What's Susan Smith's Life in Prison Like After She Was Denied Parole? (Exclusive)

Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother convicted of killing her two children in 1994, was denied parole on Wednesday, Nov. 20.

According to South Carolina Department of Corrections Communications Director, Chrysti Shain, Smith’s life in prison after her failed parole attempt will be unchanged from before. Her next parole eligibility date will be in two years on November 20, 2026.

“She never left prison,” Shain tells PEOPLE. “It will be exactly the same.”

Smith, 53, appeared before the parole board Wednesday morning, saying, “I know that what I did was horrible,” CNN reports.

She reportedly added: “I am a Christian and God is a big part of my life and I know he has forgiven me and I know that is by his grace and mercy … And I just ask that you show that same kind of mercy as well.”

On Oct. 25, 1994, Smith told police that a Black man had stolen her car, in which her sons Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, were sitting. She spent the following nine days making emotional pleas on national television for her children to be returned home safely.

However, she later confessed that she fabricated the carjacker story and that she instead let her car roll into a lake with her young children strapped inside their car seats. Authorities alleged at the time that Susan committed the crime because she was seeing a man who did not want children to interfere with the relationship.

Smith continues serving her life sentence for the murders at the Leath Correctional Institution, a 39-acre women’s prison located in Greenwood County, S.C. With the exception of being transferred for medical reasons, she has been at Leath since September 25, 2000.

She remains in Dorm C1, in room 0103 after her parole hearing.

“She’s in the same place. It’s exactly the same,” Shein tells PEOPLE.

She currently works as a wardkeeper assistant. She has held a number of prison jobs including: safety security clerk, senior teacher assistant, office clerk, landscape laborer, senior groundskeeper, food service aide, laundry helper, shipping and receiving clerk, bookkeeper, canteen operator, secretary, library helper and machine operator.

She has earned no education credits during her incarceration.

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“I don’t think she’ll ever be rehabilitated,”  her ex-husband  David Smith told Today on Wednesday. “I don’t think she’s, even to me, she’s never been really sorry for what she did.”

Disciplinary Problems

On Aug. 26, 2024, Smith was charged with a violation of the South Carolina Department of Corrections policy which forbids inmates from conducting interviews with media on the phone or in person. Inmates are, however, allowed to write letters. Smith was convicted at an internal hearing on Oct. 3. She lost her telephone and her prison-issued tablet, and her canteen privileges were suspended for 90 days.

According to the incident report obtained by PEOPLE, she was communicating with a journalist discussing an interview, a documentary and ways to get paid.

“They also discussed in depth the crime and the events leading up to and after it actually took place including such details as to what was in the trunk of the car when it went into the water and her plans to jump from a bridge while holding the boys but one woke up,” the report states.

According to the report, the journalist she communicated with deposited money into Smith’s account. “Smith also discussed the release of the documentary and wanted to wait until after her parole hearing,” the report states.

During her time behind bars, Susan received disciplinary infractions for possession of a contraband razor, possession of cigarettes and violation of institutional rules.

She was also disciplined for having sex with a prison guard, Houston Cagle, in 2000, and a prison captain, Alfred Rowe, the following year. (Cagle pleaded guilty and spent three months in jail and Rowe also pleaded guilty to having sex with Smith and was sentenced to five years probation.)

In 2015, Smith defended herself in a letter to The State, a South Carolina newspaper.

“Mr. Cahill, I am not the monster society thinks I am,” she wrote to reporter Harrison Cahill. “I am far from it.”