Pamela Smart
Appearances
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
In that first interview with Diane Sawyer, Pam talks about the tragic night.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
What happened to Greg is... the most horrible thing I've ever gone through in my life. And I'm still haunted every day by memories of what must have happened to him inside our house before he was killed. And although I wasn't there, I feel that because of that, I'll never know how Greg was feeling at the time.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I keep thinking of how afraid he must have been and how senseless this whole tragedy was. A lot of times I still can't even believe that he's gone.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
And then a few days after Greg Smart's murder, something strange happens at his wake. A group of unidentified teenage boys show up, and everyone's thinking, who are those guys? And what's their connection to Greg?
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Did you get the gun? No. A lot of people felt like they knew everything about me because they saw the movie.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
There is footage of me coming out of the funeral crying so bad that my father's holding me on one side and my sister's holding me on the other and I did lose my husband that I did marry and he did love me and I loved him.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
How is it fair that someone who pulled the trigger is home and somebody else remains in prison?
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Her makeup is perfect. I feel like in a whole condominium complex like ours, somebody must have seen or heard something. Everybody's saying they didn't hear or see anything, and I keep thinking that I'll see him, you know, walk in. But every day and every second that passes, I realize that that won't happen.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
What do you think is your best hope for getting out? So will she do it now after everything else has failed? For me, that was really hard. We're going to sit here if that's okay. I know this is not your first rodeo. No, it's not. It was such a notorious crime that I was really intrigued when she agreed to a jailhouse interview. She had been maintaining her innocence for three decades.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
And yesterday I went out to the cemetery, and that's kind of, you know, when it really hit me that he won't ever come back.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
You know, it's awful to just think about what happened in there. You know, the only comfort I have is that, you know, it just seems to have been a situation where Greg didn't know what was happening. And he just never knew, you know, and it was really quick.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Sometimes I ask myself, I can't figure out where the strength is coming from. But it seems like it's coming from inside. Maybe, you know, maybe it's a part of Greg that's helping me go on with everything.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
The interview kind of comes and goes with no fuss. No new witnesses coming forward.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
It's the Seabrook police station. It's about 40 miles away, where in walks this man.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
The man tells police that his son's friend, a teenager by the name of Ralph Welch, told him that the gun may have been used to kill Greg Smart.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
That very same day, June 10, 1990, the police haul in that teenager, Ralph Welch, for a videotaped interview.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
So, Ralph Welch tells Detective Barry Cherowitz about a secret conversation he had with the son of the man who turned in that .38 caliber revolver.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
These are the three boys that Welch names in that interview. Billy Flynn, Pete Randall, and Vance, a.k.a. J.R. Latime. It's especially startling because they're just high school kids. Latime supposedly waited in the getaway car.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
But why? What was the alleged motive? Welch seemed to know that too.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
We're speeding? We all wondered what it would be like to meet this woman, a woman that a jury was convinced had masterminded her husband's murder. It's been, you know, almost three decades and it hurts. You talked about all that you've lost, including the potential to be a mom.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
This videotaped interview with Ralph Welsh blows the lid off the case. As police begin to dig, A clue may lie in, of all places, an amateur orange juice commercial that Pam helped some of the high school students produce.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Since the beginning of time, man has enjoyed the taste of pure and natural Florida orange juice.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
This explosive videotaped interview gives police a clear motive and implicates Pamela Smart in her husband's murder. Yet it comes as no surprise to police who already think that Pam has been acting bizarrely from the moment they started talking to her.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Yeah, and that makes me sad because I love children. I wanted to be a mother and now, you know, I've lost all my years. It seems like the whole world's passing by and, you know, I'm still here.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Police noticed that Pam didn't seem to be very emotional when they finally got a chance to interview her just hours after her husband had been murdered. You weren't emotive enough for people's taste. Yes. What do you make of all that?
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Well, I wasn't very emotional. I think I was in shock, you know? You were the ice princess. Right. And I think that people's perception is interesting because like I was watching something where it was JFK's funeral and Jackie Kennedy Onassis was standing there and she never shed a tear. And everyone was like, she's so stoic. You know, nobody said she was an ice princess.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
It just seems to have been a situation where Greg didn't know what was happening.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Sometimes I ask myself, I can't figure out where the strength is coming from.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
You know, there's no better time in his life for this to happen.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
When the murder first happened, you brought the media into your home and gave interviews.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Well, no, I talked to one person, Bill Spencer, and he was hounding every day, calling us, saying that he was running with the story that Greg owed gambling debts in Atlantic City and he owed money to the mafia. And they were saying, are you going to give us a comment? Because if you're not going to give us a comment, we're running with this story.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
And it was like, wait a minute, my husband's not even buried. Like, what do you mean you're running with the story? Because we went to Atlantic City a lot. But he didn't owe anybody any money, and he wasn't killed because of that. I was pressured, basically, to try to defend him. So I did.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
The police definitely don't believe Pam Smart. There's a whole lot of smoke, but no fire yet. They have the videotaped interview from a high school kid who said she offered $500 for murder. They find her interview peculiar, but none of this adds up to murder until they make a stunning connection.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I met Bill, who was kind of making me feel like I was the greatest thing on the earth.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
He was. And I guess at that point, I was so low that I needed that boost. You were vulnerable.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
As the police begin to dig, they can't help but wonder about the strange hold that Pamela Smart has on these teenage boys, especially the long-haired kid, Billy Flynn.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
But another student from that very same high school is about to betray Pam with a secret recording.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Black widow jailed for squalid murder. It seems like the whole world's passing by and
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Well, act like I just used him, went lurking through the school looking for somebody to manipulate, and it just really wasn't even like that.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Decades of denials, but now, new just this summer, a last-ditch effort to change the narrative.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
It really boils down to this. Pam Smart is asking for the opportunity, the chance, to express remorse and to discuss her transformation over 34 years from a 22-year-old to a thoughtful, accomplished, mature 56-year-old woman.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
A lot of people felt like they knew everything about me because they saw the movie. Did you get the gun?
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I had to acknowledge for the first time in my own mind, in my own heart, how responsible I was because I had deflected blame all the time.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Remember, police had been told that these boys were mere pawns and that Pam Smart had put them all up to it. But what was the motive? Why would they kill Smart?
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I thought, oh my God, they had the wrong person. You thought Billy was innocent? I thought there was no way.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Police interviewed Cecilia, and that recording appeared in a documentary for Discovery ID called Pamela Smart, An American Murder Mystery.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
You were technically an adult, and he was underage. Absolutely. That relationship seems predatory.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
It was totally wrong. It was actually very difficult, because I had feelings for my husband. I loved him, and I also had developed feelings for Bill. And I knew that I couldn't continue like this. It wasn't going to work like this forever. It was only a short relationship.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Cecilia tells Pam that the cops have called her in for questioning about the murder.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Let me tell you how out of whack I was, OK? The day before this, I had a lawyer. And he calls me up and he says, whatever you do, don't talk to her. because she's coming in and she's going to be wired.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
That's an astonishing admission. She says her lawyer warned her. Cecilia's dangerous. She could be wearing a wire if you talk to her. And yet she still does.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Now remember, Cecilia acknowledges that she knew in advance about the murder. And that's when Pam issues what seems like an ominous warning.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
sounds like you're admitting to something. It does. My great, brilliant idea that I had was that I was going to go in and have these conversations with her to make her feel more comfortable so she could tell me whatever she was going to tell me. All I wanted to know was, did this guy really kill my husband? Because more than anything, I wanted this not to be true because I felt responsible.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
She was always there, and when we had a problem, we didn't have to wait until she came home from work because she was home.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
On that call, Pam does confess to feeling guilty about something. She says she's feeling real remorse, but it doesn't have anything to do with her husband.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
That afternoon, the police arrive at Pam's office, and she has a lot more to answer for than running over a rabbit.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I was really not worried about it, because I knew that I hadn't done anything wrong. I'm thinking this is going to get straightened out.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
But at this point, the case against Pam is entirely circumstantial. The boys are in custody, but they are refusing to speak.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
But finally, police get down to the deed itself in the interrogation room.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
So a lot was made of this $140,000 insurance policy, that this was about sex and greed.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Right, which makes no sense whatsoever, because I had a very good job. I made a lot of money for myself at that age that I was. I mean, I guess everybody needs money, but I really made my own money. The teens lay it all out.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
They say Pam told them to ransack the house and make it look like a robbery.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Ladies and gentlemen, it was that woman who initiated, orchestrated, and directed William Flynn to kill her husband.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
When I went to college, I worked three jobs, 52 hours a week and graduated from college a year early.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
My aspiration was to be a journalist and to be in the media. She wanted to be another Barbara Walters.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Randall says he then holds a knife to Greg's throat and orders him to hand over the wedding ring he's wearing.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
You get a sense of just how amateurish these teens were. Latamy made fun of Randall and Flynn for buying latex gloves that were too thin to even hide their fingerprints.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Bear in mind, Billy Flynn's sidekick, Pete Randall, was involved in several thefts, and Billy himself admitted to burglary.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Bill Flynn is supposed to be so innocent that he was manipulated by me, right? But at the same time, he was smart enough to manipulate his friends to go kill a person they've never even met.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I wanted to get up and say, stop lying. You think he lied to get a lesser sentence? Absolutely. Yeah, I know he lied.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I didn't go to college and go out partying. I worked all the time. So you skipped adolescence. I kind of skipped relationships. I had no boyfriend in college until I met my husband and that was it.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Pam's side of the story is that she denies ever letting Flynn see those photos.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
He started crying, and I'm looking at the jury, and I'm seeing that it looks like they feel sorry for him. I wanted to scream.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Now it's the defense's turn to make their case. And in a bold move, they put Pamela Smart herself on the stand.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
In 1994, everybody wanted to hear from Pamela Smart. She gave her first interview to my colleague Diane Sawyer.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Because I loved him. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. Greg didn't come home one night. He told me that he had been with someone else. Mad.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
He broke her bones. Poisons that you could use that would be undetectable.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
No, because I thought if the police knew that I had an affair with Bill, they would automatically conclude that I was involved in the murder. And also, the police never asked me.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
How did you meet Greg Smart? I met Greg when I came home for Christmas during a break one year. Originally, I wasn't attracted to him. but I then became attracted to him. What about him? He was very outgoing and always smiling. He seemed fun to be around.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I felt like the jury was either going to be hung or they were going to find me guilty. I thought there was no chance at that point that the jury was going to say I was innocent.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
The verdict that's about to be handed down would be swift. The punishment, severe. And yet three years later, it was still must-see TV when Diane Sawyer landed the only interview with the trigger man himself, Billy Flynn.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
After 13 hours of deliberation, it all came down to this. That's not that long.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Even four years after the murder, the country was still transfixed.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I didn't really consider Bill to be a kid. I guess age-wise, he was. But at the time, I just felt that he was more mature.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Perhaps the most memorable moment in the Diane Sawyer special is when she tells Pam Smart about a revealing question she asked Billy Flynn.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
If I were to ask you that question again now, is there a more nuanced answer? Did you love him?
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I feel like I loved him. I cared for him. I had feelings. You know, people act like I just used him, you know, and went lurking through the school looking for somebody to manipulate. And it just really wasn't even like that.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
For this broadcast, her mother, Linda Wojcic, traveled to New York as part of her never-ending quest to win her daughter's freedom. You've been a tireless advocate. You would be too, I would hope. Do you think your daughter had a fair trial?
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Pam's advocates and a growing chorus of feminists believe that Pam Smart got a raw deal because she's a woman.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Pamela Smart has now been in jail for nearly three decades. But the boys finish serving their time.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Pam said to me, you know, Mom, El Chapo has the same sentence I do. It's one thing for Pam's mom to rail against the sentence, but you might be surprised what the prosecutor who put her in prison thinks now.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
But now it seems Pam Smart walking free just might happen sooner than later after all.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
My name is Pamela Smart. I've been incarcerated since 1990. Thanks to this stunning change of heart. I had to
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
acknowledge for the first time in my own mind, in my own heart, how responsible I was.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
It's been much easier for her in later years. She has been a model prisoner in every way. She's tutored other prisoners. She's been part of the ministry behind bars. She's gotten two master's degrees. And in 2021, saying that she'd been fully rehabilitated, Smart petitioned the governor of New Hampshire, seeking a commutation of her sentence.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Dear Governor Sununu, without executive intervention, I will die in prison.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
This video, released to the media earlier this summer, a new approach after 33 years. My name is Pamela Smart. I've been incarcerated since 1990. Taking responsibility.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I found myself responsible for something I desperately didn't want to be responsible for, my husband's murder.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Pam, inside prison, began to undertake the really serious and hard work about taking stock of what led her to prison and also coming to grips with her own culpability, acknowledging her responsibility and saying, look, my husband's death, it's my fault.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I had to acknowledge for the first time in my own mind, in my own heart, how responsible I was. Because the truth of being so responsible was very difficult for me.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Where is Pam Smart today? What has she changed? What has she improved? How has she made the case for her own commutation? And one of the things is her more public acknowledgement of responsibility. And I think that's important.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
There's a question of someone's remorse. There's a question of someone's responsibility. But there's also the question of who the person is today. It's a testament to her character, and she becomes a prime case for a sentence commutation. This is not someone who should perish in prison.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Reacting to Smart's latest appeal, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu telling ABC News, New Hampshire's process for commutation or pardon requests is fair and thorough. Pamela Smart will be given the same opportunity to petition the council for a hearing as any other individual.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
It's a relationship that heats up lightning fast, but fizzles out almost as quickly.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
What does redemption mean to you? It means that we don't define people by the very worst thing they've ever done in life. It means that people change, people grow, and they evolve over time.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I was only 21 years old when I got married. I was very much in love with my husband. I thought that Greg and I would have a fulfilling future, that we would have a family and children. Do you still feel married to your husband? I do. And, you know, it's weird that you would ask me that because I was just filling out an application for something for in here yesterday. And it says, are you married?
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
My name is Pamela Smart. I have been portrayed as black widow, ice princess, a killer, and none of those things could be further from the truth.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
And I put yes, you know, and date of marriage. Because I am still married. I'm widowed, but I'm still married.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I had a very good job. I made a lot of money for myself. I was 22 years old. I had a 40-something-year-old secretary. I had a job where I had four weeks paid vacation, full medical, dental, all of that. I was my own boss. I really made my own money.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
So years later, when Pam Smart's case is so infamous there are TV movies being made about it, there's a scene in Murder in New Hampshire where Greg's haircut is made out to be the first sign of trouble.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
And so just to be clear, did you mastermind the murder against your husband?
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Greg's working all the time. Pamela's hanging out with teenagers. This marriage is getting bumpy.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
I was very much in love with my husband from the time he was my boyfriend through when he was my husband. And he had an affair. And when that happened, I was devastated. I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought that I wasn't good enough.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Just this summer. I found myself responsible for something I desperately didn't want to be responsible for.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
In that exclusive interview with Diane Sawyer, Pam Smart remembers the night her husband didn't come home from work.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
One night I went to bed, and I was expecting him to come home. And when I woke the next morning, he wasn't there. He was out with a friend of his, and he had been drinking, so he decided to stay at his house. And it turns out that that wasn't what happened.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Did it change the marriage? Well, I believe it made me less trustworthy. It had an effect on my self-esteem. I had thought originally that it was just, you know, he and I. And now I realize that someone could come between that. And I was scared of that.
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True Crime Vault: Broken Vows
Pam had no idea that a chance encounter was about to change her world forever.