With hindsight, Susan Smith made a big mistake blaming the abduction of her two children on “a black man.” He had, supposedly, a gun and a plaid shirt, and he hijacked her Mazda with the boys inside. Nine days later, after a nationwide manhunt, Mrs. Smith confessed to the killings, and her sons and the vehicle were retrieved from a South Carolina lake. But by then the damage was done.

Had she merely murdered her own children, she might have earned the same support enjoyed by Andrea Yates, the infanticidal pin-up gal whose drowning of her five children last year has prompted a glittery nationwide “Defence Fund” plus the backing of NOW, Katie Couric, Marie Osmond, and many others who think this particular serial killer has done a wonderful job of shining a light on some of the problems of “post-partum depression.” Alas, Mrs. Smith blamed a fictional African-American and so proclaimed herself not just a child-killer, w ...

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