Susan Smith, in Jail for Killing Her 2 Kids, Tells New Boyfriend She Wants To 'Start Fresh' if She's Paroled

Susan Smith, the notorious South Carolina woman who killed her two sons in 1994, is eligible for parole in late 2024 — and she has told her long-distance boyfriend in letters that she wants to restart her life with him if she's freed from jail.

PEOPLE has seen parts of two of letters she has sent to the man.

"We're going to have amazing chemistry in person," she wrote in one letter. "I can't wait to build a life with you. Leave the past mistakes behind and start fresh, just you and me."

Smith, now 50, is one of the most notorious prisoners in South Carolina history.

On Oct. 25, 1994, Smith, then 23, told police that she had been carjacked by a Black man who had taken off with her two young sons still in her car. For nine days, she made tearful pleas on national television for their safe return.

But it was all a lie.

As her story began to unravel, Smith admitted that there was no carjacker, and that she had let her car roll into a lake with Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, still strapped in their car seats.

Her motive: She was secretly dating a man who didn't want children. The story became international news, even landing on the cover of PEOPLE. Smith was convicted of two counts of murder and is serving a life sentence at Leath Correctional Institution in Greenwood, S.C.

Smith's time behind bars has been fraught with disciplinary actions, including illicit drug use, self-mutilation and sexual contact with a guard.

But Smith claims she has been misunderstood.

In 2015, Smith wrote a letter to The State. "I am not the monster society thinks I am," she wrote. "I am far from it."

"Something went very wrong that night. I was not myself," she continued. "I was a good mother and I loved my boys. There was no motive as it was not even a planned event. I was not in my right mind."

Smith's ex-husband — and the father of the boys — told PEOPLE in 2010 that he has never fully recovered from the pain. "There's always this nagging and gnawing heartache," David Smith said. "It's there every day, even if I'm not always conscious of it."

For the last few years, Smith has been behaving herself in the hopes that she will be paroled in November 2024.

Her boyfriend, in his mid-40s, lives outside Columbia, S.C. He works in residential construction and is divorced with two adult children. He wrote to Smith after seeing a documentary about her on television, and a long-distance romance blossomed.

But not everyone is happy with the idea that Smith will be able to start over after committing such a heinous crime.

"I don't have a problem with her finding happiness by writing a man," a family member tells PEOPLE, "but let's not forget what she did. So I hope her 'happily ever after' is happily in jail."