Susan Smith had an enviable reputation in her hometown.
She was known as a friendly, outgoing woman who was quick to help others. Above all, her neighbors thought of her as a good mother. Now, they think of her as a monster.
Friends and neighbors who'd rallied behind Smith after she concocted a story about a black assailant abducting her two young boys during a carjacking feel betrayed now that police say she drowned her sons, Michael, 3, and Alexander, 14 months.
Even President Clinton was moved. "I think they had a sense of betrayal . . . of bewilderment, of pain. . . . I think every parent was just sick about it," he said, speaking on CNN's Larry King Live Sunday.
Cara Moore was one such parent. She drove two hours from Charlotte, N.C., to stand on the spot where authorities say Smith sent her two tots plunging into a muddy lake.
"I just wish I could shake her for 10 seconds and ask, `Why?' "
Smith could face the death penalty. As her lawyers begin preparing a defense, some elements of her troubled past are surfacing:
-- Her father committed suicide when Smith was very young. But she'd come to regard her stepfather, prominent Union businessman Beverly Russell, as her dad.
-- She reportedly was molested in 1988 while in high school; no charges were filed and her teachers say they never knew of any trouble.
-- Newsweek reported that she was under psychiatric care at the time her sons were slain.
Smith's dream of finishing college was set aside when she dropped out and went to work at the Winn-Dixie grocery store where David Smith worked. They married when she was pregnant with Michael.
But the marriage fell apart. In divorce papers, she claimed her husband was unfaithful.
She got custody of the boys - along with the small, red brick house and its $344-a-month mortgage. David Smith was ordered to pay $460 a month in child support.
But her $1,416 a month in wages was stretched thin by a $300-a-month day care bill, among other expenses.
And in this town of 10,000, where jokes about marrying well still get a laugh, Smith had begun a relationship with her own successful businessman.
Tom Findlay, 27, was son of the owner of Conso Products Co., where he and Susan worked. When investigators learned Findlay had dumped Susan on Oct. 18, in part because he didn't want the responsibility of her children, they thought they'd found a possible motive.
From the beginning, her story was questionable.
Smith claimed she was carjacked while sitting in the only car at a red light. But that light only turns red when another car is at the intersection.
Law enforcement officials say they were cautious in dealing with Smith, fearful she might take her own life if she thought they were about to arrest her. Investigators worried that if she killed herself, they might never find the boys.
Her phony story set off a hunt for a black assailant, whom she'd described in sufficient detail for an artist to draw a picture that was circulated across the nation.
At one point at least six black men were gathered at the sheriff's department for questioning. Even black women felt the heat of suspicion.
"People have been staring at me since this first happened," says Marion Spencer, 44, a Union native who is black. "But I knew I hadn't done anything wrong. Blacks are always treated like the underdog here."
With the Smith case and another case in Florida grabbing attention, the Justice Department released a new manual Sunday advising law enforcement officers about missing children cases. A central point: respond to every case as if the child is in immediate danger. That means considering all scenarios - including family abduction - from the start.
Like Smith, Pauline Zile told police her daughter Christina Holt, had been abducted. Pauline Zile and her husband, Walter, have been charged in Christina's beating death.
The Smith case has united people in outrage.
Hundreds came singly, in couples or as families to say goodbye to children they never knew at the spot where authorities say Smith plunged her car into Lake John D. Long. They left flowers, teddy bears, poems and a plastic Barney.
Kevin Moore, 3, threw a bundle of forget-me-nots into the water as his mother sobbed.
"What's wrong, Mama?" the boys asked, trying to comfort her with a pat on the leg.
Cara Moore looked at her son and choked. "Those boys in the car went into that water," she says, dabbing tears.
"There are no answers," she adds. "Their last words were probably `Mama, Mama! Help me!"
