Former Prison Lover Says Susan Smith 'Belongs in Jail for the Rest of Her Life' Despite Her Tears Over Killing Her Sons

Tracey Thompson, who claims to have had a relationship with Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who drowned her two young sons in 1994, while they were both incarcerated, said she believes Smith shouldn’t be paroled.

“She is where she belongs,” Thompson said ahead of Smith’s next parole hearing. “She did something horrible. She belongs in jail for the rest of her life.”

Thompson, a former inmate who was once a bank robber, said she and Smith were together for four years while they were both incarcerated at Leath Correctional Institution in Greenwood, South Carolina. Thompson also said she still cares about Smith, but she had an extremely harsh opinion of her former partner.

“I think she’s a sociopath. You’d have to be a sociopath to do what she did!” Thompson said.

Smith became one of the most reviled women in the United States after she, then 23, strapped her two young sons, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander, into her car and let it roll into John D. Long Lake near Union, South Carolina, on Tuesday, October 25, 1994. Afterward, Smith told police and television audiences that a Black man had hijacked her car and kidnapped the two boys. For nine days before her confession on Thursday, November 3, 1994, she appeared on television crying and begging for the safe return of her sons.

Thompson said Smith was deeply saddened by what she had done. “She cried every day, every day, for those boys,” Thompson said. “She always missed them. She regretted what she did.”

Thompson said they never discussed the actual murders with one another. “She did talk about how much she missed the kids every minute of every day,” she said. Thompson believes Smith’s childhood trauma, including sexual abuse, contributed to the crime.

Prosecutors claimed that Smith murdered her sons because a wealthy man she was having an affair with didn’t want children, and her defense cited her history of trauma, as well as her mental illness. In July 1995, a jury found Smith guilty on two counts of murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after serving 30 years.

On Wednesday, November 20, 2024, Smith had her first parole hearing. The parole board voted unanimously against releasing her after the boys’ father, David Smith, asked the board to deny his former wife’s request for parole. During the hearing, Susan stated through tears, “I know what I did was horrible.” David told the board that he planned on attending each subsequent hearing “to ensure that their death doesn’t go in vain.”

Susan, 55, will go before the South Carolina parole board once again on Thursday, November 19. To approve parole, the board must vote by a two-thirds majority. Thompson said she won’t be supporting the release of her former partner. “I don’t want her to get out,” she said.

David continues to fight against his ex-wife’s attempt to win her freedom, and hundreds of people wrote to the parole board regarding her case before her first hearing. Tommy Pope, the prosecutor on the original case, has also opposed her release, and he has said he believes the death penalty would have been appropriate. At her 2024 hearing, Tommy argued that “Susan has always focused on Susan,” according to a report.