Front Porch Mysteries with Carole Townsend
Author and veteran journalist Carole Townsend shares remarkable tales from the South, tales of mystery, terror, and wonder. Townsend has built a career on the premise that truth really is stranger than fiction.
Here in the South, we love our stories. We begin in childhood huddled around campfires, whispering of things best spoken in the dark, confiding in our small trusting circles. Why is that, do you suppose? I have researched and investigated Southern history for more than 20 years and I believe it has to do with this region itself. There's a lot that hangs in the ether here and much that is buried deep in the soil. There's beauty here in the South and shame and courage and, make no mistake, there is evil. There's always been the element of the unexplained, the just out of reach that we can all feel but can never quite describe. And the best place for telling tales about such things is the comfort and safety of an old front porch. So I invite you tonight to come up here with me, settle back into a chair and get comfortable, pour yourself a drink if you like, and I'll share with you some of the tales best told in the company of friends, tales that prove that truth really is stranger than fiction, and I'll turn on the light. You're going to want that. I'm Carole Townsend. Welcome to my front porch.
Front Porch Mysteries with Carole Townsend
Malice Aforethought: The Susan Smith Murders
A mother's desperate claim that her two young sons were kidnapped by a carjacker unravels into one of the most shocking murder cases in South Carolina history. The Susan Smith case reveals how a web of lies, inconsistencies, and a devastating confession led to the discovery of a premeditated crime that shocked the nation.
• Susan Smith reported her sons Michael (3) and Alex (14 months) were taken during a carjacking on October 25, 1994
• For nine days, America watched as Susan and her husband David made tearful pleas on national television
• Investigators noticed troubling inconsistencies in Susan's story, including speaking of her children in past tense
• A "Dear Jane" letter from Susan's boyfriend suggested a potential motive for the disappearance
• Susan eventually confessed to rolling her car into John D. Long Lake with her sons strapped in their car seats
• The car floated for six minutes before sinking, with the boys conscious and likely terrified
• Despite claiming she initially planned suicide alongside her children, Susan's clothes were dry when she reported the crime
• Susan's false accusation that a Black man had committed the crime inflamed racial tensions in the community
• In November 2024, Susan was denied parole after serving 30 years, but will be eligible for review every two years
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Welcome listeners to the 15th episode of Front Porch Mysteries with me, Carole Townsend. This episode marks the end of our first season, but rest assured, we'll be back in a couple of months with more Southern history and true crime intrigue, crime intrigue. If you haven't already, please subscribe to this podcast so that when we resume in the month of May, you'll be the first to know and you won't miss a thing. My team and I wish to convey our heartfelt delight and gratitude for the overwhelming response we've enjoyed to this first season of Front Porch Mysteries, and we'd also like to invite you to rate this podcast wherever you listen, and to comment on episodes and suggest new ones, as some of you have already done. After all, we all have stories that have been passed down to us by previous generations, don't we? Some of them might be just that Stories that have been embellished over the years and amount to nothing more than mists, shadows and smoke. But what if they're true? Join me now as we examine the case I've titled Malice of Forethought the Susan Smith Murders.
Carole Townsend:On October 25th 1994, susan Lee Smith aimlessly drove her Mazda Protégé around the small southern town of Union, south Carolina. In the back seat, strapped into their car seats were her sons Michael, age 3, and Alex, 14 months. Susan was crying, distraught, planning to drive to her mother's house, or perhaps to a friend's house to seek comfort, advice and a place to rest her weary and chaotic head. But around 9 pm that night she stopped at a red light at an intersection named Monarch Mills and an African-American man opened the passenger door and slid into the seat beside her, shoving a gun into her side. The man said Shut up and drive. Susan went on to recall that, at his instruction, she had driven about five miles along Highway 49 when the man told her to stop the car and get out, susan begged him to let her take her children, but he refused, saying he was taking the boys with him but would release them unharmed when he didn't need them any longer. He then pushed Susan out of the car, slid into the driver's seat and took off with the two young boys still strapped in their car seats. Hysterical, susan ran to the nearest house she could find and banged on the front door. When the couple answered, she begged them to help her and told them the awful story of what had just happened to her and her boys. When police arrived, susan explained again what had happened, describing the carjacker as being about 40 years old, black wearing a plaid jacket, dark shirt, jeans and a dark toboggan dark shirt, jeans and a dark toboggan. It wasn't long before the man's sketched likeness was posted in many Union storefront windows. Hopes were high at the time that the carjacker would drop the boys off somewhere close by unharmed, but sadly Susan Smith would never see her precious little boys again.
Carole Townsend:Here in the South, storytelling is not just an art. It's a way of life, of retelling true things that beg to be shared. Again and again, perhaps as a way of testing their truth. We become entranced by these stories, by Southern legend and history. We're fascinated and riveted by them because there's an element to these stories that can only be described as indescribable, as unique and quirky and sometimes just downright impossible. People have asked me countless times during my career as an author and a journalist why Southern history is so colorful, why can it sometimes be so far-fetched and mind-boggling be so far-fetched and mind-boggling? My only answer and I know it falls woefully short is that this is the South, and rarely are events cut and dried here, rarely are they black and white. Southern history is laid against a backdrop of mystery, of obscurity and of the ever-raging battle between good and evil, and it's a reminder that things are not always what they seem. Join me tonight as we explore another tale of intrigue, a true story cloaked in mystery and draped in dark heartbreak. You and I have shared many a story from this old front porch, a familiar and tangible refuge from things that really do go bump in the night. And again I've saved you a seat. The following podcast contains material that may be disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.
Carole Townsend:The tight-knit community of Union, south Carolina, was in an uproar. Two of their own had been taken, and from a sweet, innocent 23-year-old mother. Across the entire country people were looking for Michael and Alex Smith. They were also looking for their abductor, the unnamed black man who had so cruelly taken them For nine straight days. Susan and her husband, david, stood front and center at several press conferences begging the man who took their two small boys to return them safely, southern accent, who looked into the camera and spoke directly to her children saying your mama loves you. You guys have got to be so strong. I just feel in my heart that you're okay, but you got to take care of each other. David stood quietly by his wife's side, his gestures and mannerisms and, in fact, his actual words, telling the world that he both believed and wholly supported his traumatized and grieving wife, saying if the person who has mine and my wife's children sees this, we come to you and beg you that you please do not hurt our children. Just find the compassion, find it somewhere in your heart to let them return home safely and don't hurt them. You can take the car whatever you want, just don't hurt our children. His anguish was evident. It didn't matter that the Smiths' young marriage had already weathered a few storms and dalliances. It didn't matter that the couple were in fact separated at the time and even seeing other people. The kidnapping of the couple's two boys and their safe return was all that mattered.
Carole Townsend:This case set off a media firestorm and a nearly two-week manhunt for a suspect. After Susan told police that her sons had been taken by a black man, the accusation caught fire as people across the country searched for the boys, coordinated vigils, hung flyers and called police with tips. Within a few days, the entire world watched as the story unfolded. Investigators fully understood the urgency of finding the two little boys and of finding their kidnapper. The first 48 hours following the disappearance of a child are the most critical in terms of finding and returning that child safely home.
Carole Townsend:Detectives began, of course, by interviewing Susan Smith, by getting her to relate every detail of the horrible ordeal over and over so as not to miss a single clue. And it was during the very first interview with Susan, according to now Union County Sheriff Jeff Bailey, that investigators first began to suspect the young mother's story. Her body language, said Bailey, just didn't fit the dire situation. And another troubling fact was this Susan Smith spoke to investigators about her children in the past tense, saying things like my children wanted me, they needed me, and now I can't help them. And there were blips, small details in her story that simply didn't add up. To a late person these intricate nuances might not mean a thing, but to seasoned detectives, well, let's just say that their antenna were up.
Carole Townsend:First, susan told detectives that she was driving somewhere she just wasn't sure exactly where. On that night she told them that she was driving to a friend's house, but that friend said that he wasn't even home at the time and he had not been expecting Susan. She told police that she had taken the children to Walmart, but no one recalled seeing the family there on that night. She told them that she stopped at a red light at the Monarch Mills intersection in Union and that there were no other cars around at the time. But there was a problem with that statement. The traffic light at Monarch Mills only turns red and stops drivers if there are other cars approaching. Otherwise the light stays green. When confronted with this discrepancy, susan changed the road name to Carlisle and not Monarch Mills.
Carole Townsend:Also troubling to investigators was the fact that Susan Smith's car seemed to have simply vanished into thin air. Usually when a carjacker steals a vehicle, that car is found abandoned elsewhere and sometimes even burned to destroy evidence. Carjackers almost never take hostages, but nine days after the incident, both the car and the children were still missing Very strange. And during a lie detector test, susan had trouble answering the question Do you know where your boys are? All the while, of course, law enforcement pursued every lead and tip that came in about the small boys, even checking out a lead as far away as Washington State. There was a nationwide manhunt for the man Susan described as the carjacker and kidnapper.
Carole Townsend:In questioning Smith, investigators picked up on a disturbing pattern. Whenever they checked her story and found inconsistencies, she would come up with an explanation that would be more difficult to verify. They began to focus on every aspect of Susan's life. The 23-year-old secretary had filed for divorce just a couple of months earlier, in September 1994. And only a few days before the incident she had broken up with her boyfriend, tom Finley, whose family owned the largest business in Union. Susan and Tom had dated off and on in 1994. A friend of Susan's told detectives about a letter Susan had recently received from Tom. In it he told Susan that while she had many endearing qualities, he saw reasons that they were not going to remain a couple and they would certainly never get married. He told Susan that among those reasons was the fact that she had children and he wasn't yet ready for that responsibility. The tone of the man's letter to his lover was kind but firm. This letter was important to investigators for two reasons. First, it established a motive. Second, it suggested that if Smith had faked the carjacking to kill her children the crime was one of passion she would likely not have had an accomplice. In other words, she would have had to have left the car within walking distance of the house where she went for help From the time that investigators learned about the Dear Jane letter from Tom to Susan, the focus of the investigation changed.
Carole Townsend:Now they were looking within a two-mile radius of John D Long Lake, a popular fishing and picnicking spot. Susan could have easily walked or run to the nearby home where she first reported her boys taken. State Wildlife Department divers twice entered the murky waters of the lake near a sloping boat ramp, searching for Susan's car, but they found nothing. And still the search for the children continued, with news media swarming the small town of Union and with tabloid news outlets speculating wildly every time. A new lead came in and was investigated. All the while, susan Smith appeared on television, seemingly the distraught victim of a cruel crime.
Carole Townsend:Nine days after the boys were taken, she appeared on NBC's the Today Show pleading for the public's help and stating that she had no idea why some were suggesting that she might have had a hand in her boys's disappearance. She was scheduled to be on other shows later that same day delivering the same message, but at the behest of law enforcement, she instead was brought back in for questioning by then-Sheriff Howard Wells, who was also Susan's godfather. Wells used a carefully scripted approach to the questioning. By 3 pm that same day, wells had his confession.
Carole Townsend:Three hours after that, divers again entered John D Long Lake Using floodlights. They located the burgundy Mazda Protégé. Upside down, about 100 yards from the boat ramp, they could see a tiny hand pressed up against the glass of a back window. Looking inside the car, divers saw the bodies of Michael and Alex dangling upside down from their car seats, grown men. Both divers and law enforcement officers wept at the sight of what they had found that day. Divers had missed the car in earlier attempts to find it because it had floated out from the ramp much farther than they originally thought. In fact, in a reenactment of the crime later played for the jury in Smith's trial, the courtroom audience watched in horror as the car floated for six full minutes, taking on water and eventually capsizing, drowning the two small boys. A camera mounted inside the car used in the reenactment showed viewers what the boys would have seen, as they undoubtedly cried in terror. Very likely they cried for their mother.
Carole Townsend:What on earth could make a mother murder her own children? What could possibly justify a mother taking two such small innocent lives, taking two such small innocent lives? In her confession, susan Smith claimed that she was determined to commit suicide that night, distressed over her failed romance and flailing finances, she planned to kill her two boys along with herself, as she believed they'd be better off dead than to go through life without their mother. Driving to John D Long Lake, she stopped the car at the top of the boat ramp and released the brake so that the car would roll into the lake, drowning all of them. She did this three times that night, working up the nerve to go through with it. On that third attempt, susan stepped out of the car and released the brake one last time, leaving her babies alone to face her choice. A coroner determined that they did not die beforehand. They were in fact alive when the car rolled into the murky darkness of the lake and cold water filled their lungs. Their mother watched as the car drifted out into the lake, sinking, capsizing, and then she turned and ran to a nearby house to begin spinning her web of lies. House to begin spinning her web of lies. We don't know how long she watched, but we do know that her clothes were not wet when she arrived at the house. In other words, she watched but she did nothing to stop it. The closed casket funeral for Michael and Alexander was held on Sunday, november 6, 1994. They were buried together in a white casket with gold trim and they lie at rest, far too soon in life, in the cemetery behind the Bogansville United Methodist Church in South Carolina.
Carole Townsend:David Smith said in a recent interview that he learned of Susan's confession the way most of us did during a press conference held that same day, that Susan prayed with the sheriff and then provided both a written and verbal confession. As horrible as Susan Smith's choices were for those two boys, her husband and the families, the grieving did not stop there. Nationwide, those who had followed the case on the harrowing days of the search also grieved. They felt betrayed. They mourned the loss of innocent life and in the small town of Union, south Carolina, healing had to begin. Smith's accusation that a black man had taken her children had ignited divisiveness and mistrust between blacks and whites in the county. By many accounts that divisiveness hadn't been there before, at least not among the majority of citizens. But all it took was a seemingly innocent young white woman crying and pleading for the lives of her sons, and the embers of racial hatred began smoking.
Carole Townsend:Although Susan Smith could have been sentenced to death in South Carolina for her crimes, the jury in her trial sentenced her to life with the possibility of parole. During the trial, susan's stepfather admitted to having molested her from the time she was a child and continuing that relationship well into her marriage to David. With that information, jurors seemed to feel that the circumstance mitigated her decision to kill her children. With that sentence, she could possibly be released from prison in 30 years. That 30-year mark fell in november 2024 and there was a great deal of publicity about the upcoming parole hearing. David Smith, his wife and other family members addressed the court, stating that Susan has not been rehabilitated and that 30 years in prison in no way pays for what she did. Others testified to the effect that Susan had not been reformed and was not remorseful for what she did to her own children.
Carole Townsend:While at the Camille Griffin Graham Correctional Institution in Columbia, south Carolina, Smith told administrators at the prison that she had sex four times on prison grounds with 50-year-old prison guard Houston Cagle. Cagle later pleaded guilty for these charges and spent three months in prison. A year later, prison captain Alfred Rowe confessed to having sex with Smith and was sentenced to five years probation. Susan Smith has since enjoyed romantic relationships with men outside of prison Because of the scandals while in the Graham Institute, smith was moved to Leith Correctional Institution in Greenwood, south Carolina, in September 2000.
Carole Townsend:She was treated several times for medical issues while at Leith, though the reasons for this treatment have not been disclosed. She has also been disciplined for drug use, self-mutilation and the unauthorized use of another inmate's PIN or personal identification number for purchases. She has received job training while at Leith in horticulture and in custodial care. Since April 10, 2025, she has been working as a wardkeeper assistant at Leith.
Carole Townsend:In August 2014, the state newspaper sent a letter to Susan Smith asking her to share her experience of her trial and investigation. In January 2015, the newspaper received a handwritten response from Smith. In the letter, smith stated it has been hard to listen to lie after lie and not be able to defend myself. Adding, I'm not the monster society thinks I am. I'm far from it. I was a good mother and I loved my boys. The letter in fact related very little about her two dead boys. It mostly addressed the public's perception of her.
Carole Townsend:Circling back to the November 2024 video link parole hearing, susan Smith was unanimously denied parole, despite her tears and her assertion that God has forgiven her for killing her sons. She reportedly became incensed at the board's decision, throwing what was described as a screaming tantrum when she arrived back at her jail cell. For now, david Smith and those who knew and loved those two little boys can rest easy that Susan will remain behind bars. But the pain still isn't over, because now that the 30-year mark of Susan's incarceration has passed, she becomes eligible for parole every two years going forward, and every two years David Smith and his family will have to explain why her release from prison would be so hard to face and so hard to live with. It seems that in the case of Susan Smith and her dreadful decision to take her son's lives that night, the nightmare will never end.
Carole Townsend:I'm Carole Townsend, veteran newspaper journalist and six-time award-winning author. You can find me on social media and check out my website at www. caroletownsend. com. As always, thanks for listening, and if you're enjoying these tales of Southern history and lore, I hope you'll tell your friends. Subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, apple Play, iheart and anywhere you listen.
Carole Townsend:My team and I referenced the following materials in putting together the facts of the story the article Susan Smith's Ex-Husband recounts the moment she admitted to killing their kids In Peoplecom by Nicole Acosta, updated February 14th 2025. The film documentary Unthinkable the Susan Smith story, nbc News, various stories from 30 years ago and from 2024 and 2025 regarding the murders, the parole hearing and the denial of parole, and the Dateline episode Return to the Lake dated February 19th 2025.
