Pamela Smart, the woman serving life in prison for plotting her husband’s 1990 murder, made a shocking confession on video, according to several major news outlets.
The 56-year-old former high school employee made headlines when enlisting 15-year-old student William Flynn and a band of teens to fatally shoot her husband in the couple’s Derry, New Hampshire, home.She long denied any involvement in the May 1, 1990, murder of Gregg Smart, even as recent as a January 2023 episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.
Now, for the first time since her 1991 conviction and life sentence, Smart has accepted her role in the grisly crime, per a videotaped statement released Tuesday, part of her latest bid to reduce her sentence, according to The Associated Press.
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Pamela Smart's Video Statement
Smart claimed in the video that a writing group behind bars “encouraged us to go beyond and to spaces that we didn’t want to be in,” allowing her to “dig deeper into my own responsibility.”
“For me, that was really hard, because going into those places, in those spaces is where I found myself responsible for something I desperately didn’t want to be responsible for,” Smart confessed. “I had to acknowledge for the first time in my own mind and my own heart how responsible I was, because I had deflected blame all the time, I think, almost as if it was a coping mechanism, because the truth of being so responsible was very difficult for me.”
Pamela Smart Photo: AP
Thirty-four years into her life sentence without the possibility of parole, which came after she was found guilty of being an accomplice to first-degree murder, Smart has earned a doctorate in ministry and three Master’s degrees. These are points she has regularly argued in multiple petitions to be released from prison, her most recent being a rejection by the state's Executive Council in March 2022 and a Supreme Court rejection in March 2023.
In her most recent petition — which included almost 30 letters of support, many from corrections employees — Smart requested the New Hampshire Executive Council and Governor Chris Sununu be open to having an “honest conversation.”
“I made excuses, dismissed my own involvement, and blamed everyone else but myself,” she wrote in her letter to Sununu, according to The Associated Press. “I am the one to blame for his absence from this world.”
Why is Pamela Smart in prison?
Pamela Smart was found guilty of having 15-year-old Billy Flynn murder her husband of less than a year, Gregg Smart. Of the five people convicted of Mr. Smart’s murder, Pamela, a 22-year-old high school media coordinator at the time of the murder, remains the only one behind bars, while Flynn and his three teenage co-conspirators were given lesser sentences in exchange for their testimony against Pamela Smart.
Per Flynn’s testimony, he and one other individual ransacked the Smarts’ condo while Mrs. Smart was out of town, lying in wait until Gregg Smart came home. As two other teens waited in the getaway car, Flynn pressed the gun to the back of Gregg Smart’s head and pulled the trigger.
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Prosecutors said Pamela Smart grew bored with her husband and wanted to benefit from a $140,000 life insurance policy. According to Flynn’s testimony, Pamela Smart claimed she was being abused by her husband and feared losing everything if she sought divorce.
The sexual relationship between Pamela Smart and the teen became a much-visited regard during the trial and helped the case attract widescale interest.
It served as the inspiration behind the 1995 film To Die For starring Nicole Kidman, and the case was later featured on Oxygen’sSnappedandSnapped: Killer Couples.
People react to Pamela Smart’s confession
While a decision has yet to be made in response to Smart’s recent petition, not everyone is satisfied that she is sincere, as reported by The Associated Press.
Gregg Smart’s cousin, Val Fryatt, told the outlet he believed Pamela Smart “danced around” a confession “without admitting the facts around what made her ‘fully responsible.’”
Fryatt said she didn’t mention Gregg Smart’s name, “not even once.’
Meanwhile, Sununu’s office said in a statement to The Associated Press that Smart would “be given the same opportunity to petition the Council for a hearing as any other individual.”
An official response by the Executive Council has yet to be released.
