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Monster mom Susan Smith, who killed her young sons in 1994 by driving into a South Carolina lake with the boys strapped in their car seats, could be a free woman in just four years.
Smith, now 49, has recently been on her best behavior at the Leath Correctional Institution in Greenwood after spending her first 20 years behind bars romping with prison guards, taking drugs and self-harming, according to People magazine and records.
“She’s behaving herself these days,” a prison source told the outlet.
“She knows that her parole date is four years away and she can’t get parole if she isn’t being good.”
On Oct. 25, 1994, a 23-year-old Smith told police an armed black man stole her car and drove off with her two sons inside. For nine days, the teary-eyed mom would appear on national television, pleading for the safe return of her “babies.”
The nation reeled and prayed, transfixed by the horror Smith and her family were facing, but it turned out there was no carjacker. The only criminal involved was the mom herself.
Before Smith made up the carjacking story to police, she drove aimlessly through the dark with her two sons — three-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex — in the backseat while she was in the throes of a depressive, suicidal episode, police said at the time.
She stopped off at John D. Long Lake in Union County and contemplated taking her life but ended up choosing her boys instead. Smith pulled up to a boat ramp, put the car into neutral, hopped outside and watched as the lake swallowed her two children. The boys were still strapped in their carseats and completely conscious when their family car turned into a watery coffin.
When divers later pulled the car from the muck, a sodden teddy bear came out along with the two boys’ bloated corpses.
It was said Smith decided to kill the boys because a boyfriend who’d recently dumped her wasn’t prepared for a “ready-made family” but to this day, Smith still claims she doesn’t know why she did it, she wasn’t in the right frame of mind and she adored her kids.
The mom finally confessed to the crime when her story fell apart and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years, which will come too soon in November 2024.
But the convicted killer faces a steep battle in convincing a parole board to set her free.
A few years into her sentence, Smith was caught romping with two prison officials — a corrections officer and a prison captain — in 2000 and 2001.
During the fallout of those incidents, Jon Ozmint was the director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
“She’ll always be a manipulative person, it’s who she is,” Ozmint told The Post Wednesday.
Later between March 2010 and March 2015, Smith ran into trouble with jail officials five times for using narcotics, self-harming and other infractions, records show. But she hasn’t been a problem in recent years, a current Palmetto State DOC source said.
“Susan is not a disciplinary problem, she doesn’t cause problems in the institution” anymore, the source said.
“But neither do a lot of people.”
Even if she is a model inmate, “it does not mean” the parole board will be letting her out, the source said.
“My guess now is she’s probably made the turn and realized all of that is getting her nowhere and it’s time to turn her life around and start living in such a manner to prove that she’s a worthy candidate for parole at some point,” Ozmint added.
But the people of South Carolina remember Smith’s crime all too well, the attorney said. Even if she was a saint during her entire prison sentence, the public — and certainly the parole board — has not forgotten the viciousness of her crime and the stain it left on the community.
The emotion behind the murders carries much more weight than the probability Smith will reoffend, Ozmint explained.
“It is highly unlikely Susan will make parole… at least not the first time,” Ozmint said.
“Based on how I see our parole board operating, I think Susan’s going to have strong law enforcement and victim opposition and that single factor many times weighs more than everything else.”
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