Smith ‘Lied’ to Nation About Her Sons, Prosecutor Says

Susan Smith “looked this country in the eye and lied” about killing her sons, who had become an obstacle to a love affair, a prosecutor said Tuesday at the start of her murder trial.

But one of her lawyers called the boys’ drownings part of a “failed suicide” by a woman who “tried to cope with a failing life and snapped.”

Tears filled Smith’s eyes and she buried her face in her hands during the opening statements at her trial on charges of drowning her sons, Michael, 3, and Alexander, 14 months.

Later, she rocked back and forth and sobbed when prosecutors played a videotape of a television interview in which she told her original story about a black carjacker abducting her sons.

Defense lawyer David Bruck has said his case will be based on Smith’s mental state.

If she is found guilty or guilty but mentally ill, she could be sentenced to death. A verdict of innocent by reason of insanity would send her to a mental hospital, from which she could someday be released if declared sane.

“She begged the alleged carjacker for the safe return of her children. . . . And the whole time, she knew they were laying dead on the bottom of John D. Long Lake,” prosecutor Keith Giese said.

The little boys presented an obstacle to Smith’s desire to be with Tom Findlay, son of the owner of the company where she worked, the prosecutor said. He had broken off their relationship a week before the drownings.

Defense lawyer Judy Clarke portrayed Smith as a deeply troubled woman and the drownings as a failed suicide.

The case began long before the car went into the lake Oct. 25, Clarke said. There was the suicide of Smith’s father when she was 6, her own suicide attempts at 13 and 18, and her stepfather’s alleged molestation, for which Smith blamed herself, the lawyer said.

Circuit Judge William Howard ended the day’s proceedings early when the courthouse was evacuated because of a bomb threat shortly after 4 p.m. No bomb was immediately found.