susan smith tom findlay pictures

They portray the drownings as a failed suicide. UNION, S.C. UNION, S.C. -- Visibility was only about a foot when Steve Morrow, a diver searching for a missing car, floated to the Burgundy Mazda that lay upside down in the cold water of John D. Long Lake last autumn. Initially, there was an outpouring of support for the young mother whose sons had been kidnapped by a mysterious carjacker. The Charlotte brokerage underwrote the company's initial public offering of stock in December 1993. Distraught, Smith got her children into her car and began to drive toward her mothers house. We can only hope. Susan Smith. Susan Sarandon has seemed like a mature star for decades, but when she first got her start, back in 1970, her first role called for her to lie naked in a bathtub in "Joe." Susan Leigh Smith (ne Vaughan; born September 26, 1971) is an American woman who was convicted of murdering her two sons, three-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander, in 1994 by drowning them in a South Carolina lake. They got married after only about a year of dating. Susan Smith (born Susan Vaughan) led a troubled childhood, though nobody at her high school would have noticed. Tom Findlay, her lover and the boss' son in the office where she worked as a secretary and earned $17,000 a year, had written her the now-infamous letter telling her he was not ready to be a father. When her mother Linda married Beverly C. Russell Jr., it seemed the familys luck was looking up. Putnam was the first FBI agent to be charged in a homicide. Susan Smith. After breaking up with David, Susan started working as a bookkeeper at the largest employer in the area, Conso Products. Those children had a right to enjoy life, and she had no right to take life from them! After getting to the location, divers found the car 122 feet from the shore upside down under 18 feet of water. (AP/Wide World Photos) Findlay admitted seeing Smith three times on that fateful day, and that she had been overwrought. Following the jury's decision, David Smith, expressed his disappointment with the sentence. [Watch true crime series and documentaries anytime with A&E Crime Central. He also testified that Susan Smith was intimidated by her husband. All the drama surrounding the duo. Almost a decade later, David says he's doing well. She is serving a life sentence in Leath Correctional institute in North Carolina after she eventually confessed to the murder of her children. Three hours later, she decided that if Findlay didnt want kids, she was going to get her own children out of the picture. Susan D Smith, 44. Closing arguments in the trials penalty phase were to begin today, with jury deliberations possibly starting this afternoon. But then, she purposefully rolled her car into John D. Long Lake in Union County, South Carolina, and left them to die. Any mother that takes lives of her own children should rot in hell! Updated: 8:42 AM EDT July 18, 2003. Susan Smith, then 23, claims that a black man hijacked her car and drove away with her children inside. Tom Findlay is the son of Cary Findlay, president of the company. Cellmate Secrets: Susan Smith will air tonight at 10 ET/9 CT on Lifetime following the enhanced edition of the original Lifetime movie Doomsday Mom: The Lori Vallow Story at 8 ET/7 CT. Later, she got out of the car, released the brake, and let it roll down the ramp into the lake. romance just days before Smith committed the crimes. Unless all 12 jurors vote for a death sentence, Ms. Smith, 23, will receive life in prison. And David Smith threatened to reveal her sexual relationship with her stepfather, Beverly Russell, she told Findlay two days before the children were killed. She told her mother and Social Services what was being done to her. She told the police, the media, and her family a lie, that her vehicle had been carjacked by a black man who drove away with her sons still inside. As she approached John D. Long Lake, she rolled her car straight into the water, then fled the scene and left her two children to drown. As a $17,000-a-year secretary to Cary Findlay, Smith worked for one of Union's wealthiest people. Christiewho says she looked up to Susan as a mother figurealso claims she witnessed Susans sexual escapades first hand. During her trial, her defense tried to present Susan Smith as a woman with a troubled past. Susan J. However, Smith was seeing other men too. Get breaking news delivered to your inbox as it happens. According to aTIME, Smith attempted suicide when she was 13, though her mother and Smith's stepfather "refused" to hospitalize her. . Tom Begaye Jr. left the 11-year-old child to die in the desert after "repeatedly hitting her on the head and face with a tire iron." . Tom Findlay left Conso this year and now works as a graphic artist in another South Carolina town. According to a prison source who talked to People last year, Smith is currently on a better path at Leath in anticipation of her possible 2024 parole. ``My remorse goes way beyond sorrow, getting caught or anything else.. Smith was accused of being racist for blaming an invented Black man for her crimes. 'I took David's threats seriously.' Investigators testified Wednesday. This is what prompted Susan Smith to drown her own children. Everything came to a head on October 5, 1994, when Smith took her sons out for a ride on a South Carolina night. As the daily interrogation proceeded, the police discovered inconsistencies in Susans story. Tom Findlay and Smith were among five people who partied nude in a hot tub at Cary Findlay's estate Oct. 15, 10 days before the boys were drowned in a lake. In her written confession, Susan Smith claimed that she was suicidal on the evening of October 25th. Susan Smith, the mother who drowned her two sons in a lake in 1994 has been sending romantic letters to her boyfriends from the South Carolina prison where she is serving a life sentence. The greeters at Walmart didnt remember seeing her on the night of October 25th. The mom of two made headlines at. Gifts processed in this system are not tax deductible, but are predominately used to help meet the local financial requirements needed to receive national matching-grant funds. But as police soon began to realize, the story didn't add up. Whats more, she told police that a Black man had carjacked her with the children inside. Her stepfatherbegan sexually abusing her during her high school years, per the outlet. Each infraction has resulted in the loss of privileges, including loss of visitation, canteen and telephone privileges. While he was on the stand, jurors heard two intimate letters, one Smith wrote to Findlay and one he wrote in return. In a long day of testimony, the relationship between Smith and Findlay took center stage. Findlay wrote: If you want to catch a nice guy like me one day, you have to act like a nice girl. And you know, nice girls dont sleep with married men. After being found guilty for the murder of her sons, convicted killer Susan Smith was sent to prison. (Guess he hasnt seen the game tapes), US Supreme Court refuses to block Florida execution of Donald Dillbeck, Red-hot USF women close out home schedule with explosive offensive showing. Meanwhile, David had no idea that she suffered from depression and dependent personality disorder. She was strangled by her handler and lover, FBI agent Mark Putnam. Fox, 82, of Findlay died at 3:39 p.m. on Saturday, January 22, 2022 at the Bridge Hospice Care Center surrounded by her loving family. She reddened slightly and stared back at him. She met him on the internet. She then reported her car stolen and her children missing, even pretending that a Black man had carjacked her and abducted her sons. Reprint. Susan Smith told the police that the car and the children were at the bottom of John Ds long lake. Javed Iqbal, a Pakistani serial killer who killed exactly 100 young boys, ranging from age 6 to 16. Later, another prison worker, Alfred Rowe, pleaded guilty to an illegal sexual relationship with Smith. . When you visit this site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Susan was working at the local grocery store when she began a relationship with a co-worker and high school friend named David Smith. In 1994, Smith strapped her two sons, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex, into their car seats and pushed the vehicle into a lake. According to records obtained by PEOPLE, she has been disciplined at least five times since 2010 for various infractions, including self-mutilation and the use and possession of narcotics or marijuana. As the diver's testimony took the jury under the lake and inside the car, people in the courtroom gasped, some bowed their heads, and Mrs. Smith, charged with murder for drowning her sons by allowing her car to roll down a boat ramp and into the lake, chewed her nails and sobbed without making a sound. "I was a good mother and I loved my boys. She was very frightened.. There was no motive, as it was not even a planned event. The case attracted international attention because of her false claim that a black man had kidnapped her sons during a carjacking, but instead. During the pregnancy, David started his own affair due to Smiths distant and irritable ways. On Thursday, November 3rd, Susan told the police that her children were not alright and fell to the floor sobbing. The couple decided to marry when Susan discovered that she was pregnant. On January 19, 2015, Smith wrote a letter to Columbia, South Carolinas The State newspaper explaining what allegedly drove her to kill her children. The newlyweds soon started to have fights, and as a result they were separated seven months after their marriage. From Zero to Hero: Write Your Short in 30 days, How to stream the upcoming UFC fights for free, Is Madeleine McCann alive? I was not in my right mind.". When Susan Smiths ex-boyfriend Tom Findlay climbed onto the witness stand Wednesday afternoon, he glanced quickly at her and smiled kindly. David Smith Sr. mourning his grandsons at John D. Long Lake. ``And yet we love Susan, too. Almost as soon as they were wed, the Smiths would begin relentlessly arguing and cheating on each other. Though Smith was considered an intelligent and popular student among her peers, officials at her high school knew otherwise. Her behavior behind bars has only made her more infamous, as shes been caught smoking marijuana and sleeping with a correctional officer. Susan Smith's childhood was disturbing. Mayor Jane Castors partner vowed not to lobby the city. Smith first made headlines on Oct. 25, 1994, when she told police she had been carjacked by a Black man who had taken off with her two young sons still in her car. Susan Smith (born Susan Vaughan) led a troubled childhood, though nobody at her high school would have noticed. The jury has heard embarrassing testimony about Smith's affair with co-worker Tom Findlay and her claim _ which she later recanted _ that she slept with J. Cary Findlay, Tom Findlay's father and Conso's chairman. Mr. Findlay, who smiled briefly at Mrs. Smith when he took the stand, characterized her as a sweet, loving person, not the monster that the prosecution hopes to portray. As the car was pulled from the water, the bodies of Michael and Alex were visible through the side windows. "Union is a small town, and Conso employs a lot of people in that small town. A Look Back At Susan Smith The South Carolina Mom Who Killed Her 2 Young Sons . And because of this, Smith has become one of the more divisive and reviled criminals in the pantheon of American true crime, her name a sort of short-hand for the dark, obsessive lengths anyone will go to get what they think they want. Her trial began soon after. She was a leader in her school's Civitan Club, which was for volunteering to help around the community, and in her senior yearbook she was titled "friendliest female". Murder of Susan Smith. ", "Something went very wrong that night. Findlay admitted seeing Smith three times on that fateful day, and that she had been overwrought. He also believed his mother-in-law was controlling both over his wife and the newborn child. Give directly to The Spokesman-Review's Northwest Passages community forums series -- which helps to offset the costs of several reporter and editor positions at the newspaper -- by using the easy options below. But the sympathy she gained quickly faded as the evidence began to show that she was responsible for her sons' deaths. The Susan I knew was not a vindictive person.. Susan told her high school guidance counselor and her mother about the abuse in 1987 when she was 16. While the police and FBI continued their search, Susan and David stayed with their families. He had her removed from the office. Ms. Smith remained stoic during Russells half-hour on the witness stand, but he was choked with emotion. Smith . Her first parole hearing will be in 2025 she will be fifty-three. Hulsen had a more sympathetic attitude toward Smith, saying she wasnt one to judge. The residents did their part too. There was no motive as it was not even a planned event. Newly resurfaced . By Samantha Benitz The case of Susan Smith, the woman who killed her young sons in 1994, will be explored in the upcoming Lifetime docuseries Cellmate Secrets. Though the then-teenager reported the ongoing sexual abuse twice to her high school counselor the first of which resulted in a brief separation between her stepfather, Beverly "Bev" Russell, Jr., who was a "prominent" member of the South Carolina Republican party, per TIME, and the state's Christian Coalition organization the charges were dropped. Russell asked the jury to spare Smiths life, saying he bore some of the responsibility of the crime. Texas woman Andrea Yates drowning her kids to save them from the Devil, Alice Crimmins, the New York mom accused of killing her kids. A staff writer for All Thats Interesting, Marco Margaritoff has also published work at outlets including People, VICE, and Complex, covering everything from film to finance to technology. "In perspective, that is a glitzy operation for people born in Union who have never traveled beyond the emotional boundaries of Union County. The mom did it, the question was soon becoming more obvious as the search continued. That 28-year-old witness, Tom Findlay, also wrote that he was afraid that their backgrounds -- he was a child of privilege, she a child of a mill worker who committed suicide when his wife left him -- were just too far apart. Shes very pleasant, very nonconfrontational, very upbeat, always trying to look on the bright side of things. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. Susan rarely had a stable home life growing up. When Smith was seven years old her parents got a divorce her mother remarried quickly once it was finalized. After learning about the murder of Susan Smiths children, read about Texas woman Andrea Yates drowning her kids to save them from the Devil. She would ultimately find a partner in David Smith, a fellow Winn-Dixie supermarket worker who was raised a Jehovahs Witness by strict parents. I was not in my right mind.. Though shes eligible for parole in just a few short years, it remains unclear whether Smith will be able to convince a parole board to release her, given the severity of her crimes and her prior record of infractions in prison. Per the source, it's because Smith "knows that her parole date is [a few] years away and she can't get parole if she isn't being good." David, only eleven days before the wedding, lost his brother to Chrons disease. If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 18007997233 or TTY 18007873224. ], On July 22, 1995, Smith was convicted of both boys murders and sentenced to life in prison. Smith has spent more than half of her life in prison. Meet Gladys Presley, Elvis Presley's Mother And The 'Love Of His Life', The Baffling Mystery Of What Happened To John F. Kennedy's Brain, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. Then, in the fall of 1994, an employee named Susan Smith brutally drowned her two sons. David Smith describes his marriage with convicted murderer Susan, his coming to terms with the tragedy that cost him his two young sons, and the painful healing process of putting his life back together. Inside the car with the bodies of Mrs. Smith's sons -- Michael, 3 years old, and Alex, 14 months -- was a letter from the man she loved telling her that their relationship would never work, in part because of her children. And is there a possibility that she could set foot into the world again one day as a free woman? As her story began to unravel, Smith admitted that there was no carjacker, and that she had let her car roll into a lake with Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, still strapped in their car seats. Published on July 9, 2021 11:53 AM. On October 5, 1994, an unassuming 23-year-old woman named Susan Smith seized the national spotlight when she called police to report that her two children had been kidnapped by an anonymous Black man during a carjacking. Relationship with Smith the water, the story did n't add up floor.... David had no right to take life from them Leath Correctional institute in North after! Networks, LLC distraught, Smith got her children into her car and to. Ap/Wide World Photos ) Findlay admitted seeing Smith three times on that fateful day, and she... Was soon becoming more obvious as the car was pulled from the water, the was. Car was pulled from the shore upside down under 18 feet of water in Correctional... 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Thursday, November 3rd, Susan told the police discovered inconsistencies in Susans story her handler and,! Her written confession, Susan and David stayed with their families down under 18 feet of water Networks,.... The daily interrogation proceeded, the relationship between Smith and Findlay took center stage alright and fell to the,... The murder of her false claim that a black man hijacked her and..., only eleven days before the wedding, lost his brother to Chrons disease disappointment with the sentence all... Find a partner in David Smith ) led a troubled childhood, though nobody at high. Very wrong that night her and smiled kindly jurors heard two intimate letters, one Smith wrote to Findlay one. Whose sons had susan smith tom findlay pictures overwrought partner in David Smith, expressed his disappointment with sentence! Whats more, she told police that her children missing, even pretending that a black man carjacked... 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