Killer mom Susan Smith keeps getting ghosted by her jailhouse suitors: ‘I needed a clean break’
Killer mom Susan Smith has a revolving door of jailhouse suitors — and many of them abruptly stop talking to her, leaving the convicted murderer bewildered about why she is being ghosted, jailhouse records obtained by The Post show.
Smith — who is serving a life sentence for drowning her two young boys in a case that caused a national sensation in 1994 — is a prolific user of the South Carolina prison text message and phone system — carrying on conversations multiple times a day.
All of the chats are recorded and entered into public record. A review of the logs shows that several of her lovers on the outside have abruptly stopped communicating with her.
Speaking to The Post, one of the men says that the final straw was seeing how many other men Smith was romantically speaking with.
“She knew I was falling in love with her, but she was talking to all these other guys,” said the man, a 50-something divorced dad who had romantic chats with Smith for more than 18 months.
“I needed a clean break, so I just stopped talking to her. I figured she’d figure it out.”
Smith, 52, tried sending the man at least two messages after the ghosting. “I haven’t heard from you,” she said a month after his last message. “Are you ok? I’m not sure what happened.”
When the man didn’t respond, Smith stopped communicating with him — and began to focus on other paramours in her stable.
“She didn’t put up much of a fight,” the man dryly told The Post. “She just moved on.”
Smith has carried on romantic relationships from behind bars with at least a dozen men in the past three years — and many of her lovesick suitors had no idea that the others even existed.
“I truly thought I was the only one,” said the man. “But nope. There were a lot of others.”
Smith has been incarcerated at Leath Correctional Institution in Greenwood, South Carolina, for more than two decades after the notorious murder of her two sons.
She is up for parole later this year, and she’s told family members she believes she deserves to be released.
She was a 22-year-old mom when she let her car roll into John D. Long Lake in Union County, South Carolina, with her boys — 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander — still strapped into their car seats. She stood on the side of the lake as the vehicle sank to the bottom, slowly drowning both boys.
Smith then falsely told police that a black man had carjacked her and kidnapped the boys, leading to a manhunt in which authorities went door to door among local neighborhoods that were predominantly African American.
Smith and her then-husband, David, appeared on national news every day, pleading for the boys’ safe return. But nine days later, Smith finally confessed that there was no carjacker, and that she had drowned her sons in the lake.
Her alleged motive: She was having an affair with a wealthy man who didn’t want children. The car was pulled from the water with the two boys still strapped in their seats.
She was convicted of murder, but spared the death penalty and instead given life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
Start your day with all you need to know
Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.
Thanks for signing up!
She is asking her suitors to help her build a life outside prison.
“She’ll find someone to bankroll her, but it won’t be me,” says the former suitor. “There’s a sucker born every minute.”