Susan Leigh Vaughan was born on September 26, 1971, in Union, South Carolina. She was the daughter of a father who struggled with mental health issues. He died by suicide when Susan was just six years old. This tragic event heavily impacted her childhood.

As Susan grew up, she faced other challenges. When she was 13, she attempted suicide. This was a sign of her deep emotional struggles. After her father's death, her mother remarried. Her stepfather, Beverly C. Russell Jr., was a businessman who later became known in South Carolina's Republican Party and the Christian Coalition. Unfortunately, he also sexually molested Susan when she was a teenager. Their relationship reportedly involved sexual interactions that continued until just months before the murders of her children.

In 1989, Susan graduated from high school. After that, she made a second suicide attempt. This happened after a romance with a married man came to an end. Later, she married David Smith, and they had two sons together: Michael and Alexander. 

On October 25, 1994, Susan Smith reported to the police that a black man had carjacked her while she was driving with her two sons, Michael and Alexander. For nine days, she pleaded on national television for their safe return. However, after a thorough investigation and nationwide search, she confessed on November 3, 1994, to intentionally rolling her car into John D. Long Lake, drowning her sons inside.

Smith claimed that her actions had no motive and were unplanned. She stated that she was not in a right state of mind. Detectives, however, had their doubts about her story from the beginning. Investigators searched local lakes and ponds, including John D. Long Lake, where they eventually found the bodies of her sons. After initial searches did not find the car, it was later discovered to be much farther from the shore than police had expected.

During the investigation, Smith underwent a polygraph test, and inconsistencies in her account raised further suspicion. For instance, she described circumstances surrounding the supposed carjacking that conflicted with traffic light patterns at that location.

In 1995, Susan Smith stood trial for the murders. Her defense argued that she was deeply troubled and suffered from severe depression. They claimed that she drove to the lake intending to end her own life and that of her children. The prosecution asserted that she killed her sons to pursue a new life with a former lover. The jury found her guilty of murder after just two and a half hours of deliberation.

Ultimately, she was sentenced to two concurrent life terms in prison in 1995. Smith began serving her sentence at the Camille Griffin Graham Correctional Institution before being moved to Leath Correctional Institution in Greenwood, South Carolina, after issues involving inappropriate relationships with correctional officers. In 2024, she was eligible for parole but was denied.