Pamela Smart released a video statement Thursday, admitting to her part in the death of husband, over 30 years after his murder in their New Hampshire home.
In her latest appeal for a reduced sentence, Pamela Smart admitted that she had previously “deflected blame” rather than facing her role in the crime for Gregory Smart’s death. In the video statement, she claimed that “the truth of being so responsible was very difficult” for her to accept.
CBS News reports that statement concluded with a plea for a meeting with New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu and the New Hampshire Executive Council, which serves as an advisory body to the governor.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Smart, a former high school media coordinator, was convicted of conspiring with her 16-year-old lover, William Flynn, to murder her husband in 1990. Three other teens participated and staged the killing to look like a botched robbery, then cooperated with prosecutors to receive shorter sentences.
All four have since been released from prison, including Flynn, who shot Gregory Smart in the head, and Pete Randall, who held a knife to Smart’s throat while Flynn shot him. They were released in around 2015, and the other two people involved, while they were teenagers, were released years before.
Despite her claims of innocence, Pamela Smart was convicted as an accomplice to first-degree murder and other charges, receiving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
In a 2019 interview with CBS Boston, she said she would never confess to plotting her husband’s murder, despite multiple appeals for sentence reduction. However, in her recent statement on Tuesday, Smart revealed that a writing group she joined encouraged her to confront uncomfortable truths, leading her to “dig deeper into her own responsibility” for the crime.
“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. 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.
“Now that I am older and able to look back on things, I can see so many errors that I made, and see how skewed my judgement was, and how immature I was. Looking backward, you know, I’m such a different person than I was … back then.
“I mean, 34 years is a very long time and during that time I’ve done a lot of work on myself.
“I’m respectfully asking for the opportunity to come 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 might have, any questions.
“If I could come in person, or via video conference so that we could share an honest conversation, I would be extremely grateful for that.”
Smart remains behind bars at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, New York. She has earned two master’s degrees behind bars and tutors inmates, is an ordained minister, and is part of an inmate liaison committee.
After exhausting all judicial appeal avenues, Smart submitted a third petition to the Executive Council in 2022, requesting a sentence reduction hearing. When it was declined, she appealed to the state Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court dismissed her request, stating that it would breach New Hampshire’s separation of powers principle.
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[Feature Photo: FILE – Pamela Smart, testifies in Rockingham County Superior Court during 1991 in Exeter, N.H. A lawyer for Smart, a former high school employee]
