PAMELA SMART Biography - Crimes, Laws and people

 
 

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PAMELA SMART

Name: Pamela Smart                                                                     
Born: 16 August 1967 Coral Gables, Florida                                             
                                                                                       
Pamela Ann Smart (born August 16, 1967), is serving a life sentence                   
for accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and witness         
tampering in New Hampshire. Smart was convicted for conspiring with her 16-year-old   
lover, William Flynn, and his three friends to kill her 24-year-old husband,           
Gregory Smart, in Derry, New Hampshire.                                               
                                                                                       
Smart went to high school at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, where she was a               
cheerleader. She went to college at Florida State University and graduated with       
honors with a communications degree. In prison, Smart has spent her time               
tutoring other inmates and has completed two masters degrees, in literature and       
legal studies, which were paid for with private funds from Mercy College.             
                                                                                       
Smart met Flynn at "Project Self-Esteem" at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton,       
New Hampshire, where Smart and Flynn were both volunteers. Smart was employed as       
a media services coordinator at Winnacunnet, and Flynn was a sophomore.               
                                                                                       
Smart was accused of seducing 16-year-old William "Billy" Flynn and threatening       
to leave him unless he killed her husband. Flynn did so with the help of two           
friends on May 1, 1990.                                                               
                                                                                       
Smart's trial was widely watched and garnered considerable media attention. In         
her testimony, Smart acknowledged that she had had an affair with the teenager,       
but claimed that the murder of her husband was solely the doing of Flynn and his       
friends, borne 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.                                   
                                                                                       
Smart was convicted in March 1991, largely as a result of the testimony of her         
conspirators and secretly-taped conversations in which Smart appeared to               
contradict her claims of having wanted to reconcile with her husband and of           
having no knowledge of the boys' plot. She could have been charged with capital       
murder, but the prosecution decided against it. She was sentenced to life in           
prison without the possibility of parole.