Early that next year, Greg surprised everyone when he said he was relocating to Florida to be with Pam. “None of us expected him to do something like that,” said Terri Schnell.
“During the week she was down there,” said Brian Washburn. “She’d come up on the weekends and during the week he could do whatever he wanted. We were like, ‘What are you, stupid?’”
Pam’s parents also took notice and wondered aloud whether their daughter’s grades would be affected when Greg headed south in early 1987.
The Smarts went to Florida with him and helped find Greg a furnished place in what was apparently an old motel that had been converted into apartments. They paid the first month’s rent and the deposit, and then went out and got him necessities like silverware and pots and pans, dishes, and bedding. When it was time to head north, separation anxiety set in. “On the way home I was crying,” said Bill Smart, “and Judy was crying, too, because we had to leave him there.”
Greg lived in the apartment and Pam had a dorm room, but they were together as much as possible. They liked to take in heavy metal concerts when bands like Motley Crue were in the area or spend their evenings in the local clubs. On weekends they would often go away, to Tampa or Daytona or Orlando. And if friends came for a visit they might head out to Disney World or Busch Gardens.
Once, Greg’s buddy Brian Washburn came to Tallahassee for a visit and they all wound up at a huge outdoor party, complete with a bonfire and band, with nearly four hundred other revelers, most of them Florida State students. Suddenly, the police descended and rounded up everyone who was too young to be drinking and loaded them on a bus to the police station.
Greg was of legal drinking age, but Pam, Brian, and nearly two hundred others were brought in to be charged. “They let Pam and one of her friends go because they went to college there,” remembered Washburn. “So I’m sitting there with like a hundred other people. They had these two tables up in front with everybody’s license laid out on it. They were taking one license at a time and writing out a report for a court date.
“There’s nothing I could do. Greg and Pam and her friend, meanwhile, are standing at the side of the room. Greg looks around, walks up to the table, grabs my license, puts it in his jacket pocket, and walks back to Pam. He stands there for a second, looks at me, winks, and goes, ‘Let’s go.’ We all got up and left.”
But the fun times were less frequent than one might expect. Greg had found work as a landscaper and whatever manual labor jobs he could pick up. Pam, instilled with her father’s work ethic, went further than simply throwing herself into classes. She worked for the Florida Department of Commerce as a part-time clerk, first with the Bureau of Economic Analysis and later with the Motion Picture and Film Bureau, for four dollars an hour. And she plugged away as a news intern for WCTV-Channel 6, the CBS affiliate in Tallahassee.
Typically, the internship was unpaid, but it gave her a feel for the world of television news. Like most interns, Pam wrote a bit for the voiceovers, helped out in production, and did a little reporting. She liked the work, though it was not what she imagined.
“Being a reporter isn’t as glamourous as it looks when you’re in college,” she said. “I would see people with beepers getting called in when there’s a fire at two in the morning, and the pay is low, and – I don’t know – sometimes nobody wants you around, and nobody wants to talk to you.
“Everything was pressure. Nothing happens all day long and then something blows up at quarter till six and everyone’s running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
“I liked some aspects of the craziness, but I wondered if I wanted to do that for the rest of my life.”
On Thursday nights, meanwhile, she was a disc jockey for the school radio station, WVSS. Pam hosted a two-hour show that she herself conceived, Metal Madness. She called herself the Maiden of Metal, a moniker that evoked a much different image than that of someone as petite and conventional looking Pam. “People were very shocked to see me,” she would later tell a newspaper reporter.
Pam got involved with the radio station to build her credentials, but at the same time being a deejay was fun. Greg would assist, chasing down records, while Pam issued her listeners doses of Van Halen, Aerosmith, and Stryper. And if friends were visiting, they could help, too – reading the weather on the air, for instance.
She also created a job for herself as the station’s promotions director. She helped stage a number of shows, including one concert in support of safe sex. Pam also wrangled backstage passes to a number of concerts. One time she and Greg even had their picture taken with Eddie Van Halen of Pam’s most beloved band, which Pam ultimately would come to carry on her photo keychain.
Their relationship, meanwhile, had evolved into something far more serious than any of Greg’s friend’s anticipated. Greg and Pam eventually got an apartment together, a two-bedroom place, along with a woman that Pam knew from one of her jobs with the state.
Greg’s parents were aware of the living arrangement, but Pam felt that her mother and father would be better off knowing nothing about it, a deceit that would spare her from an inevitable battle over her lifestyle. Said Tom Parilla: “Every time her parents came down, Greg would move all his stuff out and go live with another kid until they left.”
“Greg thought it was stupid,” added Brian Washburn. “He’d say, ‘What are they gonna do when they go in the bedroom and find my underwear?’”
Before long, Pam and Greg were talking about marriage and even stopped at a jewelry store to look at engagement rings. Then, after pulling together what he could from his meager pay, Greg bought Pam the diamond solitaire she said she liked. Pam remembered the January night in 1988 when they got engaged.
“Every single person who’s ever near me tells me that I smell like a baby because I’m always showering myself in baby powder. I’m the only person that I know who wears deodorant before going to bed. I always had perfume on and, I don’t know, I just hate everything that stinks.
“So every time I take a shower I use powder. So one day I came home and I don’t know what happened but I was totally aggravated. I had had the worst day and I was crying and complaining about something. And Greg kept saying, ‘Why don’t you take a shower and you’ll feel better.’ And I’m like, ‘Why? I don’t want to take a shower.’
“So finally I took a shower and he had put the ring underneath my powderpuff. I came out of the shower and I was using the powderpuff and I saw this box in there. I was like, ‘What?’
“I opened it up and said, ‘Oh, my God.’ I started crying and he wasn’t even saying, Will you marry me or something. And I’m like, ‘Well, say it.’ And he’s like, ‘I’m not going to say it.’ So I started saying, ‘Get down on your knee’ and he’s going, ‘No-o-o-o, I’m not getting down on my knee.’ Finally I said, ‘Yes, I’ll marry you,’ even though he never really asked me. He never said, ‘Will you marry me?’”
Pam then called her mother to tell her the good news. Linda Wojas was happy, Pam remembered, but only after the daughter answered a few key questions. “My mom was like, ‘Are you pregnant? Are you still graduating from school?’ I said, ‘Gee, don’t rejoice too much.’”
The time in Florida was a period of subtle changes for the couple. Pam was as driven as ever, but she seemed to have loosened up a bit. In high school, she had a style of dress that was neat, vaguely preppy. Now away from her parents, she let her hair, lightened by the Florida sun, grow longer, and when she got off the plane in Boston for a weekend visit, friends noticed that she had a trendier look, wearing spandex, for example.
Greg, for his part, was on his own for the first time and showed hints of maturing. Marriage, once unheard of, was on his mind. As his father remembered, Greg started to understand that the nice home and boat and other possessions his parents had acquired would not come easily at $3.35 an hour.
So he listened when his dad, in Florida for a conference of Metropolitan Life’s top regional salesmen
, suggested that Greg consider the insurance business. It might not sound sexy, Bill Smart said, but the right kind of person could make good money and pretty much set his own schedule.
With Pam’s encouragement, Greg started studying for the exam so he could sell insurance in Florida. He eventually passed it. Then one day he cut his hair so he could start work as a trainee with MetLife.
“I almost had a heart attack,” Pam remembered. “I was sitting out at this café with my friends and Greg comes over and sits down next to me. I just looked away and just kept talking. I didn’t even know it was him. I turned back around. I could almost die. I couldn’t believe how short it was.”
Almost imperceptibly, their life was changing, slowly taking on the shape of the married life that awaited them. Pam was still uncertain whether anyone would hire her as a television reporter, but it looked as if Greg’s future was in insurance. Like a lot of young couples, they talked about getting a dog, a sort of precursor to having children.
Their budgets, though, prevented them from purchasing one. Finally, Greg had saved enough money, close to four hundred dollars, and decided that he would buy Pam the kind of dog she was always talking about, a Yorkshire terrier, as a graduation present.
On the day he went to get it, he was gone for a while. Then Pam’s phone rang. It was Greg. Something had come up on the way to the Yorkshire terrier.
“Pam,” he said sheepishly, “would you be really mad if I got a Shih-Tzu?” That was the kind of dog that Greg’s family owned.
“A Shih-Tzu?” she said. “What do you want that for?”
“Well, there’s this one here and it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”
They went back and forth a bit. Pam hesitated, then thought about it, then finally gave in. “OK,” she said. “Surprise me.”
That day Greg came home with a tan ball of fur that he could practically hold in one hand. The puppy was still so young that he could hardly even walk. Pam’s heart melted. It was the nicest present Greg had ever given her. She liked him so much that she named him after another of her favorite things in life – the band Van Halen. Adding a twist, as Pam and Greg were wont to do with names, they christened the dog Haylen.
Not everything, however, was always pleasant about the relationship. Pam and Greg, in fact, had personalities that were destined to clash. Each liked to be the center of attention. Each had a strong ego. Neither was a follower.
Pam liked to be in control, and Greg had no problem challenging her from time to time, dropping her a peg or two. Sometimes he would tweak her, pronouncing her name as she spelled it – “Pame,” with a long “a” sound, as in “game.”
Greg knew the buttons to push to make Pam burn, and occasionally took joy in hitting them. Once, early in their relationship, he let her out of his car miles from home in a snowstorm, laughing out loud at the very idea of her having to trudge home by herself.
Other times he was more subtle. Pam would obviously be fixing for an argument about something and Greg would ignore her. Instead of trading insults he would simply say, “Whatever,” and get on with what he was doing. Pam had no comeback and it drove her to distraction. “That pissed her off big time,” remembered Greg’s friend Brian Washburn.
And then there were occasions when his behavior went beyond passive aggression to something more troubling. One instance occurred when Tom Parilla and his fiancée were visiting Pam and Greg in Florida. One night the two couples were in a bar where the waitresses wore tight T-shirts and hot-pink shorts. Greg and Tom had spent the better part of the evening making suggestive comments about the attributes of one particular waitress as well as every other attractive woman that walked in. It only got worse when the beers started selling for a nickel each.
All night long Pam and Greg had been sniping at each other, with Pam growing increasingly angry about Greg’s lewd remarks. And when Pam was outraged, her comments, too, could be less than commendable.
Finally, the exchanges reached critical mass. With his mouth full of beer, Greg turned to Pam and squirted a stream of brew into her face. A bouncer rushed over, seized Greg by his jacket, and hauled him out, while a flabbergasted Pam wiped away the suds.
A little later, when things had calmed down, Parilla went and spoke to the bouncer in an attempt to salvage the evening. He assured him that it was all a misunderstanding and that if he let his buddy return it wouldn’t happen again. Parilla gave his solemn word. Reluctantly, the guy said OK, and Parilla telephoned Greg at his apartment and told him to please come back, that all was forgiven.
“So he came back,” Parilla remembered, “and Pam said something. She was being wise to him again. And frigging, ‘Ppppffft,’ he does it again. ‘Fuck you,’ he says. And the bouncer’s like, ‘You’re outta here buddy,’ and frigging took him away.”
◆◆◆
Pam Smart was weary of school and she wanted to get out of FSU as soon as possible. She hated working so hard, in and out of the classroom. She had regularly been taking extra credits on top of her normal class load and even took summer courses. Within three years Pam had completed all of the credits she needed and graduated cum laude.
Toward the end of her time in Florida, meanwhile, WCTV helped her pull together a resume tape, and Pam began the maddening quest for an entry-level reporting job. She sent her tapes to stations all over but nothing was turning up.
Around this time Greg decided to go back to New Hampshire. Being new on the job, work at MetLife in Florida was a struggle and Greg thought he would do better if he went to work where his dad could help pave the way. Both he and Pam had lived in comfortable homes, surrounded by nice possessions their entire lives. Neither was ready to give that up, and they agreed that New Hampshire would be the best place to start as newlyweds.
What’s more, Greg had other reasons for wanting to leave Florida. He and Pam had grown up in different kinds of families. The Wojas children were raised with an independence from their parents that made it seem only natural if Beth or Pam or Jay went to school out of state and wound up living in some other part of the country. Bill and Judy Smart’s children, though, never ventured too far from home after they grew up. They found strength in having the family around, and they clung to it as long as they could.
Greg also wanted to get back to the Northeast. Unlike Pam, he was happiest in the cold and the snow, skiing or cruising along in a snowmobile. He had had his adventure in Florida and now it was time to go home.
Pam’s life was now a swirl of change. School was ending. She would be getting married. And after chasing a dream of being a television reporter, Pam suddenly had to face the fact that she would probably have to put her ambitions on hold.
Now, Pam had to realize that she could not chase jobs all over the country, as most ambitious young television journalists must be willing to do. Pam was going back to New Hampshire, where only one station, WMUR in Manchester, was of any significance; and that station would ultimately reject her.
“It was really hard for her,” remembered Sonia Simon, who would later be her maid of honor. “I remember her saying, ‘Am I making a mistake? Should I be going and following my dream?’ This is like everything she ever wanted to be and all of a sudden she was faced with choosing Greg and New Hampshire or being an actual reporter.”
She chose Greg. Pam finished school that summer and returned to her parents’ home in Windham. “I was surprised that she did it,” said Terri Schnell, “because all she ever talked about was the media and going on TV. Her ambitions were huge.”
Pam, who scarcely had the word “surrender” in her vocabulary, was setting aside what she had set out to accomplish, all that she had worked for, for Greg.
As it turned out, it was not all bad. She worked for a temporary agency for a while, then that summer she was hired by School Administrative Unit 21 in Hampton to be the new media center director. The school board was looking for someone to perform the usual duties, taking care of equipment purchases, for example, and overs
eeing disbursement of it to the schools.
But SAU 21 officials also wanted a person who could bring a new dimension to the job. They thought it was time to start generating more positive publicity about the school board. And Pam looked like someone who could do it all.
She seemed to be an ideal hire. She was young, but she brought with her obvious intelligence, energy, and a willingness to learn. She was friendly, too, and around the SAU 21 building the staff felt protective toward her. She was, after all, the baby of the office.
For Pam, the job was a good alternative to being a reporter. She was right out of college and already she had her own secretary, a state benefits package that her father praised as better than his at Delta, and a $22,500 annual salary. She basically was her own boss, worked at her own pace, and had not strayed too far from journalism. She spent a lot of time using the video equipment at the various schools. And she was writing press releases, which was a lot like putting together actual stories.
Greg started work that fall for Metropolitan Life in Nashua, in his father’s office. Greg had a way with people, perhaps a trait he inherited being the son of a salesman. He had a self-assuredness that some saw as cocky, but a smile that made customers feel at ease. He was also a quick learner. That and the guidance of his dad made Greg one of the young stars in his office.
Pam and Greg were both living with their parents, which helped them save for their upcoming life together. “Of course my parents charged me rent,” recalled Pam. “They were still teaching me that lesson.” Greg’s parents let him stay for free.
The months passed. Greg’s parents had gotten a smaller place, a condominium, in Derry, and in January 1989, Pam and Greg moved in together to their rented condo on Misty Morning Drive, a five-minute walk from the Smarts’ home. It was also just down the road from Pinkerton Academy, Pam’s high school.
In the meantime, the couple went through the counseling sessions required to marry in the Catholic Church, despite Pam being a nonpracticing Catholic.
Teach Me to Kill Page 7
