The Racial Hoax Murders and the Killer of Killers

This episode contains descriptions and details that some listeners might find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. Well, hey there, and welcome back to American Criminal.

In 1989, The Murder of Carol Stuart received a lot of attention in the media. It was a complex, messy case that held America transfixed, and it left Boston reeling.

First, the city and its leaders said Carol's death was an example of the drug-fueled violence brought on by the crack cocaine epidemic. Then the police marched into Mission Hill, aggressively targeting young black men for searches and interrogation.

And when the truth was finally revealed, no one knew what to say. The entire city had been fooled, and it had been so easy. All Chuck had to do to sow that level of division was say that a black man had attacked him and his wife.

But what Chuck Stewart did wasn't revolutionary. Evil? It's short, but hardly original.

Because stories like this have been repeated over and over again, Professor Catherine Russell Brown, who studies race and crime, sociology and criminal law, popularized a term for these incidents. Racial hoaxes.

These are instances of people taking advantage of fears and stereotypes to commit or invent some kind of crime. Professor Russell Brown has two categories for these.

The first are convenience hoaxes, when people make up an imaginary crime for personal reasons. Maybe they need an excuse for being late to work, to cover up some humiliation they've experienced, or even just to impress someone with an exciting story.

So they say they were robbed or assaulted. And more often than not, the perpetrator of this fake crime is a black man. Here's an abridged version of such a story.

In 1931, there were two groups of teenage boys riding a train in Alabama, a group of white kids and one of black. Now apparently, the white kids didn't like sharing the rails with the black kids and tried to force them off the train.

When the black guys refused to leave, the white guys found a station master and told them that the black guys had attacked them. Pretty soon, cops had boarded the train and arrested all nine of the black teens.

They also picked up a young white woman and a white teenage girl. Allegedly, both of them were sex workers and were facing criminal charges of their own. When they all got to jail, the girls accused the black teens of raping them on board the train.

News of this alleged crime spread quickly, and a mob of thousands showed up at the Scottsboro jail where the teens were held.

Lynching black men accused of raping white women was a common occurrence back then, so Alabama's governor mobilized the National Guard to protect the jail and courthouse.

With so many eyes watching the case, the Scottsboro boys, as they were collectively known, were quickly convicted by all white juries. They received sentences ranging from decades behind bars to death. But here's the thing.

One of the alleged victims of the rape changed her story during the drawn out appeals process. While on the stand, she recanted, saying that she and the other young woman came up with the story to avoid being thrown in jail for prostitution.

Several of the black teens eventually had their convictions overturned or were pardoned. But others ended up locked away for years. Three of those who served time weren't pardoned until 2013, decades after their deaths.

The Scottsboro Boys case is one of the most famous racial hoaxes in American history. It's one that had a long, long tail and is generally considered a miscarriage of justice over a crime that never actually happened.

But not all racial hoaxes look exactly like. The second category that Professor Russell Brown sorts racial hoaxes into are cover-ups. When a person commits an actual crime and then tries to blame a person or group of people usually from another race.

Obviously, if you listen to our series on the murder of Carol Stuart, you already know one of these stories very well. But there are plenty more stomach-churning cases of people blaming a faceless other for their own misdeeds.

And two of them came hot on the heels of the explosive Stuart murder. This is the racial hoax murders and the killer of killers.

5:24

The Anderson Attack

April 21st, 1992 is a Tuesday, so it's an unusual night for Jesse and Barbara Anderson to go on a date. But babysitters for their three young kids are easier to arrange on weeknights, so Tuesday it is.

The family lives a comfortable life on the rural outskirts of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, so Jesse and Barbara relish the chance to come into Milwaukee for a little grown-up time and civilization.

They start with a 7 o'clock show at the Northridge Mall Movie Theatre. When that lets out, they head to the nearby TGI Fridays for a late dinner. They pay their check around 10.15 and head for their car.

Moments later, people inside the restaurant hear a commotion coming from the parking lot, shouts for help most of all.

A group of customers and staff run outside where they find 31-year-old Jesse feet away from the door, a black baseball cap in his hand, and a small knife sticking out of his chest. He is standing over his wife who is lying on the ground.

A couple of the bystanders scream at the sight of 33-year-old Barbara, and I don't blame them. She has been stabbed more than a dozen times in the chest, neck and face. There is blood everywhere.

People rush to help the couple while someone heads inside to call for an ambulance. Stammering and seemingly in shock, Jesse explains that they were attacked. That much is obvious.

It was two young black guys, he says. The couple were walking towards their car when Jesse heard Barbara scream and turned around to see some guy stabbing her. He leapt to her defense, struggling with the two men, trying to get the knife from them.

That's how the blade got stuck in his chest. The attackers ran off after that. Jesse holds up the black LA.

Clippers hat in his hand. He knocked this off one of their heads, he mumbles, while a server from the restaurant helps him sit down on the curb.

When the cops arrive on the scene a few minutes later, Jesse repeats the story, handing them the knife that he's now pulled from his chest. It's small, a red plastic handle and four-inch blade.

It's the kind of thing you'd buy at an outdoor sports store. Not that Jesse's thinking about the provenance of weapons just now. Barbara's rushed to the closest hospital, where doctors tend to her horrific injuries.

She has 21 stab wounds in all. Right from the start, doesn't look good. But her husband has been much more fortunate.

Jesse only received four stab wounds. One of them punctured his lung, but that's the most serious of his problems. Or so he thinks.

So this probably isn't going to shock you, but Jesse Anderson is a big fat liar. That's why Milwaukee's cops are stumped at first. That doesn't seem to be any motive for this attack.

The Andersons were robbed, so the only thing people can think of is that this is some kind of terrifying gang initiation ritual. But even that doesn't seem likely to people who know anything about local gang activity.

But early local media coverage of the case brings in some tips that help investigators figure everything out. The first useful call they get is from a 20-year-old kid called Tommy Miles.

He tells the cops that he was at a mall the day before the attack when a man who looked just like Jesse Anderson walked up to him and offered to buy his black Clippers cap for 20 bucks.

Two of Tommy's friends back the story up, and Tommy himself describes a grease stain inside the hat that proves it's the one Jesse claimed he got from the attackers. So, that's not looking good for Jesse, but it's not quite a smoking gun.

That, investigators get when the owner of a military goods store calls to report that a man matching Jesse's description bought a fishing knife from him about a month ago, and he literally has the receipts to back his story up.

His store is the only one in Milwaukee that stocks the kind of knife that stabbed Barbara and Jesse, and they've only sold one of them, Evfer.

On Thursday afternoon, less than 48 hours after the stabbings, Barbara Anderson dies from her injuries, turning an already serious criminal case into a murder investigation.

A couple of days after that, Jesse is released from the hospital free to return to his children and move on with his life. But that new chapter is incredibly short, only last two hours.

He's barely made it home when police show up to take him into custody. The next day, Milwaukee's finest announced that they're charging Jesse with his wife's murder.

Then they start assembling more evidence for their case, and they do not have to look hard. A search of the Anderson's house turns up a letter Barbara wrote to Jesse. In it, she tells him that she wants to reconcile.

Exactly what they were fighting about she doesn't say, but she apologizes to her husband for having gained weight since they got married, and promises to work harder on her appearance.

Whatever their problems, whatever her husband said to her, she wanted their marriage to work. Apparently, Jesse didn't. The investigation reveals that just weeks before he killed her, Jesse called to update Barbara's $250,000 life insurance policy.

Yeah, it's another one of those stories. With all of that evidence stacked against him, Jesse doesn't stand a chance at trial.

In August, just four months later, he's convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, but he's given a glimmer of hope. He will be eligible for parole in 60 years, when he's in his mid-90s.

11:31

Justice in Prison

He won't make it to 40, though, and here's where this already tragic story takes a truly wild turn. Two years later, Jesse's serving time at the Columbia Correctional Institute.

He's incarcerated with hundreds of other inmates, but there are just two who are important to this story. The first is 25-year-old Christopher Scarver, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence of his own.

The second is 34-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who targeted young men and boys from the late 70s to the early 90s.

On the morning of November 28, 1994, Jesse, Christopher and Dahmer are carrying out their assigned cleaning duties in the prison's gym facilities.

They are unsupervised, so no one is around to stop Christopher when he savagely beats his fellow inmates with a 20-inch metal bar he hid inside his uniform.

After the attack, Christopher, who is thought to live with schizophrenia, returns to his cell and tells a guard what he's done. God ordered him to do it, he says. Dahmer is rushed to a hospital, but he's dead within an hour.

Jesse lives for two more days, but dies from his injuries on the 30th. He's 37, and he takes to his grave his reasons for killing his wife of seven years. In the aftermath of the crime, no one could quite believe it.

Jesse and Barbara had seemed so happy, but it had all turned out to be a lie. The Andersons had concealed their troubles from the world, and in turn, it seems Jesse had disguised his hatred for his wife.

Only a deep-seated loathing could have motivated him to attack her so viciously. And just like Charles Stuart, he was sure that the community would believe him when he blamed black men for the crime.

But the world hadn't forgotten about Carol Stuart and Mission Hill just yet. Newspaper articles about Jesse compared the two cases, noting just how similar they were. It seemed that the world was catching up to this kind of crime.

The cops had spotted this one a mile off. Surely, no one would be fooled for even a minute the next time. Then again, maybe not.

14:08

A Motherʼs Plea

Around 9:30 p.m. on October 25th, 1994, Susan Smith is found crying on a front porch in Union County, South Carolina. The owner of the house tries to comfort Susan, who seems inconsolable.

But slowly, through her tears, she manages to tell him what happened. Once she's got her story out, the man brings Susan into the house and calls 911.

There's a lady come up the front door, and she's some guy jumping into a red light with her car with her two kids in it, and he took off, and she got out of the car here at our house. And he's got the kids?

Yes, ma'am, and her car.

I don't...

She's real hysterical, and I just decided I need to call the law and get them down here.

Get them going, Pam.

I got two kids. Police rush to the house just off Highway 49 and collect a statement from 23-year-old Susan. She goes over the story with them.

She was stopped at a red light when a man opened the passenger side door and threatened her with a gun. There were no other cars around, so Susan couldn't even call out for help.

He made her drive a short way, then ordered her out of the car before he sped off with the vehicle. It's a harrowing story on its own, but the kicker is that her two young sons were in the back of the car.

Michael is three years old and Alex is just 14 months. Before she got out of the car, Susan told her boys to be brave for her, and that was the last she saw of them. The cops asked what the carjacker looked like, and Susan says that he was black.

In his late 20s, early 30s, was wearing blue jeans and a plaid shirt, and that he had a toboggan hat on. Within hours, a sketch artist has come up with an approximation of what this man might look like. Not that it's a very useful tool.

Susan's description of the guy is so vague that the sketch could be any one of hundreds of young black men in the community.

Local police start going door to door that night, seeking out the homes of black families and questioning any men who remotely match the description Susan gave. But they don't uncover any leads that way.

Thankfully, the cops aren't alone in their search. The small city of Union comes together to hunt for the man who's made off with Susan Smith's children.

Police helicopters and search dogs are sent to perform sweeps of the area, while locals scratch their heads and wonder how such a shocking crime could happen in their community.

I mean, there are only about 10,000 people in the city, so everyone feels like they know just about everyone. Surely, someone should know who this mystery carjacker is. They just need more eyeballs on it.

Locals tie yellow ribbons to trees throughout the city to raise awareness of the crime, while others hand out flyers with a picture of Susan's car and a sketch of the suspect. But the truth is that the case didn't need any extra promotion.

The story captures the attention of the press almost as quickly as it draws in the police. Susan and her estranged husband David appear on the nightly news, Susan repeating the story of what happened and making a plea for their son's safe return.

But some local producers can't help noticing that Susan seems excited by all the attention. Watching footage of an interview back, they noticed that before Susan sat down in front of the cameras, she was smiling and flustered.

Her demeanor switched once she sat beside David, though. It was eerie to watch. Of course, none of this was shown to the public.

All anyone saw on their television sets was a distraught mother desperate to have her children back.

18:05

A Story Falls Apart

But although she has the general public on her side, the police aren't convinced that Susan Smith is telling the truth. Within a day or two of the story breaking, investigators start taking a closer look at her story.

There isn't a lot to work with, but there's one key detail that gives them pause. Susan says she stopped for a red light at an intersection, which is where the man got into the car.

Crucially, she tells detectives that there were no other cars in sight. That's why the carjacker was able to pull off the crime so easily. No witnesses to give chase or call the cops.

But a little digging reveals that the traffic light in question would not have changed to red without another car there waiting. It's a small thing, but it's enough to prove that Susan's not being truthful about at least part of her story.

And if she can lie about that, then what else is she lying about?

Over the next few days, while the media continues to pick over the case and amplify calls for the return of Michael and Alex, Susan is brought in for multiple polygraph tests, each of them proving inconclusive.

The boy's father is frustrated by the cops' focus on his wife. He can't imagine what they're thinking. It feels like they're wasting time and manpower that could be better spent out looking for the man who has the kids.

But the police aren't simply talking to Susan and hoping to catch her in a lie. They've been actively searching for her car, believing that she may have hidden it somewhere on her own. They even discreetly send divers into John D.

Long Lake, which is close to where Susan says her car was stolen. But the diver's search at the water's edge proves fruitless. There's no sign of a car in there.

As for the rest of Union, its black residents are treading very carefully. Young men especially are nervous to go out alone. Worried that they'll be thought of as suspicious if they're spotted going for a hike in the woods or fishing.

So they stay home, waiting for this all to end so their lives can go back to normal. They don't have to wait long. On November 3rd, nine days after Susan first reported her children missing, she gave a new statement to the police.

And it's radically different from the first story she told. A short time later, Sheriff Howard Wells makes an announcement to an assembly of reporters and concerned locals.

Susan Smith has been arrested and will be charged with two counts of murder in connection with the deaths of her children.

Now, as you can hear from that clip, no one in Union was expecting the news. And, the full story is more shocking than the revelation of Susan's arrest. On the night of the 25th, she strapped her sons into their car seats and drove towards John D.

Long Lake. She exited Highway 49 onto a small road that led down through a wooded area to the lake's boat ramp. There, she put the car in gear, got out, and watched it roll into the water, with her son still inside.

After the car disappeared from view, Susan made her way back to the highway, then walked to the first house she could see, where she started telling her tale to anyone who would listen. The red light, the gun, the black man, all of it a lie.

And people are angry. Understandably, the black residents of Union County have the most to be upset about. Once again, the idea of the black guy has been used by a criminal to try and get away with their own actions.

But mostly, people are just devastated that the two little boys the whole country has been searching for have been dead this whole time, killed by their own mother. Hours after the confession, divers returned to the lake to search for the car again.

Investigators had initially guessed that if the car was in the water, it would have stayed within a few dozen feet of the shore. Turns out they were wrong. The vehicle is eventually found over 120 feet away from the water's edge.

When it's dragged from the lake, the bodies of Michael and Alexander are still strapped into their car seats. In the trunk, detectives find mementos of Susan's life, including her wedding album and a bridal gown.

Susans quickly charge with two counts of murder and then everyone sits back to watch the trial unfold. And no one's prepared for what comes to light.

23:04

Trial and Conviction

The trial of Susan Smith begins in July 1995, less than a year after she confessed to drowning her two young children in a lake and blaming it on an imaginary black man.

The city of Union, South Carolina has been transformed for the case, as journalists from around the world arrive to cover every minute.

Parts of the streets surrounding the courthouse are blocked off to make room for satellite trucks, film equipment, and for live feeds to major networks. Media outlets run out homes and empty shop fronts to set up base.

The Associated Press takes over an old roller rink to use as housing and office space for its reporters. But even with public interest in the case still sky high after all these months, not everyone believes the trial should be broadcast.

Before proceedings can get underway, the Defense brings up the ongoing trial of OJ. Simpson in California and says that allowing cameras into the courtroom will affect the jury and the witnesses here just as it has there.

The judge agrees with the argument and orders all cameras out of the building. Now the trial can finally begin. Thanks to her confession, Susan's lawyers know that it's no use trying to prove that she's not guilty.

That ship has sailed. What they do instead is try to explain the state of mind Susan was in at the time of the murders and the ways her life set her up to fail. Susan's school counselor is brought in to talk about how troubled she was as a teenager.

He recalls that when she was 13, she tried to overdose on aspirin. One of the star witnesses for the defense is Susan's stepfather, Beverly Russell. He takes the stand to tell the court how he began sexually abusing Susan when she was 15 years old.

He goes on, revealing that he and Susan had an ongoing sexual relationship even after she was married with children. After she confessed last year, he wrote her a letter insisting that he was partly to blame for her crimes.

He let her down as a father, he said, and her sons paid the price. These insights into Susan's earlier years seemed to support a key aspect of the story that she laid out in her confession. That she was planning to take her own life that night.

But that her body willed her out of the car as it rolled down the boat ramp. To hear her lawyers tell the story, the murders were the impulsive actions of a woman with a traumatic past and a fragile mental state who wanted to end it all.

But, the prosecution gets to have their say too, and they've got a different explanation of the events of October 25th. Remember how I said that Susan and her husband David were estranged?

Well, in the months leading up to the murders, Susan had been dating Tom Finley, a wealthy local bachelor. But he'd ended things, writing her a Dear John letter to explain why. Among the reasons he gives Susan are her children.

He didn't want kids, and he certainly didn't want the responsibility of her children. The prosecutors argue that this was the reason that Susan killed her sons. They were obstacles to a relationship she wanted to continue.

And she believed that if they were gone, she'd be free to do as she wanted. So she packed her trunk with relics from her old life, including her wedding dress and wedding album.

Then she bundled the kids into the car, drove them to the lake, locked the doors, and watched her past slip out of sight. This idea proves too compelling to ignore. At the end of four days of testimony, the jury retires to deliberate.

They take just two and a half hours to convict Susan of two counts of murder. Days later, the same jurors sentence her to two concurrent terms of life in prison.

The prosecution had argued for the death penalty, but it was decided that it was more punishing for Susan to have to live with what she'd done.

In 2024, 30 years after her crimes, she's eligible for parole for the first time, but her application is denied. In the decades since Susan Smith's story shocked America, the full scope of it has been lost.

Most of the time, when people hear the tale, they get the pieces that feel the most important. Mother drowns own children in car. But the scale of Susan's evil deed is diminished in that version of events.

It leaves out the part where she made up a different crime to explain her son's disappearance and then blamed it on a black man. Like Chuck Stewart and Jesse Anderson before her, Susan Smith was sure everyone would believe her.

And for a moment, they did. This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details. And while in some cases, we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is a co-production of Airship and Evergreen podcasts. It's hosted, edited, and produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz. Audio, editing, and sound design by Sean Ruhl Hoffman.

Music by Thrum. This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan. Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson, and Lindsey Graham.