Nine Days of a Lie: Susan Smith and the Lake in Union
On October 25, 1994, Susan Smith told America a Black man had carjacked her Mazda in Union, South Carolina, and driven off with her sons still in the back seat. Michael was three. Alexander was fourteen months old. For nine days the country searched. Then she confessed: there was no carjacker. She had let the car roll into John D. Long Lake.
Alexander Lawson traces the night at the boat ramp, the national manhunt built on a racial hoax, the confession, the trial, and the life sentences that followed — including Smith’s 2024 parole denial and her next hearing in 2026.
Content warning: child…
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