Crime Weekly - S3 Ep218: Crime Weekly News: Susan Smith Soon Eligible for Parole & Rex Heuermann Faces More Charges

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

Susan Smith made headlines in 1994 when she strapped her two young children, Michael and Alexander, into their car seats and drove her car into a lake, letting it submerge and drown them both. She was convicted of both their murders and given life in prison with the possibility of parole in 30 years. This November, she will finally be eligible for that parole, but many people do not want her ever released. Rex Heuermann is also in the news as he stands trial for the infamous Gilgo Beach murders. He faces even more charges as DNA from strands of hair connect him to more deaths, and his killings may even stretch over state lines. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. CozyEarth.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY to get 30% off! 2. PDSDebt.com/CrimeWeekly - Get your FREE debt analysis today!

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we have you covered with bold hues, soothing neutrals, and everything in between. Shop the sale online or visit your neighborhood Sherwin-Williams store. Click the banner to learn more. Retail sales only. News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And we're going to be talking about Susan Smith tonight. Many of you have already heard about this case, but there are some updates and Stephanie's going to relay them to you now if you haven't heard of them. Well, so as a quick recap, Susan Smith, she was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 1994 murders of her two sons, three-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex.

As of now, she's currently up for parole. And listen, I don't think she should get it. Okay. I'm just going to spoil that for you and tell you, I don't think she should get it. And I know Derek's not super familiar with this case, but I'm going to give you a breakdown of it now because it was a horrific and senseless crime. And it sent shockwaves, not just through the country, but through the world. It went international because it was kind of like one of the first times, one of the first major stories of a mother killing her children. In October of 1994, Susan Smith strapped her two sons into their car seats, and then she allowed the vehicle to roll into a South Carolina lake. She basically did nothing while her children drowned in that car. She later told police that a black man had carjacked her at gun point. And she then put on a show of crying for reporters, telling them, quote, I want to say to my babies that your mama loves you so much. You just got to be strong. I just know I just feel in my heart that you're OK. You've just got to take care of each other, end quote. And see,

this is where people really get it twisted, where they're like, well, you know, maybe she was going through something. She had mental health issues. She was postpartum depression. Okay. But then you get up in front of cameras and you lie about what happened to your kids and claim a black man took them and now you don't know where they are and you're sending a message to your children that you know are no longer alive. It's giving Chris Watts. It's giving Casey Anthony. It's giving malicious and not the result of some mental health issue. Now, 10 days later, Susan Smith did confess to drowning her children. And it wasn't like she just came out and she was like, oh, I can't believe I'm getting away with this. My conscience won't let me live. I've got to tell you. No, police were on to her from the get-go.

There was a lot of inconsistencies with her story, her initial story that she told. And they pretty much, I think, from the jump, they were like, there's something off here. And they kind of did some investigation. And then they sat down with her and they told her what they had. And then she confessed.

And obviously, divers went into the lake to pull the car out. And diver Steve Morrow would later say, quote, I was able to see a small hand against the glass, end quote. Absolutely horrendous. Yeah, so police said that they basically immediately suspected that Susan Smith was lying to them about the disappearance of her children. In fact, they actually searched the lake where the boys' bodies would eventually be found, but they were unable to initially locate the vehicle because it came to rest significantly further from the shore than they had originally thought. And meanwhile, there's this, you know, manhunt going on for this black carjacker who doesn't even exist. And when Susan Smith was convicted of murdering her two children the found guilty. But the prosecutor, Tommy Pope,

he was unable to get the death penalty for Susan Smith, even though he did try. And according to Susan Smith's attorneys, it wasn't that she was an evil person. In fact, they said this isn't about evil. This is about her being evil. This is a case about despair and sadness. They said that she had a difficult childhood. Her father took his own life when she was only six years old. She tried to take her own life when she was 13. She tried it again when she was 17. high school, although Susan Smith at one point described their relationship as consensual and said that she enjoyed it because it seemed to make her mother mad and jealous. In fact, Susan Smith's affair with her stepfather allegedly continued through September of 1994, just weeks before the murders. Now, Susan Smith married her husband in 1991, and at that time, she was pregnant with her first child. The relationship was not a good one. There was multiple affair allegations on both sides, and one of those affairs was between Susan and a 27-year-old

graphic designer named Tom Findlay. Now, this affair began in January of 1994. It lasted for a few months. It resumed in September of 1994, just a few weeks before Susan Smith took the lives of her two children. And according to Tom Findlay, he and Susan were together intimately just 10 times, but he broke off the relationship for good on October 15th, 1994. He said he did that because he saw Susan kissing a married man at a hot tub party. But there was another reason that the relationship didn't end up working out. And according to Tom Findlay, he was not down for having kids. He did not want to have children, even though he said he could see himself with Susan. He didn't like the fact that she had kids. And who does that remind us of?

It reminds us of Chris Watts and Nicole Kissinger. He said, quote, there are some things about you which aren't suited for me. And yes, I am speaking about your children. This is a letter that Tom wrote to Susan. And this letter was discovered with the bodies of her children in her submerged vehicle. The letter goes on to say, quote, I'm sure that your kids are good kids, but it really wouldn't matter how good they may be. The fact is, I just don't want children. And Smith insisted that her despair over Tom's decision to

terminate the relationship is what led to the murder of her children. She said, quote, I was in love with someone very much, but he didn't love me and never would. End quote. That's what she said in her confession. And listen, I actually have respect for that. You came out and said the quiet part out loud. It's horrendous. The thought that you might kill your kids because a not why I did it or it didn't happen that way or I didn't do it. She's coming right out. She's saying, yeah, that's why I did it. And I don't know. What do you think about all this? Yeah, I definitely want to weigh in on it because as a father and an investigator, it's it's a difficult case. And the cases involving children are always the hardest. But let's take a quick break and then we'll dive right into it. Going to the gym can be discouraging, especially if you're putting in the work but barely seeing changes. But with Tonal, you can actually see your progress with every workout. Tonal provides

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Minimum purchase may apply. See site for details. Well, I mean, I always hate the cases involving kids. And I remember this case. Obviously, I didn't go over all the details of it, but it made national news when she did what she did to her children. And there was clearly a lot going on there. Probably some childhood trauma, a lot of things going on with Susan. Clearly it was childhood trauma. Could it just be that she was like a bad person though and a selfish person? Like, does it always have to be childhood trauma? Because so many people have childhood trauma and don't do this. Yeah, no, I think there's obviously people that are just bad people, but it does appear that she was groomed from a very young age with her, you said, stepfather or father. I mean, that's not something she just learned on her own. Somebody clearly taught her that and made her feel like it was okay.

So I blame him for that, obviously. And, you know, I think that can contribute to the behavior she displays with other men and seeking attention from them and seeking companionship and wanting to be wanted. And so I don't know exactly what was going on in her head. Obviously, there's not a single thing on this planet that would justify what she did. But I do think that with that note, being in the car, it doesn't leave a lot of speculation out there why, you know, partially why this was done. And I don't know. I just, whenever it involves kids to me, like I've seen so many things in my career a car accident or a sudden infant death syndrome, something like that, where you just walk in it, no matter what it is, those cases always

stick with you. I talk about these a lot on my YouTube channel as well. And it just, those cases are just the most difficult because these victims are the most innocent. They're just getting started. Their life has just begun. And all they know is that everyone's a good person in their eyes. They're not skewed yet by the reality of our society, you know, of the, of the civilization that we live in and to, and it's almost like they only know how to love and that's taken from them and they don't get to fulfill whatever dreams or aspirations they would have had. So it's troubling as a father,

I hate it. As an investigator, I hate it just as much. And I just, no matter what happens, you just can't find a rational reason for it. Well, now she is nearing a parole date. I believe it's November of 2024. It's November 4th of 2024. She will be eligible for parole. And this is kind of a question that that's been sort of asked as the state approaches. Like, do you think Susan Smith should get out of parole? And the majority of people say absolutely not. The majority of people, there's people who believe that she should, I guess, get out of parole. However, she's done a bunch of stuff in prison that's probably going to affect her chances of getting parole because it's kind of going to show that she's not really reformed. She the things that appear to have motivated her to take the lives of her children.

So she's been with a ton of men, a ton of men. So in 2000, she contracted a sexually transmitted disease while she was incarcerated. They did an investigation after that, and it revealed two former South Carolina Department of Corrections personnel, a guard named Houston Cagle and a captain named Alfred Rowe, engaged in sexual relations with Susan Smith while she was imprisoned. Smith also allegedly engaged in a sexual relationship with multiple female inmates. And the UK Daily Mail reported that records reveal Susan Smith has been having a ton of phone sex from behind bars, in addition to conducting multiple flirtations via text message. I'm looking at this mugshot picture of her.

She looks like Susan Atkins. She looks like a Manson girl. So you can kind of hear the transcripts of these calls or read the transcripts of these calls. And there were several, several different men. And they're talking very dirty. They're talking very dirty. And we believe that this might sort of complicate her ability to get out because it does show a little bit that she's not super responsible and she's a little bit kind of reckless. So Susan Smith reportedly told one of these men that she speaks

to on the phone that she would make a good stepmother to his children. She also told this man that she could see herself around kids. And he responded to her, quote, you'd be great, babe. End quote. Apparently, this man is just one of more than half a dozen men who are talking to Smith. They're throwing money at her. They're telling her when she gets out, they're going to be with her. I don't know which one she's going to be with, maybe all of them. But either way, apparently, her family members are not shocked to hear about how active she's been from behind bars. They told the messenger, quote, guys have always flocked to

Susan, end quote. One relative told the messenger, quote, she's always been into guys, obviously. It would be the best case scenario for her to be in a relationship. So she's hoping to find the right man to live with if she gets out, end quote. Wow. Wow. Even her family members are like, yeah, I mean, this is just who she is and what she does. We're not surprised by it. Yeah. And I'm not making excuses for it, but this does go back to what we were just talking about a few minutes ago, right? Like she didn't, I agree with you a hundred percent that some people, regardless of the upbringing, regardless of how good their parents were, regardless of how much they were told they were loved,

when you have your stepfather molesting you from a young age, this is what you learn as a child, and it traumatizes you, and it completely stunts your growth and what you think is acceptable, and also what you decide at that point, like I'm using my body to garner the attention of men, that this is what you know.

Yes, 100%, 100%. I agree with you. Okay. Yeah, it's just like- But does every person who's groomed and sexually assaulted at a young age go on to do this? Of course not.

So what's the difference between them and her? I don't know. Selfishness and a lack of accountability and not trying to be better. Well, I would disagree with it to a certain degree because there's times

when I've been in situations where it's the exact same situation, two officers, we both experience and see the exact same thing. And yet one person ends up retiring from the job because of what they experienced. They can't just, they can't get over it. And the other person continues on. I think everybody reacts to different situations in their own way. Yep. And some of those ways are illegal and deserve the electric share. Well, it's just like, you know, we just covered last, and this is a good example of it, where we just covered the Menendez brothers in our last series, and they were horrifically traumatized and taken advantage of, and what they experienced was horrendous. And they decided to kill their offenders.

Not everyone goes and does that. And if and if Susan if Susan had killed her stepfather, I would be singing a different tune. You'd be OK with that. Why would I? Why would I ever? I mean, I wouldn't be OK with it, but I wouldn't be like, oh, electric chair. You deserve to go to prison forever or you should never see the light of day. It'd be like, okay, I understand why you went after the person that broke you. I don't understand why you broke two innocent children that you could have used instead to break the toxic cycle of abuse that you had passed down to you. You had the opportunity to break that cycle. You had the opportunity to be different, to make different choices, and to save those two little boys and to save yourself. But instead, you decided to just throw it all away because of some F boy who was like, Susan, I

really could see being with you, but you know, those kids. Screw him, honestly, too. Tom Findlay, you suck. You suck. All right. Susan sucks. Honestly, her husband, David Smith, I don't know about him, but apparently he doesn't want her to get out. He's actively trying to prevent her release. Well, he's the father of the kids, right? Yep. I mean, can you blame him? No, I don't.

I don't blame him at all. But he doesn't feel bad for her childhood trauma because his sons are bad for it. I'm not saying it was sad. i'm not referring to the children i'm referring to the fact that she you just went down this list of people that she slept with and that she's including department prison personnel and phone sex and all these things like that sexual element of it what she's doing that is sad but don't they have mental health services in prison? Like, wouldn't that stuff be available to her? Yeah. But I'm compartmentalizing what she did as opposed to what she's experiencing. Instead of hopping on the phone, all right, and talking about making out in the car with your boyfriends like you're 17 years old, go to a therapy session. Go to a

group session. Be better for yourself. My God, lady, my God. So anyways, David Smith, her husband, he doesn't want he doesn't want her to get out. I don't blame him. And relatives said, quote, David still thinks of his boys every day. Doesn't ever want Susan to get out. She belongs in jail. She's exactly where she needs to be in prison. And we will do whatever it takes to keep her there. there. But you know her boyfriends, they're trying to actively help her get out of jail. They're offering her money. I wonder why. Right. And I do wonder why. Okay. I do wonder why. You don't know why?

It is goddamn 2024. Are you telling me there's no eligible woman anywhere but in prison? We always talk about these weirdo women and how they like go after these criminals like Chris Watts and Charles Manson in prison. We're like, ah, these women are so weird. What are these men? Weird. Y'all are weird. Okay. You're weird. You should be ashamed of yourself. One dude offered her a car. Another offered her a place to stay when she's paroled, if and when. Another spoke to her about moving in together, starting a family. Good Lord, who wants to start a family with a woman that killed her two children,

her two little babies, in such a horrific way so she could be with a dude? With a dude. All right. One of the men told the messenger he finds Susan to be interesting and misunderstood and that she's not what you think she is. She's a manipulative person. And once again, yes, it's sad that she feels like she has to manipulate men in order to have value and worth in their life. Many women have felt that. Many women have been there. We get it. I don't feel bad for her. I never want her to get out. And honestly, I think she deserved to be put to death. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, I just want to briefly talk about something that's been in the headlines this past week. I just want to touch on it really

quick. Going to the gym can be discouraging, especially if you're putting in the work but barely seeing changes. But with Tonal, you can actually see your progress with every workout. Tonal provides the convenience of a full gym and the expertise of a personal trainer anytime at home with one sleek system. Designed to reduce your mental load, Tonal is the ultimate strength training system, helping you focus less on workout planning and more on getting results. No more second-guessing your technique. Tonal gives you real-time coaching cues to dial in your form and help you lift safely and effectively. After a quick assessment, Tonal sets the optimal weight for every move

and adjusts in one-pound increments as you get stronger, so you're always challenged. Tonal lets you choose from a variety of expert-led workouts, from strength to aero hit to yoga and mobility to keep you coming back for more. For a limited time, go to tonal.com to get $500 off your tonal purchase, plus a free four-year warranty. That's tonal.com for $500 off, plus a free four-year warranty. tonal.com. All right, we're back. So we haven't really talked about Rex Heuermann, who's suspected to be the Long Island serial killer on Crime Weekly. But I thought something was interesting because we've been talking auermann was arrested last year and then he

became a potential cold case person of interest in other states where he has ties like New Jersey, Nevada, South Carolina, Connecticut. Now, if they attach one of these cases to Rex, it's going to turn into a federal case and then everything's going to really kind of ramp up at that point. The FBI is involved. The FBI plays the long game, according to Joseph Giacone. You know, he says the FBI plays the long game having the feds take over. They can get somebody to talk and save their own miserable life, end quote, can bring this up to the federal level, if they can scare Rex Heuermann and say like, oh, hey, you're going to be looking at the death penalty right now. And based on the publicity this case has gotten, I think they'd have actually a good case for getting him the death penalty. Now, they say that much of the evidence police have been seen taking out of Heuermann's house has been hidden from view in boxes or bags. And investigators have declined to comment on this most recent search that they've done, but they are believed to be looking for evidence in another cold case and not one of the four that Rex Heuermann already faces charges in. Because according to many people, the evidence

in those four cases is already overwhelming. Heuermann is accused of leaving his wife's hair on materials found on the victims. Did you hear that, by the way? Yeah. So covering this case, it seems, I don't know if it was intentional or unintentional, but there's been multiple victims that have been found in the burlap wrapping with female hair, which belonged to Rex's wife on it. Yes. That's partially how they tied it back to him. Do you think it was intentional?

Because I kind of think it was intentional. I don't. You don't? No, that's stupid. That's a huge mistake. Well, why isn't his hair on them then? So I think what's happening is there's obviously a situation. If you look at his hair, it's a little shorter.

Her hair is probably longer. It got wrapped up in whatever he was using to wrap them. I don't know how. I can't explain it. But I don't think he's taking a single hand, dropping it as his calling card because it could single-handedly sink him, which it looks like it might. I don't think he did it intentionally. Well, they might've found other hair on these victims because apparently they have been seen, the police have been seen removing a dog bed from Rex Heuermann's house.

And why would you take the dog bed unless you have dog hair or animal hair to match that dog bed hair up to? So that also could be another nail in his coffin, right? Because if it's Rex Heuermann's dog and Rex Heuermann's wife, it's Rex Heuermann. Right. Right. No, that would make perfect sense why they took the dog bed, because they probably found some animal here. Maybe initially they thought, oh, it could be an animal from the area. But when they found out it was a canine, they said, hey, you know what? Let's go back and see. You know, Rex had dogs.

Let's see if it matches. And why does that matter? It's because now they're testing evidence from, you know, crime scenes and victims that did not happen in New York. So if they're able to use this dog hair to tie to any of these victims that they're investigating outside of New York, that could put the death penalty into play for Rex Horman because that could then make it become a federal case. And that's very cool. That would have to be the worst for him. And it's interesting because we know that Rex was a duck hunter. So I don't know if he used his dog for duck hunting or not.

But when we talk about some of the victims, they were wrapped in, they originally said burlap. And it is a type of burlap, but it's called the duck blind. Basically, it's camouflage's end where the hunter can stay behind it and they're not seen by the animal. So if he were using a dog to help with his duck hunting, some of the dog hair might've gotten on the duck blinds and then he uses them to wrap up his victims. That could be another nail in his coffin. But I do want to change course slightly for a brief second, just to put it out there, because when we were covering this case very early on after law enforcement finished their

initial round of searching this property, I know that Rex's wife signed a major deal. And I'm not going to say with who you guys can go find it out, but a major deal with a huge platform to kind of tell her story and cover it along the way. And they were filming around the house and all these different things. So I do wonder how that could also affect this case as far as contamination. Cause I'm on, I'm working under the assumption that there's been a lot of people in that house now. And is that going to work against the humans? Is that going to work for them? I don't know, but I do know for sure that there was a bidding war and she signed a deal and she was working some things and they were already filming. So I'm imagining they've been in that house. So how is that going to come into play? And how could that change the trajectory of what we do in the future as far as true crime documentaries? a little premature to me because there's still a world where Asa, although she's completely not charged with anything as of right now, could eventually be charged with something

if she knew what was going on. There have been allegations and testimony from some individuals who suggested that Asa was present, at least when a couple of these victims were in Rex Ruman's home. So I don't know where that's going to go or not, but the whole thing felt a little premature to me when she signed this deal. And now law enforcement's coming back to the house, the crime scene, and you have to compete with the fact that there may be all this new DNA in the house from individuals who have nothing to do with that house, just people from LA or whatever, who've been through that home now.

It contaminates the scene. And I don't know how that affects the case going forward. It is very interesting and it's going to be a crazy case. And obviously they want to bring it up to the federal level. So they have that leverage to hopefully get him to confess. Oh yeah. And I hope they do. Absolutely. We're going to, at some point, we're going to cover it. We've talked about it before. I think we have talked about it briefly, Gilgo, and some of it, we've mentioned it here and there, but we might've even covered it on a crime weekly news once initially, something brief, nothing crazy, but we're

going to dive into it because this is something that deserves- When it's like, yeah, when it's in the stage where we have, and when we have more information from the trial and things, yeah. Yeah. It'll be a good one because I've covered it a lot. I've had to do a lot of research on it. Y'all obviously do a lot of research on it and it'll be a good series to cover from the time when it started to how we got where we are today. And I have a feeling there's going to be more to the story, maybe because of some of the things I just mentioned that may make this a one of a kind case with things that we've never experienced before because of the way true crime is covered these days and how that could be a factor in this case. So we will keep you guys updated if there's any major updates in it. Stephanie, any final words

from you? No, I'm good. We appreciate you guys being here. We're going to be covering the final part of Julie Jensen later this week. It'll be out on Friday on audio, as always, and on YouTube on Sunday. Until then, everyone stay safe out there, and we'll see you soon. Bye.