Pamela Smart accepts responsibility in husband’s 1990 murder for first time

Pamela Smart, who is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for coordinating with her teenage student in the death of her husband in 1990, has accepted responsibility for his death for the first time.

In his final appeal to New Hampshire authorities to reduce your sentence, Smart acknowledged that she previously “deflected blame” rather than acknowledge her own part in the murder “because the truth of being so responsible was too difficult” for her, while also giving a video statement that was released Tuesday -fair. The statement ended with a request for a meeting with New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu and the New Hampshire Executive Council, which advises the governor, among other functions.

Smart, 56, was a 22-year-old high school media coordinator when she began an affair with a 15-year-old boy who later fatally shot her husband, Gregory Smart, in Derry, New Hampshire. The shooter was released in 2015 after serving a 25-year sentence. Although Pamela Smart denied knowledge of the plot, she was convicted of being an accessory to first-degree murder and other crimes and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Smart has been incarcerated for almost 34 years. Despite repeated attempts to appeal the sentence, she said CBS Boston in a 2019 prison interview that she would never admit to planning the murder. But Smart said in Tuesday’s statement that she began to “dive deeper into her own responsibility” through her experience in a writing group that “encouraged us to go beyond and into spaces we didn’t want to be in.”

“For me it was very difficult, because entering these places, these spaces, was where I found myself responsible for something that I desperately didn’t want to be responsible for, the murder of my husband,” she said, her voice shaking. “I had to acknowledge for the first time in my mind and in my heart how responsible I was, because I had been deflecting blame all along, I guess, almost like it was a coping mechanism, because the truth of being so responsible was very difficult for me.”

Smart said he has reflected on his past and believes he has changed since his arrest.

“Now that I’m older and able to look back, I can see so many mistakes that I made and see how my judgment was skewed and how immature I was. Looking back, you know, I’m such a different person than I was. … at that time,” she said. “I mean, 34 years is a long time and during that time I worked on myself a lot.”

She asked to have an “honest conversation” with New Hampshire’s five-member Executive Council, which approves state contracts and appointments to state courts and agencies and advises the governor, along with Sununu. The board rejected his latest request in 2022 and Smart appealed to the state Supreme Court, which dismissed his petition last year.

“I am respectfully asking for the opportunity to appear before you, the New Hampshire Executive Council, and have an honest conversation with you about my incarceration, my acceptance of responsibility, and any concerns you may have, any questions,” Smart said in the finale. from the video. “If I could come in person or via video conference so we could have an honest conversation, I would be extremely grateful for that.”

Val Fryatt, Gregory Smart’s cousin, told the Associated Press that Smart “danced around this” and accepted full responsibility “without admitting the facts that made her ‘fully responsible.'”

Fryatt noted that Smart did not mention her cousin’s name in the video, “not once.”

Messages requesting comment on the petition and statement were sent to councilors, Sununu and the attorney general’s office.

Smart had exhausted her judicial appeal options when she returned her third petition to the Executive Council seeking a sentence reduction hearing in 2022. The council’s rejection led her to pursue appeal to the state Supreme Courtwhich rejected the request and said that ordering the elected board to reconsider its decision would violate New Hampshire’s separation of powers.

Smart is serving his sentence at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, New York. She earned two master’s degrees behind bars and also taught other inmates, was ordained as a minister, and served on an inmate liaison committee. She said she is sorry and has been rehabilitated.

His trial was a media circus and one of the first high-profile cases in the United States concerning a sexual affair between a school employee and a student. Joyce Maynard wrote “To Die For” in 1992, based on the Smart case. This inspired a 1995 film of the same name starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix. The killer, William Flynn, and three other teenagers cooperated with prosecutors. They served shorter sentences and were released.