Before they knew it the day of their marriage was almost upon them, But by this point the concept of being married was not completely foreign to either of them. Talk of tying the knot was cropping up all over among their friends. Sonia was married to Chris Simon. Tom Parilla was getting married that spring. Several other friends were engaged. It was almost as if getting married was now the thing to do.
Parilla and Greg agreed that they would be one another’s best man at Greg’s wedding on May 7 and Tom’s a week later. Rather than throw separate bachelor parties, the two grooms-to-be decided instead upon a joint farewell to the single life along with their fiancées. So the couples, their families, and friends got together at the Hanover House, a nightclub they frequented in Manchester.
It was a joyful evening, with lots of laughs and good fellowship. Tom’s fiancée and Pam presented their men with a number of gag gifts, de rigueur at such an occasion. One was a specially baked cake in the shape of a woman’s bosom. They each also received a G-string to model later.
And that night both Greg and Tom went home with special T-shirts from their future wives, which had drawn guffaws from their buddies: “Man is not complete until he’s married,” the message on the shirts read. “Then he’s finished.”
◆◆◆
After a year and a half of preparations, Pam and Greg’s wedding took place on May 7, 1989, at Sacred Heart Church in Lowell, Massachusetts, where her parents had exchanged their vows thirty years earlier.
Arriving at the church and waiting for the bride and groom to take their places, some of Greg’s friends were mystified. Smart, they always figured, was the freest of spirits and would certainly be the last of them to ever settle down. Instead, he would now be one of the first. “Greg just wanted to have fun,” said Terri Schnell. “Life was a party to him. That’s all it was. I have no idea why he got married so soon.”
It was a large wedding, with nearly two hundred and twenty-five guests and few expenses spared. The ostentatious exclamation point on the whole affair was the couple’s limousine, called The Starship. It was so vast that it sat nearly a dozen people and even had a bar.
The driver picked up Greg and Parilla and the Smarts to ferry them to the church. On the way, the best man requested a stop so he could buy champagne – seven bottles. And all the way to Lowell and the church, the bubbly flowed…and flowed.
By the time they got there, a half-hour trip, Greg and his best man were feeling no pain. Greg’s nose took on a rosy color, as it often did when he drank. They posed for some pictures, made a trip to the men’s room, and waited, Parilla kidding the groom about how nervous he must be. Then they started to embark on a second trip to relieve themselves.
“All of a sudden, the priest goes, ‘You’re on,’” remembered Parilla. “And Greg and me, we’re both like, ‘Oh, man!’ We’re standing up at the altar and we had to go to the bathroom so bad. Plus, we were cocked. We were standing there going, ‘Oh, jeez,’ just trying to stay still.”
All the same, the ceremony went off without any major problems and was a beautiful affair. Pam, as nervous as any bride, had been slightly perturbed because one bridesmaid’s bouquet of flowers had not been delivered and had to be picked up. Also, the limousine had been late. Still, she and Greg made a handsome couple as they exchanged vows, Pam wearing a gorgeous pearl-covered gown and Greg in a gray tuxedo.
Pam, Greg and best man Tom Parilla (Tom Parilla)
Later, at the reception at the Pelham Inn in Pelham, New Hampshire, Greg’s buddies – many of them with hairstyles like heavy metal rockers, a stark contrast to the older people in attendance – took full advantage of the open bar and ran up a tremendous tab for Pam’s father. One of Greg’s friends, in fact, had everyone’s attention as he carried tray after tray back to his table, storing up for when the time limit on the free drinks was up. Parilla, meanwhile, offered up a mangled, inebriated toast to the newlyweds.
Pam and her father and Greg and his mother danced as the band played “Wind Beneath My Wings.” Their wedding song, played on the stereo system, would be by the Christian heavy metal band Stryper. Its title: “Honestly.”
Two weeks later, not long after the couple’s honeymoon in Bermuda, Judy Smart was over at their condo for a visit when Pam said she had something she wanted to show her mother-n-law. Pam went to a closet and came out with a pile of wedding cards. On them were notations of each person’s gift or how much money they gave.
“First she went through her whole family’s cards,” Judy said. “This uncle so and so gave me three hundred dollars, aunt so and so gave me one hundred dollars and this friend from Florida gave me five hundred dollars.
“Now I’m getting madder and madder and I’m saying to myself that I’m not going to say anything because of Greg. I didn’t want to get in a big argument with her.
“So, she gets done with her side and she says, ‘Now, I want to show you this.’ She says this person, and she’s naming my husband’s sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles, only gave fifty dollars. This person only gave thirty dollars. Do you know that thirty dollars doesn’t even pay for the price of the meal?
“It got to the point where Greg said, ‘That’s enough, Pam,’ and she still wouldn’t stop.
“Finally I just got out of there. Never in my life have I seen anyone do such an awful thing.”
Like a lot of new marriages, the union of Pam and Greg raised doubts among their friends and relations. Besides the husband’s history with women, the couple simply did not seem to easily mesh, and a number of people wondered how long the marriage would last.
Before the wedding, Bill and Judy Smart said, Pam’s parents called them, concerned that their son would not be able to give their daughter the things in life that she deserved. Greg, after all, had no college education and did not seem the type to set the world on fire. Greg’s parents tried to allay their fears. Greg will make a good provider, they said. Everything will be fine. “We had to sell Greg to the Wojases, like he was a piece of merchandise,” Judy Smart later said.
The differences between the two went deeper than whether or not Greg would keep Pam in the lifestyle to which she had grown accustomed.
Both of the newlyweds liked to be noticed. Before they had even met, in fact, both had altered the spellings of their nicknames – she was “Pame” and he was “Gregg” – so as to set themselves apart from the crowd. Some people wondered how long there could be two centers of attention.
The couple also seemed to have differing drives in life. Greg had always wanted to enjoy himself, to party or to hang out with his friends. He took what came when it came. Pam, on the other hand, was organized. She was ambitious. She set goals.
“She’s someone who had to be in control,” said Brian Washburn. “The way she dealt with things was to organize things. The reason that they got along is that he didn’t care, so if she planned something out and wanted to do something, he’d just do it. He didn’t give a shit. With Greg it was always, ‘Let’s go, no problem, whatever.’”
Greg liked outdoor activities – riding his four-wheeler, snowmobiling, skiing. Pam preferred lying on the beach or waterskiing. Greg, like his father, found joy in trips to Atlantic City, where he would sit in the baccarat pits at the Trump Plaza, drinking draft beers and betting contentedly for hours. Pam was less enthusiastic about gambling.
Each, however, was willing to try. Particularly early in the relationship, Pam agreed to go on skiing trips. And when they went to Atlantic City, Pam and her friends would shop or otherwise amuse themselves while the men gambled, and then they would get together for dinner and a show.
Early on, Pam came to depend on Greg for the bulk of her social life. Outside of Sonia, virtually all of her friendships were with Greg’s buddies or their girlfriends and wives. “I don’t even know who she hung around with before she met Greg,” said Brian Washburn. “I don’t have a clue.”
As she’d been in high school, Pam was possessive of her man. She had few
close male friends. As a result, Terri Schnell remained the couple’s friend, but her closeness to Greg became limited. Indeed, the very thought of Terri making Greg breakfast like the old days was unspokenly forbidden. “When they got married, Greg pretty much wasn’t supposed to hang out with me,” Terri said. “For a few months we lost touch because it just wasn’t allowed. Pam did have a problem with that.”
Pam felt threatened by a number of people. As with everything in his life, Greg took his friends as they came. But Pam could not get along with strong-minded individuals, such as Greg’s friend Tom Parilla. Pam’s closest friends were often younger than she, less educated, and tended to admire Pam and her forceful personality. “She liked to be the one who everyone would turn to, the dominating one, the leader,” said one old friend.
Despite the differences, the marriage did seem to have some strengths. Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Smart were starting life together with few material needs. The gifts from the bridal shower and wedding had been overwhelming. Their seven hundred and fifty dollar a month condo in Derry was decorated as attractively as those of many couples who have been saving for years. Pam had her 1987 Honda CRX and Greg had a 1989 Toyota pickup.
Pam, who signed the checks for most of the couple’s bills, would eventually earn as much as $24,300 with the school board. Greg had a phenomenal year selling insurance for such a young man in his region. He earned almost $42,000 his first year, eventually sharing MetLife’s regional rookie-of-the-year awards with a friend from the Nashua office.
They were not wealthy, but they lived a life of privilege and middle-class respectability that they had known since childhood. Together they had at least $6,000 in the bank. They started looking for a house. The future seemed nothing but bright. “They were typical yuppies,” said John Wojas, “up-and-coming people that were doing good.”
At the same time, both Pam and Greg had begun to gradually grow on their respective in-laws. Greg scored points one time by showing up at the Wojas house with individual roses for Pam, her mother, and sister, Beth. At other times he would help John Wojas work around the yard. Pam’s father planned to take Greg to a boxing match in Las Vegas. And at Easter, Linda Wojas even made Greg his own candy bunny.
Living so close, the Smarts tended to see the couple more often, so much, in fact, that Linda Wojas felt a tug of jealousy. Early in their marriage Pam and Greg often had dinner with his parents. On summer weekends, Bill Smart would take them and their friends out on his yacht, the Bill Me Later, on Lake Winnipesaukee.
And Judy Smart agreed to take an aerobics class with her daughter-in-law. “It took me a while to warm up to her,” Judy Smart later said, “but she would stop and visit and I grew very attached to her.”
Both Greg and Pam were sticklers for cleanliness. Pam, according to Greg’s pal Yvon Pellerin, used to fold her dirty clothes before she put them in the laundry hamper.
Greg, meanwhile, found pleasure in keeping the condo tidy. He took it as his duty, for example, to wash and brush the dog. He also used to tell his mother that he liked the neat lines the vacuum cleaner made on the carpet, so he would vacuum often. And friends would visit and inevitably smell one of Greg’s beloved potpourri air fresheners. “What is this?” one asked. “A passion pit?”
◆◆◆
The newlyweds had dinner out once or twice a week, occasionally having a limousine ferry them to some costly restaurant in Boston. Now and then Pam would join Greg on a trip to Atlantic City, taking in the casinos and the nightlife.
At other times, they would hit the local clubs, places like the Hanover House or T.R.’s Tavern, with their friends, usually other couples, like Brian Washburn and Tracy Collins or the Parillas. Less often, they would get together with Terri Schnell and her boyfriend.
“I used to look at them and say, Wow, they’ve got two cars, two jobs, a nice little condo all neatly furnished,” Pam’s sister Beth told the Boston Globe. “And I thought, I hope that happens to me someday. I mean, the worst thing I can remember between them was him yelling once because there was macaroni on the floor.”
Yet no couple is that blissful. Truth be told, Greg continued his distasteful practice of spitting beer in his wife’s face on into the marriage. “I’ve seen that a few times,” said Yvon Pellerin, one of Greg’s longtime friends. “He’d have a can in his hand, spit a little beer in her face, and she’d go upstairs all pissed off. That was it, she’d leave us alone for the rest of the night. He could see it coming, that she was getting ready to bitch, and he wasn’t in the mood to hear it.”
Pellerin, uncomfortable by what he would see, would sometimes try to talk to Greg about it. “He’d look at me and go, ‘Ahh, forget about it,’ put the TV back on, throw me a beer, and he’d forget about it. He’d make believe it didn’t happen. I think he wanted to show her that he was the man, he was the boss, and you’re not gonna tell me what to do or who I can have at my place.”
One night Greg and his pals Brian Washburn and Dave Bosse drove to Boston to see Ted Chappell’s heavy metal band perform at one of the clubs. It was a joyful night for Greg, made even better by a credit card mix-up in which he and his friends got all of their drinks for free.
When it was time to leave, Greg and Bosse, in their cups, could not find Washburn, so they left him behind. They pulled in around two in the morning to find Pam livid because Greg was so late and so drunk.
“He went up straight to bed,” Bosse recalled. “He wanted to crash. They had an argument then and there. The next day she left him. I was hung over on the couch when he called me. She wrote him a note: You can’t find me. I’m not at my mother’s. I’ll be somewhere else. Don’t even try to find me.”
That dispute passed quickly. The couple, in fact, rarely had long-winded, public disputes.
Pam, however, did have to agree that sometimes her husband could be an irritant. The summer after Pam and Greg got married, Terri Schnell said she remembers complaining to Pam about her boyfriend. Some problem or other had come up, and Terri was angry and frustrated. Pam told her she empathized. Greg, too, had his moments.
“Why can’t they just die and make our life easier?” Pam said. “No divorce. No nothing. Just disappear.”
Terri Schnell laughed. After all, sometimes she wondered the same thing.
Chapter 3
Like everyone in the detective bureau, twenty-eight-year-old Dan Pelletier had pushed aside almost everything he was working on and was putting in heavy overtime on the Smart homicide. Unlike the others, though, when Pelletier came on the job in the morning he kept finding police reports about the killing, written by his colleagues, piling up on his desk.
All of the detectives shared the same large office, and space was at a premium, so no one ever got too touchy about their “personal space.” Pelletier was one of the more methodical of the investigators, however, and simply followed his nature: He started organizing the paperwork.
Then one day Jackson came by. “So what’s going on with your case?” he said. “How’s it going?”
“My case?” Pelletier said. “What case?”
“You know, the Smart murder.”
Typical Jackson, Pelletier thought. Most of the detectives liked the captain because of his easygoing nature and disdain for supervisory formality. Still, Pelletier wondered if maybe Jackson could have let him in on the fact that he had been named lead investigator in Derry’s lone killing of 1990.
All the same, it was a good surprise. Pelletier – Danny to his fellow detectives – had been with the force for six years but only two as a detective. What’s more, he had only been involved in three other murder cases, none as a major player. Yet everyone else – all three other general investigators, their sergeant, and Jackson – simply had other assignments that they were locked into.
Someone had to be cut free to handle all the paperwork the Smart case seemed certain to generate and to become intricately aware of all the nuances and players. Danny just happened to be at the right place at the right time
.
Like any Derry detective and like any detective on any small police department, Pelletier had worked all kinds of crimes – fraud, drugs, bad checks, rape, anything and everything.
He had also carved out a niche on sexual assault cases, in particular child abuse. Patience was one thing Pelletier had in abundance. And he could effortlessly downshift to layback mode. Called to a school, he would get down on the floor with some kid he had just met and talk about puppies or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as if time was no consideration at all, winning trust and eventually progressing to the true reason he was there.
Not that it was all that hard to guess that Pelletier was a policeman. His boss, Jackson, could pass for a bartender at some local pub, but Pelletier simply looked the part of his job. Every hair on his blown-back pelt was in place. Moustache trimmed. Posture straight. If there was a manufacturing plant somewhere that turned out frames of young cops, Pelletier would have come from one of the standard molds.
That was not a very far cry, in fact, from how Pelletier got into police work. When he was a high school student in Methuen, Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire state line, he had joined the Explorers Club and spent a lot of time around the local police department. He liked the people. The work looked interesting.
So after high school, he drove a newspaper delivery truck, enrolled in the criminal justice program at a community college, took all the exams, and one day a job became available for a patrolman just up the interstate, in Derry.
It was 1984 when Pelletier joined the force and like any patrolman started off cruising the streets, a job that mostly entailed chasing noisy kids from one hangout to another, calming down the combatants of domestic wars, and handing out traffic tickets.
Teach Me to Kill Page 8
