Pamela Smart

Pamela Ann Smart (née Wojas; born August 16, 1967) is an American woman who was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and witness tampering in the death of her husband, Greggory Smart, in 1990.

Smart, then aged 22, had conspired with her underaged boyfriend, then 15-year-old William "Billy" Flynn, and three of his friends to have Greggory (24) murdered in Derry, New Hampshire.

She is currently serving a life sentence at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a maximum security prison in Westchester County, New York.

Pamela Smart was born Pamela Wojas in Coral Gables, Florida, on August 16, 1967, the daughter of John and Linda Wojas.

She grew up in Miami, Florida, before her family moved to Derry, New Hampshire, when she was in the eighth grade.

Pamela attended secondary school at Derry's Pinkerton Academy, where she was a cheerleader, and graduated from Florida State University (FSU) with a degree in communications.

At FSU, she had been the host of a college radio program.

Pamela met Greggory Smart while she visited New Hampshire over Christmas break in 1986.

They formed a relationship in February 1987 and married two years later, with Greggory moving to Florida to live with Pamela during her senior year at FSU.

Seven months into their marriage, the couple began having difficulties in their relationship.

Pamela took a job as a media coordinator at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, New Hampshire, where she met sophomore student William "Billy" Flynn at Project Self-Esteem, a school drug awareness program where both were volunteers.

Pamela also met another intern named Cecelia Pierce, who was friends with Flynn.

On May 1, 1990, Pamela came home from a meeting at work to find her condominium ransacked and her husband Greggory murdered.

Police officials said the crime scene looked like a disrupted burglary.

Pamela was later accused of seducing 15-year-old Flynn and threatening to withhold sex from him unless he killed her husband.

Flynn did so with the help of friends Patrick "Pete" Randall, Vance "J.R."

Lattime, Jr., and Raymond Fowler.

During the investigation, Lattime's father brought a .38 caliber pistol he had found in his house to the police, believing it might have been the murder weapon.

On May 14, an anonymous tip also indicated that Pamela's friend Cecelia Pierce was aware of the plan.

Police talked to Pierce, who agreed to wear a wire and record conversations with Pamela in hopes that she would say something incriminating, which she did.

On August 1, 1990, Detective Daniel Pelletier approached Pamela in her school's parking lot.

Smart recognized him, having spoken to him on at least six other occasions.

Taken by surprise, she asked, "What's up?"

"Well, Pam," Pelletier said in the recording, "I have some good news and I have some bad news. The good news is that we've solved the murder of your husband. The bad news is you're under arrest."

"What for?"

Smart asked.

"First-degree murder."

Smart was then handcuffed and arraigned at the Derry District Court and jailed at the New Hampshire State Prison for Women, which was in Goffstown at the time.

Smart's trial was widely watched and garnered considerable media attention, partly because it was one of the first in the U.S. to allow TV cameras in the courtroom.

She faced life in prison if convicted.

The prosecution's case relied heavily on testimony from Smart's teenaged co-conspirators, who had secured their own plea bargains before her trial began.

When oral arguments began March 4, 1991, Assistant Attorney General Diane Nicolosi portrayed the teenagers as naïve victims of an "evil woman bent on murder."

The prosecution portrayed Pamela Smart as the cold-blooded mastermind who controlled her underaged sex partner.

Nicolosi claimed that Smart seduced Flynn to get him to murder her husband, so that she could avoid an expensive divorce and benefit from a $140,000 life insurance policy.

In her testimony, Smart acknowledged that she had what she termed an "affair" with the underaged boy, but claimed that the murder of her husband was solely the doing of Flynn and his friends as a reaction to her telling Flynn that she wished to end their "relationship" and repair her marriage.

She insisted that she neither participated in the murder plot nor had any foreknowledge of it.

Though Flynn claimed he had fallen in love with Smart when he first met her, Cecelia Pierce testified at trial that Smart and Flynn were originally just friends.

Pierce first noticed a change about February, when Smart confessed to her that she "loved Bill."

Flynn testified at trial that he was a virgin before he had sex with Pamela Smart.

After a 14-day trial that culminated on March 22, 1991, in the Rockingham County Superior Court, Smart was found guilty of being an accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and witness tampering.