Читать книгу Parents Who Kill - Shocking True Stories of The World's Most Evil Parents - Carol Anne Davis - Страница 37

Susan was born in 1971 in the small town of Union, Southern Carolina. Her mother was a teenage bride and housewife, her father a mill worker and volunteer fireman.

Susan was their third child but their first daughter and was very close to her father. He taught her how to speak and how to read. But the couple divorced shortly before her seventh birthday and, a month later, he put his shotgun to his temple and committed suicide. (As a teenager, Susan would form intense attachments to men whom she regarded as father figures. But, when they couldn’t fulfil her many unmet needs from childhood, she would angrily end the relationship and go in search of another male.)

When Susan was seven, her mother married a man from a wealthy family called Bev Russell who was very active in the Christian Coalition. Susan’s mother, Linda, was also religious, a stalwart at the local Methodist church. Outwardly they were a respectable family, but by 13 Susan was so unhappy that she took an overdose of aspirin. When she recovered, she threw herself back into her school activities, joining numerous after school and leisure clubs.

When she was 15, Bev started coming into her room and night and fondling her. Out of her depth, Susan would pretend to be asleep. At 16, she told her school counsellor and Bev admitted the offence. The family went for counselling but the abuse wasn’t reported to the police. Susan continued to spend her evenings and weekends in frenetic activity as if by filling every waking moment she wouldn’t have time to think.

At 18, she started dating an older married man and was deliriously happy – but when he ended the affair, she took an overdose and spent several days in hospital. She again went into therapy.

At 19, Susan became pregnant by David Smith, a year her senior, who already had a fiancée. Susan was working as a checkout girl at the local supermarket and David was the assistant manager. The couple had a church wedding in March 1991 and their first son, Michael, arrived in October. Susan was a good mother though she worried constantly about money and was very jealous when David spoke to other women, sometimes hitting him and accusing him of cheating on her.

Two days after their first wedding anniversary, the couple split up but they later reconciled and created a second son, Alex. But, shortly after his birth in September 1993, they split up again. Susan no longer wanted David, but she hated to see anyone else with him and did everything that she could to break him and his girlfriend up. By now she was having full consensual sex with Bev, her stepfather, who was still married to her mother. She also had relationships with various other men in town.