The murder inspired the Nicole Kidman movie ‘To Die For’; while Smart now admits she “deflected blame all the time,” a family member of her dead husband feels her video message “danced around” her actions.
Pamela Smart is acknowledging, “for the first time,” her role in the 1990 murder of her husband, Gregg Smart.
Now 56, the former New Hampshire high school media counselor was 22 when she convinced a 15-year-old boy with whom she was having an affair to kill her husband. Though she now admits she always “deflected blame” in his murder, Smart was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and given time without parole.
The true crime saga inspired Joyce Maynard’s book To Die For, which was adapted into a film starring Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon and Joaquin Phoenix.
The teen, William Flynn, shot Gregory to death as another person held him at knifepoint. After pleading guilty to second-degree murder and cooperating with prosecutors, Flynn was released from prison in 2015. Pamela, meanwhile, has had every appeal request rejected.
In a new video released this week in another attempt to get her sentence reduced, Smart finally took some accountability for what happened — after previously admitting to an affair, but not to the murder plot against her husband.
“My name is Pamela Smart. I’ve been incarcerated since 1990. I was convicted of being an accomplice to murder and I’m serving a life sentence without any possibility of parole,” she said in a video sent to both New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and the state’s Executive Council.
After a slate reading “Accepting Responsibility” flashed across the screen, Smart is seen explaining that about 10 years into her time behind bars she began to “dig deeper and into my own responsibility” after joining a new prison writing group.
“I always thought I was going to a deep place … and [the instructor] would pressure us and encourage us to go beyond, into spaces we didn’t want to be in,” she continued, before taking a long pause.
“For me, that was really hard, because going into those places, in those spaces is where I found myself responsible for something I desperately didn’t want to be responsible for, my husband’s murder,” said Smart. “I had to acknowledge for the first time in my own mind and my own heart how responsible I was, because I had deflected blame all the time, I think, almost as if it was a coping mechanism, because the truth of being so responsible was very difficult for me because I’m not a person who went through life hurting other people.”
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“It was a space that was very uncomfortable for me and something that was new,” she continued.
Smart said she’s now able to “see so many errors that I made” and how “skewed my judgment was and how immature I was” at the time of her husband’s murder.
“Looking backwards, I’m such a different person than I was, more thoughtful than before. I think things through before I make decisions and [I’m] less impulsive and just more responsible and mature than I was back then,” shared Smart. “34 years is a very long time and during that time I’ve done a lot of work on myself, a lot of spiritual work. I had a big growth in who I am and how I deal with things and people.”
She ended her video with a request for a meeting with the New Hampshire Executive Council, asking to have “an honest conversation about my incarceration, my acceptance of responsibility and any concerns you might have, any questions.” The footage also included a slate claiming Smart has earned multiple academic degrees, including Master of Science in Law, Master of Fine Arts in English Literature, Master in Professional Studies and Doctorate in Ministry.
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According to the AP, nearly 30 letters of support were also included with the submission — as was a written letter from Smart to Sununu.
“I made excuses, dismissed my own involvement, and blamed everyone else but myself,” she wrote, saying she “became comfortable in my warped logic.” She also admitted, “I am the one to blame for his absence from this world.”
A family member of Gregg, cousin Val Fryatt, wasn’t impressed with the video — telling AP Smart “danced around” her actions, didn’t mention the victim’s name once and only accepted responsibility “without admitting the facts around what made her ‘fully responsible.'”
The governor’s office said Smart will be given the same opportunity to petition as anyone else, while Councilor Joseph Kenney said her request was “not on my radar screen as of yet.”
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