Talking Dateline: Return to the Lake

Dateline NBC

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True Crime, Culture, Social, Society & Culture, News

4.4 • 38K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Josh Mankiewicz and Craig Melvin sit down to talk about Craig’s episode, “Return to the Lake.” In 1994, the disappearance of two young brothers, Michael and Alex Smith, following an alleged carjacking in Union, South Carolina, was all anyone could talk about. The nation felt their mother’s despair as she told the harrowing story of a man who drove off with her two young boys after threatening her at gunpoint. Nine days after Michael and Alex disappeared, Susan Smith confessed to the unimaginable – she had killed her sons. Josh and Craig discuss Craig’s heartbreaking interview with David Smith about the deaths of his sons 30 years ago and his ex-wife’s recent bid for parole. Dateline Producer Carol Gable joins Josh to discuss the letters she and Susan Smith have exchanged for the past 20 years and to answer questions from social media. Listen to the full episode of “Return to the Lake” on Apple: https://apple.co/3CM39jz Listen to the full episode on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/13y8ZWq4lKB5kM9ZY7Crli

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody. It's Josh Mankowitz, and we're talking Dateline today with Craig Melvin.
0:11.6	Hi, Craig.
0:12.3	Josh, how are you, Mank?
0:14.0	Good, and congratulations on that new non-dateline job that you have.
0:19.8	I see you try to fit in around your dateline responsibility.
0:22.8	Well, you know, my primary obligation remains to dateline.
0:27.6	This dateline thing, this is correct.
0:30.5	Yeah.
0:31.2	So this episode is called Return to the Lake.
0:34.1	And it is about a horrifying case that everybody of a certain age, that being me,
0:39.7	will remember. It's from 1994. It's the story of Susan Smith, who murdered her two young
0:45.1	children. Now, for this episode, Craig spoke with her ex-husband David in a very rare, very
0:51.8	revealing interview about how this case, this loss, how it impacted him,
0:55.8	and how he is fighting to keep the woman that he once loved behind bars.
1:01.6	Now, if you've not listened to this episode yet, it is the episode right below this one
1:05.6	on the list of podcasts that you just chose from.
1:08.5	So you can go there and you can listen to it and come back here,
1:11.7	or you can go to Peacock and stream it.
1:15.2	Now, when you come back, Craig and I will talk about the episode.
1:18.6	Craig also has an extra clip that he wants to play for us from the chief of SLED,
1:23.5	the South Carolina law enforcement division, Mark Keel.
1:26.8	And then later, we're going to be joined by a special guest.
	...

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