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Some people’s lives are grounded in deception. For Susan Smith, maintaining the image of the model daughter, friend, wife, and mother was an arduous, lifelong task. And in the end, it collapsed, her terrible secrets rising to the surface.

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Susan was born in Union on September 26, 1971, the only daughter of Linda, a home-maker, and Harry Ray Vaughan, a firefighter who later worked as a winder at a textile mill. Linda had a son, Michael, whom they called Moe, from a previous relationship, and with Harry, another son, Scotty. The Vaughans lived in a modest brick house on Siegler Road, just outside downtown Union. In was near Foster Park Elementary School where Susan was a student. When she was a little girl, Susan always wore pretty dresses to the classroom, her light brown hair pulled back in fancy bows. She shined in grade school, bright and eager to learn.

But life at home on Siegler Road was far from harmonious. In 1977, after seventeen years of marriage, Linda Vaughan asked her husband for a divorce. Susan was six years old.

Harry Vaughan, devastated by the breakup of his marriage, moved into an apartment in a nearby housing development and began drinking heavily at a local bar, Alias Smith & Jones. He’d show up with friends for half-price beers during Happy Hour every day around four P.M.

“He was outgoing and good-looking—a sweet and nice guy,” recalls a woman who tended bar there. “Everyone liked him.”

The Vaughans’ divorce became final on December 7, 1977. Five weeks later, on January 15, 1978, Harry Vaughan took a gun and shot himself in the stomach.

Many believe that Harry Vaughan did not intend to kill himself, but rather hoped his suicide attempt would draw attention to his pain and perhaps reconcile his family. In fact, moments after he pulled the trigger, Harry Vaughan called for help. But it was too late, and Harry died. It was two months before his thirty-fifth birthday.

Shortly after Harry’s death, Linda Vaughan married Beverly Russell, a wealthy businessman who owned an appliance store in downtown Union. Bev, who had several daughters from a previous marriage, was well-known in Union. A longtime Democrat who had ultimately switched to the Republican party, he had become a state Republican executive committeeman, as well as a member of the advisory board of the Christian Coalition.

After her mother remarried, Susan and her brothers moved from the cozy Siegler Road home to their new stepfather’s large three-bedroom ranch house with a big yard in the more exclusive Mount Vernon Estates section of Union.

Little Susan held tight to memories of her father. She often listened to a cassette tape of her dad laughing as he tried to teach her to talk when she was a toddler. She kept an eight-by-ten photograph of him in the bottom of her desk drawer at home, next to a coin collection he had given her.

Harry Vaughan was buried at the edge of Union Memorial Gardens Perpetual Care Cemetery on Highway 176, a few miles from Bev Russell’s home. From the car, Susan could see her father’s grave as they rode past almost every day.

Susan’s childhood friend, Stacey Hartley, recalls those years as particularly hard on Susan. “I remember when her daddy died. It was during the winter and there was snow on the ground,” says Hartley. “I turned on the radio and they said he shot himself. Susan took it hard. I remember Susan crying and all. I remember crying myself when her mother remarried and they moved to Mount Vernon. I went up to her new house and stayed with her every now and then, but it was never the same as those days in the hammock, this hammock in Susan’s yard. We used to swing in that hammock and laugh and laugh.”

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Susan earned good grades throughout elementary school and junior high, and later, at Union High School, she seemed to excell at everything. She was a member of the Beta Club, a group for students with higher than a B average, as well as a member of the Math, Spanish, and Red Cross Clubs. She volunteered to help put on the city’s annual Special Olympics competition, and did work with the elderly. Susan was named president of the Junior Civitan Club, an outreach organization, and from 1986 to 1988, she and her best friend, Donna Garner, worked as candy stripers at Wallace Thomson Hospital in downtown Union.

In her senior year in 1989, Susan Leigh Vaughan was voted Friendliest Female at Union High School. Her classmates say she always smiled, was always cheerful and down to earth. Slightly husky and five feet, three inches tall, Susan usually wore miniskirts and blouses, flattering her figure.

“All the guys wanted Susan,” remembers Kenny Jennings, who went to school with Susan and later worked with her at Winn-Dixie. “We thought of her like a model, a real nice-looking girl, a nice build. I’m surprised she didn’t get Best Looking in our class.”

Despite the perfect appearance, there was turmoil in Susan’s life. In 1988, when she was seventeen, she appeared at the office of the high school’s guidance counselor, Camille Stribling, and said she had been molested by her stepfather, Bev Russell. By law, school officials are required to report child abuse allegations. Stribling called the State Department of Social Services. An official there called the Union County Sheriff’s Office.

In early 1989, when the sheriff at the time, William Jolly, attempted to investigate the molestation charges, Susan and her mother, Linda, said they did not want to pursue it any further. Ultimately, there was never a court hearing in the case. Judge David Wilburn was presented with an agreement hammered out between Russell’s attorney, Robert Guess, and Assistant Sixteenth Circuit Solicitor Jack Flynn. The judge sealed the court records on March 25, 1988.

Despite the claims of abuse, Susan continued to strive. She began working part-time after school at Winn-Dixie. She started as a cashier, but within six months, had moved up to head cashier, and then bookkeeper. She made friends easily and was well liked by her coworkers at the supermarket.

“Most of the time girls didn’t stock the shelves, but Susan was the kind of girl who didn’t mind stepping in and helping the guys out,” recalled Jennings. “She worked so good she moved up very quickly. Everyone knew Susan was trying to succeed, trying to get ahead. She deserved it.”

It was at Winn-Dixie that Susan got to know David Smith, whom she knew casually from high school, where he had been one year ahead of her. David, who grew up in nearby Putman, didn’t smoke or drink and worked long hours at the supermarket, beginning when he was just sixteen years old.

At first, the two were simply friends. David was dating his longtime girlfriend, Kristy, and Susan had begun seeing someone as well. In her senior year, when Susan was eighteen years old, she started secretly dating an older married man. “No one was supposed to know,” a former co-worker said. “But the guy would tell me and David about it, and we could see it.”

About that time, Susan became pregnant and had an abortion. Thereafter, the relationship ended. Deeply depressed, Susan took an overdose of aspirin and Anacin.

She was admitted to Spartanburg Regional Medical Center from November 7 to November 15, 1989, not long after the start of her senior year of high school. In the hospital, doctors discovered that this wasn’t Susan’s first attempt at suicide. She had taken a similar aspirin overdose when she was only thirteen years old.

News of Susan’s suicide attempt traveled quickly at the high school and at Winn-Dixie. Her managers at the store were supportive, telling her that she was welcome to return to work whenever she was ready. She took about a month off from school and work, and then went back.

By then, David Smith’s interest in the pretty bookkeeper had grown. At the time, he was a stock clerk in the dairy and frozen-foods section. He broke up with Kristy, and set his sights on Susan.

He talked to his friend Kenny about it. “He said he liked her and I told him, ‘David, it’s going to be hard to get her; you’re not good enough,’” Kenny recalled. “I was shocked when they hooked up. David just jumped in. He had confidence that he could have her. They became real good friends, and a month later he was taking her home from work. A year later they were married.”

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In many ways, marrying David Smith seemed to be the remedy to all the sorrow in Susan Vaughan’s life. Now, she would have her own family and the protected, stable environment she so craved. For no one, it seemed to Susan, had loved her enough before.

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David Michael Smith, was born July 27, 1970 in Michigan. By the time he turned two the family moved to Putman, about five miles northwest of Union. His father, Charles David Smith, also called David, worked for a while in Harry From’s clothing store in downtown Union, and eventually took a job as manager of a Wal-Mart. David’s mother, Barbara, worked on and off in a lawyer’s office and in a dialysis clinic. She also went to school part-time to study nursing.

David had a half-brother, Billy, from his mother’s first marriage, an older brother, Danny, and a younger sister, Becky. David and Danny were particularly close, playing football with the neighborhood kids, and exploring in the nearby woods.

Growing up, the Smith children joined their parents at weekly Jehovah’s Witness meetings at Kingdom Hall in Union on Route 18. By age sixteen, however, David broke from his parents’ religion, causing friction within the family. He moved in with his great grandmother, Forest Malone, who lived next door.

After school, David worked hard at Winn-Dixie. Eventually, he moved up to assistant manager, handling most of the customer service, usually working the 3:00 to 11:00 P.M. shift. David, said Jennings, was always willing to help stocking shelves, or doing anything else that was needed. “Everybody loves him,” said Jennings. “He’s the best manager there. He always helps out. He always stays on top of everybody but he doesn’t jump down your throat. He’ll say, ‘I need you to do this.’ We’d always laugh and joke, call each other funny names.”

One co-worker recalled that in 1987, when a fellow co-worker was close to getting fired, David talked to his boss, encouraging him to give the young man another chance. It was one of many kindnesses his co-workers recall. “If somebody shows up at closing and needs Pampers, he’ll let them in,” one said. “He’s that kind of guy.”

After David and Susan had been dating for a year, Susan became pregnant.

On Valentine’s Day, 1991, Susan and David filled out a marriage license. A month later, on March 15, 1991, they were wed at United Methodist Church in Bogansville. Susan was nineteen, David, twenty.

After the wedding, as they prepared to drive away, Susan waved to her family and friends. “I love y’all,” she said. Susan then moved in with David at his great-grandmother’s house.

A short time later, David mailed a copy of his wedding video to his friend Kenny Jennings, who had by then moved to New York and was unable to attend the wedding. David attached a note saying how happy he was that he and Susan were finally going to be together forever.

But the start of the marriage came at a tumultuous time in the Smith family. David’s brother Danny, then twenty-two, a worker for the Buffalo Water Department, was gravely ill with Crone’s disease, an acute inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. In the winter of 1991, Danny had surgery at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center, but bacteria developed and his condition quickly deteriorated. Just eleven days before David and Susan’s wedding, Danny Smith died.

The funeral was held at the Bogansville United Methodist Church were Susan and David would later marry. Danny was buried in the cemetery behind the white church. On his stone it read, “Daniel Steven Smith. Feb. 12, 1969—March 4, 1991. Loved by all.”

The marriage of David’s parents had been rocky, but once Danny died, it quickly fell apart. David’s mother, Barbara, moved to Garden City, near Myrtle Beach. David’s father, a Navy veteran who had served during the Vietnam War, was crushed by the death of his son and fell into a deep depression.

Not long after Danny’s death, Susan walked into her father-in-law’s home and found him collapsed on the floor. He had taken an overdose of pills. She called for help and Charles David Smith eventually recovered. The pain of his suicide attempt touched many that knew him.

“A lot of people knew about David’s father—it was so sad,” said a woman who worked with him at Wal-Mart. “He was always a sweet, feeling person. It was pretty hard on the department store. It really affected David’s family.”

And perhaps Susan, too. By nineteen, she had suffered the suicide of her father, twice attempted to kill herself, claimed to have been sexually molested, and stumbled on her father-in-law near death by his own hand.

And then, two weeks after her twentieth birthday, just seven months after her marriage, Susan Vaughan Smith faced the greatest responsibility she’d ever known: she became a mother.