Pamela Smart, responsible for her husband's 1990 murder for the initial time while serving a life sentence.
Pamela Smart, the woman known for orchestrating her husband's murder along with one of her students in 1990, has finally accepted responsibility for her actions in a recently released video statement. The statement was shared as part of her recent attempt to reduce her life sentence without parole. Smart was just 22 at the time and working as a high school media coordinator when she started a relationship with a 15-year-old student. This student later shot and killed her husband, Gregory Smart, in Derry, New Hampshire.
After serving a 25-year sentence, her accomplice was released in 2015. However, Smart maintained her innocence throughout the trial, claiming she had no knowledge of the plot and was therefore found guilty as an accomplice to first-degree murder and other crimes. She was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In her statement, Smart spoke about her journey of self-reflection through a writing group that pushed her to confront her truths. "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, my husband's murder," she said, her voice breaking. She admitted that she had always shifted the blame, almost as if it was a coping mechanism, but now she understood the extent of her responsibility.
Smart requested a conversation with New Hampshire's five-member Executive Council and Governor Chris Sununu, who rejected her latest appeal in 2022. She then filed a petition with the state Supreme Court, but it was dismissed last year.
Val Fryatt, a cousin of Gregory Smart, critically pointed out that she hadn't genuinely accepted responsibility: "She danced around it and accepted full responsibility ‘without admitting the facts around what made her ‘fully responsible.’”
Smart, who is now serving time at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, New York, has utilized her incarceration to earn two master's degrees, tutor other inmates, get ordained as a minister, and be part of an inmate liaison committee. She asserts that she's remorseful and rehabilitated.
This case catapulted into the spotlight as a media spectacle also known as "America's first high-profile case about a sexual affair between a school staff member and a student." Joyce Maynard wrote "To Die For" in 1992, based on this story, which was then adapted into a 1995 film titled "To Die For," starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix. The killer, William Flynn, and three other teens cooperated with prosecutors, and they were all released after serving their sentences.
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Pamela Smart acknowledged her involvement in her husband's murder during her recent attempt to reduce her life sentence, stating, "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, my husband's murder." Despite serving time in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Smart continues to assert her remorse and rehabilitation, stating, "I'm remorseful and rehabilitated."
