Pamela Smart, Who Encouraged Teen Boy to Kill Her Husband, Accepts Responsibility for Crime

Christine Pelisek
·3-min read

Pamela Smart, 56, has been incarcerated since 1990

<p>Jon Pierre Lasseigne/AP</p> Pamela Smart

Jon Pierre Lasseigne/AP

Pamela Smart

Pamela Smart, a former high school employee serving a life sentence for recruiting a teenage boy with whom she was having a sexual relationship to kill her husband, has accepted responsibility for his murder in a videotaped statement that was released Tuesday.

The statement came during her latest attempt to have her sentence reduced, CBS News reported.

Smart, now 56, has been appealing her conviction for decades.

In the video, Smart, who has been incarcerated since 1990 after being convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, said she started to “dig deeper” into her role in her husband’s slaying while in a writing group.

“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, per the Associated Press. “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.”

<p>Courtesy of HBO</p> Pamela Smart

Courtesy of HBO

Pamela Smart

"Now that I am older and able to look back on things, I can see so many errors that I made, and see how skewed my judgement was, and how immature I was,” she said, per CBS News. “Looking backward, you know, I'm such a different person than I was ... back then," she said. "I mean, 34 years is a very long time, and during that time I've done a lot of work on myself."

At the end of the video statement, Smart, who is housed at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York State, asked to meet or have a video conference with New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and the New Hampshire Executive Council.

Related: Pamela Smart Claims a Plastic Knife Infraction Could Be Keeping Her from Getting Prison Sentence Reduced

Smart's case was one of the highest-profile crime stories of the early 1990s.

Gregg Smart was found dead in his New Hampshire condo on May 1, 1990. The 24-year-old insurance agent had been shot in the head.

As police investigated the crime, they began to focus on his wife, Pamela, a 22-year-old media coordinator at a nearby school. Investigators soon learned that Pamela had been having an affair with an underage student, William "Billy" Flynn.

Flynn admitted that he was the gunman, but maintained that he did it at the direction of Smart — an allegation that Smart denied.

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After Flynn pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, he testified against Smart.

The case quickly became international news, and even helped inspire the 1996 Nicole Kidman movie To Die For. The question at the center of the case: Was the pretty young widow responsible for her husband's murder? A jury thought so, and she was convicted on March 22, 1991. She has remained in prison ever since.

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