Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her two young sons in October 1994, reportedly believes her chance of being paroled 30 years later is unlikely following her recent flub with prison rules.
The South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services set Smith’s parole hearing for Nov. 20.
“She’s inconsolable,” Smith’s relative told the New York Post of the killer’s thoughts ahead of her upcoming hearing. “She was so close to getting out, and it seems to be collapsing in front of her very eyes. She has derailed it herself. She’s not happy at all.”
The relative’s comments come after Smith, now 52, was convicted on Oct. 3 of communicating with a victim/and or witness of crime, according to Chrysti Shain, director of communications with the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
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Smith was charged with the crime in September, after agreeing to send contact information – including that of her former husband and the other of her children – to a documentary filmmaker, who then deposited cash into Smith’s account.
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SCDC inmates are not allowed to do interviews over the phone or in person, but they may write letters, according to prison rules.
While the conviction was her first disciplinary action in a decade, Smith was previously engaged in a sexual relationship with a prison guard, a prison source said in an interview with People in 2020.
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“She knows it’s now very unlikely she’s going to get out,” Smith’s relative told the Post. “This is a fresh disciplinary action, a month before her parole hearing. The parole board 100% pays attention to these things. This is really bad.”
In 1994, when Smith was 22, she strapped her sons, Michael and Alexander Smith, into the back seat of her car and watched as she let the vehicle roll into John D. Lake in Union County. It took six minutes for the two boys, one 3 years old and the other just 14 months, to drown.
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Former Union County prosecutor Tommy Pope, now a South Carolina state representative, previously told Fox News Digital that Smith should not be released.
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Pope said Smith was having an extramarital affair at the time with Tom Findlay, the son of a local, wealthy business owner, who wrote Smith a letter a week before the murders, telling the 22-year-old woman that while he was interested in her romantically, he was not suited to raise children, as the Birmingham News reported in a 2005 interview with Findlay.Â
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That letter would become a key piece of evidence in the prosecution’s case.
Pope sought the death penalty for Smith during her trial in 1995, and he does not think she should be eligible for parole today.
“Some of the jurors, after the fact, even said they gave her life under the theory she would be remorseful and spend her time thinking about Michael and Alex. Well, she has proved from her conduct in prison that she’s had sexual relations with guards, she’s got Facebook friends and sugar daddies waiting for her to get out,” Pope said. “She is focused on what’s best for Susan, not what happened to Michael and Alex.”
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