Читать книгу Parents Who Kill - Shocking True Stories of The World's Most Evil Parents - Carol Anne Davis - Страница 38

In September 1994, Susan filed for divorce, though this was against David’s wishes. She took a secretarial job with a fabrics firm and began dating Tom Findlay, the boss’s son. She often left the children with friends whilst she went out to party, sometimes spending her evenings at a popular country and western club. But when Tom realised that she wanted a serious relationship he admitted that he didn’t want to settle down with someone who already had children. He wrote her a very complimentary farewell letter, telling her that she’d ‘make some man a great wife.’ He could have played her along, but instead decided to be honest – yet he’d be left with feelings of guilt over what happened next. For, instead of finding someone who was happy to join a readymade family, Susan decided to get rid of her existing one. If she was single, Tom – who was affluent and attractive – would hopefully want her again…

On the evening of Tuesday 25 October 1994, a week after the break-up, she drove 14-month-old Alex and three-year-old Michael to John D Long Lake. Parking on the bank, she got out of the car, took off the handbrake and watched the vehicle roll into the water and eventually sink out of sight. Racing to a nearby house, she begged them to contact the police, saying that she’d been carjacked at nearby traffic lights by a black man, and that he’d made her drive into the country at gunpoint, whereupon he’d taken control of her Mazda and driven away with both of her sons.

Police – aided by hundreds of concerned local people – mounted a huge search of the area, and photographs of the boys and descriptions of what they were wearing were broadcast on national television. Susan and David (who had no reason to doubt his wife’s version of events) made a televised plea for their safe return. Susan said ‘I have prayed that whoever has them, that the Lord will let him realize that they are missed and loved more than any other children in this world.’ After further religious sentiments she added ‘I just feel in my heart that you’re okay.’

For nine days, Susan stuck to her story whilst her son’s corpses decomposed in John D Long Lake – divers had searched parts of the lake but it was an enormous stretch of water and they failed to find the Mazda. She slept a lot, though she became upset when she had to take a lie detector test. David told her that, when they got the boys back, they would reconcile as a family and she replied that he and she could do so even if they didn’t get the boys back.