Cecelia’s actions were even more ill-advised than Spencer’s. The reporter hurt his own credibility and perhaps even that of his television station, but Cecelia was putting the state’s case in jeopardy. It was ridiculous to think that the girl had gone to the police that spring eyeing a Hollywood contract. At the same time, though, Pam’s lawyers knew how to make a lot out of a little. And it only took one doubtful juror to get a hung jury.
For their part, Twomey and Sisti declined to say much to the media, unless of course one counted Sisti’s predictable remarks about it all being “garbage.”
Some of the glossier lawyers who offered to represent Pam most likely would have gone on a media offensive to counteract what had already occurred. Yet Twomey and Sisti failed to see what could be gained by the publicity. After all, their field of play was the New Hampshire legal system. That’s where Pam’s fate would be decided. That’s where they wanted to engage the prosecution.
Still, Twomey agreed to appear on Hard Copy that fall, telling his interviewer that he questioned Cecelia Pierce’s account of Billy having sex with Pam. “What can you tell me about the credibility of that person? What can you tell me about whether that person has said directly contradictory things in the past? The fact that somebody said something means nothing to me. I mean, is this person reliable?
“I’ve heard the tapes. I’ve read transcripts of them. And in my reading of the transcripts and my listening of the tapes I don’t come to the same conclusions. And I wouldn’t say the same things about the tapes as was said in court by an agent of the state.
“Pam is innocent and she has a defense. Buy your ticket and you’ll find out what it is.”
◆◆◆
The arrest of Pamela Smart was a relief to some people. It was sensational to others. And to her family and friends, it was hell of earth.
For Pam’s parents and siblings, it was always there: Greg was dead. Pam was in prison. And their world was upside down.
One of Pam’s friends from high school saw Linda Wojas in a restaurant one day. The friend, who remembered Pam’s mother always being so full of positive energy, was saddened to see Linda looking exhausted and angry.
And angry Linda was. At forty-nine years old, she and her husband, fifty-one, were still relatively young and healthy and had saved some money. Their kids were all grown, with only their son still in college. The couple planned to travel, to enjoy their lives.
Now everything was changed forever. Their savings took a powerful hit. What’s more, Pam was behind bars. Linda blamed the Derry police, the state, and the media, for starters. “This is a nightmare that we can’t wake up from,” she said that fall. “I see red thinking about what’s happened to all of us. Everything is so unfair and so awful.”
In a futile effort, Linda would even write a two-page letter directly to Judge Gray, pleading that Pam be released in their custody. “We are alarmed and do not wish to wait until we receive a telephone call informing us that she is in the medical ward before we reach out for help,” she wrote.
The mother said she was certain Pam was innocent.“There’s nothing indicative ever—ever—in Pam’s personality that would ever tell you that she could be capable of something like this,” she said in an interview. “Ever, ever, ever.
“Have you ever looked at a fifteen-year-old boy? Go in a school yard and you’ll know what we’re talking about. Are you going to tell me that my daughter would be interested in running off into the sunset, if that’s the theory that you want to adopt, with a fifteen-year-old boy?
“Give Greg more credit than that, for choosing a person that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Fifteen years old. That’s a kid.”
John Wojas, meanwhile, had taken early retirement from his job as a pilot at Delta Air Lines. He was the family’s breadwinner, but less vocal than his wife. “Greg is dead,” he said. “Somebody did it. And we want whoever did it to pay for it. Hey, if my daughter was involved, so be it, and she has to pay the price, just like anybody else. But until she comes to me right to my face and says, ‘Dad, I was involved,’ I can’t believe it. I’ve just seen this kid do too much good all her life.”
At times, John could even find his sense of humor, not surprising for a man who flew commercial jets and whose job description included keeping calm in the face of crisis. “I know one thing,” he said. “You would never convince me that Pam would ever have done this for insurance money. If she wanted any money she would have took care of me. Then she would have had some money.”
The Wojases found solace in the support of their family and friends. Pam’s dog, Haylen, who was now in their care, was also something of a comfort. “I play with him because every time I look at him I think of both Pam and Greg,” said Linda. “And I cry whenever I hold him. I try to make up for whatever’s been done to everybody just through this foolish dog.”
“Well” added John Wojas, “that’s our only grandchild. We’ve got a grandpuppy.”
Around the same time that fall, Bill Smart and a reporter drove out to the Forest Hills Cemetery in an old car that Greg had once owned. It was a rattletrap, but Bill Smart kept it around because it reminded him of his son.
Smart stood over his son’s tombstone, the woods that surrounded the graveyard bursting with color.
“This is ridiculous,” he said, sobbing, venting whatever thoughts ran through his mind. “This is absolutely ridiculous. There are no words to describe what this has done to this family. I feel guilty if I even laugh. This is awful. It’s just no right that you bury your child.
“Sometimes I talk just to talk. I ramble and I ramble, just to talk.
“I’ve been beaten down. I’ve been betrayed. My whole family has been betrayed.”
He walked back to his car and swept his hand left to right pointing out all the nearby headstones—a police officer, an infant, and all the others.
“I’m sure every poor person that’s here has a story,” Smart said. “And most of them probably are tragic. But this is something that didn’t have to happen, that shouldn’t have happened.
“You can’t explain this. In your mind you can’t justify it. Even if he had a million dollars of coverage.”
The arrest would also have a deep effect on Pam’s and Greg’s friends. The murder had shaken them like an earthquake, and this was the massive aftershock. Many did not know what to think when prosecutor Cindy White revealed at Pam’s bail hearing that secretly recorded tapes existed and that Cecelia had told authorities that she walked in on Pam and “William F.” while they were having sex.
Eventually, the case would cause canyonlike divisions between the group of friends and at times within couples as well. People took sides, almost as if Pam’s guilt or innocence was a high-stakes sporting event. Bill and Judy Smart did not make matters any better when they began to shun some of Greg’s old friends, whom the Smarts learned were visiting Pam in prison.
People like Terri Schnell and Brian Washburn, who were probably closer to Greg than anyone outside his family, were anguished to think that the dead man’s parents might hate them. They too were devastated by Greg’s death—Schnell had gone into hysterics when she learned of it, screaming “Greggles! Not Greggles!” over and over—but they could not easily accept that Pam was involved. It was too mind-boggling.
But the shockwaves went even further. They rolled out and touched relatives and coworkers and practically anyone who ever knew Pam Smart. Even a cop in one of the towns near Derry who had once done Pam a favor—making a call that took care of one of her speeding tickets—received a few sidelong glances from his colleagues.
The pain even stretched into the past, to the people who knew funny and boisterous Pam Wojas back at Pinkerton Academy.
One woman, who had been close to Pam as a teenager, was in Europe when she learned of Smart’s arrest. Friends had mailed her newspaper articles that she read in stunned disbelief.
The woman, who preferred not to be named, said that for weeks Pam w
eighed on her mind, even though they had lost contact long ago. It was all too unreal.
“One night I had a dream,” said the old friend. “Pam was sitting at my kitchen table, eating soup. She was really tiny, just bones. She was skinny and sick. And she kept saying she didn’t do it and how awful it was.
“And then I had to take her back. For some reason I took her to the post office after it had closed, and there I handed her over to this woman. She was going back to prison.”
Chapter 10
As she awaited her trial, Pam would be housed just west of Manchester at the New Hampshire State Prison for Women in Goffstown.
This was, of course, the infamous “slammer” that Pam had talked about when trying to convince Cecelia Pierce not to tell the truth to the police. Surrounded by coil upon coil of razor wire, the brick and concrete structure had room enough for more than one hundred inmates, though at any given time its population hovered around eighty.
In certain ways, the facility resembled a college dormitory. The place was clean; the walls were painted white, the doors bright red, and the floors industrial gray. It had a small library and a workout room, among other areas used for teaching and various forms of rehabilitation. The cells had solid steel doors, not bars.
It was, however, still prison.
As such, the Goffstown facility was not always a happy place. Inmates were separated from their partners, children, friends. Frequently, they had an array of emotional and psychological disturbances as well as problems with drugs and alcohol. A history of childhood abuse was common as well. Added to the mix was the unavoidable truth that most inmates came from poverty and lacked education.
“Pam’s a real sore thumb in there,” said her mother. “Like she said, ‘Mom, I’m the only one in here with all of my teeth.’”
Home for Pam was a cell—she would refer to it as her “room”—in what is known as D Tier, Goffstown’s maximum security wing. Pam’s cell, like everyone’s, was ten feet long by seven feet wide, with a ten-foot-high ceiling. She had a bunk, a stainless-steel toilet, sink and a footlocker for her possessions. She also had her television and a Walkman.
Visits, according to prison rule, were limited to twice a week. And Pam’s parents, sister Beth, and friends like Sonia Simon, Terri Schnell, Tracy Collins, and Tracy’s boyfriend Brian Washburn made regular pilgrimages. Smart also had clergy visits.
With few options, Pam tried to make the best of her confinement.
Smart regularly wrote and called old friends.
She penned a poem, “Good-bye My Love,” for Greg and mailed copies to all of her buddies.
Now a voracious reader, Pam engulfed everything from Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent to Drew Barrymore’s Little Girl Lost.
She leafed through the pages of People and TV Guide, her selections for the two magazine subscriptions that the prison allowed.
And she took active part in Bible-study classes, at one point setting aside her worries about her impending trial and joining the group in a hearty rendition of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”
Displeased with prison food, Pam ate less, and dropped more than ten pounds. She was put on a special weight-monitoring program, to prevent possible health problems caused by not eating. If she died at least it would be thin, she joked in a letter to a friend.
What’s more, Smart would tell her visitors that she was considering suicide, which always got their attention and stoked the fires of their sympathy.
Pam would also speak of her fears that they would abandon her and simply never visit again. When her friends said that was ridiculous, Smart would hint that things were not going to look very good when everything started coming out in her trial. Her friends told her to be quiet. After all, things didn’t look very good right now.
During a telephone interview with Linda Wojas about a week before Christmas 1990, I mentioned that I had started work on this book and that I hoped to be able to interview her daughter. Mrs. Wojas did not think that was likely before Pam’s trial, then scheduled to begin February 4.
Yet Linda seemed anxious for the media to finally come to know the true Pam. With Christmas coming, Linda thought that her daughter would appreciate a card, and after that maybe someday, after all the madness ended, I would be able to sit down and talk with her.
So, I sent Pamela Smart a Christmas card. On the front was a picture of a happy golden retriever looking out the window of a fire-engine red pickup truck, with an evergreen in the back. Opened, the card read, “Happy holidays are headed your way.”
I wrote on the inside, introducing myself, and asking Pam if she would consider being interviewed for the book, assuring her that nothing that she told me would be printed prior to her trial.
On the evening of December 21, Pam called my home collect. Reversing the charges is the only way inmates can make contact with those on the outside.
Smart had received tons of requests from all kinds of people, she said, with everyone seeming to want a piece of her story. Interviews, movie deals, book proposals.
“I don’t know why I’m calling you,” she said. “I just am. I’m surprised. How can you write a book on something that hasn’t even happened? I was just calling to find out what the end was, because I’m wondering myself.”
She went on to say, reminiscent of her interviews shortly after Greg’s death, that the main reason she was calling was her concern about anyone attempting to portray her dead husband in a bad light.
It was a curious comment. Hardly a negative word had been printed about Greg. Pam was the one who was coming across poorly in the media, a natural side effect of being charged with murder.
“I just don’t want his name ruined or anything,” Pam said of her late husband. “Obviously, I can’t do much for myself anymore. But Greg was like the nicest person in the world and he doesn’t deserve any of this adverse publicity. I would like for him to be able to rest in peace. And that’s all I care about right now.
“Just all this stuff about me having a sixteen-year-old lover and all these totally absurd things. You know, I mean, I just don’t understand that. And then I’ve heard reports that my husband supposedly beat me. It’s just ridiculous.
“My concern isn’t even about me. My concern is just about Greg. And that’s all I care about. I don’t even care if you write that I did it. I do and everything like that. But I care more about Greg. And I just, I mean, I want everybody to know that Greg was not a bad person.”
Pam said that she was working at the prison as a teacher, an irony that did not escape her. After her arrest, headline writers and reporters had often erroneously said that Pam was a teacher rather than media center director for the school board. (Technically, it was a mistake, but not one as egregious as many have suggested: Cecelia Pierce did receive credit for her internship with Pam, and Smart had been scheduled to teach a course in the fall.) All the same, she was a teacher now. At Goffstown, Pam instructed her fellow inmates in math, spelling, English, and science.
Yet, as her mother said, prison was not a place where Pam easily fit in. Her social background was different from most of her fellow inmates. But Smart also said she had no need for any of the help programs that the prison offered.
“I go to one thing in here,” Smart said. “Bible study. That’s it, because I am not an alcoholic. I’m not a drug addict. I’m not an incest survivor. I’m not an abuse victim.
“I don’t know if I’d consider myself above these people, but I just come from a different life.”
Smart came into the prison, and, as was so often the case in her life, quickly became the center of attention. All of her fellow inmates wanted to get a look at her and decide for themselves whether she was innocent or guilty.
In the process, not all of the women were diplomatic. Said Pam: “Like some girl just came up to me one day and was like, ‘You’re a bitch and you killed your husband and you’re a murderer and dah-de-dah-de-dah-de-dah, and f-ing this and f-ing that.’ I mean, the
language. I’m sure you can imagine. And so I say, ‘Thank you very much’ and go back to my room and of course bawl my eyes out.
“I’ve been punched twice; I was thrown up against the wall a couple weeks ago. Some girl just threw me against the wall. She didn’t like me, I guess. And of course I went and told on her. So now she’s in lockup for fifteen days.
“In jail you’re not supposed to tell on other people or something. But I’m not going to stand around when people punch me. And I’m the smallest person in this jail, so obviously people want to pick on me just because I’m little.”
Pam’s placement on the maximum-security tier was a result of the seriousness of the charges against her. Her fellow inmates on D Tier were hardly like anyone Pam knew on the outside.
“There’s this one girl who sleeps while she’s eating,” Smart said. “There’s one girl who screams all day long that she’s murdering us all. There’s one person that spends most of the day on the phone trying to call the White House collect to talk to President Bush.
“And one of them comes up to me and goes, ‘I’m going to murder you.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And she said, ‘Just because I’ve murdered like two hundred people and I figure what the hell is one more?’ And I’m like, ‘OK, well, whatever.’
“It’s like one day after another. It’s like all this built-up frustration. Sometimes I wish they would put me in a car and drive me to a field and let me get out and scream at the top of my lungs and drive me back. Then I’ll be at peace for a while.”
Pam spoke of her unhappiness in prison and of the pain she felt at being falsely accused. It tore her apart, she said, to see her mother in tears and Greg’s parents turned against her, not to mention having five months of her life taken from her. Furthermore, Pam said, she had not even had time to properly grieve for Greg.
“I just feel like my life was like a piggy bank and someone just picked it up and just threw it on the ground and it’s in like a million pieces right now,” she said. “And I’m walking around trying to pick it up. And even if I find all the pieces when I glue it back together it just won’t ever be the same. That’s how I feel. I have to deal with it. What else can I do? I can die. Or I can deal with it. And that’s it.
Teach Me to Kill Page 28
