Guilty.
The Smarts, their entire row now holding hands, cut loose with full-hearted cheers that they tried in vain to restrain.
Accomplice to first-degree murder?
Guilty.
It was is if an electric current ran through Greg’s family. Again they fought to keep their cheers from ripping wide open.
Tampering with a witness?
Guilty.
Again, the cheers. All of Greg’s family and friends were smiling, but their eyes were moist as well.
Mark Sisti asked that the jury be polled. “Guilty” was pronounced thirty-six additional times.
Judge Gray thanked the jurors and sent them back to the deliberation room.
Then, he set to sentencing Pam on the accomplice to first-degree murder charge. In accordance with New Hampshire law, he was required to send her to prison for the rest of her life with no chance of parole.
“Mrs. Smart,” Judge Gray said evenly, “you’re in custody of the sheriff. This hearing is adjourned.”
Pam, whose face revealed nothing at the moment that the verdicts were announced, was escorted to the clerk of the court’s office to wait until the reporters and everyone else cleared out before being transported back to prison.
She sat down, looking stunned.
“I can’t believe Billy,” she said to Paul Twomey. “First he took Greg’s life. Now he’s taking mine.”
Epilogue
A week after the verdict, the Derry police successfully traced a telephone call from Linda Avory to the Smarts. The call had originated in Derry.
Captain Jackson and Dan Pelletier went to the house. The woman who lived there denied knowing anything about the call, even though a photograph sitting on the television set was a larger version of the one the Smarts had received.
The woman seemed to remember bringing a smaller copy of the photo to a bingo game not long ago. And—oh, yes—it had been stolen.
It took a while, but finally the woman admitted to creating the name Linda Avory and calling the Smarts. She explained that she had been watching the trial on television for hours on end and became captivated by it.
Afraid that Pam would be acquitted, she had called Diane Nicolosi with the fake story about the incriminating letter. She had even planned to write one, but changed her mind. And then, thinking about the Smarts’ pain over the loss of Greg, she made up the story about the baby. “I guess she thought she could help Billy and me by saying that there was something left of Greg,” said Judy Smart.
Not long after the Derry police solved the mystery of Linda Avory, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office dropped the other charges against Pam, including the one that said she tried to hire a hit man to kill Cecelia Pierce. “To pursue these charges in Hillsborough county would serve no useful purpose at this time,” said John Arnold, the state’s attorney general, in a press release.
Had the matter ever gone to court, most likely the first breeze that came through the courthouse window would have toppled the state’s case. It did not help that the charges were based almost entirely on the testimony of inmates at the Goffstown prison.
◆◆◆
Pamela Smart would remain in the news around New England for months after her trial. In May, during her sentencing hearing on the conspiracy to commit murder and witness tampering charges, Pam upstaged her father-in-law, who was taunting her in his victim-impact statement. She jumped up and yelled, “Your honor, I can’t handle this! I don’t have to listen to this anymore!” Her mother stood up as well and shouted at Greg’s father, “Where does your vengeance end?”
When the theatrics were over, Judge Gray calmly sentenced Pam to maximum sentences of seven and a half to fifteen years on her conviction for conspiracy and three and a half to seven years on the witness tampering charges. Already serving life without parole, Pam’s additional sentences are concurrent.
Not long after, J. Albert Johnson, a Boston defense lawyer with an ear for a sound bite and an eye for the cameras, replaced Twomey and Sisti as Pam’s attorney. Johnson would come to file four motions with the Rockingham County Superior Court seeking a new trial. Judge Gray rejected each of them, including one that challenged the imagination by comparing Smart’s trial to that of the infamous Dr. Sam Sheppard. The 1954 conviction of Sheppard, a Cleveland, Ohio area osteopath, was overturned by a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling restraining the media’s role in trial coverage.
The next stage for Pam is the New Hampshire Supreme Court, which will probably not consider her appeal until well into 1992.
Pam and her family, meanwhile, created a sporadically published Friends of Pamela Smart Newsletter, which is mailed to her supposed legion of supporters. And, of course, to the media. Printed on high-quality paper, the newsletter often includes a missive from Pam. “I know that the injustice I suffer in some way imprisons all of you,” she wrote in one.
But the ultimate peculiarity came during the summer of 1991, when Pam’s parents threw a ten-dollar-a-head Friends of Pamela Smart Cookout. Some 300 people showed up. A singer warbled an original tune called “Pamela’s Song.” Someone stuck a “Pame is Innocent” button on the collar of Haylen, Smart’s dog. And Pam even called from prison and thanked her supporters over the loudspeaker. When Dan Pelletier learned of this he chuckled a little, then mused that the dog probably set off fleeing at the sound of her voice.
◆◆◆
Guilt of innocence, of course, had been decided by the jury. When all the television trucks and reporters had left the courthouse in Exeter, only one real question remained: Why?
The reasons behind the killing of a promising life insurance salesman named Gregory Smart have been debated again and again.
Some have said that he was killed purely out of selfishness, that $140,000 in insurance money and a condominium full of furniture were incentive enough for Pam to instruct Billy Flynn to commit murder. Others wondered if Greg, less than a model husband, went too far in his treatment of Pam. Some have said that she truly wanted Flynn to replace Greg. And, Paul Maggiotto, of course, told the jury that Pam was afraid the affair with Billy Flynn would become public knowledge and so, rather than divorce Greg, she had him murdered.
Perhaps every answer has a grain of the truth.
Pamela Smart, although she did see a psychiatrist briefly in the summer of 1990, appears not to have had a thorough psychological evaluation. Perhaps even years of analysis would be needed before coming to a determination of the roots of her behavior. As such, any examination of the deeper reasons for her actions is speculative.
Still, many of her personality traits and actions clearly resemble those of seen in individuals commonly known as psychopaths or sociopaths.
Although people tend to think of sociopaths as mass murderers, more often they move through society without physically harming others. Traits of the sociopath can be found in business, for example, where certain individuals claw their way to the top—or toward whatever goal they seek—without a thought about who is crushed in their path. The problem is a character disorder, not a mental one.
“There are probably millions of sociopaths,” said Jack Levin, a professor of sociology at Northeastern University and coauthor with James Alan Fox of the 1985 book Mass Murder, America’s Growing Menace. “Most of them would never kill anyone. Not as long as they get what they want. You can see this in the case of Pam Smart and Charles Stuart.
“They lead ordinary lives and they love their family members, but not necessarily for who they are but for what they’ll do for the sociopath. So long as things go well and the people around them are not perceived as obstacles, then everyone is safe.
“But at that time when a sociopath’s goals become unrealistic or very lofty and people are seen as in the way, then those people must go.”
Fox, who teaches in the criminal justice department at Northeastern, explains that one could live with a sociopath for years before seeing their true nature revealed. “In a marriage, the sociopath
can appear to be very loving,” he said. “But they only love you for what you can do for them. There is no sense of altruism. And if the spouse is no longer necessary, he or she becomes expendable.”
The vast majority of sociopaths, particularly those who kill, are men. And when women are involved in murders, they tend not to do so for the sake of killing in itself. More often, they are involved in murder out of what they regard as self-defense—as in the case of battered wives—or avarice.
A variety of characteristics are common to sociopaths. They are bright, often more intelligent than average, and present an image of outward warmth. They also have an ability to maintain their composure without sinking into depression or breaking into tears no matter what the stress may be.
In his 1986 book Criminal Behavior, a Psychosocial Approach, author Curt Bartol wrote that such individuals often appear to be affectionate and can mimic the range of emotions, but in reality “true loyalty, warmth, and compassion are foreign to them.”
Levin explained that sociopaths are masters of appearances. “For them, life is a stage,” he said. “Every day they play a character. And they don’t care about the rules that we live by, but they know the rules and manipulate the rules and they can use those rules against us.
“The sociopath knows exactly what other people are feeling even though he or she doesn’t feel those things.”
Added Fox: “Sociopaths are very needy people. Throughout their entire lives they’ve been practicing at manipulation, exploitation, to get what they need. That’s the way they survive.”
At the same time, such individuals are invariably egocentric. They crave attention, which can be manifested in sexual promiscuity among other types of behavior. “There’s a kind sociopath called the narcissistic type, who are very much taken with themselves, who need be the center of attention,” said Fox. “They get their sense of self-worth not by looking at one’s self but by how others see them.
“And they like attention whether it’s positive or negative. Someone like Pam Smart must very much enjoy the attention she’s getting with things like the picnic. Her trial’s over but not forgotten and she’s not forgotten. They like to be in the limelight. And her limelight continues.”
Pam, like many sociopaths, appears to have no remorse for her role in the death of her husband. For those who have the character disorder, there is no concern for anyone but themselves. As such, neither a husband with a bullet in his skull nor the pain inflicted on countless friends and families, affects them.
Usually, sociopaths will rationalize their behavior, Consider as a possibility, Pam’s comments to Cecelia that the teenage boys made their own decision to kill Greg and that it wasn’t her fault.
“It seems to be very easy for sociopaths to justify killing when they direct the action and don’t physically participate in it,” said Levin. “If they can hire someone else to do the dirty work, if they can get impressionable young boys to carry out the killing in the name of love, if they can find a group of followers who want to feel special, they don’t feel responsible.
“They didn’t kill anyone. Isn’t there free will? They reason this out so beautifully. They weren’t directing puppets, they say. Why should they be implicated in a crime that was committed by someone else? I think they really do not relate the cause and effect relationship between the orders that they give and the commission of the crime by others.”
Levin is not unbiased in this matter. Had JR Lattime gone to trial, Levin was prepared to testify for the defense to perhaps explain traits that he has identified as being on the increase among teenagers today.
Levin said he believes there is a category of the sociopathic personality that he calls “temporary sociopaths.” In short, teenagers will often behave seemingly without conscience at times, but change as they grow older.
The boys, of course, are far from innocent. Few excuse their behavior or sympathize with their having to spend their young adulthood behind bars.
At the same time, most people agree that he boys who killed on the night of May 1, 1990 most likely would never have murdered anyone had Billy Flynn never met up with one Pamela Smart.
“That’s the sad thing,” said Levin. “That’s why Pam Smart is so guilty. She destroyed her husband’s life, yes. But she also destroyed the lives of these teenage boys, who might have made it through these turbulent adolescent years into adulthood without having to spend much of their lives in prison.”
About the Author
STEPHEN SAWICKI is a Boston-based writer. His work has appeared in People, Time, and a variety of national and regional publications. He holds degrees from Ohio Wesleyan University and Stanford University.
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