all the food was cooked and you know, all you had to do is set the table or whatever and play with your cousins.
24:48 You know, those were the days anyway.
24:51 Now I had to get over 50 to do the cooking.
24:56 It's just not as fun anymore.
24:57 No, I enjoy being around family anyway.
25:00 I hope that y'all have an amazing Thanksgiving.
25:04 I hope that y'all stay safe and don't hurt anybody on Black Friday.
25:08 I always love seeing the stories on the news back in the day where people used to literally attack one another at Walmart and Kmart and Target literally fighting over that last scooter that was 1999.
25:22 You know, on Black Friday.
25:24 It's kind of crazy, but I do like that.
25:27 All the stores have started having their sales early and giving you a chance to access some of those specials before the actual Black Friday.
25:36 And I love Cyber Monday y'all.
25:38 There's something to be said about being able to shop online.
25:42 It's scary when you don't know what you're getting.
25:44 But if you know what you're getting and you know, the quality, if it's a brand you're familiar with or whatnot.
25:49 I love me a good Cyber Monday sale.
25:53 I just, I don't know, shopping is not as fun anymore because the stores are crowded and there's tons of traffic and maybe that shows my age.
26:02 I don't know.
26:03 But anyway, I hope y'all have an amazing holiday and I'll talk to y'all again before Christmas and the New Year.
26:10 Just be safe and I look forward to talking to you next week.
26:14 Bye y'all.
26:15 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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26:30 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.