Episode 75: Pamela Smart
Gregg Smart at age 20
Pamela Smart, previously Pamela Wojas, was born in August of 1967 in Windham, New Hampshire. Her family moved to Miami, Florida for a bit before moving back to Derry, New Hampshire, with Pamela returning to Florida to attend college at Florida State University. On her winter break in 1986, 19-year-old Pamela met her future husband Greggory Smart. By February of 1987 Pamela and Gregg’s relationship became serious and they married just two years later in 1989. However, it did not take long for the couple to begin experiencing strain in their marriage.
Pamela was working as a media coordinator at Winnacunnet High School in Seabrook, New Hampshire, and she had started volunteering at the high school’s drug awareness program called “Project Self Esteem”. This is where she met William “Billy” Flynn, who was just 15 at the time. Billy’s friend Cecelia Pierce also volunteered with the program and was a media intern who worked closely with Pamela.
On May 1st, 1990, Pamela returned home after a work meeting to the condo she shared with Gregg in Derry, New Hampshire to find the home ransacked. She also found Gregg’s body in a pool of blood, and police soon determined that the murder was the result of an interrupted burglary. The investigation soon shifted after police received an anonymous tip saying four teenage boys were seen near the condo on the night of the murder, one of them being Billy Flynn, who was rumored to be in a sexual relationship with Pamela Smart.
Police questioned the four boys and it was determined that Billy Flynn and his friend, 16-year-old Patrick Randall, had entered the condo and forced Gregg Smart to his knees in the foyer where Billy shot him in the head. Their two friends, Vance Lattime and Raymond Fowler, had been waiting outside in the getaway car. All four boys cooperated with police and told them that Pamela Smart had planned the whole thing, promising them each $500 of the life insurance money and promising Billy Flynn that he and Pamela could be together and continue their relationship once her husband was dead.
Cecelia Pierce was also brought in by police and was asked to wear a wire, which caught Pamela discussing incriminating details about planning the murder. She was arrested on August 1st, 1990, and the trial that followed was the first to be televised “gavel to gavel”. Pamela was found guilty of being an accomplice to first degree murder as well as conspiracy to commit murder and witness tampering. She was sentenced to life in prison where she remains, despite continued claims that she is innocent.
Billy Flynn and Patrick Randall were convicted of second-degree murder, receiving sentences of 40 years to life with 12 years of the minimum sentence deferred. Raymond Fowler and Vance Lattime both received prison sentences and were paroled in 2005.
Image Sources:
abcnews.go.com - “Pamela Smart on teen lover who murdered husband nearly 3 decades ago: ‘I loved him’”