An infamous South Carolina woman who is serving life sentences for drowning her two young sons back in 1994 is making a bid for freedom.
Convicted child killer Susan Smith has once again applied for parole, Us Weekly confirmed with Department of Corrections officials.
This is the second time she is seeking to be released on parole.
The first was made in 2024, but the South Carolina Probation and Parole Board unanimously denied her request.
Smith, 54, was convicted in 1995 for drowning her boys Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, by rolling her car into a lake in Union with her sons still inside.
The case made national headlines after Smith went on the local television news for nine days straight, pleading for her sons’ safe return. She also claimed that she had been carjacked by a black man on October 25, 1994, while her boys were secured in the back seat.
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She eventually confessed and the boys’ remains were later pulled from John D. Long Lake.
Smith has a parole hearing set for November 19, 2026. If she is denied, she will need to wait until 2028 to file a third parole application.
“I want to say how very sorry I am,” she said during the 2024 hearing. “I know that what I did was horrible and I would give anything if I could go back and change it.”
Smith had planned the killings as a murder-suicide but told investigators her body willed itself out of the vehicle.
Her ex-husband and father of the boys, David Smith, challenged her parole bid, and said she needs to die behind bars.
“God gave us free choice. She made free choice that night to end their lives,” David Smith said. “She changed my life for the rest of my life that night.”
Only six of the 471 letters and emails that were received by the parole board ahead of the 2024 hearing supported Susan’s release, the department has said.
Her attorney, Tommy Thomas, said during the 2024 hearing that Smith’s murderous actions were the direct result of untreated mental illness caused by her father’s suicide when she was only 6.
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Since the start of her prison stay at the Camille Griffin Graham Correctional Institution in Columbia, Smith hasn’t exactly been a model prisoner.
She has past infractions for mutilation and drug possession as well as using another inmate’s pin number to contact the outside world.
She was most recently disciplined on August 26, 2024, for speaking to the producers of a documentary film on her case.
If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or considering suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
