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The Susan Smith case in Union SC. I live near that area. The morning the news hit and her wild story about a black man stealing her Mazda with her two young sons in the car with all the sobs and tears was horrible. The news released the car description and license tag number.
At my work we would ride through shopping centers, grocery stores before work and during lunch looking for the Mazda. Then the truth came out. Susan Smith had murdered her two sons, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander. The two boys were strapped in their car seats and she launched the car into the John D. Long lake.
She is in prison in Columbia SC and has been on her best behavior for several years with the parole pending soon. Past infractions in prison contacting STD, drug use, self-mutilation and having sex with a prison guard and a prison captain.
Smith was sentenced to life with possibility of parole in 30 years! Smith is eligible for parole in November 2024. She will be 53 years old. I sincerely hope the Union County Sheriff's Department, the ex-husband and father of Michael and Alexander will be at the parole hearing to object to this parole.
I really doubt that Susan Smith will ever be a free woman again. Her ex-husband isn't alone in his objection.
Her prison record is consistent with her dangerous character flaws and lack of self control.
Susan Smith needs to stay where she is. She is lucky to be alive.
Paul Bernardo/Karla Homolka........Rapists and murderers. Killed 3 girls here in Ontario, one of them her sister. He was also known as the Scarborough Rapist......Real sickos.
For some reason, this one didn't get that much attention. It involved a truly "wicked stepmother" and her husbands disabled daughter, Zaharah Baker.
The poor child was abused, taunted and kept from school by this horrid woman. Zaharah had lost a leg to cancer and much of her hearing to chemotherapy. Stepmother took her on forced marches with her prosthetic leg. This was seen by others.
Her father was clueless and never protected her. God knows what else happened in that home. The "family" moved frequently to avoid CPS.
Zaharra's remains were never found. It is believed that she was dismembered and fed to a woodchipper, scattering her remains abound Hickory NC.
Sylvia Likens case.
Embodied every level of society neglect .
School did nothing.
The family siblings aided the mother in the cruelty.
Her bio parents cast her off to strangers..
Her final days were horrendously inhumane. Never mind the final moments of her death.
That murder story crossed Soo many lines.
Will take time to review some of the posters others Cases. Thank you for those back stories.
It has to be Jeffrey Dahmer. I was born in 1986 so this maniac being plastered all over the news was one of the first major true crime news stories I remember. I was very young and impressionable so I’m sure it’s a big reason I got interested in true crime so early. Lionel Dahmer’s A Father Story was one of the first real books I ever read too (definitely not age appropriate reading lol).
As for things that are more personal Mary-Lou Arruda was a little girl from Raynham, Massachusetts who was murdered in 1978. I’m from Medford, MA so not exactly next door to Raynham, but close enough to the general area. I even have relatives there. Her story was definitely referenced in those stranger danger school assemblies we would have in elementary school. Although that would’ve been in the early 1990s and when you’re a little kid in the early 1990s, 1978 might as well be 1948 or 1928.
Also, with the Massachusetts connection, Elizabeth Short, the murder victim in the Black Dahlia case, was raised in Medford, MA. We even went to the same high school. Obviously in different years and she dropped out while I graduated. Also, another odd similarity is we both moved to California as teenagers (though I just snuck in as a 19-year old college transfer student while she moved there as a younger teenager).
Arruda and Short are both tragic cases, but they don’t really stay with me the way the horrid details of Dahmer’s crimes do.
I'm from England, so grew up with the stories in the news there. The one which I think sticks in the minds of so many Brits because of its sheer evilness and infamy is one which took place a little before I was born. Myra Hindley & Ian Brady murdered five young victims in the north of England between 1963 and 1965 - Lesley Ann Downey (aged 10), Pauline Reade (16), John Kilbride (12), Keith Bennett (12), and Edward Evans (17) - and buried their bodies out on the moors near to where they lived. It shocked the nation, not just that the pair could carry out such murders but the particularly callous way in which they did it. They were so sick that apparently they even made a tape recording of their youngest victim begging for her life, which was played to the jury during the trial. After their conviction, the judge felt that the jury had listened to such horrendous things during the course of the trial that he made an order that none should ever have to serve on a jury for any reason again.
Unfortunately, in most people's minds, the pair escaped being hanged as the death penalty for murder in Britain had been suspended for a trial period a short time before the conviction, so they were sentenced to life. Both died in prison a few years ago.
Search on the "Moors Murderers" for the full story. There are many accounts out there.
The Susan Smith case in Union SC. I live near that area. The morning the news hit and her wild story about a black man stealing her Mazda with her two young sons in the car with all the sobs and tears was horrible. The news released the car description and license tag number.
At my work we would ride through shopping centers, grocery stores before work and during lunch looking for the Mazda. Then the truth came out. Susan Smith had murdered her two sons, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander. The two boys were strapped in their car seats and she launched the car into the John D. Long lake.
She is in prison in Columbia SC and has been on her best behavior for several years with the parole pending soon. Past infractions in prison contacting STD, drug use, self-mutilation and having sex with a prison guard and a prison captain.
Smith was sentenced to life with possibility of parole in 30 years! Smith is eligible for parole in November 2024. She will be 53 years old. I sincerely hope the Union County Sheriff's Department, the ex-husband and father of Michael and Alexander will be at the parole hearing to object to this parole.
Couple of notes here. First off.. Remember.. When the story first broke, everyone but the police believed her. She's about the poster child for "White woman in trouble" and the media hysteria that can come from that. I've lived in the upstate all my life save for 9 years in the DC area, and have been back here since '91.
The sheriff of Union County, Howard Wells, who broke her and got her to confess, wound up doing a little bit of time after being indicted by the feds for lying to investigators, unrelated to the Smith case.
I suspect he'll probably lay low as the time for her parole comes around. I think he's truly just at the point that he's gotten past it and doesn't want to revisit it. Maybe he files an opposition to her parole, but, i'd actually be surprised if we hear from him at all.
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