Classroom to Crime Scene: Pamela Smart’s Deadly Plot

Pamela Smart’s Early Life: The Perfect Cheerleader

Strikingly beautiful and outrageously popular, Pamela Smart just seemed to have it all and that’s just the way that things had always been for her. She was born on August 16th, 1967, in Coral Gables, Florida, but she and her family moved to Derry, New Hampshire when Pamela was in the eighth grade. There she went to high school, where she became a ring-leading cheerleader with an always sunny disposition. Pamela was always surrounded by friends and always seemed to be the center of attention and that’s exactly how things were when she went to college too. 

College Years: Pamela’s Love for Radio and Van Halen

Now studying communications at the University of Florida, Pamela became the host of her very own radio program. Pamela had gone from being the sweet and vivacious cheerleader to the “Maiden of Metal”. A huge Van Halen fan, Pamela played their music all through her show and even got a custom license plate for her car that simply read “Halen.”

Pamela was just as popular as ever, and she was still very much the center of everyone’s attention, but for Pamela, it still wasn’t enough. She wanted something more. She wanted to be more. What Pamela really wanted was to be on TV and it was her big dream to become an anchor.

Her degree in communications would set her on the right track to do just that, but right when she had one year left to finish off her studies, she came across a potential hiccup in that plan.

Meeting Greggory Smart: A Love at First Sight Story

Charming, long-haired and handsome, Greggory Smart was a metalhead who was just two years older than Pamela. Their paths crossed in New Hampshire when Pam was visiting her parents for the Christmas holidays and that was that. It was one of those instant connections. One of those love at first sight and the consequences be damned sort of situations.

But her new relationship with Gregg put Pamela at a crossroads. She still had to go back to Florida to finish up her degree if she ever wanted to fulfil her dreams of becoming a news anchor, but Gregg was based in New Hampshire. 

Could Pam really give up everything she’d been working for just for the possibility that things would work out with her new boyfriend Gregg?

Lucky for Pam, she never had to find out.

Finding himself at the same crossroads, Gregg picked up and moved to Florida rather than face the possibility of losing Pam. The young couple lived together while Pam finished up her education and then they married a year later. With their whole futures ahead of them, Pam and Gregg then settled down back in New Hampshire and got to work building a life together.

They bought a house. Gregg got Pam a dog. She named it Halen after her favorite band. Gregg then got a job at his father’s insurance company. He cut off his long hair and wore a suit and tie to work every day.

The Crumbling Marriage: Problems Behind Closed Doors

Pam found herself in a situation where her husband looked nothing like the man she’d married.

The two started bickering. According to Pam, Gregg began cheating on her during the first year they were married, but it’s difficult to say whether that’s true or not with any degree of certainty. What we do know is that by month seven of their marriage, Pam and Gregg’s whirlwind romance had hit the rocks.

The two of them were still married, but growing further and further apart every day. Trying to make herself feel better, Pamela then threw herself into her new job, where she was the media coordinator at Winnacunnet High School. There she found herself the center of attention once again. The halls and corridors were filled with excited chatter as people pushed and shoved just to get to the front of the crowds and talk to Pam. She was beautiful. She was interesting and intelligent. She was a teacher who liked the same kind of music that the students did and the teenagers at Winnacunnet High school couldn’t get enough of her.

Yes. Instead of spending her spare time with the other teachers at the school, or even people her own age, Pam was spending more and more time with her pupils. Classes rolled over into break times and after school activities and then she began volunteering in the evenings and on the weekends too.

Pamela Smart and Billy Flynn: A Forbidden Affair Begins

One pupil in particular stood out amongst the rest. Tall, lanky and boasting a mane of long, dark hair, Billy Flynn went up several notches in Pam’s books just because his favorite band was also Van Halen. The next thing anyone knew, Billy and Pam were working very closely together through the long winter nights making a music video for a school project.

The Manipulation: How Pamela Convinced Billy to Kill Gregg Smart

According to some accounts, one day in February 1990, when Billy was still only fifteen years old and Pamela was twenty-two, she turned around to him and asked: “Do you think about me? Because I think about you all the time.”

The seal was broken. Charged whispers turned into stolen moments and about two weeks later Pam had taken Billy’s virginity. She then strung him along with more sexual favors and platitudes, but shortly after that she began to tighten the reins.

On the one hand, she was giving Billy pictures of herself, posing in only her lingerie. On the other, she was telling him that they had to end their relationship because she was in love with her husband Gregg. Then, in stolen moments filled with heated passion, she would tell Billy that Gregg abused her and that she feared the only way she could ever really be free of him would be if someone killed him. If she tried to divorce Gregg, he would take the house, the car and maybe even her dog Halen and then her life would be ruined.

The trap was set. The only thing left to do then was to wait.

On May 1st, 1990, just a few months after Pam began sleeping with one of her students, she came home to find Gregg dead. Her home had been ransacked and lying face-down in the foyer was her husband. He’d been shot in the back of the head.

What had at first looked like an attempted burglary that had ended in disaster quickly morphed into a murder investigation and at the heart of it was Pamela herself. Detectives found her cold and callous, not at all like a grieving widow who had just married her husband only about a year ago.

But what they lacked was proof that Pam had had anything to do with it. Her alibi was airtight and placed her across town at the time of the murder and so, the investigation stalled to a halt.

That was until a tip over the phone named a high school student as a witness. Cecelia Pierce was in the inner-circle and allegedly knew about a murder plot to kill Greggory Smart, but before the investigators could interview her, they found themselves chasing up another lead.

The Investigation: Unraveling the Plot

Rumors about the murder had been circling around the school like wildfire and one parent was more concerned about them than others. Vance Lattime Jr, who usually went by JR, was very good friends with Billy and even though he didn’t own a gun himself, his father did. With the school absolutely buzzing with rumors and speculations that Gregg had been shot in the back of the head, JR’s father went to check on his gun just to put his own mind at ease.

He was shocked to find that it had been cleaned within an inch of its life.

Suspecting that he was actually in possession of the murder weapon, JR’s father took it down to the police station and handed it in. While the gun was in for processing, investigators closed in on Cecelia. 

Cecelia was reluctant to speak at first. She considered herself special to call herself friends with Pamela Smart, but with the threat of being arrested looming over her head, Cecelia cracked. She confessed to knowing about a murder-plot to kill Gregg Smart and she was willing to wear wire to record her conversations with the mastermind behind it.

During these recordings, Pam can be heard talking about the plan to kill her husband and she can be heard coaching Cecelia on what to say if the investigators should approach her. “You’d be better off just lying,” she says.

A few months later, Pam found herself in the car park at the school and surrounded by officers. “What’s up?” she asked one of them. “Well, Pam,” he answered. “I have some good news and I have some bad news. The good news is that we’ve solved the murder of your husband. The bad news is you’re under arrest.”

In court, Pam, Billy and three other teenage boys, including JR, faced murder charges. Pam admitted to having an affair with a minor but claimed that she’d had no idea that Billy or anyone else had been planning on killing her husband. The trial quickly derailed into a case of he-said-she-said, but the prosecution painted a clear picture in everyone’s minds. Pam had manipulated young and impressionable students and she’d had them do her dirty work for her.

Pam was found guilty of being an accomplice to first degree murder. She was given a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Her appeals process actually only ran out in March 2023 when she lost her final appeal. She will now officially spend the rest of her life behind bars.

Billy Flynn was found guilty of second degree murder and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for forty years, but with the possibility that his sentence could be deferred to 12 years if he maintained good behavior . He was granted parole in March 2015, just a few days after the 25th anniversary of Greg’s murder. Another boy named Patrick Randall was found guilty of the same charges and received a similar sentence with a similar release date. 

JR was found guilty of being an accomplice to second degree murder and he was released from prison in 2005. Raymond Fowler, who waited in the car during the murder, was released in 2003.