Murder of Susan Smith

Susan Daniels Smith was born in 1961 in Matewan, West Virginia, to Sidney and Tracy Daniels, and was the fifth of nine children. Her family moved to Freeburn, Kentucky, when she was an infant, and she left school in the seventh grade due to financial hardship within her family. In 1977, at age 15, she met Kenneth Smith, a 22-year-old local drug dealer. The two married and had two children by the mid-1980s, though their relationship was strained by drug abuse; they eventually divorced but continued to share a home.

In 1987, FBI agent Mark Putnam arrived in Pikeville, Kentucky, to investigate ex-convict and bank robber Carl Edward "Cat Eyes" Lockhart, a friend of Kenneth Smith. A local sheriff's deputy, Albert "Bert" Hartfield, recommended Susan Smith as an informant to help Putnam's investigation and earn extra income. Smith provided information that contributed to Lockhart's arrest in December 1987; he was later sentenced to 57 years in federal prison. Smith received $5,000 for her assistance.

According to Putnam, contact with Smith diminished after the Lockhart case closed, but Smith sought to continue the relationship, and by mid-1988 the two had begun a sexual affair. Aware the relationship endangered his career and marriage, Putnam requested a transfer to Florida in early 1989. He was required to return to Kentucky in mid-1989 to complete an unrelated investigation. During this visit, Smith told him she was pregnant and that the child was his. Putnam proposed that he and his wife, Kathy, adopt the child, but Smith refused.

According to Putnam's later account, on June 8, 1989, he drove Smith in a rental car to a secluded area. Following a confrontation in which he said both parties made threats, a physical fight ensued, during which Putnam strangled Smith to death. He placed her body in the trunk of his car and, the next day, dumped it along an old coal mining road before returning to his family in Florida. Three days after the killing, Smith's sister, Shelby Ward, reported her missing.

In 1990, the FBI opened an investigation into Smith's disappearance, focusing suspicion on Putnam. He failed a polygraph examination and subsequently confessed, pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter after describing the strangulation as accidental and disclosing the location of Smith's body. He was sentenced that year to 16 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter, becoming the first FBI agent convicted of a homicide-related offense.

Putnam served 10 years of his sentence, being released in 2000 after being described as a model inmate. His wife, Kathy Putnam, died in 1998 from organ failure related to alcoholism while he was still incarcerated. After his release, Putnam relocated to Georgia, remarried, and was reported to be working as a personal trainer as of 2016.