Special!
$13.56 USD

Susan was never a violent person, never abused her children. She never committed an act of any kind that those close to her could point to later as an omen of the killing of her children. She loved them dearly. They were her life. But she sent three-year-old Michael and fourteen-month-old Alex to their deaths in John D. Long Lake on a dark October night more than five years ago.

To the State of South Carolina, she is inmate 221487. But she is my daughter Susan Smith. Her sentence: prison for the "balance of her natural lifetime"; no possibility of parole for thirty years. She is assigned to a psychiatric building at the Women's Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina.

The children's birthdays are terrible reminders to Susan of the tragic event. August 5, 1996, would have been Alex's third birthday. All day long I wondered how Susan was doing, coping with that day virtually alone with her thoughts inside a prison.

At six-thirty in the evening, the phone rang. I grabbed it on the first ring, then quickly pressed "1" to accept the collect call.

"Mama," she sighed, "I still can't believe it's happened." Her voice cracked, "I miss them so much."

"I miss them, too," I said softly.

We've had this same exchange so many times. She still can't explain how the tragedy happened.

I've driven up and down the roads that Susan drove that dark night, trying to understand a depression so deep it could lead to killing. Mile after mile, she drove down the pitch-black road; and the longer she drove, the more isolated, the more lonely she became. Finally, she lost touch with reality. And the unthinkable happened.

For the last five years, I have watched Susan struggle with an overwhelming, uphill battle only she could fight. I have had nothing more to offer than my love and support. With her grief, guilt, despair, and illness to contend with, my one goal has been to instill in her the will never to give up hope. She has tried to keep me from knowing—to keep me from worrying—about how difficult her life is. The prison walls are not her struggle, as bad as such confinement is. Her real struggle lies in the unseen walls of mental illness. She has mutilated herself, cutting her arms and wrists with whatever object she could find. Several times she has been put on suicide watch for her own protection. She has developed an eating disorder, which is a mental disease in itself.

Towering over everything is the reality of Susan's terrible act. Dealing with it is an overwhelming task for family and friends. Everyone close to Susan knows she is not a cruel person. All of us are convinced something went terribly wrong that fateful night.

We all have faithfully stood by Susan. According to prison policy, she has a certain number of persons on her visitors' list. She rotates her visitors; but some—like Barbara, Walt, her best friend Donna, my mother, her brothers Michael and Scotty, and Scotty's wife, Wendy—have remained constant. She rotates the other visits among different family members and friends.

When I go to see Susan, several usually ride with me on the sixty-mile trip. Our visits take place in a large room that has about fifteen square tables with four straight chairs arranged around each one. The tables are numbered, and we are assigned a table after everyone is processed. We get something to eat out of the vending machines and just talk and catch up on everything. We talk about things that happen in the prison. We talk about things that are happening in our family and in Union.

We keep Susan involved with what's going on. Close friends send her invitations to their weddings. When Donna and Mitch were planning their wedding, we talked about that a lot. Susan was sad she couldn't be there, but she wanted to know everything—the colors they were using, who was in it, what songs Donna and Mitch picked out, where they were going on their honeymoon. For a wedding present, she cross-stitched a wedding-prayer design, and I had it framed for her. It was beautiful. We sent her pictures of the wedding festivities. She was delighted to receive them.

Susan always sends Christmas presents to everyone in her family and to close friends. The Christmas of ‘97, she cross-stitched designs on T-shirts for a number of people. She gave me a sweatshirt with colorful bunnies cross-stitched on it. It was a lot of cross-stitching! Shortly after that Christmas, they quit selling the shirts in the prison shop. Now she does her "shopping" in a Christian supply catalog and has the items sent to me to give to everyone. They are not expensive gifts, but it keeps her in touch and gives her something to do.

The only presents we can send to Susan are money, magazine subscriptions, and newspapers. When Barbara Garner asked what she wanted for the Christmas of ‘98, she said she wanted a Good Housekeeping magazine.

It came out in the trial that Susan's stepfather, Beverly Russell, sexually abused her when she was a teenager. For a time he visited her in prison. I never encouraged or discouraged the visits. I felt she should make the decision. One day she simply told me she had taken him off her list. She says she doesn't hate him. She just doesn't want him to visit. His name never comes up anymore.

I try to put myself in Susan's place. How would I deal with such grieving over my children? How would I feel, knowing I am responsible for the deaths of the two people I loved more than anyone else on this earth, but don't understand and can't explain why things happened? Would I give up and allow myself to slip away into a world of insanity? Or would I have the strength that Susan has found?

She has progressed a little, but only a little. The improvement has come with the help of some caring therapists, medication, friends and family who love her. She has a job working as a teacher's aid that she enjoys very much. I don't think she is as suicidal as she has been. But she is far from being well. She is not where I hope for her to be.

Susan is reminded of the tragedy in so many ways. She thinks of her children when she sees the children of other inmates come to visit. I have caught a glimpse of her, out of the corner of my eye, as she watches them. She can't keep her eyes off them. When they stumble or fall, she catches her breath. She told me one day that she was anxious for one of her friends to have a baby, so she could hold it. She didn’t have to wait long, because Donna and Mitch celebrated the birth of their son the following spring. Susan picked out a gift for the baby from a catalog.

I think Susan has enough faith to know the Lord has already forgiven her, because she is truly sorry. But even though we can receive the Lord's forgiveness, forgiving ourselves is another matter. She will have to come to the point where she can forgive herself, but she is not there yet. Before she can forgive herself, she has to get well enough to realize how sick she was that night.

One day, out of the blue, Susan said she was afraid there might come a time when no one would visit her. Her statement surprised us all. I asked her why she would even think such a thing. She answered that some of the women never have visits. Their families just forget about them. I quickly assured her that, as long as there is breath in me, she will never be forgotten; and the rest of her family and friends feel the same.

Later, I expressed my concerns to Scotty. "If I should die," I questioned, "who will watch after Susan?"

"Mama," he assured me, "as long as I live, you don't have to worry about Susan. I'll visit her."

I visit Susan every time prison officials will let me, and I will as long as I am on this earth. I love her now just as I have always loved her. So do the rest of her family and friends. Her struggles are our struggles.

In the nearly five years since Susan was found guilty of murder, I am just now beginning to understand the silent devastation of mental illness. Obviously, I have to accept that Susan was responsible for the deaths of her children. But where does responsibility lie for what happened along the way that got her in that mental shape? This book is a quest for understanding—for myself and for others.

Pay securely with any major credit card through PayPal. It's Fast and Free!

Also available at major book stores and online at www.amazon.com.

Distributor: Baker and Taylor

In addition to online ordering, you can order 3 other ways: To order by email, send your order information to authorsbooknook@bellsouth.net. Provide your name, address, phone number, and a good time to call. We will contact you for payment information. To order by fax, use fax number (615) 377-1033. To order by mail, send your order to Authors Book Nook, P.O. Box 513, Brentwood, TN 37024-0513; include a check, money order, or credit card information.

Books by Shirley Stephens: Great Truths from Jesus' Conversations With Women, My Daughter Susan Smith, Breaking Crime's Vicious Cycle, A New Testament View of Women, Under the S.S. Shadow.
Books by William Stephens: Build Your Own Low-Cost Timber and Beam House, The New Testament World in Pictures, The Bible Speaks to End Times, Prophet of Fire (Elijah novel).