Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman convicted in the 1994 deaths of her two young sons, has exchanged hundreds of phone calls and text messages with male admirers and received thousands of dollars from some of them while serving a life sentence, according to transcripts obtained by the Daily Mail.
The documents, which the Daily Mail said it obtained, include hundreds of voice and text exchanges that show Smith, 53, communicating with men who range in age from their late 20s to their mid-60s. The outlet reported Smith averages 15 to 20 text messages a day and spends hours on the phone with correspondents who engage in romantic and sexual banter and who sometimes transfer funds to her inmate account.
In one of the messages cited by the Daily Mail, Smith thanked a man identified as Jason after he sent money to her prison account: "Thank you so much for the funds. It was so sweet and so thoughtful of you. And...it was a lot. I am so grateful that God placed you in my life. He knew I needed someone like you at this time, so thank you for listening to Him and reaching out to me." The outlet also reported that in other exchanges Smith told admirers she would be with them if she were ever released from prison.
The correspondence reportedly occurred while Smith is incarcerated at Leath Correctional Institution in Greenwood, South Carolina. The transcripts portray repeated solicitations of attention and affection from outside the prison, including references to gifts and financial transfers to her commissary or inmate account.
Prison communication systems generally allow incarcerated people to receive phone calls and messages from outside contacts through services that charge fees and enable deposits to commissary accounts; the Daily Mail account places Smith’s activity within that framework. The outlet did not provide records from prison officials as part of its reporting.
Smith's case drew national attention in 1994 after the deaths of her two sons in a South Carolina lake. She was prosecuted and is serving a life sentence; the recent transcripts and the reported flow of funds illustrate that, decades after the crime, Smith continues to attract attention from members of the public.
The exchanges documented by the Daily Mail underscore ongoing questions about communications between incarcerated people and outside contacts, including how such relationships form and the financial arrangements that support them. The reporting does not include comment from Smith, her legal representatives or corrections officials about the specific transcripts cited.
The story adds to a pattern of public interest in notorious criminal cases and the lives of those convicted, as well as debates over prison communications policies and how correctional institutions monitor and regulate outside contact.