Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 9, 1995 TAG: 9507100104
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICK BRAGG THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: UNION, S.C. LENGTH: Long
The prosecution is expected to paint her as a scheming monster who lied to her hometown and the entire world for nine days, blaming a phantom carjacker for the disappearance of her sons before confessing that she had drowned the two little boys in a dark lake.
It is more than just legal fencing. In the 23 years she lived in this insular mill town of 10,000 people, she developed a dual persona, almost as distinct as a split personality. And that fractured image of Smith has become the centerpiece of her murder trial, as both sides begin Monday to pick a jury that will decide if she lives in prison or dies in the electric chair.
Since her arrest Nov. 4 in the killing of her children, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex, snippets of Smith's life have spun out wildly, like paint on an abstract canvas. Now, as the little town prepares for a month or more of trial - and a news media circus and T-shirt sales - hHer guilt is not in question, only the price she will pay.
Her lawyers, headed by David Bruck, a nationally respected expert on the death penalty, must prove that her sad life tipped the young mother over the edge of reason, and perhaps sanity.
Her past is burdened by betrayal from nearly every man she ever loved.
She was a daddy's girl, the third child and only daughter of Harry Ray Vaughan, a mill worker, and Linda Sue Harrison. Linda Sue Vaughan filed for divorce a month before Susan's sixth birthday. People who knew the family said it was because she had met a new man.
Four months later, Vaughan shot himself in the chest.
In 1979, her mother married Beverly Russell, a local political leader active in the Christian Coalition and a member of a well-known Union family.
When Smith was 15, she was molested by Russell.
Smith's mother and Russell separated earlier this year after Family Court released a record that showed Russell admitted molesting Susan when she was a junior in high school. He kissed her, fondled her breasts, and once - after he returned from putting up posters for Pat Robertson - Russell put her hand on his groin.
Russell was not prosecuted because Susan and her mother did not press charges. Later, Susan said she was a willing participant.
Russell, a tax consultant, mortgaged his home to pay for her defense. In April, he released a statement saying: ``I am responsible for, and ashamed of, what happened. I appreciate the fact that some of my friends and family tried to speak in my defense. They don't know what I did.''
At the time of her sons' killings, she was divorcing her husband, David Smith, and had just been rejected by the man she said she loved, Tom Findlay, the wealthy son of the owner of the textile mill where she worked as a secretary.
Findlay, who told her he did not want a ready-made family, lived on the grounds of his father's 13-acre estate, which includes a 7,000-square-foot mansion called Fair Forest Manor: a fairy tale life that once seemed in reach of Smith, who earned just over minimum wage.
Friends and family said she loved her children, that she was a perfect mother in spite of her unstable life and that she just snapped.
``Anybody would have to be sick to do anything like that,'' said Ponnie Lovelace, whose daughter has been Susan's friend since elementary school. ``It happened so quick and bam! - it was done.''
A judge's order bars the lawyers from discussing the case, but Bruck said that when Smith's story is complete, the people who have condemned her will see her as a tortured human being.
Even the people who most want her dead concede that she was a troubled person. But her history also suggests a dark side, that she was not always the victim.
People who have known her for years describe her as manipulative and deceitful, and capable of ending her children's lives to improve her own. It is that possibility - that she killed her children in hopes of reclaiming her lover - that most sickens people in Union. It is that woman whom Tommy Pope, a young prosecutor in charge of the case, will try to send to death row.
That woman's history is just as well-documented as the one of the victimized girl.
Smith said her relationship with her stepfather became ``an affair'' that continued after she was married.
She had an affair with a co-worker of her husband's. She had had an affair with the same man before she was married, when she was trying to make another lover, a 40-year-old married man, jealous.
When Findlay broke up with her just days before she killed her children, she told him she had slept with his father, J. Cary Findlay. Later, she said she had made that up.
She told authorities a black man with a gun jumped in her car at a traffic light in Monarch, another tiny mill community east of Union, and forced her to drive north along State Road 49. A few miles later he forced her out of the car, she said, and drove away with her babies.
Afterward, she looked into television cameras, clutching her estranged husband's hand, and said, ``I have to put all my trust and faith in the Lord that he is taking care of them and that he will bring them home to us.''
Findlay later told the investigators that he talked to her during that time, and that she did not want to talk about the boys, only about their relationship.
Susan and David started dating when they were both working at Winn Dixie. She was 19 and he was 20, a clean-cut, good-natured man whom some of Susan's friends described as ``unsophisticated.'' They married in a quiet country wedding in March 1991. She was two months pregnant.
Their marriage was so shaky that friends said they never knew from day to day whether the Smiths were together or apart.
Some time after Michael was born in October 1991, Susan had an affair, friends and family members said; David retaliated by doing likewise.
The Smiths reconciled, and Alex was born in August 1993. Susan went to work at Conso, and soon became an assistant to Cary Findlay's secretary.
In December 1993, Susan started dating Tom Findlay. She told him she and David were separated. He dropped her in March when he found out otherwise. They began dating again after the Smiths' final separation in August 1994.
On Oct. 18, he wrote her a two-page letter, breaking off their relationship.
He said their relationship was doomed because they came from completely different backgrounds and he was not ready to be a father to her children.
John D. Long Lake is not on the way to anywhere. It is an isolated place, on a dead-end blacktop road.
On Oct. 25, Smith picked up Michael and Alex from day care and headed for Union's only bar. She met a girlfriend, and they headed for Conso so she could talk to Findlay.
Susan told Findlay she had lied about his father, but Findlay did not want to hear it.
She was upset when she returned to the car. ``I may just end it,'' she said.
Smith dropped her friend back at the bar and arrived home with her children about 6 p.m. Then, at about 8, she put them back in the car and drove to the lake.
by CNB