Smith was a 22-year-old mom when she became a household name for killing her sons, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander. In 1994, she let her car roll into John D. Long Lake in Union County, South Carolina, with her boys still strapped into their car seats.

Amid racial tensions and in a conservative part of the Deep South, Smith falsely claimed a Black man carjacked her and took her sons.