Original subtitles

♪♪

[ Coos ]

Susan: I can't even describe what I'm going through.

I mean, my heart is just so -- it just aches so bad.

[ Crying ] I can't sleep. I can't eat.

I can't do anything but think about them.

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "How it Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

In the fall of 1994, the country was riveted

by the story of two missing boys -- Michael and Alex Smith.

Their mother, Susan, told police

she was the victim of a carjacking

and that the suspect drove off

with her young sons still in the backseat.

For nine days, investigators scoured the state,

then the country,

looking for clues that could lead them

to the boys, the car, or the carjacker.

Then, a break in the case -- one that would shock everyone.

Here's how it really happened.

♪♪

Reporter: It's been a collective nightmare

for the small town of Union, South Carolina.

Ermini: We have two missing children here.

Their whereabouts are unknown at this time.

David: I received a phone call at work

that Michael and Alex were missing.

I would like just to say to whoever has my children

that they please --

I mean, please -- bring them home.

Wells: Susan Smith, who's 23 years of age,

was driving on Highway 49 in Union County.

While stopped at the traffic light,

a single black male rushed up to her car

and opened the passenger door and jumped into the vehicle.

And I just screamed. I said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "Shut up and drive."

Wells: She had two small children in the car --

a son, Michael, who is 3 years of age,

a son Alexander, who is 14 months of age,

in car seats in the back of the vehicle.

My children -- they were screaming, hollering, crying.

He directed Susan to go down the road

that leads down to John D. Long Lake,

made her get out of the car.

And I tried to get my children,

and I was, you know, just begging him,

"Please let me take them," and he said no.

And then he continued down the road

with, you know, Michael and Alex still in the car.

I plead to the guy -- me and my wife plead to him

to please return our children to us safely and unharmed.

We love our children very much.

Klaas: The whole country was invested

in the recovery of those two boys.

Throughout the past nine days,

law-enforcement authorities around the country

followed up on thousands of tips.

And nobody ever turned up anything the whole time.

Wells: The information is very sporadic.

We do not know exactly where the car will turn up

or where the suspect may be.

We would meet with law enforcement.

Law-enforcement authorities say

they have no good, credible leads yet.

They are looking at all possibilities,

including the possibility

that the mother might not be telling the truth.

They had interviewed me early on

and given me a polygraph and ruled me out,

but they kept interviewing Susan.

[ Crying ]

Wells: We've had questions about her story.

That's why we've talked to her more than one time.

♪♪

One red flag early on is you normally don't see

a carjacker taking children.

When they asked her what she'd been doing that night,

she had different accounts.

That made the sheriff suspicious

because her story just never stayed the same.

And there was that intersection

where she said the carjacking occurred.

Pope: She was saying she was sitting at a traffic light

when the carjacker gets into her car,

but the light in that particular area

was configured such the only way it would be red

would be if another car came to that intersection.

So there would have been a witness.

She said there was no other car.

I said, "Are you sure?"

♪♪

She said, "I'm positive."

I knew there was something wrong with her answer.

♪♪

She took several polygraph tests.

She failed every single one of them.

She was not telling the truth.

That's when the suspicions absolutely started to rise.

I said -- I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know what was going on.

Reporter: Police have been conducting

a parallel investigation,

looking for a stranger abductor,

but, also, keeping a very close eye on family members

since most child abductions happen

by somebody who is a relative.

We are going to look at everything and rule out nothing.

The truth is going to come out.

♪♪

Reporter: For more than a week, a desperate search

for two little boys has riveted a nation.

From the parents came impassioned pleas --

their hopes raised, then dashed when leads failed to pan out.

Tonight, a shocking development.

I never gave up hope of finding Michael and Alex.

I just wanted to get them back, whatever it took.

We're going to make a brief announcement.

Eftimiades: The sheriff had made an announcement

that he was gonna hold a press conference.

It was a large crowd there.

There will be no questions.

It was obvious that it was going to be important news.

A dramatic development today

in the disappearance of two little boys.

Even though people had suspicions, to hear it,

I think it still was a shock.

Susan Smith has been arrested.

Smith is incarcerated at an undisclosed location.

Reporter: Did she confess?

Did she tell you where the car was, Sheriff?

[ Indistinct shouting ]

♪♪

David: I found out about, you know,

what had happened over the TV.

We hadn't heard anything prior to that.

What was going through my mind?

I don't know.

Reporter: Susan Smith's tearful allegation

that a black man had carjacked her car

with her children inside

turned out to be a lie.

She had a lot of people fooled.

[ Static crackles ]

♪♪

[ Crying ]

She tried to be the victim, and she was crying,

but she wasn't crying real tears.

I want to say to my babies

[Crying] that your mama loves you so much.

Everyone reported that

Susan Smith was a really good mother.

When we found out the truth,

it made it all the more shocking.

♪♪

Reporter: Her tearful pleas for their return

captured the hearts of the nation.

My children are my life, and they just got to be okay.

They just got to come back okay.

Reporter: Eventually, under pressure from police,

Smith admitted it was all a lie.

Brackett: She played the distraught, grieving mother

and was able to do remarkably well at it,

considering that she knew the whole time where her kids were.

Eftimiades: She took several polygraph tests,

and it always came back inconclusive

when they asked the question.

"Do you know where your children are?"

Her husband took polygraph tests

and came out clean.

He had no idea.

I believed her 100%, okay?

Not 99%, not 95% --

I believed Susan 100%.

I believed in her, and a whole lot of people did.

Now, the police didn't.

The police knew from the get-go

that her story had a big hole in it.

The police knew more than we knew,

and they were holding their cards very close to their vest.

There was just too many things that didn't add up.

♪♪

Stewart: Very first night,

Roy Paschal, the forensic artist, said,

"She's involved in this thing, as far as I can tell."

Paschal: First thing that caused me alarm --

when I was sitting with Susan and her husband, David, came in,

he was comforting her, holding her close,

and she was crying.

As soon as he left the door, she turned around, and she said,

"Well, let's just get back to it."

So it was almost like a light switch, that switch in emotion.

It gave me pause

because that emotional change can be an indication,

because she knows -- she knows the real deal.

So I talked to the sheriff, and I said,

"I have reason to believe that Susan's not telling the truth.

Her children -- they are in danger."

And he was right.

And that's when the decision was made

that we would run a parallel investigation.

Jordan: The police were working very cleverly

with what they call a parallel investigation.

They were following all the leads according to Susan's story

while also watching her very carefully, very closely.

And the more we'd analyze what was going on minute by minute,

it became pretty obvious.

[ Crying ] My heart is just so -- it just aches so bad.

Stewart: The sheriff

and the head of the FBI in South Carolina and I

would get together,

watching Susan Smith's "performance,"

I guess I will call it, on television.

Harris: She tried to be the victim.

If you go back and look at all the newsreels, she was crying,

but she wasn't crying real tears.

I want to say to my babies

[Crying] that your mama loves you so much.

Jordan: Seeing Susan Smith appearing in these press conferences,

doing what we called in criminology "scrunch crying."

She screwed her face up with emotion,

but no tears are coming.

That usually indicates that they're faking it.

Hey. That feel good?

Stewart: She was one character on news media

and then joking with the agents.

Harris: She was a little, you know, friendly.

♪♪

You know, I was 44 at that time.

She said, "Well, you look good to be 44 years old."

And she wanted to talk about, you know, going to the beach,

and she's acting like we're having a pizza party, you know?

Well, it's totally out of character for a grieving mother.

I think the Sheriff's Department played it well.

They didn't believe about the carjacking,

and they would tell her little things.

The number-one thing that bothered them

was that intersection where she said the carjacking occurred.

And I was stopped at a red light,

and just out of nowhere, this black guy came up.

And he just opened the car and jumped in the car.

And that just didn't happen.

♪♪

And the turning point was November the 2nd.

And I said, "Let me ask you -- could it possibly be

that the carjacking occurred somewhere else

other than where you're telling me?"

Pete Logan worked slowly and slowly with her.

Logan: And I said, "The red light

that you were supposedly stopped at --

it will never turn red if there's no cars there,

and you're telling me there wasn't any cars there.

I got a feeling it may have happened somewhere else

and there's some reason you don't want to tell me."

Jordan: This would allow her

to basically trip herself up, recant her story.

We call that giving a suspect enough rope to hang themselves.

Logan: She jumped on that and said,

"Yes, it happened somewhere else,

but I didn't want to tell you."

I knew then, if she changed her story,

we got our foot in the front door.

Then she tried to say that it had happened at some rural place

and she was meeting somebody.

She'd moved her location 13 miles.

Well, we counteracted that.

Stewart: We told her that that could not have happened,

because where she said now that it happened

had been under heavy surveillance

for a drug operation. [ Siren wailing ]

We said, "Hey, we had a road block there that night,"

which we didn't,

but we were trying to find out any information

that would lead us to where those kids were.

We're trying to hope that the kids were alive somewhere.

Pope: I believed that it was some type of domestic situation,

that most likely she had the kids

with either a friend or a family member.

Every night, we'd have a meeting,

and the sheriff and the chief

and all of the agents would be there.

We were getting anxious.

Stewart: We knew she had lied.

I'd had about enough of this.

It was time for it to come to a head.

She was breaking down pretty fast.

Wells: She realized it was time.

She just told me that she was so ashamed.

And there was a lynch-mob mentality

because she'd put people through so much.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

♪♪

Hey. That feel good?

Mm!

[ Laughs ]

Reporter: For nine days, hundreds of volunteers

joined federal, state, and local investigators

in a coast-to-coast search for the boys

and for a suspect who never was.

Callebs: I arrived in Union, South Carolina,

the day the news broke.

When I got out of the car, I just remember

people running everywhere, people screaming --

looking around like, "What is going on here?"

Reporter: The same people who had prayed for Susan Smith

for more than a week

loudly jeered her arrival at the Union County Courthouse.

[ Indistinct shouting ] Stewart: That crowd was very upset.

We know she has lied.

Brackett: In fact, there had never been a kidnapping.

The children had never left Union.

♪♪

Sheriff Wells and I discussed it.

[ Crying ]

The idea was for her to admit that she was lying,

just tell her,

"Look, it's basically time to tell us the truth."

We had to bring this thing to a head.

We felt that something had to be done,

the case had to move on,

that we would confront Susan on that day,

and that's exactly what we did.

♪♪

They had taken Susan off to interview her again.

I think that was the only time that maybe I wasn't with her.

Harris: We had come up with a plan.

I had picked her up. Sheriff was ready.

And that is when they reveal their trap.

Wells: I told her that we had already discredited her story

and that I would tell the world that it was not true.

Jordan: "Susan, now that you've been caught in a lie,

why don't you just tell us the truth?"

She was breaking down pretty fast.

Wells: She asked if I would pray with her at that time,

and I did, and at the end of the prayer, she was crying,

and she just told me that she was so ashamed,

that she was so ashamed.

She was crying hysterically during that period of time.

♪♪

Wells: Then she said, "You don't understand.

My children are not alright."

[ Static crackles ]

And that's when she told us the truth.

Harris: She wasn't up there maybe 20, 25 minutes.

Sheriff come out and said, "Hey, she told me,

'The car's in the lake -- kids are in the car.'"

That was her words.

That's what we needed.

I remember that just like it was yesterday.

Reporter: [ Speaking indistinctly ]

Susan Smith has been arrested and will be charged

with two counts of murder in connection

with the deaths of her children --

Michael, 3, and Alexander, 14 months.

Jordan: When the truth came out

that they had arrested Susan Smith

for the murder of her own children,

people were floored.

Stewart: You could just hear this gasp in the crowd.

I'll never forget that.

The vehicle, a 1990 Mazda driven by Smith,

was located late Thursday afternoon

in Lake John D. Long near Union.

Two bodies were found in the vehicle's backseat.

The sense of absolute shock and horror --

it reverberated through the American public.

Reporter: She signed a confession saying

she strapped the boys into their car seats

and let the vehicle roll into a lake.

[ Babbling ]

♪♪

Pope: And I got a call that the boys had been found

in John D. Long Lake,

so I got in the car and went to John D. Long Lake.

Paschal: Susan's car was maybe 108 feet out,

in dark, deep water.

When cars sink, they sink nose down

because the engine's heavier.

Harris: We sent divers down to the lake.

One time, we missed it.

The divers went out a little further.

Brackett: It was quiet.

Everybody was shocked --

the sight of the vehicle emerging from that dark water.

♪♪

Harris: As it was coming out of the water,

you could see the lights start coming up.

The headlights were still on.

We pulled it out...

and the kids were in the car.

And that was probably something that I will never forget

if I live to be 100 --

those two little children being in the car.

And one had kicked his shoe off in the struggle.

Brackett: Just a horrifying moment of realization

that this is really happening, this is where they are,

and the children are gone.

Susan: I was stopped at a red light.

I was stopped at a red light.

Out of nowhere, this black guy came up.

This black guy came up.

Told me, "Shut up, or I'll kill you."

It terrifies me to think, had she stuck with her story,

we may still to this day be looking for the boys.

♪♪

Reporter: The Smith family held a visitation

at the Holcombe Funeral Home in Union.

Scores of local residents filed in to pay their respects.

A funeral for the two young boys is scheduled for Sunday.

David: You know, they say that the hardest thing in life

to deal with is, you know, the loss of a child.

Well, I was trying to deal with the loss of two...

[ Sniffles ]

...that happened at the same time...

by their mother.

Those little boys -- they loved you.

They trusted you.

You know, they didn't do anything wrong

to deserve what you did to them.

The enormity of the pain --

I just wanted it to stop.

But, you know, now I had to stand up

for Michael and Alex

as their father --

anything that I could do within my power.

She thought this was going to be her ticket to happiness.

Reporter: Prosecutors will argue that she's a heartless killer

who disposed of her children

in order to snare a rich boyfriend.

She had been seeing this guy.

Pope: He had written her letters --

"If only you didn't have children."

♪♪

♪♪

This is two lives lost, wasted.

Callebs: You know, you just close your eyes

and just wish it wasn't the case.

♪♪

Welcome back.

The world was shocked

when they learned the news that Susan Smith had lied.

Her children had not been taken by a carjacker,

as she had claimed.

The truth was she murdered them.

Susan drove the car into a lake where the boys were trapped,

and they drowned.

The prosecutor called her a cold-blooded killer,

but the defense told a different story.

Reporter: Susan Smith, the 23-year-old mother

who said that her two children were kidnapped

when her car was stolen a week away

has confessed to killing them.

The news came out that Susan had confessed.

Christopher: I don't think that anyone

or any community

could ever be prepared for -- for that.

Callebs: She comes on TV

and really played in to the heartstrings

of people across the country.

♪♪

I'm gonna be honest with you.

I had no idea that a mother would do something like that.

It hurts so bad,

to see those poor little boys out there playing

and us believing she was a good mother.

It was just so brutal, finding out the truth.

She's making those protests that,

"Oh, I love those little boys so much."

Well, you murdered them.

You know, you drowned your own children.

Reporter: People in Union were horrified to learn

that the children were alive

when the car went into the water.

You always ask yourself, "Why? Why would she do this?

What motivated her to drive her children into the lake

and then lie about it?"

Ooh! That's just fine!

People said she was a very devoted mother.

That's what makes this all just so heartbreaking,

because she really did seem to love the children,

and she did take really good care of them.

Susan: Look at Mama, Michael.

David: Susan, you know, she was a great mother.

She always made sure they were clean, fed.

Jordan: So when we found out the truth

about what happened to these young boys,

it made it all the more shocking.

Something snapped in her, and something went wrong,

because...

the Susan I knew would not have done it.

♪♪

The motive of this crime was suicide, not anything else.

Stewart: Her defense was that she had been abused

and that it was emotional issues and mental issues

that caused her to do it.

♪♪

Susan sank.

I think the illness Susan has was responsible, not...

♪♪

...not Susan.

David Bruck showed me Susan Smith's confession,

let me read it.

Reporter: The confession paints the picture

of a distraught, desperate woman.

In it, Susan Smith says she drove to John D. Long Lake,

considering killing herself.

Susan Vaughan, as she was born in 1971,

grew up in Union,

and her parents divorced when she was very young.

And, sadly, just after her parents divorced,

her father committed suicide when she was only 6 years old.

Reporter: Her father committed suicide when she was a child.

She allegedly tried to kill herself twice,

and court documents allege her stepfather molested her.

Eftimiades: This was the kind of family

where you don't tell anyone what's really going on,

and I think that she grew up feeling like

she had to put on a big smile

and act like everything was fine,

and I think she was crumbling.

She got married young and had the two children right away,

and from the beginning of her marriage,

both she cheated and her husband cheated,

and it was -- she was a mess.

Callebs: The day Susan Smith killed her kids,

she drove to John D. Long Lake,

which has a very steep drop-off on a ramp,

and she said she went there fully intending to kill herself.

Reporter: Smith says, "I wanted to end my own life so bad

and was in my car,

ready to go down that ramp into the water."

Eftimiades: And she sat at the top of the ramp,

and she started to go down and stopped

and went a little further and stopped.

And at that point, she got out of the car,

and she let the emergency brake go.

Brackett: And walked away with her children in the back,

and it just rolled down into the water.

[ Water burbling ]

♪♪

Pope: The defense tried to create a botched suicide,

but it just didn't mesh.

If I'm rolling down and I now change my mind about suicide,

just stop the car.

She was able to rescue Susan.

She could've rescued the boys.

What we believed that the motive was,

was that she was having a relationship with a young man

and the children were in the way.

Reporter: Prosecutors will argue that she's a heartless killer

who disposed of her children in order to snare a rich boyfriend.

Brackett: She worked at a company in Union called Conso,

and that was one of the largest employers in the county.

And she fell in love with the owner's son.

Jordan: Tom Findlay was known as "the catch."

She thought she might be the one to actually land him.

I didn't find out that Susan was seeing someone else

until after we were legally separated.

She had been seeing this guy while we were together --

you know, a very wealthy family.

Callebs: She felt she was in a marriage

that simply wasn't working.

She thought this was going to be her ticket to happiness.

Jordan: About 10 days before the children went missing,

he breaks up with her.

Pope: He had written her letters, you know, of,

"If only you didn't have children."

"Susan, I could really fall for you,

but there are some things about you that aren't suited for me,

and, yes, I am speaking about your children."

♪♪

Brackett: I don't think Tom Findlay knew

when he wrote "the children" in that letter --

certainly he had no idea that he was lighting a fuse.

Harris: I think that -- that shook her,

and she wanted to figure out a way not to have the kids.

Pope: I firmly believe and continue to believe

that she made a horrible, horrible choice,

based on her thought,

if she could be rid of those children and rid from David,

that she was gonna be with Tom Findlay.

And there were so many kind of behind-the-Scenes subtleties.

The night she killed the kids,

she's wearing the Auburn sweatshirt.

And Tom went to Auburn, had given her that sweatshirt.

And in the car, when we pulled the car up --

all of her wedding albums, maternity clothes.

All of the stuff is in the back of the car.

It's like she's burying her old life.

Why did you happen to have

everything associated with your old life in the car,

along with the kids?

That can't be coincidence.

There's a message here.

Pope: Basically, she had tied up one tight package --

other than having David perhaps in the car --

everything that was a barrier to her being with this other guy.

When Susan Smith was remorseful, why is she remorseful?

Is she remorseful because of Michael and Alex,

or is she remorseful because now everything she'd laid out,

everything she'd done, had fallen apart?

The big question was, "What was going through her mind

at the time of the actual incident?"

And the only person who really knows was her.

The plan was to see if we could basically re-enact

the car rolling down the ramp into the lake.

[ Water splashes ]

It would literally take your breath away.

♪♪

Reporter: Supermarket tabloids have called her

"The Most Hated Mom in America."

23-year-old Susan Smith is charged with drowning her sons,

3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex.

What Susan Smith did to her children

reinforced my belief in evil.

It was just absolutely unfathomable.

The anger grew over the months until the trial began,

and then it was a hysteria.

Reporter: Smith dreads the trial,

not because of the possible outcome, her attorney says,

but because she'll have to once again

be in the same room with the boy's father.

Seeing Susan at the trial...

[breathes sharply]

...was very difficult.

Sitting not that far away from her

was very tempting [breathes sharply] to harm her.

But I knew I had to just stay focused

on who we were seeking justice for.

Just like once again to emphasize to the public

that you remember the two little boys who lost their life

and who are the real victims through all of this.

This is far and away the most highly publicized criminal case

in the history of South Carolina.

It's a media blitz,

and it was just unbelievable to live through it.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

This all took place at the same time

that O.J. was taking place on the West Coast,

and all of that is being put on television.

Reporter: The trials of Susan Smith and O.J. Simpson

have captured the attention of the world.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

Callebs: O.J. Was a circus.

That played out in front of cameras every day.

And then you have this case.

The defense made the motion --

they objected to the presence of cameras.

It might affect how the witnesses testified.

Reporter: This is the last video that you will see

from the inside of the courtroom

in the Susan Smith trial here in Union, South Carolina.

Court will take five minutes

so that the cameras can be removed at this time.

There were no cameras in the courtroom on this one.

♪♪

Christopher: I remember the opening day of the trial,

and I was out there early in this crowd of people,

and it was so crowded, I could barely breathe.

[ Chuckles ]

Reporter: Confessed murderer Susan Smith

was described as depressed and suicidal,

but technically competent to stand trial.

She didn't testify.

I don't know how well she would've done on the stand.

I would've gone through the events of that night

and the mechanics of those boys' deaths.

"So when you got to John D. Long Lake,

what did you do then?

When you got out of the car

and you let the car go down without you,

what did you do then?"

Those are the type questions I would want to ask

because I think, at that point, they would see the true Susan.

But I think that's exactly

why Susan Smith never took the stand.

Jordan: This was a textbook trial,

and it was over and done within five days,

which isn't really surprising considering that she confessed.

You know, people said, "Well, she confessed.

Why do you even have a trial?"

But till the jury comes back, you're never sure.

It's always tough when you're waiting for a jury.

Time just moves so slowly.

Come on in. We do have a verdict.

Reporter: The courtroom was hushed.

Susan Smith was awaiting word of her fate.

The jury walked in and handed its verdict to the court clerk.

She said in a soft voice, "Indictment for murder.

The verdict -- guilty of murder."

♪♪

The same words were repeated a second time.

Susan Smith had been convicted of murder

in the deaths of her two sons.

I don't think anyone was surprised by that.

She expected this.

I expected this.

It's just hard to hear.

The big question was just the penalty.

Would she be given the death penalty?

Reporter: Next week, the same jury will meet

to hear testimony and consider her sentence.

She could get life in prison

with the chance of parole after 30 years

or death in the electric chair.

There was a ferocious fight on both sides.

You could have spoken to a dozen people on the street,

and it would've been split both ways.

I don't think it's right that she done something like that,

and she shouldn't go free for doing it,

but I don't think they should take her life for doing it,

because it's not gonna bring her kids back.

Take her in there and just throw her in the darn lake.

Death penalty's too good for her.

I wanted the death penalty for Susan.

Susan: Don't you look cute?!

You need to give up your life

because of the manner in which you took their life.

Callebs: I just felt so sorry for him.

I mean, he [scoffs] -- he did nothing in all this

and lost everything.

♪♪

Reporter: Now, Susan Smith's ex-husband,

David Smith,

arrived here at court earlier today,

and he is openly supporting the prosecution's effort

to seek the death penalty.

Tommy Pope informed that he was gonna put me on the stand.

It was one of the most emotionally draining times

I'd ever experienced.

It was the most difficult thing I've had to do, I guess,

since I buried Michael and Alex.

Brackett: His testimony was just brutal.

He's got to bare his soul about how, you know,

his whole life had just come undone.

Pope: It is -- It's gut-wrenching,

and I actually ended up back in my office

and had a good cry myself.

Reporter: At one point, he said, when he learned

that Susan had killed his two kids,

that really all his dreams, all his hopes --

everything came to an end that day.

♪♪

David: And at that moment, my world...

my life had just, as I knew it, had just stopped.

[ Sighs ]

♪♪

Pope: That's real people and real, you know, children,

and so what you have to do in the courtroom

if you're doing your job is bring the reality to them.

♪♪

The plan was to see if we could basically re-enact

the car rolling down the ramp into the lake.

We looked around and shopped until we found a used car

that was the same make, model --

even got the same burgundy color.

Because this jury's got to know what really, really happened.

Reporter: That was the reasoning behind

the re-enactment of the crime in John D. Long Lake.

There was a camera inside the car to presumably

give the children's view of what happened.

[ Water splashes ]

[ Water burbling ]

♪♪

Pope: The camera was mounted

between where the car seats were strapped back in the car.

You see the water coming up through the vents

and coming over the camera --

what the boys would've been facing, strapped in that seat.

[ Water burbling ]

It would literally take your breath away.

The car, you know, going down -- it took about six minutes or so.

She had six minutes to do something

other than cook up a story about a black carjacker.

Reporter: Susan Smith is in a real fight for her life.

Ought to be going to the chair!

I think that, right now,

unless something dramatic happens,

Susan Smith will be the first woman sentenced

to the electric chair in this state in the last 40 years.

♪♪

Reporter: The time has come to decide

what Susan Smith deserves for what she did.

Pope: I was asking for the death penalty.

The betrayal of Susan Smith leading all of us on

was probably the strongest factor toward the death penalty.

Christopher: And, of course, the defense

was pushing hard back against the death penalty.

Clearly not really a capital case.

It's not gonna do any good.

It's only gonna cause more pain.

Reporter: Reports claim, as a teenager,

she twice attempted suicide

after supposedly being abused by her stepfather,

but no charges were filed, and the case was dropped.

Smith now confronts paying the ultimate price

for ending the lives of her sons

in what she says was a suicidal panic.

There's been so many different sides of Susan Smith

portrayed in the newspapers and on TV

that people really don't know what to think.

They don't know what kind of person she is.

Pope: The way the case had played out,

I felt it was gonna be difficult.

♪♪

The jury's been deliberating the fate of Susan Smith

for just about an hour and 45 minutes now.

Callebs: There was always tension in the courtroom.

She fully knew what she had done.

You committed a heinous crime,

and you're going to have to pay the price for it.

The question is, will you pay with your life?

We turn around -- the jury comes in.

And that's the hardest time because it's out of your hands.

You've done everything you can do.

Wells: I tried to watch the faces of the jurors.

Those 12 people were the consciousness of Union County.

They -- They voted their convictions,

and they came back with something I think

that probably speaks for most of the county right now.

After deliberating just 2 1/2 hours,

the 12-member panel decided Smith will not be put to death.

♪♪

Instead, the jury opted for life in prison.

Pope: The jury chose to give her life.

I think they thought she'd have to think about what she did.

Reporter: It was 12-0, a unanimous vote,

all for life in prison.

I was in the courtroom when the clerk read the verdicts.

David Bruck, Susan Smith's attorney,

had his left arm around her waist,

and when the verdict was read,

she kind of put her arm around him,

and they kind of hugged for a moment.

This case was an awful human tragedy from the beginning,

and it still is, and it always will be.

♪♪

And I think the jury made the wise decision.

It has taken a tremendous toll.

I know it's taken a toll on all of us.

I know it's taken a toll on David.

Reporter: David Smith, Susan's former husband,

just looked straight ahead.

Kind of a wave seemed to rush over him,

when someone hears the kind of news

that they don't want to hear.

Me and my family, of course, are disappointed

that the death penalty wasn't -- wasn't the verdict,

but it wasn't our choice on what penalty she was to receive.

Roberts: As a parent myself, I feel real sorry for him,

and there's nothing anybody could do to bring his kids back.

♪♪

If we could, we would have.

♪♪

You know, Michael and Alex were my life.

I don't -- I don't --

I don't understand how she did it,

you know, even now, because she was a good mother.

♪♪

I've been...very blessed.

♪♪

My children -- they are fully aware

of who Michael and Alex were

and, you know, what happened to them.

♪♪

[ Birds chirping ]

♪♪

[ Bird calling ]

Christopher: I remember going to that lake years ago.

It was beautiful.

After the incident, it became a memorial.

People came, I guess,

in a quest for some sense of -- of understanding.

I go back. I pay my respects to the kids.

You just wonder what could've happened to those boys

had they lived,

and I'm sure I'm not the only one to ask that question.

David: Michael and Alex --

they're, you know, part of my heart.

[ Sighs ] And, you know, part of me,

even right now,

feels like I should be smiling...

[ Chuckles ]

...because it was such a joyous time.

All: ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪

[ Cheers and applause ]

[ Woman laughs ]

[ Crying ] But I guess because the outcome is hard.

♪♪

There is a memorial

to 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex Smith

at the lake where they drowned.

After learning the truth about what happened to his sons,

David Smith says he considered suicide,

but made it through the dark times

with the support of his family.

He has not spoken to Susan since she was convicted in 1995.

Susan Smith is serving a life sentence

for the murder of her two sons.

She will be eligible for parole in November of 2024.

I'm Hill Harper.

Thanks for watching.

♪♪