TEACH ME TO KILL was originally published by AVON BOOKS, a division of the Hearst Corporation, in November 1991.
Copyright 1991 by Stephen Sawicki
Cover design of 2019 edition by JD and J Design LLC
Rear cover photographs courtesy (left to right): Tami Plyler, Don Himsel
All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law.
For information address: [email protected].
THE STORY BEHIND THE HEADLINES IN THE YEAR'S MOST SENSATIONAL MURDER TRIAL
On the night of May 1, 1990, a single shot shattered the peaceful town of Derry, New Hampshire and catapulted it into the spotlight of worldwide attention. Twenty-four-year-old Gregory Smart lay dead, a bullet from a .38 revolver in his head. A year later, his twenty-three-year old bride of one year stood trial for his murder in a sensational courtroom drama of lust, hate, and seduction that mesmerized the nation.
Here is the scandalous story behind the headlines. Written by Stephen Sawicki, the only national reporter to cover the case from arrest to conviction, he has interviewed friends, neighbors, former classmates and family members of both killer and victim to write THE SHOCKING TRUE STORY OF PAMELA SMART--THE SCHOOLTEACHER WHO GAVE LESSONS IN LOVE...AND MURDER.
Teach Me to Kill
Stephen Sawicki
About this book
Close to thirty years have passed since Pamela Smart entered the national consciousness by manipulating her teenage lover, Billy Flynn, and by connection his friends, into taking part in the murder of her husband, Gregory. Her compelling, often salacious, trial drew worldwide attention that really has yet to cease. An untold number of articles, books, movies, and documentaries have been produced about the case—some better, some worse—with many more sure to come to sate the curiosity of a generation yet unborn when the Pam Smart saga first captivated the nation and the world.
I was a Boston correspondent for People magazine when the story first broke, and spent considerable time in New Hampshire reporting on it for two articles that the magazine ultimately ran. That early reporting led to this book, for which I then spent many more weeks pursuing the case, dividing my time between a rented condominium in Hampton, New Hampshire, accompanied by my golden retriever Abbey, and my apartment in Boston.
Pam Smart’s fame—well, infamy—is rooted in another time, a time before the internet and a time when judges around the country were still navigating the benefits and hazards of cameras in their courtrooms. True crime, meanwhile, was coming into its own in the late eighties and early nineties. Daily tabloid television programs like Hard Copy were turning what had mostly been a minute or two of crime reportage on the evening news into neatly narrated packages of five to ten minutes. Crime stories, particularly homicides, had also become a staple for People, whose millions of readers feasted upon the details, in between their regular servings of Princess Diana, Oprah Winfrey, and John Kennedy, Jr., of course. True-crime quickie books, fast on the heels of whatever new shocker had hit the news, were on the rise as well. (For many people, Teach Me to Kill falls into that genre. I won’t dispute the designation, but I did devote almost a full year to the project. My editors and their marketing counterparts, I assure you, did not think it was quickie enough.)
Less than six months before Greg Smart was killed, Boston was briefly the epicenter of this national obsession with true crime, with the murder of pregnant Carol Stuart by her husband, Charles, which he ultimately blamed on an innocent African-American man. That case, which I had a minor role in covering, ended with the husband leaping off the Tobin Bridge to his death when it became clear that he, in fact, had been the killer.
For a brief interval at the start of 1990, no story in America was any bigger. Within just a month or two of Stuart’s body being hauled from the Mystic River, Pam was grooming Billy to kill her husband. I have no proof, but I have long suspected that the Chuck Stuart case, and the massive attention that it drew around the country, went a long way in inspiring Pam Smart to have her husband murdered. She had her particular reasons, yes, but somewhere in her mind I also think that she believed that she could pull off what Chuck Stuart could not. That case, which Stuart set up to seem like a carjacking, also involved supposedly stolen jewelry. And, the explanation that Pam unconvincingly tried to float about Greg’s killer—robbery by a desperate and mysterious stranger—is certainly a familiar diversionary tactic in the true-crime catalog.
I did not choose the title Teach Me to Kill, nor did I like it very much at first. Nor did I like the cover that my publisher chose without my involvement. When I first saw it—with Pam in her bikini and blood-like red dripping from the letters and across the photos—I impulsively called my editor and screeched at him (a life lesson in the value of slowly counting to ten when upset). Funny thing is, over the years I’ve grown fond of the title and the original cover. It reminds me of the pulp era of publishing. I take comfort in knowing that some of our greatest authors have had bodice-ripping paperback book covers, including Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Fitzgerald. And, when I heard through the grapevine that a former girlfriend commented that she would never read such a book, I developed some extra affection for Teach Me to Kill and its R-rated cover.
There was also, by the way, a French translation—Lecons Particulieres de Meurtre—that sold some copies abroad. “Steve,” my editor joked, “the French love you and Jerry Lewis.”
Not everyone, though, loved me. Shortly after Teach Me to Kill came out, a supporter of Pam’s, probably someone she didn’t even know, telephoned me at home late one night–he must have found my number in the phone book—and irately called me nasty names.
A young woman from the Midwest, meanwhile, wrote to ask if I could send her the prison address of Billy Flynn, with whom she felt a profound personal connection. When I neglected to respond, she wrote again, angrier this time. I meant to send her a kindly letter about why her pursuit was probably less than a good idea, but let it go. I just hope she found happiness closer to home, perhaps with someone with one less killing on his dating profile.
In 1992, when I started my next book—a project far from true crime and the likes of Ms. Smart—someone who I met, for reasons that remain bewildering, wrote to Pam and informed her of what I was working on. Better at responding to letters from complete strangers than I am, Pam wrote this individual back and took the opportunity to charge that I’d only written Teach Me to Kill for the money. There is truth to that, of course (such troves of riches you have never seen!) But one would think that someone who herself has been accused of being "money mad" would be more circumspect before making such remarks about another person. Especially if those comments might raise questions about that person's well-cultivated reputation for allowing others to pay for lunch.
These days, Pam Smart still resurfaces a few times a year. Someone will air another “exclusive” interview with her from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York State, to which she was transferred in 1993. Or she will have come up with some new angle in seeking release. Or a television production company or documentary film maker will revisit the whole affair, sometimes with a remarkably naïve perspective. (One documentarian passionately questioned why those who actually killed Greg Smart should now be out of prison on plea bargains while Pam has no chance for parole. I’d like to ask this director if he has any sense whatsoever about how the justice system in America often works, or at least why he wasn't publicly defending “poor” Mafia boss John Gotti when Sammy “the Bull” Gravano copped his advantageous plea.) All of the new stories about Pam Smart are billed as something special, but really, it is the same fiction that she has been peddling since 1991
.
Let me say, as someone who at the time looked into the case as deeply as anyone, short of the police and lawyers, that the accused was indeed guilty as charged. Of this, I have no doubt. I attended every moment of the trial. I also sat by myself for hours closely listening to the tapes of her secretly recorded conversations with Cecelia Pierce, and the voice on those tapes is that of a woman desperately trying to keep a teenage girl from going to the police with the truth. The truth. And, if you are new to the lies that Ms. Smart and her supporters toss around so casually, you might come to buy into their mind-bending version of events. After all, they repeat it enough. Pam, they say, had no involvement. They blame the Derry police and the State of New Hampshire, who as if they had little else to do, were for reasons unknown out to get her. And they blame the media, as the most venal liars tend to do.
But this is hardly a matter of maybe Pamela was behind the killing or maybe she was not. The case, in reality, is a slam dunk. To be sure, there are men and women in New Hampshire and across America who are unjustly incarcerated. Some are actually innocent of the crimes for which they have been convicted. Many others, often the poor and uneducated, have been represented by attorneys who were either incompetent or too swamped with cases to provide adequate defense. Or the inmates’ circumstances were such that they should have been treated with more consideration by law enforcement or the courts. Pamela Smart, however, is not among this group. To those who have devoted so much time and energy to helping Ms. Smart win her freedom, I suggest that they instead seek out and offer their service to some of these forgotten souls. I'm sure they would welcome the help. And they are a lot more deserving.
In preparing this edition of Teach Me to Kill, I returned to my milk crates and cardboard boxes of files about the case, which except for a number of moves had been untouched over all these years. I felt such a sorrow as I thumbed through the old transcriptions, photographs, newspaper clippings, court records, and scribbled notes. Part of it, no doubt, was the passage of time; has it really been thirty years? Part of it had to do with the brief friendships come and gone with some of the reporters and others I met while covering the case. But mostly, it was just the senselessness of the crime. Beyond Greg’s death, which should be enough for anyone, so many people were left to try to rebuild broken lives. So much raw pain spread all around. And for what? Some repugnant scheme that Pamela Smart concocted and refuses to own up to even these many years later.
When I look back on the case, I always think first of Bill and Judy Smart, who lost their son in all of this. I met with the Smarts for lengthy interviews, before and after the trial. I remember talking with Bill at his dining table after Pam’s conviction and noticing the collection of prescription pill containers for the varied medications the couple were taking in the wake of Greg’s death. “Judy!” Bill yelled upstairs to his wife at one point. “Bring the Halcion when you come down!” You would have to do a lot of convincing to make me believe that the emotional trauma caused by Greg’s death did not contribute to shortening the lives of both of these good people. Judy passed away from a neurological disease in 1998 at 60 years of age. Bill died in 2010 of pancreatic cancer. He was 68. More than one person has said that neither was ever the same after Greg was killed, and I have no doubt that’s true.
For journalists, however, covering such cases is not all gloom and doom. If it was, their careers would be short-lived indeed. I often remember the people I met from the Pamela Smart case, like Loring Jackson, also now deceased, and Dan Pelletier, such decent men and such good frigging cops, and Pam’s lawyers, Paul Twomey and Mark Sisti, with whom I couldn’t help but feel a certain sympatico, despite their notorious client. And that’s just a few of the folks connected to the case who I fondly think about from time to time.
I also recall one day strolling with my dog down bleak Upper Collins Street in Seabrook, past Ralph Welch’s house, and “coincidentally” running into Ralph, one of the heroes of the story. By then he was refusing to speak to any reporters, but as he pet and whispered “good dog, good dog” to my golden retriever, I could see him weakening as I made my pitch. Ralph never did grant me an interview, but for a minute there Abbey had softened him up for my best attempt.
Another time, I was driving up to the New Hampshire seacoast from Boston. I had a long “to do” list for that day, but was undecided where to start. Then I saw a billboard along the highway for a local injury lawyer. “SEE FLYNN!” it commanded. I took that as a message from a higher power, drove straightaway to Billy Flynn’s mother’s place, and, uninvited, knocked on the door. Elaine Flynn hadn’t been talking to any reporters, as far as I knew, but that day she invited me in and told me all about her son and their family for an hour or more. In retrospect, I suppose the billboard could have been more malevolent in its advice, but I remain grateful for its contribution nonetheless.
When the court case was long said and done and my book was off to the printer, CBS aired a made-for-television movie about the case, Murder in New Hampshire, which starred Helen Hunt as Pam. Captain Jackson was having his detectives and their families over to his house to watch the show, and for no reason other than that I thought it might be interesting to witness, I asked if I could attend as well. That night, there were a couple looks of irritation that a reporter, even a non-working one, was present. But what I still smile about is the roar of merriment that went up when the cops saw that Mark Sisti was played by Emmy-winner Larry Drake, who at the time everyone knew for his part as mentally impaired Benny Stulwicz on the hit show L.A. Law.
I would be remiss in not acknowledging that this book, and so many other interesting stories for me back then, came about because of my association with People magazine. I did the work—and make no mistake, at times it could be stressful, trying work—but the magazine’s reputation and so many people’s love and respect for it, opened doors all along the way. And that’s to say nothing of the talented and encouraging individuals I was fortunate enough to have worked with there, and who I appreciate more in hindsight than I necessarily did at the time.
So here is Teach Me to Kill, only minimally altered since its original publication in 1991. I’ve made some minor corrections and I added a few lines that were omitted the first time around. In revisiting the book, I believe it stands the test of time. In one of the documentaries a couple years ago, someone referred to Teach Me to Kill as “ the Bible” of the Pam Smart case, an amusing irony that is not lost on me. Still, the proper response to any compliment consists of only two words, and I will deploy them here: Thank you.
Stephen Sawicki
May 2019
Acknowledgements
I owe many unpayable debts to the people who allowed me into their lives to share what they know about the murder of Gregory Smart. More people than anyone will ever know—families, extended families, friends, teachers, even entire communities—suffered greatly because of this tragedy. My apologies to any of them if my presence or questions in any way deepened their sorrow. Many others sacrificed much of their personal lives to see that justice was done. I thank them for taking even more time away from their jobs, family, and friends to assist me with this book.
Some sources spoke or provided information on the condition that they not be named. I have, of course, respected their wishes and hope they know how deeply I value their assistance and in some cases their friendship.
Many people consented to both lengthy and brief interviews for this book, all of which helped shed light on the case and the personalities involved.
My appreciation to: Paul Maggiotto and Diane Nicolosi of the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office; Paul Twomey and Mark Sisti, attorneys for Pamela Smart; Dr. Roger Fossum, New Hampshire chief medical examiner; Edda Cantor, superintendent, New Hampshire State Prison for Women, Goffstown, New Hampshire.
Also; William and Judith Smart, Elaine Flynn, Diane and Vance Lattime, Patricia Randall, Cecelia Pierce, Cecelia and Allen Eaton, Danny Blake, Tom and Heidi Parilla, Steven Paymen
t, Ted Chappell, Terri Schnell, Brian Washburn, Sonia and Chris Simon, Dave Bosse, Rich LaFond, Yvon Pellerin, Paul Reis, Steve Schaffer, Joseph O’Leary, James Weiss, Barbara Kinsman, Leonard Barron, Harvey and Mary Jane Woodside, Judy Liessner, Paul Dacier, and Art Hughes, among others.
From the Derry Police Department: Chief Edward B. Garone, Captain Loring Jackson, Barry Charewicz, Vincent Byron, Dan Pelletier, Michael Surette, Michael Raymond, and Gerald Scaccia.
My appreciation also to Pamela Smart, who agreed to be interviewed by telephone from the New Hampshire State Prison for Women in Goffstown on December 21, 1990 with the understanding that the material not appear prior to her trial.
Linda and John Wojas, the parents of Pamela Smart, were interviewed for several hours in the course of working on an article that appeared in People magazine.
Thanks also to the staffs of the Derry (New Hampshire) Public Library, Boston Public Library, Lawrence (Massachusetts) Public Library, Lane Memorial Library (Hampton, New Hampshire), Brown Library (Seabrook, New Hampshire), Pollard Memorial Library (Lowell, Massachusetts), Haverhill (Massachusetts) Public Library, and the Dimond Library at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
From the time that Gregory Smart was found murdered through the conviction of his wife nearly eleven months later, the media covering the case has at times been harshly, and often unjustly, criticized. Few of the reporters that I met while working on this book have been anything other than professional. I am indebted to many of them for their kindness, insights, and in several cases, friendship.
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