I remember when this story first starting breaking nationally years ago, and there was a search throughout South Carolina for her 2 missing children. I remember being on the phone with a friend when we began discussing the case as the story of the search was being broadcast on TV. My friend said, "What kind of scumbag would kidnap 2 kids like that? For what purpose? Rape? Ransom? What?" I replied, "My instinct tells me she's responsible. The mother. I don't know why, but whatever has happened to those 2 kids, she's responsible." Sure enough...It still gives me a chill to contemplate how those 2 tiny children died, the horror of their last moments---seeing the water rise inexorably up around the car they were trapped in as their mother stood on the shoreline, her vapid cow eyes staring out at them as they drowned. She then appeared before the TV cameras, her crocodile tears streaming down the cheeks of her doughy, moon-like face, as she blamed the crime on...who else?...an anonymous black man, nearly precipitating a riot and/or various lynchings. The words "monster" and "evil" don't even begin to touch her. And the astonishing thing, given the enormity of her crime, is that she appears to be such a dullard, such a pitiful and uninteresting excuse for a human being. What possible failures of humanity could create a creature such as Susan Smith? Sexual molestation at a tender age? Something else? God knows, I have no answers, or suggestions, or theories. I wish I did. Because when I see the monstrous acts that we humans inflict on each other, on our own children, it often fills me with a paralyzing despair, whether that human in question is Heinrich Himmler, or Joe Stalin, or Charles Manson, or Susan Smith, or the abusive husband, or the child-molesting clergyman, or...whomever. Sometimes I wish I were religious, and capable of believing in the simplicity of the whole God/Devil, Good/Evil, Black/White explanation for the problems and tragedies that plague humanity. Unfortunately, I'm not.