‘Haints’ is not for the faint of heart

Ghosts and ghosts haunt the dark recesses of our minds. In times of crisis they come out and cause some moments of fear.

Thirty years ago, on a Halloween night in the WSPA newsroom in Spartanburg-Greenville, South Carolina, there was a report of a car theft. The driver escaped, but her two sons remained in the car. The Union County Sheriff’s Office began a major search for the car. A response team was sent to the area and returned with an interview with the distraught parents, with the mother pleading with the car thief to return her babies.

It was the main soundbite that opened the 11 p.m. news. WSPA broke the story. What should have been a fun evening with kids in costumes souring candy. I worked at night at the time. Tommy Colones, the photographer, handed me a tape to uplink as I started my shift.

“CBS expects this,” he said when he finished his shift. Switches vibrated, coordinates confirmed, tape rolled, checked and rolled again in New York. The feed contained all the necessary material to begin what would become one of the biggest stories I’d been involved in: Susan Smith, a hoax carjacking, the eventual deaths of her two sons, a 30-year-to-life sentence — and a story that continues to haunt the back forty of the mind to this day.

History is filled with stories of past haunts. These are useful in shedding light on how and why something might be done differently. Susan Smith’s case introduced a new tool for the FBI to solve such crimes. It also brought understanding and investigation into the minds of large and small perpetrators. Today, people understand that every case is nuanced and that obvious answers may not be the truth.

The reporting has also changed. In the mid-1990s, fax machines were one of the few interconnected resources in newsrooms. That night and for the next nine days before her arrest, the Union County Sheriff’s Office released a composite sketch of the suspect. The staff and I fielded hundreds of calls from truck stops, police stations, concerned people and other newsrooms to fax that draft. Nowadays, a digital post would travel around the world in an instant.

There were hours of interviews for stations around the world about the progress, mood and fears of the community trying to come to terms with the shock. Susan Smith was arrested for the murder and confessed to the murder, leading to the Union County trial in July 1995.

A communications village was created in the parking lot opposite the courthouse. News megastars arrived and stood with the courthouse in the background as they covered the big picture. Connections were discovered. The suspect was the sheriff’s goddaughter. The lake where the boys were found was built with funding from South Carolina. The lawmaker who pushed for that funding had his own allegations of malfeasance.

Today one can go to that lake and see the memorials erected by family and strangers in an effort to commemorate two young innocents who were lost.

Hauntings are not for the faint of heart. They very often become tools that keep us all remembering, moving forward and learning.

That event was a feint, a deception: the light at the intersection where the kidnapping probably only worked if the factory next door was in operation, and that factory had been closed for several years. It changed the tenor of a place, people and understanding forever.

Susan Smith will have her first parole hearing on November 20 in Columbia, South Carolina. Feints can haunt our minds as we celebrate another holy evening.

Orpheus Allison is a photojournalist living in The County who graduated from UMPI and received a Master of Liber Arts degree from the University of North Carolina. He started his journalism career at WAGM Television, worked in the US, later changed careers and taught in China and Korea.