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Nine Long Days - The Susan Smith Case
Susan Smith being escorted in handcuffs to court by law enforcement officials.
Image courtesy of the Union County Sheriff s Department, 2006 (Union, South Carolina, U.S.A.).
Background Information
Susan Smith had been separated from her husband, David Smith, 24, for several months. Susan had been seeing a successful businessman named Tom Findlay. Mr. Findlay had recently broke off their short relationship saying that he was not comfortable about getting involved with someone who had children. After this break up, Susan threatened suicide on several occasions.
Susan's Story
On the evening of October 24, 1994, Susan Smith, 23, frantically pounded on the front door of a house in the town of Union, South Carolina. When the unsuspecting homeowner opened the door, Susan began sobbing and screaming that her children had been kidnapped.
When police arrived, Susan told them that a middle-aged black man with a gun had forced her out of the car while she was waiting with her two children at a red light. The suspect then drove off with her two young children: Alex, 1, and Michael, 3. The alleged kidnapping occurred near John D. Long Lake, and an extensive search of the area was completed .
Police Become Suspicious
When police found nothing during their search, they began questioning Susan Smith more extensively. Questioned for 6 hours, Ms Smith was asked to recount the ordeal numerous times. Investigators soon became concerned about inconsistencies in her story. The first police investigator to become highly suspicious of Susan Smith was a police sketch artist who interviewed her the night her children disappeared. He found that her initial physical descriptions of the suspect were vague, but they became increasingly detailed as the interview continued. This behavior is typical of someone who is making up a visual description as they go along. A truthful person tends to give a very detailed physical description in the beginning of an interview and the description becomes vague near the end of the interview.
Three days after the incident, David and Susan Smith were given separate polygraph tests. Polygraph testing indicated that David did not know anything about the disappearance of his children. However, Susan s test results were inconclusive and indicated she was being deceptive. Over a series of nine days, Susan was given a polygraph test after every police interview, and the results were always inconclusive .
Susan continued to deny any involvement in the disappearance of her children. A suspicious aspect to her story was that she said the kidnapper approached her car at a red light on Monarch Mills Road. Susan stated she was the only car stopped at this intersection. However, this was impossible because at night the lights at this intersection were programmed to change colour only when more than one car was waiting to proceed. When confronted with this, Susan changed her story, saying that the abduction occurred at a different intersection more than two miles from the original location. When she changed her story, an FBI official accused Susan of killing her children. Instead of confessing, Susan became angry and walked out of the interview. Police needed a new approach to get the truth because they did not want Susan to refuse further interviews. Some were concerned that she may commit suicide before the truth was determined.
The Set-Up
Police began a new approach with Susan by bringing in Pete Logan, an FBI agent with 30 years experience. Agent Logan was a soft-spoken, grandfatherly-type of person, a trained polygraphist. During his interviews with Susan, he gently managed to gain her trust. After every long interview, he asked Susan, Do you know where your children are? Susan continued to insist that she did not, and each time the polygraph test results revealed she was likely not telling the truth.
On November 3, 1995, nine days after the disappearance of Alex and Michael, Susan Smith and her ex-husband David made several national television appearances in the morning pleading for the safe return of their missing children. That afternoon, Susan again met with Agent Logan where she repeated that she was mistaken about being at the Monarch Mills intersection. She stated that the kidnapping definitely occurred at the Carlisle intersection. Agent Logan then said he had to leave Susan to answer a phone call. There was no phone call -- this was part of the interrogation plan.
Sheriff Tom Wells, the initial investigating officer before FBI involvement, then went to talk to Susan. Sheriff Wells had known Susan Smith for many years, and he told her that the kidnapping could nothave happened at the Carlisle intersection. He told Susan undercover police officers were at that site on the night in question conducting a drug investigation, and they had witnessed nothing out of the ordinary that night. This was a carefully fabricated lie; there were no police officers at Carlisle that night. Sheriff Wells then asked her to pray with him ending his prayer with, Lord, we know that all things will be revealed to us in time. He then looked at her and said, It is time, Susan. Susan then admitted she was depressed, lonely, and wanted to kill both herself and her children. She stated that she placed her car in neutral at a boat ramp on John D. Long Lake and at the last minute she had got out of the car and left her children to drown as the vehicle rolled into the lake.
Conclusion
A team of divers confirmed this story. The car had drifted more than 30 metres from shore, further than police suspected. The vehicle was found upside down, resting on the lake bottom. Alex and Michael were found inside the car, still strapped into their seats. Susan's wedding album and a breakup letter from Susan s ex-boyfriend, Tom Findlay, were also found in the car.
On July 25th, 1995, Susan Smith was found guilty and sentenced to thirty years to life in prison. She will be eligible for parole in 2025. Polygraph testing played a pivotal role in obtaining a full confession from the culprit responsible for killing Alex and Michael Smith.
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