UNION, S.C. - Susan Smith's family wailed and shrieked in horror as the news came over the television.
In the same house where they had withstood an emotionally draining, nine-day search for Smith's two boys, the news that she had confessed to killing Alex, 14 months, and Michael, 3, was devastating.
Just hours before, Smith, 23, had been sitting with her husband on the living room sofa, making another televised plea for their boys' safe return.
And they prayed, as they have continuously, for Alex and Michael, subject of a nationwide search that stretched as far as Seattle.
Suddenly, word came from the sheriff's office - where Smith had twice failed lie detector tests and where investigators had interrogated her for hours about her tale of a gunman who stole her car and her boys - that Smith had been arrested and would be charged today with murder.
The news got worse with every grisly detail.
The arrest warrant says Smith confessed to driving her burgundy Mazda Protege off a boat ramp into nearby Lake John D. Long with her two sons in the back seat.
That's where divers, who had been in the lake repeatedly and previously found only muddy beer cans, found Smith's car and two bodies.
Smith had been on her way to visit friend Mitch Sinclair the night the boys disappeared. Sheriff Howard Wells said earlier that he was not a suspect.
CNN reported late Thursday that police had found a letter from Smith's boyfriend saying he wanted to be with her but didn't want "any kids around."
"What could drive a mother to do this? I'm very heartbroken," sobbed Susan Pegram, 46, a family friend.
"It's just disbelief," said Amy Lou Horne, who lives next to Smith's small red brick house in this tiny textile town.
"I never thought she was involved," said Horne. "She was always out there playing with those kids."
The case had been called every parent's worst nightmare, an unpreventable crime.
Smith told of a black gunman who leapt into her car in the few seconds she was stopped at a red light.
She said he forced her to drive out of town and then forced her to get out.
And then, lending to the credibility of her story, she told of how he promised not to harm the boys, but didn't have time to let them out.
The charge by the sheriff - Smith is arraigned today - suggests that Smith walked away from the lake, strolled up a hill in the dark of night, and began telling an impressive string of lies.
And she played upon racial fears by blaming a mysterious, gun-toting black man for the carjacking.
Rick McCloud, 24, a high school social studies teacher who lives off Highway 49, said he and his family are accustomed to trucks grinding along the highway, and cars racing by. But on that night, it was the sound of a human wail that pierced their living room walls. McCloud said Smith was howling as if she were in pain as she walked up his driveway.
As he tried to relay her story to a 911 dispatcher, McCloud said she appeared too distraught to talk.
If Smith was involved in the disappearance of her sons, McCloud said before her arrest: "She's in the wrong line of work. She should be an actor."
Today, people in and around Union, named for its history of churches coming together, are left to wonder how a mother who they saw living to love her children could become a killer.
"I still don't believe it," said Smith's neighbor, Earl Valentine. "Nobody but her and the good Lord knows what happened. I don't have any idea what would cause her to snap."
Smith, a secretary at a local textile manufacturing firm, had reached agreement in court for her divorce from her husband, David, 24, who she says had been unfaithful.
The divorce has not been finalized, but the judge had granted Smith custody of the children and ordered her husband to pay child support from his earnings as assistant manager at Winn-Dixie.
David Smith could not be reached late Thursday for comment.
Area residents, meanwhile, are reeling from what many feel is the worst possible end to a small-town horror story.
Rose Marie Savage, the mother of a 3-year-old girl, said, "Union used to be a close-knit town. Now things will never be the same around here."
Adding to the pain in a town that had come together to search for the missing boys was footage of Smith talking about her boys being played and replayed on television.
"Our lives have been torn apart by this tragic event," Smith said Thursday before being arrested.
"It hurts to know that I may be accused," she told NBC. "I do understand why they would do what they are doing. I can't express how much they are wanted back home."
Pegram groans.
"We're hurting and we're all hurting for the family right now," she said. "Our prayers go out to them. They need our support more than ever now. I think we're all in shock."
Valentine said the kids who lived next to him "sure were fine boys. This just don't happen in Union, but there's a first time for everything."
