There is always a real story with all of this stuff these days.
Susan Smith changed all of that with her stunt.
I was at work the day it was all over the news that she had reported that a "black guy" had kidnapped her kids, a woman co-worker with two kids herself exclaimed how terrible it was, yadda yadda -I hope they find them before anything terrible happened... I turned to her and said , hell! she already killed those kids! No "black guy" took them!
She was horrified, telling me that I was mean saying all those things.
So I asked her, if some random dude-black/white whatever was trying to take your kids -would you fight till death or simply give up? she replied welllll, I guess you got me there- they would have to kill me.
The next day I had wished I had made bets.