Susan Smith Murderer - Research Paper Example

Susan Smith was married to a David Smith from March 15th 1991 to May 1995 with whom they bore Michael Daniel (on October 10th 1991) and Alexander Tyler (on August 5th 1993). She killed both of the children on October 25th of 1994 by letting her 1990 Mazda Protégé roll into the nearby John D. Long Lake, drowning the children inside. At the time of the incident, the first born child Michael Daniel Smith was only 3 years old while his smaller sibling, Alexander Tyler Smith, was only 14 months old (Russell & Stephens, 2000).

The case attracted worldwide attention with Susan Smith at first claiming her innocence and stating that a black man had carjacked her and kidnapped her two children, making away with her vehicle in the process. On national television, she cried for the rescue and return of her children but following thorough investigations and nationwide searches, she confessed her crime. Even from the onset of the investigations, law enforcers found her testimonies rather wanting and conflicting and begun strongly suspecting that she knew of her children’s whereabouts.

When she and her husband were subjected to a series of polygraph tests, all the results indicated that she was lying about not knowing her children’s whereabouts (Smith & Calef, 1995). But perhaps the biggest breakthrough in the case was when she stated that lights at the intersection where she stopped only turn red when a car approaches on the intersecting road (her purported reason for stopping at the intersection) but since she had earlier claimed that no other cars were on the road at the time, she was deeply conflicting her testimonies.

Finally, investigators found the children’s bodies in Lake John after searching surrounding lakes and ponds (Rekers, 1996). The rational choice theory/ choice theory/ rational action theory is a framework for comprehending and modeling social and economic behavior. The rational choice theory, pioneered by George Homas, attaches