On this day, Aug. 31, in 1996, seven people who visited the site where susan smith drowned her two boys died in the same lake.

Two young families had gone to see a granite memorial placed on the edge of the John D. Long Lake in South Carolina where Michael, 3, and Alex Smith, 14 months, drowned after their mother rolled her car into the waters with them strapped inside in October 1994.

Two years later, the driver and some of the passengers had stepped out of the parked GMC Suburban when the vehicle suddenly drove down the steep embankment that Smith used to push her Mazda into the lake. The truck landed upside down in 20 feet of water.

Five people inside -- including four children -- and two adults who swam to try to save them were killed.

-- Scott McCabe