Good evening.
I have a dream that won me.
The people.
They say it would play.
One, two, three, four, five, four.
The memories.
Down.
This man's been off the hook with John Fitzgerald.
John, go and throttle up.
The moments that most touched our lives.
You are making fun.
Join us as we travel to another place.
Return to another time.
See what you remember as we reveal what you never knew in tonight's timeline.
I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't do anything but think about them.
Susan Smith fooled America, but she didn't fool him.
The man who finally got her to confess to drowning her two children tells how he did it.
Started rocking and said, I'm so ashamed, I'm so ashamed.
And she asked for my gun that she might kill herself.
What year was it?
They were on different sides that day.
This soldier was behind a gun.
I don't know that I ever felt any less threatened or more threatened than I did that morning.
These students were in front of one.
And I said, oh my God, they're shooting at me.
Tonight, all three relived those 13 seconds at Kent State that changed their lives and America forever.
What year was it?
At age 72, Hugh Hefner is still a playboy.
What I've attempted to do is push the outer boundaries of what is acceptable in terms of sexuality.
He did, and it all started with just one picture.
What year was it?
When Nat King Cole and his daughter Natalie first made music together, people talked about a technological breakthrough.
Unforgettable in every way.
But for this once troubled child of a legend, it was an emotional breakthrough as well.
He isn't up there and I'm down here, and we are even now.
A father-daughter reunion.
What year was it?
Timeline, a Dateline special.
Here now is Jane Pawley.
Good evening.
Tonight, we're going to take a little trip back in time.
But we'll make it easy.
All you need to bring is your curiosity.
We'll provide the memories.
On our trip, you'll get to meet some fascinating people, relive some unforgettable moments.
You may also discover that the past isn't always quite the way you remember it.
Because in many of the stories we'll revisit, we've discovered something new.
What years will our timeline take us to tonight?
We'll be back with our first story after our first timeline.
All of the following events happened during the first week of May.
Do you know what year it was?
Harry Blackman was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice.
Airport was flying high at the box office.
You'll kill yourself for nothing if you explode that bomb.
Stay where you are.
Robert Young starred as TV's Marcus Welby, MD.
National Guard troops opened fire on the anti-war demonstrators at Kent State University, killing four.
And the Jackson Five had the top two.
ABC is easy as one, two, three.
I say, well, don't blame me.
ABC, one, two, three, baby, you and me, girl.
All right, what year was it?
1970, 1971, or 1972?
The answer coming up on Timeline.
That's how easy love can be.
ABC is easy because I can be.
So what year was it?
ABC was top of the charts.
Blackman was on his way to the high court.
And four young students were killed at Kent State University.
It all happened the first week of May, 1970, a week that for many young Americans would mark the end of innocence.
The Vietnam War had thoroughly divided America.
On May 4, 1970, those divisions would come to a terrible, terrifying climax at Kent State University.
You know part of what happened that day.
Here's Dennis Murphy with the part you may not know.
We felt that we had to send a message to President Nixon and to the generals.
At that time, the students are getting killed guard, get them.
Four people lay dying on the ground, blood flowing all over the place.
Three people, three lives, three stories.
A student radical, a National Guard Lieutenant Colonel, and a curiosity seeker.
Three people who had never met, but who would be brought together for 13 chilling seconds that would change their lives and America irrevocably.
Dean Kaler was 20 years old the day of the Kent State shootings.
His draft number was 330, very high.
He knew he wouldn't have to go to Vietnam.
As far as going to school and worrying about being drafted, I didn't have that worry anymore.
So the Vietnam War came to him as it came to the rest of the United States that awful day.
In the spring of 1970, Kent State University was smack in the middle of nowhere in America's political consciousness.
It was on campuses like Columbia in New York and Berkeley in California where we grew accustomed to unrest.
Then on April 30 came this announcement by President Nixon.
Tonight, American and South Vietnamese units will attack the headquarters for the entire communist military operation in South Vietnam.
This key control center has been occupied by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong for five years in blatant violation of Cambodia's neutrality.
This is not an invasion of Cambodia.
Nixon had campaigned promising to end the war in Vietnam.
Now it seemed at least to those opposed to the war, he was expanding it.
They saw it very much as an invasion of Cambodia.
There were lots of people who were upset about what was going on with him and his term in office.
And then you have the speech and it just totally pissed people off.
We were shouting at the television. We were cursing.
For Kent State student Alan Canfora, President Nixon's speech was a call to arms and not the kind Mr. Nixon intended.
Two weeks earlier, a childhood friend had been killed in Vietnam.
That helped push Canfora from supporting the war to joining the radical students for a democratic society, the SDS.
We vowed as we shouted at the TV, President Nixon, we're going to make you hear our message in Kent, Ohio.
We're going to send you a message this weekend.
Canfora's idea of sending a message began with some spray painting of buildings in downtown Kent.
But soon he and his friends turned to the Army ROTC building on campus.
First came rocks through windows, then fire.
People saw that building as a symbol of the war in Vietnam, the symbol of the link of the campus with the war in Vietnam.
And so I think that's why people weren't surprised that that building burned.
Forty-eight hours after President Nixon's Cambodia speech, the Army ROTC building on the Kent State campus was burned to the ground.
Dean Kaler's dad drove him back to campus after a weekend away and couldn't believe what he saw.
As we got closer to the city limits, my dad said, oh my God, this looks like Korea.
By Monday, May 4, there was chaos.
Students, both demonstrators and the curious, and Ohio National Guard troops swarmed all over campus.
By no coincidence, Street Fightin' Man was playing on loudspeakers.
We're demonstrating kids all over the place.
Chuck Fassinger, a Korea vet and Lieutenant Colonel in the Guard, never imagined he'd be patrolling a university campus.
But when the ROTC building was torched, the Guard was called in.
Fassinger's orders allowed no rallies on campus.
The reason given was they expected the same kind of confrontation that happened with the burning down of the building.
And the best way to control that was not to let there be a very large crowd.
Right at noon, a student rang a campus bell for victory.
Another called for a strike of classes until the war ended.
Some began chanting.
They were chanting, pigs off campus, ho, ho, ho Chi Minh, one, two, three, four, we don't want your you know what war.
We also said, national guard off campus, pigs off campus, things like this.
Chuck Fassinger could see the tone of the demonstration was changing.
The purpose of the rally was no longer anti-Vietnam, anti-war, it was anti-guard.
Guards off our campus.
Then it started.
Some students, including Kaelor, who was there more out of curiosity than ideology, began to throw rocks.
The guardsmen responded with tear gas.
The students threw the tear gas grenades back.
Things were quickly spinning out of control.
They just started shooting tear gas and said disperse with the bull horns.
Helicopters flying all over with spotlights and troops everywhere and they were all moving at us.
The sky was filled with tear gas which went higher than these buildings.
And I can recall reaching down and picking up some of the tear gas canisters and throwing them back toward the guard.
The guard marched over a hill, blanket hill.
And though the gas had dispersed some of the students, the guardsmen were now out of tear gas grenades and had to call for more.
I've been in combat.
And I don't know that I ever felt any less threatened or more threatened than I did that morning.
The students, believing the troops' M1 rifles were not loaded, felt emboldened.
More rocks flew.
Kaelor, suffering from the tear gas, did some of the throwing.
I remember grabbing a handful of stones and just flinging them in the direction of the National Guard.
I mean, you're talking gravel.
Canfora insists the students were too far away to hit the guard with rocks.
But that's not how Fassinger remembers it.
They're really bold ones that come up behind you and hitch in the knees and make you fall down or try and trip the guard and then run away.
Surrounded and apparently in retreat, the guardsmen began to march back up the hill.
Alan Canfora taunted them with a black flag.
And we thought they were just retreating.
We thought they were going away.
It seemed like the whole confrontation was over.
Then suddenly, no one to this day knows exactly why, the guardsmen turned, lowered their rifles, and aimed them at the students.
At that instant, Alan Canfora with his black flag found himself at ground zero and opened an inviting target for angry or scared troops.
He saw a tree and ran for it.
To his horror, Dean Kaelor suddenly realized he was in the line of fire as well.
He hit the ground to avoid the fusillade.
When they got to the top of the hill, they just turned and fired.
I mean, it was like in unison all of a sudden.
And I said, oh my God, they're shooting at me.
24 years of being in the military said this isn't supposed to be any shooting.
At that instant, in 13 horrifying seconds, with Kaelor hitting the ground, Canfora running, and Lieutenant Fasinger atop the hill, three people became reluctant players in one of the darkest moments in American history.
Chuck Fasinger remembers the guards talking later about someone they shot.
Somebody wearing a bandana or chief over his face and waving a black flag.
That was Alan Canfora.
And at the last second as I pulled in behind the tree, I felt a bullet hit me in the wrist.
The bullet went in the front part of my wrist and it came out through the side.
Canfora's wounds were relatively minor.
He was treated and released that day.
But what about Dean Kaelor?
Some of the guardsmen, the shooters, said I shot at an individual identified in one case, as I recall, a redhead.
Could that have been Kaelor?
The gunfire only lasted 13 seconds, but it felt like it lasted an eternity.
Kaelor says he was lying on the ground cowering in fear when he felt something like a bee sting in his back.
My legs got real tight and then they relaxed and then I didn't feel anything anymore.
Everything felt weird. I couldn't feel my toes.
Dean Kaelor would never feel his toes again.
A bullet caught part of his spine and Kaelor has spent the last 28 years in a wheelchair.
In all, nine students were wounded, four others were killed.
It's been nearly three decades since the tragedy at Kent State and what we're about to tell you may surprise you.
Long after the Vietnam War ended badly, long after the students graduated to grow into middle age,
long after the anguish and the despair and the heartache of that day split the country in two,
after all that, no guardsman or officer has ever been held accountable for what happened atop Blanket Hill.
There had been three lawsuits on the matter, but today we're no closer to the truth than we were in 1970.
Chuck Fassinger, who has become the unofficial spokesman for the troops, left the Guard two years later
and is now a managing director with the American Welding Society.
He wishes Kent State had never happened, but it did.
I've often said if that were to plunk down here today, go back 28 years, the results would have been the same
and I wouldn't know how to make them different.
Alan Canfora, the angry young radical, moved back into the mainstream.
He's the Democratic Party chairman in his hometown of Barbaton, Ohio
and is writing a book about Kent State that he hopes will become a movie.
For those of us who were victimized, I don't think that there's a day that goes by that we don't think about those tragic events, yes, every single day.
And Dean Kaler, whose curiosity brought him to his fate, has moved on with his life as well.
He became a wheelchair athlete and now teaches history and government to high school seniors in Nelsonville, Ohio.
And yes, the subject does come up in his classes.
Three days after our interview with Kaler, he had a heart attack and is now recovering from bypass surgery.
Kaler has never forgotten the day his life and America were changed forever, but he has somehow learned how to forgive.
Forgiveness is not something you just kind of switch and you do. It's something you work at, something you have to learn to do.
Chuck Fassinger, the guardsman, says theories that the shooting was ordered or planned are, quote, nuts.
He says if anything, fear and confusion was to blame.
For our next story, let's start the timeline again.
All of the following events happened the first week of December. Do you know what year it was?
Gary Cooper was the top movie draw.
Bundabar, bundabar.
Kiss Me Kate, the top movie musical.
Sid Caesar was the king of comedy on TV's Your Show of Shows.
I believe the rule, boys, is going to be pretty messy.
The first issue of Playboy Magazine hit the stands, and Perry Como had the top song.
Papaya mama, turn up the deep blue sea, tell your papa papaya, you're coming home with me.
All right, what year was it? 1953, 1954, or 1955?
The answer, when timeline continues.
No, no, no.
Turn up the deep blue sea, tell your papa papaya.
So what year was it? Papaya mama was a hit, coop was hot, and the world got its first look at Playboy Magazine.
You're coming home with me.
It all happened the first week of December, 1953.
No one knew exactly what would happen when that first Playboy hit the stands.
Certainly not Hugh Hefner, who would soon become the most famous magazine editor ever.
We know now that first issue of Playboy launched an empire.
What you may not have realized is that it also launched a revolution.
Here's Keith Morrison.
Before Hugh Hefner became a household name, before the women,
and the mansion, and the women, and the fame, and the women, and the publishing empire.
And did we mention the women?
Before all that, there was this.
A photograph, innocent by today's centerfold standards.
It had the power to change the way an entire society thought about sex, if coupled with the right idea.
And Hugh Hefner had an idea.
I was looking for some kind of special gimmick for the first issue.
The gimmick he settled on was this photo, bought for $500.
America's newest sex symbol. Nothing on but the radio.
I think that what made her particularly attractive and appealing was a combination of sexiness with vulnerability.
That was the idea. Sexiness combined with vulnerability. And it would launch an empire.
I'm a romantic. Have been all my life.
Now, before you roll your eyes and say, oh please, exactly how romantic can a guy who claims to have slept with more than a thousand women be,
you may want to listen to his story first.
Hugh Marston Hefner of Chicago grew up in what he calls a typically repressed American home.
No smoking, no liquor, no show of affection.
All forms of love became for me romantic love, the kind of love that I saw in the movies and in the music of the 30s and 40s.
Hefner's first idea of romantic love came in the person of Betty Conklin.
But after he cast her in a homemade movie, she dumped him for another boy.
Hefner decided to change his image.
I literally then reinvented myself. I changed my clothes.
I changed my name. Started referring to myself as Hef for the first time.
It would not be the last time he'd reinvent himself.
And Hef began living a life father knows best, could have been proud of.
He married his high school sweetheart, Millie Williams, the only woman he had slept with and had two children.
But the marriage soon failed.
And Hefner went to work to start a slick, sexy magazine that wouldn't skulk around in the back of dirty bookstores.
It would tell young men how to dress, order wine, buy a sports car.
Yes, it would have nudity. And it would be called Stag Party.
But a hunting magazine called Stag threatened to sue.
All I did at the last minute was simply take a rabbit head and put it on top of the same drawing.
So this rabbit actually has hooves.
In December of 1953, Hefner put Marilyn Monroe on the cover and thought maybe, maybe it would sell 30,000 copies.
The first issue had no date on it because I didn't know there would ever be a second issue.
There was. The first issue sold 53,000 copies.
Hefner was on to something and he knew it. To him, sexual freedom was liberation.
What's more, he rejected the idea that his success was due entirely to nude pictures.
No, Playboy was suffused with a simple idea.
That sex is okay. That nice girls like sex too. It's a part of being a human being.
The idea that nice girls liked sex too was a radical concept.
Hefner insisted his centerfolds looked like the girl next door.
Though how many Americans had neighbors who looked like this was open to debate.
What I've attempted to do is push the outer boundaries of what is acceptable in terms of sexuality, but do it in a moral way.
Popular though his magazine was, Hefner himself has often been more reviled than revered,
absorbing criticism from all sides, especially from feminists.
All the while, Hefner was all work and no play. And then, in 1959, he decided to live the life he'd created for others.
Reinvention number two.
When I reinvented myself through the magazine with all of the props, the pipe, the smoking jacket, the pajamas, the 300 SL,
I was doing the same thing I did in high school.
I turned myself into the person I wanted to be.
Hello!
Excuse me, I didn't see you come in. Welcome to the party.
First in the 60s and especially in the 70s, Hefner had made his bed and now he would sleep in it.
Lots of them actually. This was pre-AIDS, sexual revolution America, and Hugh Marston Hefner was the five-star general.
These were wild times.
Pretty wild. Pretty wild. I think we tested the outer boundaries. It was a time in which we could explore who we were.
The party that kind of usually begins for us around one o'clock and goes until dawn.
And Hefner didn't have to go very far to do his exploring.
Most of the action took place in his mansion, first in Chicago and later in Los Angeles.
People came to him, not the other way around.
Life with Hef was one long, decadent party, whether it was on his plane or at a playboy club.
Or at his famous, or infamous, depending on your point of view, grotto.
The scene of, well, you get the idea.
All of which raises a question.
Is it possible that some of the women Hefner slept with actually were using him for career advancement or bragging rights and not the other way around?
Absolutely, Hefner says. And so what?
No, that doesn't offend me at all.
I've never minded being a sex object.
I suggested at one point that the major sex object created by Playboy actually was probably me.
Along the way, Playboy dressed itself up with some of the best writers in the country.
It's true sometimes men really did buy the magazine for the articles.
Mostly though, they bought it for this.
Same position, arching your back, hand up, good. Great.
They've been unfolding before us for 45 years now.
And nobody, not even Hefner, would suggest that men turn to these pages to see big brains.
Well, there's no question of what we're looking for. Beauty first and foremost, photographic beauty, in face and figure.
I never really thought I was that beautiful. And then I saw the pictures and I was like, wow, I guess I really am beautiful.
The bacchanalia that was Hef came to an end in 1985 when at the age of 59 he suffered a stroke.
Reinvention number three.
I literally used it to change the direction of my life.
And I put down, as I said at the time, the luggage of my life.
And that meant the constant pursuit of romantic adventure.
One result of the stroke was this.
Nine years ago, Hefner asked Kimberly Conrad, the 409th Playboy centerfold, to become the second Mrs. Hefner.
Within a few years, there were two children running around.
And the Playboy mansion was soon filled with different kinds of playthings.
Well, you could say I guess I've reinvented myself a third time. I'm a very happily married father.
I've come full circle and am savoring and enjoying a traditional marriage with two wonderful children and a wonderful wife.
And this being Hollywood, the story should end there. But it doesn't.
In January, the Hefner separated Kimberly's idea and she moved into the adjacent mansion, giving new meaning to being in love with the girl next door.
And though Hefner wants to reconcile, not exactly waiting by the phone.
When we talked to him last week, it was quite clear he's Hef again, hosting lingerie party, a member of the Viagra generation and in the middle of, you guessed it, reinvention number four.
To come back out and discover an entire new generation was waiting for me and wanting me to come out and play was, at my age, quite a wonderful thing.
So now it's retro Hef, 72 years old, hobbing, dancing, approaching the millennium, searching for playmate 2000. Quite a life, really.
And it's not over yet. Not over until the fat lady sings and we don't let fat ladies on the property, so.
Hefner agrees he's responsible for a lot of plastic surgery, but says Playboy didn't invent the idea of wanting to be attractive to the opposite sex.
The timeline is moving again. All of the following events happened the first week of November. Do you know what year it was?
Former President Reagan revealed he had Alzheimer's disease.
Stargate was out of this world with moviegoers. Just tell him you had sex with his wife. That'll get him.
On TV, Seinfeld was a hit. I'm going with Jerk Store. Jerk Store is the line. Jerk Store.
Susan Smith confessed to drowning her two children, and Boys to Man had the top song.
I love me like you love me too. And I want you like you love me.
All right, what year was it? 1992, 1993, or 1994? The answer coming up on Timeline.
Still working on a date? Try these events. Jurors were seated in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
Anti-abortion activist Paul Hill was convicted of murdering a doctor and his bodyguard.
And at 45, George Foreman became the oldest heavyweight champ ever, knocking out Michael Moore.
We'll have the answer when Timeline continues.
So what year was it? All Make Love to You was number one on the charts.
Susan Smith confessed to murdering her children.
It all happened the first week of November, 1994. It's a parent's worst nightmare.
Someone took her children, is what a terrified young woman told police.
We know now Susan Smith was lying. We didn't know it then. Neither did police. But they suspected it.
Sarah James has new details of how a small town sheriff finally discovered the truth.
Be on the lookout for a 1990 master protege.
It began with this dispatch over the police radio.
Get them going, Pam. I got two kids.
A reported carjacking in Union, South Carolina.
I just feel like my whole world has been taken away. I mean, my children are my life.
And they just gotta be OK. They just gotta come back. OK?
October 24th, 9 p.m. 23-year-old Susan Smith says while she's driving to visit a friend,
a black man forces his way into the car at this red light, makes her drive for five miles, then makes off with the car.
Happy birthday to you.
In the car, strapped in their car seats, Smith says, are her two boys, 3-year-old Michael and Alex, 14 months.
The next morning, Union, South Carolina wakes up to the horrifying news.
We're still looking for the car. We're looking for the children, of course. That's our first consideration.
The man in charge of the investigation is Sheriff Howard Wells, fresh from an FBI training seminar.
I'm determined. I'm confident. And I believe that we're gonna find these children.
It's a local case, but it's about to become a national story, an obsession, really, when Susan's tearful plea is broadcast nationwide.
I can't even describe what I'm going through. I mean, it's in my heart. It's just, I ain't so bad.
I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't do anything but think about them. I just want to hug them, pet them, and tell them I love them.
Why do you believe it might be you?
Sheriff Wells sets up a command post and calls in the state police and FBI, the target, this man, described to them by Susan Smith.
A single black male was in his late 20s, early 30s, and I said he was dressed with a dark black or blue to body cap plaid jacket and blue jeans, and he was armed with a handgun.
The search for Michael and Alex is urgent. The nights are cold, and Union County is large, more than 510 square miles, much of it thick forest.
Susan's estranged husband, David Smith.
I plead to the man, me and my wife, plead to him to please return our children to us safely and unharmed.
We love our children very much, and we want them returned to us safe and sound.
Police bring in dogs and helicopters.
Ominously, divers search a lake near the spot where Susan says she was booted from the car, but they find nothing.
At the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, they're puzzled.
In nearly all carjackings involving children, the kids are released within hours. Why not this time?
If he's got them, what is he going to do with them? Is he abandoning them? Is he feeding them? Is he changing the diapers of the 14-month-old?
I mean, there are just a lot of personal safety issues that this raises for those two kids.
Police remain baffled. They have no motive, no ransom demand, no sign of the Mazda. Nothing.
There is nothing more that I can probably tell you right now, other than that we're probably more frustrated than anyone else, because we can't do more than what we've already done.
But Sheriff Wells is more than frustrated. He's suspicious.
He knows that in 97 percent of child abduction cases, a family member is involved, and he's made uneasy by something Susan has said.
Wells asked her whether the carjacker made any sexual overtures toward her.
And she smiled and said, no, nothing like that. And I thought that was terribly inappropriate at that time, because it was so factual that there was nothing there to smile about.
From the start, Wells has a two-track approach, the very public search, and the equally private investigation of Susan Smith.
She's cooperative at first, even as divers search the lake.
I don't know where she thought she'd gotten away with it, but I have the impression she felt we would have found it.
She was astonished that we did not find it.
And there's something else that piques Wells' curiosity, something about the carjacker she described.
She asked if a person could be arrested by that sketch, if a person could go to jail based on the sketch alone, and usually that's unusual.
Did that suggest Susan Smith was worried that an innocent man could be imprisoned for her crime?
We do not have a car. We do not have the children. We do not have the suspect.
By day four, more than 60 hours have passed since Michael and Alex disappeared.
Police bring in a lie detector. The goal, tighten the vice ever so slightly on Susan.
It works. Her reaction is more revealing than her answer.
Susan related to her family that she had failed, and we were quite surprised that she told the answer, that she said she had failed, when we said it was inconclusive.
Wells' suspicions increase, but there's no evidence, only Susan.
I can't express how much they are wanting back home, how much we love them, we miss them.
There are two more things preying on Wells' mind. One is that lake.
Divers searched it regularly, and though they found nothing, Wells keeps focusing on something he learned a month before at the FBI Academy.
When the mother is a killer and acts alone, that the child will normally, in these case studies, will be found within 10 miles of home, usually an embryonic type state covered in plastic or in water.
The other thing that puzzles Wells is the traffic light, where the abduction allegedly happened. How, Wells wonders, could that light have been red?
She said she was stopped at a red light, an intersection in Monarch, and there were no other cars around. That cannot be.
That red light is a closed loop. A car has to be at the opposing light in the intersection to make the light change.
So Susan changes her story, providing a written account saying it really happened somewhere else. Her story is breaking down, and Wells knows it.
He sneaks her past the media into the Christian Family Life Center and tells her the intersection where Susan now says it happened was under police surveillance that night, so he knows nothing happened there.
Susan puts her hands in his and begins to cry.
And she asked for my gun that she might kill herself, and I asked her, I said, Susan, why would you want to do that?
And Susan says, you don't understand. My children are not all right. And that was at 1.54 p.m. on November 3rd.
The woman who claimed that a black man drove off with him in a carjacking, tonight she's been arrested for murdering her children.
He has solved what may be his biggest case ever, but for Howard Wells, it's a painful moment.
Susan, Michael, and Alex Smith live down the street. Her two nephews are his own godchildren.
Susan wrote out this confession.
I felt I couldn't be a good mom anymore, but I didn't want my children to grow up without a mom.
I felt I had to end our lives to protect us all from any grief or harm.
I had never felt so lonely and sad in my entire life.
I dropped to the lowest when I allowed my children to go down that ramp, into the water, without me.
I broke down on Thursday, November 3rd, and told Sheriff Howard Wells the truth.
And here's something about this case you may not have heard.
After she confesses, Susan asks Wells whether it's true that police have been watching the intersection where she claims the abduction took place.
I told her, no, we didn't. She said, that's all right, I'm not mad.
She said, it's as if the world's been lifted off my shoulders.
There is one thing left to do.
Divers go back to the lake and find the car 116 feet from the shore.
When the car was brought out, it was just exactly like she had told me it would be.
The two children were in the rear of the car, still in the car seats.
And I saw Michael on the driver's side and Alex on the passenger side.
I want you back!
It's all your baby girl!
It is all more than union can take.
Susan, suddenly a pariah, has not only committed murder, but in describing a black man as the culprit, has reopened racial wounds in this southern town.
The town and the nation gather for a funeral that never should have happened.
For David Smith, the boy's father, the pain is unimaginable.
I miss those little smiles that they can give.
They could take this whole earth and turn it upside down.
They could take your worst day of your life and change it and turn it around and make the rest of it better, the rest of your day better, with their smiles.
Put the band down forward, go around.
Less than a year later, Susan Smith is found guilty of the murders, but has spared the death penalty.
Her sentence? Life in prison. She will be eligible for parole after 30 years.
For David Smith, the town of Union, South Carolina, is a constant reminder of the worst moments of his life.
He's since moved away.
Nothing, however, can remove his pain, pain that he hoped to ease in the days following Susan's confession by wearing a picture of Michael and Alex on his pocket.
It makes me feel closer to them and also it's also right near a place where Michael and Alex will always be, which is right next to my heart.
It's where they will always be for the rest of my life, be in my heart.
Well said after Smith confessed. She told him she figured he knew she was guilty all along. He says not so.
Let's get back aboard the timeline. All of the following events happened the second week of June. Do you know what year it was?
Mount Finitubo erupted in the Philippines.
Golf war troops were honored with parades. Billy Crystal starred in City Slickers.
This guy is not normal. I'm telling you. Did you see his eyes? He's got crazy eyes. He's a lunatic.
I'm telling you, we are going into the wilderness being led by a lunatic. He's behind me, isn't he?
The Cosby Show was a TV hit.
You see me having trouble with the door?
And Natalie Cole released a unique duet.
...someone so unforgettable, thinks that I am unforgettable too.
All right, what year was it? 1990, 1991, or 1992? The answer when timeline continues.
So what year was it? Americans cheered, Billy drove steers, and Natalie Cole released Unforgettable.
Unforgettable too.
It all happened the second week of June, 1991. A year that was indeed unforgettable for Natalie Cole.
It was the year she stepped out of the shadows and, thanks to time and technology, was finally able to share the spotlight with her legendary dad.
Here's Ed Gordon.
Being a legend isn't easy. Being the child of a legend may be tougher yet.
And in the world of entertainment, being the child star of a legend may be the toughest thing of all.
There is something very unnatural about people telling you that you are perfect. That you are like all that. You are it. You can do no wrong. And that's just not healthy.
Natalie Cole has spent most of her life pulling in two directions. She wants to get back her father, Nat King Cole, who died too soon, while at the same time, escaped from his shadow.
It hasn't been easy, but as you'll see later, with the help of this actor in a studio, some ingenious work with computers, and a little imagination, Natalie Cole managed to do a little of both.
A lot of things happen to a young woman when she loses her father. That's the first man in her life. That's the important one.
Nat King Cole died of lung cancer when Natalie was just 15. Reaching out to her famous father has been a lifelong struggle for a woman overshadowed by her father's legend.
Right out of college, Natalie tried to start her own singing career, but by 1973 was arrested for heroin possession.
But Natalie cleaned herself up, and by the mid-70s, she had a string of hits and awards. Still, she was haunted by the feeling that she was a fake. That success came only because she was Nat King Cole's little girl.
If you're not worth it, you don't deserve anything. That even if you have some success, you're guilty about it.
Natalie's troubles were not over. There were more drug problems and rehab. It would take 15 more years before Natalie Cole at last embraced her father and his legacy.
In 1991, she recorded Unforgettable with Love, Dad's Music, her interpretation. It sold 11 million copies.
Part of me was able to say, Dad, I love you. I'm proud to be your daughter. Okay? I am no longer running and dodging and hiding from it. I am proud to be Natalie Cole.
Then in 1996, Natalie came out with a new album of standards. And the music video helped bring her closer to her father, allowing her to digitally reach back into the past.
How hard was that? How strange was that for you? Yeah, it's pretty strange. It's pretty strange. There was a part where I had to actually go like this to Dad's face.
Of course, no. You know, I had to do that a few times and it was very, very strange.
At a special effects house in London, computer experts start with this old footage of Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald.
Ella was then blotted out and new video of Natalie was placed in. The color was removed, Natalie sized up properly next to her father, and the new footage was digitally aged to match the old.
Finally, sepia tone was put in. The finished product may be a bit eerie, but it put Natalie where she'd longed to be for 30 years, next to Dad.
He isn't up there and I'm down here. We are even now. I don't need to go there anymore.
You know, I feel like I've earned the spot next to my dad, not in front of him, not behind him, just next to him.
It's when I fall in love with you.
Natalie Cole says she thinks the bigger a celebrity is, the harder it is for their children. We'll be right back.
Now let's take a look at one of the stories we're working on for Dateline Sunday. Coming up next.
This man admits he was growing marijuana, but says, I didn't do anything wrong. He says he smoked marijuana to ease his pain, but prosecutors aren't buying his story.
Will Foster couldn't have used this much marijuana in his entire life. Was he a criminal or a victim?
That story next on Dateline Sunday.
That's the timeline for this Sunday. Now stay tuned for Dateline Sunday. I'm Jane Pauley. See you soon.