Teach Me to Kill

by Stephen Sawicki

  “I’m not sure why they’re calling you in again,” said Pam. “But don’t panic. I’m sure it’s nothing big. They do this with everybody.”

  They entered the building, and Cecelia’s mother could hear Pam ranting about how the police were treating her so poorly. “I have a right to know what’s going on!” said Smart. “I’m not being treated like the victim that I am. The police aren’t telling me anything. Captain Jackson is nothing but an asshole.”

  A moment later, the door opened and Pelletier stepped out, a bit miffed to see who Cecelia had in tow. Pam demanded that the detective tell her what was going on, but Pelletier turned to Smart and snapped, “I can’t talk to you now; I want to talk to her.” Then, he ushered Cecelia and her mother inside.

  It was around quarter to five when Cecelia and her mom sat down with Pelletier and Charewicz at a conference table. Jackson sat back, out of the way, and let his men conduct the interview.

  Both naturally amiable, the two detectives told Cecelia that it appeared that she had been less than honest when she had talked with Charewicz three weeks earlier. Now was the time to come clean.

  Cecelia again said she knew nothing about the murder and denied any awareness of Pam having a relationship with Billy Flynn.

  The only new bit of information she revealed was a fabricated story that Pam had told her to tell about how Cecelia and Billy had gone over to the Smarts’ condo back in February. Cecelia told the police that as part of the orange juice video they had gone to tape Pam’s husband on his four-wheeler, but that Greg had canceled because of an appointment. Pam had wanted this story out, and would repeat it herself as an explanation should Flynn’s fingerprints be discovered at the crime scene.

  Again and again, Pelletier and Charewicz urged Cecelia to tell what she knew. It seemed clear that she was lying. Among other things, one of the veins in her neck was bulging out in response to the stress.

  More obvious was her classically defiant body language. Arms and legs crossed, leaning back in her chair, Cecelia insisted that she knew nothing else.

  Repeatedly, she glanced at her watch, concerned that she was going to be late for her driver’s education class. Then, Cecelia looked around the room and up at the ceiling. “Like she had something better to do,” Pelletier later said. (Her annoying pretension of disinterest, it would turn out, was Cecelia’s way of coping with tense situations.)

  Jackson had enough. He suddenly pushed himself out of his chair and came toward the girl, surprising everyone.

  “I’m getting tired of listening to this shit!” he roared. “We don’t need your smart-ass attitude.

  “Do you think we’re playing a game here? Don’t you think this is serious?

  “Let me tell you something, young lady. Do you realize that if you’re lying to us, if you’re jerking us around, that you can be in trouble yourself? Do you know that if you’re lying we could charge you with hindering an investigation? And don’t think we won’t do it.

  “You’ve got one opportunity and it’s right now. This is your chance to come clean.”

  Cecelia’s mother came to life. Like a mother bear protecting her cub, she too began to roar. “Now just wait a damn minute!”

  She glared at Pelletier and Charewicz. “I don’t mind you two asking her questions in a normal tone of voice. But I’m not gonna put up with his shit. I’ll tell you people right now, just in case you forgot, this is a minor. She is sixteen years old. And I’m not gonna sit here and listen to this smart ass.

  “What’s more, I don’t think Cecelia’s gonna answer any more questions for you. Maybe I’d be better off having a lawyer in here.”

  Jackson looked to Cecelia’s mother, who seemed only to be getting started, and nodded toward the door.

  They stepped out of the room and Jackson’s attitude changed, going from combative to conciliatory in one minute flat.

  “Look,” he said, “Don’t get upset about the way I was talking to her in there. It’s a role. It’s an act. From what information we have so far, we don’t believe that Cecelia’s done anything wrong. To me, she seems like a normal, typical teenage kid. But I also feel that there’s something that she knows that she’s not telling. And what I’m trying to do is get her to pay attention and realize how serious this really is.”

  Jackson’s anger had sounded authentic enough to Mrs. Eaton, but she said she understood. Calmer now, she said she would try to talk to her daughter at home.

  The interview complete, the mother and daughter walked out only to be met by Pam again.

  “Well, what’s going on?” Smart asked Cecelia.

  “Nothing,” replied the girl. “They just asked me the same questions they asked me before.”

  That night, Pam called Captain Jackson at the Seabrook Police Department, demanding to know why her car had been stopped the night before and just what was going on with the investigation. Jackson replied that he could tell her nothing. And as for her car, well, they’d pulled over the wrong vehicle. “I’m not that stupid,” Pam replied.

  By 8 p.m., propelled mostly by adrenaline and caffeine, Jackson and his men had arrest and search warrants in their hands. They had the murder weapon. They had a handful of statements against the boys. All that was left was to bring them in.

  The cops split up. Sergeant Byron, Surette, Lussier, and some Seabrook officers went to Pete Randall’s home on South Main Street, looking for the black and red bag in which the boys had carried their clothes on the night of the murder. They came away with a knapsack, but it proved to be worthless. Patricia Randall told the cops she had recently bought it for her son.

  For the most part, the search at the Randalls’ house went smoothly, until one of the detectives asked burly Frank Randall if he was hiding anything and suggested that he could be prosecuted if he was. “When they knocked on the door, this was the first my husband knew about anything,” said Patricia Randall. “So when the cop said that to him, he freaked. He got really mad.”

  At the same time, Captain Jackson, Pelletier, Charewicz, and Seabrook Sergeant Thompson, along with some patrolmen, showed up at the Lattimes’, searching for Greg’s Kenwood truck speakers and the package of ammunition from which the killing bullet had been taken.

  Of all Jackson’s strengths, his people skills ranked highest. Blowing up, as he appeared to have done with Cecelia earlier, was out of form for the captain. He was more in character making small talk and showing an interest in folks. Jackson was the kind of guy who took the edge off any conversation by just being himself, telling an anecdote or politely chuckling at even the weakest attempts at humor.

  So while his detectives ran their eyes and fingers through the Lattimes’ personal possessions—a tense situation under any circumstances—Jackson stood off to the side, chatting with Vance, as if they were neighbors comparing notes on their rhododendrons.

  “It was like he knew what I was going through,” remembered Lattime. “It was like one father talking to another and one of them suddenly remembering he was a captain on the police force. He was looking for the truth, but he had to follow the guidelines.”

  Added Diane Lattime: “When they were getting ready to leave, Captain Jackson had tears in his eyes.”

  The Derry police departed that night with Greg’s truck speakers, but they failed to find the bullets.

  They also failed to find the boys. All afternoon, Billy, JR, and Pete had sat around the Lattimes’ house, waiting endlessly for the rap at the door that meant they were under arrest.

  All of the mothers had come by that day as well. “Diane called me up and said, ‘No sense sitting home alone, why don’t you come over?’ recalled Patricia Randall. “So I said OK. I went over and she said, ‘Do you want to talk first or cry first?’ I said, ‘Cry,’ and that’s what we did.”

  There had been discussions that day among the parents about sending the kids out of the country. Without passports, their choices were mainly Canada and Mexico. The idea was eventually voted down: The thou
ght of the boys spending the rest of their days on the run was repellent. Plus, who could afford what it certainly would cost?

  Instead, Billy, Pete, and JR settled on the movies. They asked their parents for permission to go to the cinema in Salisbury, if for no other reason than to break the tedium. First, the boys watched Total Recall. They came back out and bought tickets for Another 48 Hours.

  With the cops holding arrest warrants, Patricia Randall and Diane Lattime agreed to get the boys and bring them to the station. Diane found the kids playing video games, killing time between movies, and told them that the police had arrest warrants. They had to go to the Seabrook PD.

  The boys came along peacefully, except for Billy Flynn, who got into a brief argument with Diane.

  He did not mind going down to be arrested for murder, but Flynn said if he could not see Another 48 Hours, he wanted his money back.

  “I think Billy was focusing on staying normal,” said Patricia Randall. “I think he was holding the murder apart. I think if he didn’t, he’d crack up.”

  The two mothers and the boys drove toward the police department. Along the way, JR made a prediction. “When this all comes out,” he said, “this is going to be the biggest story ever to hit the seacoast.”

  The boys were placed under arrest at around a quarter to ten Monday night. Technically, they were charged with juvenile delinquency, which when charged as adults would become first-degree murder for Flynn and accomplice to first-degree murder for Randall and Lattime.

  The state obviously was going to attempt to have the boys tried in the adult courts, where they could be sentenced to life in prison rather than be slapped on the wrist and held in a youth center until they were eighteen years old—nineteen at best. Given the severity of the accusations, the smart money was on the prosecution getting its way.

  That evening, by a stroke of luck, Bill Spencer managed to break the story of the arrest. At around eight, the reporter said, he was at a graduation ceremony and ran into a state police officer he knew who said that word on the grapevine was that the Smart homicide was solved. Apparently, the cop said, it was three teenagers out of Seabrook. Spencer made some calls and at eleven o’clock, only a little more than an hour after the actual arrests, the story was on the news.

  One of the viewers that night was Pam Smart. Since Greg’s death, hardly a night went by—if any—when Pam slept alone. And so it was that on June 11 Pam had invited Terri Schnell to sleep over in Hampton, and together they learned from the news that three boys, unnamed because they were juveniles, had been arrested for Greg’s murder.

  Now it was show time: Pam got on the phone and called her secretary, whose husband was on the Winnacunnet school board, and asked if they knew who the teenagers were. She also called the Derry police, but was told that no one from the detective bureau was available.

  The next morning, Tuesday, at around 5:30, Pam was on the phone again. But this time—mere coincidence, according to Pam—she called Elaine Flynn, who said that Billy, Pete, and JR had been arrested. “I think you better get a lawyer,” Elaine said, before hanging up.

  Later that day, Pam called everyone who might know something about the arrests. As the widow, she later said, it was within her rights to know what was going on. And so she would contact everyone, from the AG’s office to one of the victim’s advocates to the police, probing for details.

  Her main concern was whether the police had strong evidence. Was a gun found? Or her jewelry? Were the kids confessing?

  At one point, she called Captain Jackson, seeking information and expressing concern that perhaps the families of the boys would want to harm her.

  “I’m afraid,” said Pam. “I know these kids. Am I in any danger?”

  “No,” Jackson replied flatly.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know,” he said. “And so do you.”

  That same day, Linda Wojas showed up at the Derry Police Department. Over the past month and a half, Pam’s mother had agonized over Greg’s death. To Linda, this was the first good news in a long time. What she did not know at this point was the angst that her daughter was experiencing over the arrests.

  “You can’t believe how relieved we are!” said Linda as she went toward Dan Pelletier as if to embrace him. “Thank you so much!”

  The detective shuffled backward, out of hugging distance. “Well, uh, you know, there’s still more work to do,” said Pelletier.

  ◆◆◆

  The media, in the meantime, saw an intriguing story and ran with it. Driven by a hard-bitten news director at channel 9, Bill Spencer dove in with an aggressiveness that knew no shame. As always, he drove the cops crazy, waving his microphone in front of the boys as they were escorted into Hampton District Court for arraignment. “Did you have anything to do with Greg Smart’s murder?” he shouted.

  A source gave Spencer a copy of the SAU 21 newsletter with Billy’s and Cecelia’s photo and Pam’s article about the orange juice video. The reporter then broke the story that Pam knew at least one of the accused killers.

  From there, Spencer tracked down Cecelia and got her on tape telling the concocted story about Billy and herself going to Pam’s in February to tape Greg.

  But the most indelible moment for WMUR’s viewers had to be when Spencer banged on the door of Pam’s condo in Hampton, apparently catching her at a bad time.

  Smart opened the door a crack. Spencer beheld Pam wearing a robe, her hair in a wreck, and looking as if she had been crying. The cameraman only got footage of the reporter at the door, not Smart. But a microphone on the camera did pick up her refusal to be interviewed.

  “Pam, what’s wrong?” Spencer said. “How you doin’?”

  “Nothing, but I can’t comment, Bill,” she said, her voice beginning to quaver. “I really can’t. I’m totally devastated by this. I can’t comment.”

  Another reporter who would hurl herself into the story was Franci Richardson of the 10,000-circulation, semi-weekly Derry News. Outhustling the larger staffed, better financed Manchester Union Leader, a statewide paper, Richardson was pounding on doors all around Seabrook. She tenaciously tracked down all kinds of sources and even got quotes from the likes of Cecelia, Raymond Fowler, and Ralph Welch.

  But all of the area newspapers, from Nashua to the sea, were jumping into the fray, besieging the families of the boys, friends, neighbors, and the kids who as underclassmen were still in the midst of finals at Winnacunnet High School. Almost all of the journalists were scoring now and then with hard-to-get quotes or new details.

  Most everyone, including WMUR, agreed not to use the boys’ names or pictures, as state law decrees, but the Union Leader ran photos of Billy, Pete, and JR and identified them, without ever facing legal challenge.

  Meanwhile, the Nashua Telegraph, like Bill Spencer, found Pam Smart “sickened and devastated” by the arrests. “I want to be happy because they caught someone,” she said. “But I don’t have enough information in my own mind that they are guilty.”

  And the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune drew an equally subdued response. “If you want to say anything about how I am feeling now, you could say I am very, very shocked,” said the widow. “I guess you could say they were good kids.”

  She added: “I can’t say anything about them. I work for the school district. I could lose my job. The last thing I need right now is to lose my job.”

  In reality, unemployment should have been the least of Pam’s worries. Much closer to the last thing Smart needed was what was actually happening while Pam was issuing her refusal-to-rush-to judgment statements:

  Cecelia Pierce was getting scared.

  Chapter 7

  Pam had taken a few days off from work in light of the circumstances. Still, she saw Cecelia on the Wednesday after the arrests because Pam, Cecelia, and Tracy Collins were testifying in Massachusetts in the trial of the hit-and-run driver who struck Smart’s car near Salisbury Beach in March. Pam’s mother also attended the proceeding.
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  Pam took the witness stand, and when the prosecutor asked who had been in the car that day, Pam said herself, Cecelia, and Tracy. As on the accident report, she neglected to mention Billy Flynn, who now just happened to be in custody at the Adolescent Detention Center in Concord for killing her husband.

  Smart and Cecelia huddled briefly that day, with Pam mostly wanting to know what people were saying about her. What rumors were going around about her connection to the boys?

  Yet while Pam was looking outward, her most serious threat was right before her: Cecelia Pierce was slipping out of Pam’s control.

  Captain Jackson had scored a direct hit when he yelled at the girl. The major effect was simply that he frightened her, especially in the wake of the boys’ arrests, into thinking that she might be taken into custody.

  “Every night when I was in bed I’d get up like every five minutes when a car pulled in, seeing if it was the police coming to get me,” said Cecelia.

  To say the least, Cecelia was struggling with conflicting emotions. She bounced back and forth between understanding that the murder was wrong, to not wanting to betray Pam, to worrying that she herself would end up behind bars.

  “I couldn’t sleep at night,” she said. “I kept laying there thinking, ‘Oh my God, if Greg’s in heaven, is he looking down at me right now? What would Greg want me to do? Does he hate me?’

  “And with the boys arrested, I was afraid of what they would think. If I go forward, the boys are gonna hate me—that kind of thing.”

  Cecelia would later tell an interviewer from the television program Hard Copy that her feelings toward Pam had changed: “Her lover was in jail and she didn’t care. And how was I supposed to believe that she was actually my friend? I could hang myself knowing what I know and she’d be relieved because that’s one less person who could tell.”

  Cecelia wanted to share the information with her mother, but she could not figure out how to say it. In addition, Pam had hit on one of Cecelia’s, and perhaps most teenagers’, deepest fears, that the girl would disappoint and draw the wrath of her mother. Pam repeatedly warned the teenager that her parents would certainly be outraged that she had done nothing to prevent the killing.