Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, welcome back, bingers, to another episode of Binged, where we're hitting reset and introducing a brand new theme for this week and next, bungled burglaries.
The kind of burglaries where someone ends up dead. This is the kind of stuff that nightmares are made of. Being surprised by an intruder inside our homes, our sanctuaries, where we generally feel our safest. But of course, not all botched burglaries are what they seem. Sometimes a murder scene is staged to look like a burglary to conceal the true nature of a crime.
And that may be an element in today's story. A murder in New Hampshire town that became a media sensation and actually inspired the 1992 novel "To Die For" and the 1995 film adaption starring Nicole Kidman. That story drew heavily from the case we're covering on today's episode. And the real story is every bit as shocking and perverse as the one in "To Die For."
for those of you who have seen the movie, though it's not nearly quite as funny. So let's just jump right into it.
It was just after 10 in the evening when a woman's scream echoed through the Summer Hill condominiums in the town of Derry, New Hampshire. It was May 1st, 1990. The scream was coming from Pamela Smart, a 22-year-old woman who lived in the complex with her husband of one year, Gregory Smart. And that's what she was screaming about. She was screaming about her husband. My husband, he's hurt. She
she screamed through the front door of her adjacent neighbors, Kim and Paul, while banging and ringing on their doorbell.
Kim and Paul barely knew their neighbors, and to them, Pam was just an hysterical woman shrieking through the door. "He's on the floor!" Pam yelled. "I don't know what's wrong with him." Now, rather than open the door, Kim decided to call 911 and told them that her neighbor, a woman, was screaming on the other side of their door. Meanwhile, Pam moved on to the next apartment down and banged on the door of Judy and Chris just as they were settling in for the evening.
Like the other neighbors, Judy and Chris also didn't know Pam, but they looked through the peephole and saw a young woman outside their door who appeared to be in distress, screaming, crying, and apparently scared.
So Judy opened the door and allowed her inside. My husband's on the floor and I don't know what's wrong, Pam told her, urging them to call 911. Judy made the call while her husband Chris insisted on tending to Greg Smart. But Pam kept discouraging it, refusing to take him back to her apartment, which was very confusing to the neighbor who just wanted to help.
And when another neighbor, Art Hughes, believing he was hearing the sound of a woman being battered by her partner, tracked the screams back to Pam's building, Pam appeared outside her door and tried to deter him from entering the apartment.
She said she was afraid there may still be somebody inside. So it's interesting that Pam doesn't seem to know what happened to her husband, but is also feeling like someone might be inside her apartment, which suggests she had suspected, or it had at least crossed her mind, that her husband had been the victim of violence. And when the police showed up and entered the apartment, it was maybe apparent why Pam felt this way.
The home had been ransacked. CDs were thrown about, the VCR had been knocked upside down and onto the floor, and near the back door, someone had left a pair of stereo speakers and a TV set. It looked like Greg, whose lifeless body lay between the foyer and the living room, had possibly interrupted a burglary on his own home.
Underneath his body were his diamond-studded wedding ring, his wallet, and his car keys. The blood that surrounded him came from a wound in his head, and although there was a brass candlestick lying near the body, it was the .38 caliber hollow-point bullet extracted from his head at autopsy that was the cause of his death. Down in the basement was the couple's shih tzu cowering in a corner and trembling. And here's the part of the story that's especially hard to tell.
Greg's parents actually happened to live in a neighboring condominium in the same complex. One of his neighbors phoned them at Pam's urging and told them their son was, quote, very, very sick and they should come over right away. Greg's parents were already in their pajamas and now they felt this horrible sense of urgency. So they just threw on some clothes over the pajamas and raced over to their son's condo with their other son, Dean, driving.
when they got to the unit their entrance was blocked by a police detective and they demanded to know where their son was and what was wrong with him pam was standing there and she told him she didn't know where were you her mother-in-law asked pam replied that she was at a work meeting 45 minutes away greg's parents then totally lost their composure and tried kicking their way past the police detective who stood his ground and held them back
Then Greg's brother, Dean, finally demanded to know what was wrong with his brother. "If he's sick, someone go in and help him," Dean said. That's when one of the first responders informed the family that Greg wasn't sick and he couldn't be helped. He was already dead. It was then that a door swung open and the Smart family was able to see Greg's body lying on the floor of his apartment.
His poor mother Judy collapsed into hysteria and had to be taken to an ambulance where she was looked after for a while. Greg's father and brother were grief-stricken, and his newly widowed wife Pam seemed dumbstruck, like she was in shock or maybe disassociating. I mean, she had come home to her husband dead on their floor. Over the course of the night, as police processed the condo, neighbors from around the complex tried to console Pam, who seemed to be in reflective mode.
He's been so messed up lately, she said. No one was quite sure what she meant by that. She volunteered that she knew something was wrong when she came home and found the front light turned out, despite Greg's truck being in the driveway. And while Greg's mother, Judy, asked the police for a paper bag expecting to be sick, Pam wondered aloud, what will I do with the rest of my life?
And then she expressed how annoyed she was that she couldn't get to her contact lens solution because her apartment was now a crime scene. She was really bouncing all over the place emotionally, but she was nowhere you'd expect from a woman who just found her husband dead.
So Derry, New Hampshire, which at the time had a population of just under 30,000, was generally a safe place to live. There wasn't a lot of homicides, and Greg Smart's murder was in fact the first murder of 1990, five months into the year. And burglaries in the town of Derry were almost as rare as murders, and certainly this burglary seemed suspect.
The Summerhill Condominiums where the Smarts lived were densely populated and the area around the apartment was well lit. For a burglar, this seemed like a counterintuitive choice.
And investigators processing the scene couldn't find any signs of forced entry, nor did it make sense that Greg Smart had essentially been executed. I mean, why? Why kill Greg when he was apparently being compliant and had just removed his wedding ring and had his car keys and wallet ready to hand over? The lead detective assigned to the Smart case was Dan Pelletier, and he'd connected with Pam just hours after her husband's murder.
And right away, she insisted on a formal interview, which struck the detective as odd. But of course, he granted it. They took her down to the police station, and one of the first things out of her mouth was, this looks like a botched burglary. Like she was telling the detectives how to interpret the evidence.
She then added that the first thing she saw was the speakers off the stand. One of the detectives thought this was odd. She just discovered her husband dead on the floor, but the thing that caught her attention most was the missing speakers. That's the first thing she noticed. And then she began volunteering evidence and things she thought might be helpful, seemingly eager to assist the investigation.
She said she found a dent in the wall and some stains on the carpet that seemed fresh. She had found them when she "walked over to the body." It seemed strange to the detectives that she would phrase it this way, as though she already had the knowledge that her husband was dead, and also that she chose this rather clinical descriptor, considering the closeness of their relationship, calling her husband "the body."
So Detective Pelletier asked for a list of everyone who had visited their condo in the month leading up to the murder. This was so that fingerprints could be identified and ruled out as being from the suspect.
And then a few days after the murder, they allowed Pam to enter her house, even though it was a crime scene, to pick up some of her personal effects. And she repeatedly walked on the area of the carpet that was soaked with her dead husband's blood. Everyone else walked around it, but Pam walked directly on it, even when her mother finally covered it with a towel.
And then, much to the detectives' dismay, Pam Smart began talking about the case with the news media. She was pretty chatty and open with the press. Too open, the detectives felt. In fact, she was outright sharing sensitive information they felt would compromise their investigation. The detectives tried to rein her in and even urged her father to try and persuade Pam not to talk to the media. But it seemed like she was loving the spotlight.
The murder wasn't even a week old when Pam began describing to reporters how the stereo speakers had been placed by the door and CDs were strewn about and drawers overturned and shared with them the fact that the crime apparently had no witnesses. She also claimed that hundreds of dollars worth of jewelry had been stolen.
So because Pam just couldn't seem to be quiet, the detectives completely cut her and the rest of the family off from being kept in the loop about the investigation. But the press, on the other hand, the press was loving how Pam seemed to be eating up the attention. This newly widowed, tragically widowed young woman appeared more hungry for media attention than she was devastated by the loss of her husband.
Journalists covering this case sensed there was something interesting going on beneath the surface of this. And the surface of it was, this was a strong woman, determined to press forward in the face of tragedy. A blissfully happy marriage shattered by a bullet. We didn't have any problems, Pam told the news. We were very happy. We just wanted to be together.
that wasn't entirely true. In fact, for a marriage so new, Pam and Greg's had its share of issues. Pamela Smart was born Pamela Voyes in Miami, Florida to John and Linda Voyes, an upwardly mobile, well-to-do couple who moved to New Hampshire in the early 80s when Pam was in the eighth grade. Now up in New Hampshire, Pam attended private school where she was a cheerleader, an honor student, and popular among her peers.
She first met Greg Smart, who was a couple years older than her, in 1986 at a party he threw while he was dating a friend of hers. Now, Greg threw a lot of parties at this time. That's just the kind of guy he was, a party boy. And Pam was into it. She herself was someone who loved to be the center of attention. And she readily admitted this. She began hooking up with Greg and before long, she was smitten with him.
Meanwhile, she left New Hampshire to attend college at FSU in Florida, but she flew back to New Hampshire to visit every chance she got. But that was when she came to learn that Greg was dating another girl and so she ended up giving him an ultimatum. It was either her or the other girl. He couldn't date both. And unfortunately for Pam, Greg chose the other girl.
Then later that summer, they reconnected and suddenly Greg's feelings had changed. Greg and Pam became exclusive with each other. Pam's parents, however, did not approve of Greg. Her mother especially. She didn't like his long hair. It didn't square with her idea of the kind of man who should be courting her daughter. She hoped that the relationship would run its course and fizzle, but the
The opposite happened and Greg moved down to Florida to be with Pam while she finished college. Greg got a job as a landscaper to make ends meet for himself and eventually began working as an insurance agent like his dad. Pam, meanwhile, was ambitious. She secured a job as a clerk for the Florida Department of Commerce with the Motion Picture and Film Bureau and she got an internship with the local CBS affiliate, occasionally appearing on air as a reporter.
She also hosted a college heavy metal radio show, christening her on-air personality, the Maiden of Metal. Sometimes Greg would even assist her at the station. A shared love of heavy metal was one of the things that bonded them. Now eventually, Greg and Pam got an apartment together, but they kept this fact a secret from Pam's parents, because after all, they didn't quite approve of Greg even still, and wouldn't have been pleased with such a living arrangement.
And whenever they'd come to Florida for a visit, Greg would actually move all of his stuff out and sleep at a friend's place. By January 1988, Greg had saved up enough money to buy Pam the diamond solitary engagement ring that she liked, and he proposed to her.
By summer, Pam had completed her degree, a degree in communications, and her plan was to become a broadcast journalist. The local CBS affiliate whom she interned for helped her put together a reel with her on-air appearances, and she sent the tape far and wide hoping to land an entry-level reporting gig somewhere. But not a single news station responded. And Greg himself had been struggling to stay financially afloat throughout the time he lived in Florida.
Also, Greg had a close-knit family, which isn't to say that Pam's wasn't, but her parents fostered independence and wanderlust, while Greg's family was more into keeping each other close and sticking together.
So he and Pam actually decided to return to New Hampshire and begin their lives together there near family. They didn't have a wedding date set yet, but they were looking at the summer of 1989. Pam, having been rejected by every station across the country that she'd applied to, went to the only major local news affiliate in the state. But the result there was the same. They didn't want her either.
This was very difficult for Pam. She took this rejection hard. Sometimes after a particularly long day, I love to play games on my phone to get my mind off things. And one game I have been loving is June's Journey. June's Journey is a hidden object mystery mobile game that puts your detective skills to the test. You play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder.
murder. With hundreds of mind-teasing puzzles, the next clue is always within reach. Every new scene and chapter leads to more juicy secrets and clues being revealed about this mysterious murder that brings out the detective in everyone. Plus, you get to chat and play with or against other players by joining a detective club. You'll even get the chance to play in a detective league to put your skills to the test.
I have always loved good scavenger hunts and puzzles, and of course, we all know I love a good murder mystery, and this is just the perfect marriage of the two. Right now, I'm on chapter two. I've been trying so hard not to use the light bulb feature to help me search for clues. I seriously look forward to playing it every night. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.
Okay, most beauty brands don't understand fine color treated hair, but Proz does. They have a formula that can address my specific type of hair needs, which makes sense because it's based on me. If you're wondering whether custom hair care is worth the hype, let me tell you it is. And that's why I'm obsessed with Proz.
Since 2017, Proz has transformed traditional hair and skincare with a made-to-order model that reduces waste, celebrates unique beauty over one-size-fit-all beauty standards, and works better than off-the-shelf alternatives. Developed in Paris and bottled fresh in Brooklyn, Proz combines the know-how of its world-class team of in-house cosmetic chemists with an advanced AI algorithm that personalizes your formulas
based on 80 plus unique factors. You literally go on, take the quiz, it asks you all types of questions and then they personalize your hair care. Since I switched to pros, I've noticed that my hair is so much shinier, stronger, and my color actually lasts longer. And because you're always changing, so is your pros. Your formulas evolve alongside you and pros will address any new concerns, adjust your formulas with the seasons and learn from your feedback with an always custom fit.
You guys, Proz is so confident that they'll bring out your best hair that they're offering an exclusive trial offer of 50% off your first hair care subscription. Order at proz.com slash dark.
Pros.com. Dark. Go on. Take the quiz. See what they come up with. Take your free consultation. Get your one-of-a-kind formula and see the difference custom hair care can make with 50% off at pros.com. Dark. Let's get back into the episode. Pam, thanks so much for joining us.
Pam then got a job through a temp agency until in the summer of 1988 when she was hired by Winnikonet High School to be their media center director and media coordinator. Pam's friendly demeanor and her ambition and the big ideas that came along with it appealed to the school's hiring board because they were looking for someone to expand the role and do innovative and exciting things with it.
She produced educational videos for the school district and she had her own personal secretary and student intern. And Pam was suddenly making really good money. In fact, her benefits were better than her father's and he was a captain for Delta Airlines.
Both Greg and Pam were living with their parents after they returned to New Hampshire. But when Greg's parents moved from a house into a condo, the young couple decided it was time to move in together again. In January of 1989, they moved into an apartment that was a five-minute walk from Greg's parents. And in May of the same year, they were married.
The wedding took place on May 7th, 1989 at the same church in Lowell, Massachusetts, where Pam's parents had been married 30 years earlier.
Over 200 guests were in attendance. It was a lavish wedding. But then the first sign of potential trouble occurred just two weeks after the wedding, when Pam and Greg returned from their honeymoon in Bermuda. Greg's mother, Judy, was visiting the newlywed couple when Pam presented a stack of wedding cards on which she'd notated how much money each of the wedding guests had given as a gift.
She started naming the dollar amount and who gave what? $300 from her uncle, $500 from her friend. And then she saved what she felt were the stingiest gift givers for last. And all of those people were relatives of Greg's parents.
Greg's aunt only gave $30, Pam complained. That doesn't even cover a meal. Keep in mind, this was 1989. It's 2023 now, and $30 can still easily cover the price of an average meal. So I don't know what kind of meals Pam was accustomed to, but it definitely wasn't McDonald's like I like.
But either way, Judy Smart was appalled by this and had to bite her lip. This is her son's wife now. It felt like Pam was adding insult to the way that her parents felt about Greg. I mean, Judy Smart already felt like she had to, as she later put it, sell her own son to Pamela's parents like a piece of merchandise. They weren't accepting of him and they didn't feel he'd be able to give Pamela the life she deserved.
He had no college education and as they saw it, limited ambition. While Pam's ambition was boundless, but the smarts assured the Voyes family that Greg would be a good provider, a good husband. Though Pam's family continued to have their doubts about this new marriage and a lot of people in the social circles of both Pam and Greg were betting against them. They just seemed so different and Pam was so possessive. She
She disapproved of Greg remaining friends with his ex-girlfriend, the girl he'd been dating when he first met Pam. Pam also had issues with some of Greg's friends and the fact that he sometimes spent more time with them than her. But more to Pam's dismay, Greg was changing. He was maturing. He was suddenly earning more money than her, becoming more family focused and responsible.
And though this is the kind of change that Pam's parents would have welcomed and probably did, for Pam, it was disconcerting. And when Greg finally cut his hair, changing his look from long-haired metalhead to short-haired professional, he was almost unrecognizable, like a new person and not the one that Pam had signed on to.
So it's like while Greg may have been either intentionally or unintentionally conforming to meet the approval of his in-laws, he was shedding the bad boy image that drew Pam to him in the first place. And then seven months into the marriage, he admitted to Pam that he had been having an affair. For Pam, this changed everything. She realized she was no longer happy in this marriage and she wanted out.
So two weeks after Greg's murder, the phone rang at the Derry Police Department. It was a woman who refused to identify herself, who said she had some information about the Greg Smart homicide.
His wife planned to have him killed so she could collect the insurance money, the caller said to police. And there's a person you can talk to about it, but she's a minor. She's 15 years old, the caller said. She knows the whole situation. And the name of the 15-year-old was Cecilia Pierce. The caller said she was friends with Pam Smart and even attended the funeral. Cecilia's name had actually already come up twice before in this investigation, but
One of Pam's colleagues from the high school had told the detectives that Cecilia had been spending a lot of time at Pam's condo the week before the murder. And suspiciously, Pam failed to mention Cecilia when detectives first asked her to name everyone who had been at the condo in recent months.
It was only a week later that Pam finally added Cecilia's name to the list when she was asked if she had any friends that didn't know Greg. Pam claims she first met Cecilia at a drug and alcohol awareness program for which she had volunteered at the high school. And the program was called Project Self-Esteem. All the freshmen at Winniconet High School were expected to participate in Project Self-Esteem.
And Pam was someone all the participating students looked up to and respected. They connected well with Pam, who was really only a handful of years older than them, and they saw her as cool. And it was in the program she also met 16-year-old Billy Flynn, a young man who was vulnerable and troubled.
In the last few years, Billy's whole life changed after his parents divorced. His mother moved him and his siblings from California to New Hampshire, and his father, with whom he'd had a complicated relationship, died suddenly in an automobile accident.
He's only in high school. His personality changed after that. He became withdrawn. He fell in with a group of kids who were outsiders, which included Cecilia and also his friends, Pete Randall, JR LaTime, and Raymond Fowler. They were a literal band of outsiders. People at high school and in the community would refer to them as Three Musketeers, and their identities were all heavy metal, just like the music Pam used to play on her college radio show.
So there was maybe a natural chemistry and connection between this group, but especially between adult Pam and student Billy. And it was during a meeting with the project self-esteem discussion leaders that Billy first took notice of Pam Smart and he fell hard for her. During the meeting, he turned to his friend JR and whispered, I'm in love. And Pam sensed his attraction to her and she began feeding it.
Meanwhile, she also grew inappropriately close with Cecilia.
whom she knew wanted to work in broadcast journalism just like her. So she played on this and groomed her. And while she hired Cecilia as her student intern, she also would regularly dump on Cecilia about her personal life. And Cecilia allowed it because her relationship with Pam was validating to her. Plus you have the student teacher kind of situation happening here. Pam
Pam was this beautiful and dynamic adult, and Cecilia had never had a friend like her before. And at times it even felt like they were best friends, or perhaps even more than best friends. It was a relationship that had become so consuming for Cecilia that her mother had begun to disapprove of it. So Pam's mom went to the high school's assistant principal to express her concerns about how much time her daughter was spending with Pam.
The assistant principal told her that he too had noticed this, and although this left the expectation that maybe something was going to be done about it, to put the brakes on it, nothing ever happened. Pam continued spending a lot of time hanging out with both Cecilia and Bill, going to places like arcades, clubs, and shopping malls that were regular teen hangouts.
And Pam did look younger than her age, so she didn't really look out of place. And maybe she didn't feel out of place. Maybe Pam, as ambitious as she was, didn't want to let go of her carefree teenage years. She wanted the status and money that accompanied professional achievement, but she didn't want to actually do the work and put in the time. So maybe that ambition was more about ego and her narcissism than anything else.
And as Pam and her husband, Greg, seemed to be rapidly drifting apart, Pam and student Billy were growing closer. One morning in February of 1990, Pam had asked Billy if he thought about her when she wasn't around, and he admitted that he did. And then she told him that she thought about him all of the time.
which stopped Billy dead in his tracks. He had never imagined that someone he felt this way would or could ever reciprocate, especially an adult. And in that moment, hearing Pam say those words, he was experiencing something totally new to him. She told him that she didn't know what to do with the fillings because she was a married woman.
But then three weeks later, she found herself in Billy's bed, listening to Motley Crue and making out with him. And then Greg went out of town and Pam invited both Billy and Cecilia over to her condo to watch a movie. And the movie she chose for them to watch was the very steamy, very R-rated Nine and a Half Weeks.
when the movie was finished pam asked cecilia to walk the dog and when cecilia was out pam led billy into the upstairs bedroom put on some van halen tunes and slipped into a negligee she bought specifically for this moment and that's when she and billy had sex for the first time
And for Billy, it was his first time ever. Over the next few weeks, Pam and Billy would meet and have sex regularly. And again, this is completely inappropriate and an abuse of authority. And it was during this time that Pam began telling Billy that they had to get rid of her husband, Greg. If they didn't get rid of Greg, they couldn't keep seeing each other, she warned. Billy asked her why they can't just get a divorce.
Pam told him that she would lose the condo, the furniture, and probably her precious shih tzu. And she said Greg would probably follow her everywhere. And he was a scary, violent man. Greg beat her, she told him. He was an abuser, which was a complete lie. The next morning, as she drove Billy to school, she reminded him, if you want to keep seeing me, you'll have to get rid of my husband. And that was all it took to convince Billy. The threat of withholding sex.
Billy then made plans to kill Greg, but two different times he failed. He couldn't do it. Something thwarted him, deterred him each time, and he couldn't follow through with it. And this made Pam angry. If you loved me, you'd do this, she shouted at him, manipulating him.
That's when Billy turned to his friends, Pete, JR, and Raymond, and brought them into the fold because he felt he couldn't do it alone. Pam met with the three boys and they all together developed a plan.
They would wear dark clothing. They'd park by the shopping plaza across the street and the rear doors would be left open so they could enter the condo, stage it to look like a burglary and then lie in wait for Greg. Okay, you guys, let me guess. Your medicine cabinet is crammed with stuff that doesn't work. You still aren't sleeping. You still hurt and you're still stressed out.
That's how it was for me. So I cleared out my cabinet and reset my health with CBD from CB Distillery. And it has been a real change. Now, CB Distillery's targeted formulations are made from the highest quality clean ingredients. No fluff, no fillers, just pure effective CBD solutions designed to help support your health.
in two non-clinical surveys 81 of customers experienced more calm 80 said cbd helped with pain after physical activity and an impressive 90 said they slept better with cbd and you guys i have taken cbd to help me sleep and i all
I always zonk out so fast and have such a restful night's sleep. Those nights that I'm tossing and turning, I always reach for my CBD. So if you struggle with a health concern and haven't found relief, make the change like I did to CB Distillery. And with over 2 million customers and a solid 100% money back guarantee, CB Distillery is the source to trust. I have a 20% discount to get you started.
Visit CBDistillery.com and use code DARK for 20% off, you guys. If you wanted to give CBD a try, go to CBDistillery.com, code DARK. CBDistillery.com, use code DARK. All right, let's get back to the episode. Pam then laid some general ground rules for murdering her husband. Number one, don't turn on any lights.
Because if Greg sees there's a light on inside when he knows nobody's supposed to be home, he won't go in. Number two, put the dog in the basement so he isn't traumatized by the murder. And number three, use a gun, not a knife, because knives are too messy and will get blood all over the furniture. On the day of the murder, Pam ran into Billy by his high school locker and let him know the rear doors of the condo were left open and everything was set.
Later in the afternoon, Billy phoned Pam to tell her that they needed a ride to pick up the getaway car, which was J.R.'s grandmother's car. Pam agreed and later gave them that ride. So she was involved in nearly every aspect of her husband's murder, except for the murder itself. That night, Pam went to a meeting at the high school, which again was 45 minutes from where she lived. So this gave her what she thought was an airtight alibi.
Meanwhile, Billy and Pete broke into their condo while JR and Raymond hung back at the shopping plaza and waited. Billy had a snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver that JR had taken from his father's gun collection, unbeknownst to his father. Billy and Pete approached the Shih Tzu, but the Shih Tzu growled and ran away, and they had a hard time catching the dog. Billy had to chase him around the couch a few times before he finally scooped him up and tossed him down the stairs into the basement.
The two boys then proceeded to ransack the condo, pocketing jewelry and placing the stereo speakers by the back door with the intention of making it seem like a botched burglary. Once they were finished with the staging, the two boys hid in the dark and waited and waited and waited for what seemed like hours.
And then finally, a pair of headlights swept through the condo and settled on the kitchen window before going out. A few moments later, Greg stepped through the door and was promptly ambushed by Billy and Pete, who wrestled him to the ground. Greg removed his wallet and offered it to the two young men. Pete ordered him to remove his wedding band, but Greg told them, I can't do that. My wife will kill me. He begrudgingly removed it anyway.
Billy then aimed the gun at Greg's head and said, "'God forgive me,' before firing a single fatal shot into Greg's skull."
After killing Greg Smart, Billy and Pete fled the condo, rejoined J.R. and Raymond in the getaway car at the shopping plaza, and hightailed it from the crime scene. So, as I mentioned in the first part of the story, Pam's behavior after her husband's murder right from the get-go made the investigators suspicious of her. In fact, one of the detectives outright felt she was responsible somehow.
And then one Sunday afternoon, a little over a month after Greg's murder, Vance Latime, this is JR's dad, brought a snub-nosed .38 caliber handgun into the police station. It occurred to him that it may have been the gun used to kill Greg Smart.
And so being a guy with a good moral compass, he turned it over to the detectives. He told them that a friend of his son's named Ralph Welch had overheard him discussing plans to commit a murder.
And then they got the anonymous tip naming Cecilia Pierce as someone with knowledge of the crime because Cecilia was close with Pam and Billy. So investigators contacted Cecilia and she told them everything. It really didn't take much convincing. She told them that Pam masterminded Greg's murder and then she named Billy, JR, Pete and Raymond as the ones who pulled it off. But when the detectives tried to talk to the boys, they all refused to cooperate.
Ultimately, they got Cecilia to agree to wear a wire and record her conversations with Pam. They were hoping Pam would say incriminating things and give the police enough probable cause to arrest her. And this gambit paid off.
When Cecilia asked Pam if she regretted not having just gotten a divorce, Pam replied, "Well, I don't know, you know, something was going wrong until they told Ralph. It's their stupid faults that they told Ralph." And then basically everything else Pam said in the conversation was pretty incriminating, including ordering Cecilia not to talk to police about the crime.
This was all authorities needed for an arrest warrant. On August 1st, the lead detective, Daniel Pelletier, caught up with Pam in the parking lot of the high school. What's up? She asked. Detective Pelletier told her he had good news and he had bad news. The good news was her husband's murder had been solved. The bad news, for Pam at least, was that she was under arrest for first-degree murder.
After her arraignment, she was taken to the New Hampshire State Prison for Women while awaiting trial. Pamela Smart's trial was notable as one of the first to allow TV news cameras inside of the courtroom, and it was broadcast widely and watched by a large number of viewers. The centerpiece of the prosecution's case was the testimonies of the teenagers she manipulated into participating in the plot to kill her husband.
Those teens were prosecuted separately and were given plea bargains as incentive to testify against Pam. Pam admitted to having an inappropriate sexual relationship with Billy Flynn, but she claimed that it was entirely Billy Flynn's idea to kill her husband. She claimed she had told Billy that they needed to end their relationship and she needed to work on repairing her marriage and that she had no foreknowledge of the murder whatsoever. Billy was just a jealous kid.
The prosecution portrayed Pam, and probably correctly, as a cold-blooded murderer who used sex to control and manipulate Billy Flynn into murdering Greg, her husband, and the motive was avoiding divorce and to also become the benefactor in a $140,000 life insurance policy.
When he took the stand, Billy Flynn said he had lost his virginity to Pam and had fallen in love with Pam at first sight. But Cecilia Pierce saw it differently. She said they appeared to be just friends until a few months later when Pam confided in her that she loved Flynn.
The trial lasted for two weeks, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Guilty on the counts of being an accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and witness tampering for having been recorded via wire telling Pierce not to talk to authorities.
She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Billy Flynn and Patrick Randall were tried as adults and convicted separately. Each of them received 40-year prison sentences. Both were paroled in 2015.
J.R. LaTime received a 30-year prison sentence and was paroled in 2005. And Raymond Fowler, who was also sentenced to a 30-year prison term, was paroled in 2003. So all of the boys are out. Pam, meanwhile, has been serving her sentence at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in New York State, where she was transferred from New Hampshire in 1993 for security reasons. But apparently, she wasn't a model prisoner.
She had over 20 disciplinary reports filed on her during her time at the New Hampshire State Prison for Women. And although most of those were for minor infractions, two of them weren't. It was also believed that the facility wasn't secure enough for an inmate of Pamela Smart's stature. And there were concerns that she might be able to break out of prison.
In 1996, two of her fellow inmates beat her senseless, fracturing her nose and breaking her eye socket. All this because Pam allegedly snitched on them for having a sexual relationship. Those two inmates were charged and transferred out to another facility.
Pam had to have a plastic plate installed in the left side of her face. Reportedly, she has never fully recovered from this beating and still has to take medication to manage chronic pain. But prison did not stop Pam's ambition. In the years since she was incarcerated, Pamela Smart has earned two master's degrees, has tutored other inmates, and has become a campaigner for the rights of women in prison. Pam has since tried to appeal her conviction and fight for her release.
She contends that the media coverage had influence over her trial and its outcome. She has not been successful in any of those efforts. She still keeps tabs on Billy Flynn because she believes he's the key to her release. She maintains that Billy Flynn knows the truth, but will never come out with it. So this was a case where the botched burglary was actually just a facade. And it was one investigators saw through pretty quickly.
But in our follow-up episode, we'll look at a real burglary gone wrong. And it's a case that features truly one of the most terrifying 911 calls I've ever heard. It's a very different story from the PAM Smart story. It's the kind of story that'll make you want to double-check your locks and install a security system if you haven't already. The world really can be a scary place sometimes. So I'll see you then. Bye.