Susan Smith And The Son Of The Boss -- `The Catch' Eluded Her

UNION, S.C. - At 7 a.m. yesterday, after a weekend of mourning, workers clutching lunch pails trudged back to their jobs at Conso Products, the largest textile mill in this sleepy Southern town. Two hours later, executives in suits carried briefcases into their offices.

Somewhere between these two worlds - the working class and the white collar - lived Susan Smith, the woman accused of drowning her two small sons. She worked as a $6.10-per-hour secretary for the mill owner, J. Carey Findlay, a corporate raider formerly of Birmingham, Ala., who purchased the $25 million-a-year business in the mid-1980s.

Smith was also dating the boss' son, Thomas Findlay, 27, who headed the plant's graphic design division, where an enormous sign proclaims Conso "The World's Largest Manufacturer of Decorative Trim."

Smith's desperation to jump from the listing boat of the working class appears to be a major motive, police and those close to Smith say, for the crime of which she's accused.

Law-enforcement officials say Smith saw Thomas Findlay, the scion of what is probably the county's richest family, as her ticket out. She would drive from her small ranch-style house through the stone and wrought-iron gates of the Findlay estate, where Thomas lived in a guest house and was famous for late-night hot-tub parties.

On Oct. 7, Smith filed for a divorce from her husband, David, who worked as an assistant manager at the Winn Dixie grocery store. She apparently hoped to move with Findlay far from the small town to London, where Findlay's family is acquiring another plant.

"SHE SAW AN OPPORTUNITY"

In the office, secretaries called Findlay "The Catch." And Susan Smith thought she had him hooked.

On Oct. 18, Findlay wrote Smith, breaking off the relationship because he did "not want the responsibility of children." Over the next week, Smith, feeling betrayed by Findlay and facing the bleak prospect of raising her two children alone - unraveled psychologically. The first sentence of her two-page confession read: "Because of my romantic and financial situation, I've never been so low."

Smith, who friends say has a history of mental illness, left work Oct. 25, picked up her children from day care and drove into the night. The children slept, she said in her confession, while she drove aimlessly for two hours.

Then she pulled her burgundy car to the edge of a lake, where, she told police, she contemplated suicide. Instead, with her children strapped in their car seats, she let the car roll down a boat ramp and watched it sink into the dark waters.

The bodies of Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, would remain submerged in the lake for nine days while Smith told police and public that she had been forced out of the car by a black man who then abducted her two children.

Hugh Munn, a spokesman for the State Law Enforcement Division, which investigated the case, said, "She saw an opportunity to rise to another level, to another kind of life. She saw that dwindling, and then she saw it crash. I think she felt" Findlay "was using her."

Despite a news report yesterday that more arrests were pending and a two-hour meeting among the chief prosecutor, the sheriff and Smith's defense attorney, all sides said they lacked information that would lead to further arrests. But one law official involved in the case said investigators were looking at whether Smith had told anyone that she had killed the children or planned to.

Smith remains in an isolation cell in prison, on a suicide watch, said her lawyer, David Bruck.

THE BOYFRIEND

Findlay has said, in a statement issued through his attorney, that he has been cooperating with police and provided them "early on" with the Oct. 18 letter, which he says he had saved in his personal computer.

Findlay left for London days after the boys' deaths but before the arrest, police say, and is still there.

His stepmother, Constance, said that "this young man had nothing to do with this."

"Tom was with a number of friends that evening. He has cooperated with police. And we and law enforcement and our attorney thought it best for him to leave," Constance Findlay said of his London trip.

"The police have been through all this. You are not going to find anything," she said, when asked about whether her son had a role in Smith's emotional crisis.

Findlay said her son was dating Smith, but added that "it is no secret Tom dates a number of women." Stephen Long, 23, who knows both Smith and Findlay, said Findlay was engaged to another Union woman.

Some of Findlay's friends, who gather at the Hickory Nuts bar, say Findlay was known to date several women, who liked him because he was "sensitive and smart" and also because "he came from money."

Findlay "wasn't like most guys around here," said the Hickory Nuts manager, Tony, who asked that his last name not be used. The few who seemed to know Findlay said that he spent most of his time swimming and playing golf at the Fairwood Country Club.

Findlay brought Smith to the club only once, said waitress Nicki Crocker. This summer, Smith was invited to the Conso Products executive party, where she was seated near Findlay but with several place settings between them.

"She didn't like that at all," Crocker said.

There are some similarities between Susan Smith's romantic life and that of her mother, Linda Sue Vaughan. According to 1977 divorce papers, Vaughan left her blue-collar husband, Harry Ray Vaughan. She quickly "married up" to Beverly Russell, a stockbroker. Harry Vaughan committed suicide less than one year after the divorce.

Her father's suicide left Smith deeply troubled, her friends say, although she rarely showed it. She was a member of the National Honor Society and was voted "most friendly" in her high school class.

Despite the cheerful facade, Smith suffered severe depression during her senior year and attempted suicide, said her close friend, Donna Greer, 23, who is a nurse. Smith left school for several weeks and underwent psychiatric treatment in nearby Spartanburg. Through several breakups with her husband, she would grow deeply depressed and show up at Winn Dixie tearfully accusing him of sleeping with a cashier, friends and employees there say.

"She had a really tough life," Greer said. "But she was the best friend and the best mother. She would do anything for you. No one can understand this thing."