Pamela Smart said she has acknowledged “for the first time” that she is responsible for her husband’s murder after decades of deflecting blame with “warped logic.”
“I found myself responsible for something I desperately didn’t want to be responsible for, my husband’s murder,” Smart said in a videotaped message from prison obtained by Fox News Digital.
This revelation, she said, came in a prison writing class, where her instructor pushed the group to “dig deeper … in my own mind, in my own heart.”
Smart, now 56, has spent nearly 34 years behind bars as part of a life sentence without parole for her role in Gregory Smart’s 1990 murder. The killing was carried out by four teenagers, led by one boy she was having an affair with.
WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME PAMELA SMART ASKED FOR A PARDON
In this 1991 file photo Pamela Smart testifies in Rockingham County Superior Court in Exeter, N.H. (The Associated Press)
In May 1990, Billy Flynn, who was 16 at the time, fired a shot through Gregory Smart’s head as Patrick Randall, then 17, held a knife to his throat.
Pamela Smart, who was 22 at the time and Flynn’s program instructor in a Hampton, New Hampshire, high school, was sneaking around with Flynn.
During the trial, Flynn testified that Pamela threatened to break up with him if he didn’t kill her husband.
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Flynn, Randall and two other teenagers at the time, who were the getaway drivers, served their sentences and have since been freed.
“It has taken me decades to come to a place where I can more fully understand and accept responsibility for my inexcusable actions and behaviors,” Pamela wrote in a March letter to New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, where she pleads for a pardon.
Pamela Smart acknowledged responsibility for her husband’s murder in her latest plea for a pardon. (AP Photo/Jon Pierre Lasseigne, File)
She said in the letter that she lied to herself and “rationalized that, because I wasn’t there the night Gregg was murdered, because I didn’t pull the trigger, I wasn’t responsible.”
“I became comfortable in my warped logic because I didn’t want to face the fact that Gregg’s murder was no one’s fault but my own,” Pamela wrote.
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In the videotaped statement from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York, where she is serving time, she used this “warped” rationalization as a “coping mechanism because the truth of being so responsible was very difficult for me.”
Gregg’s cousin, Val Fryatt, didn’t buy the lengthy pauses and Pamela’s emotions in the 4.5-minute video, telling the Associated Press that she “danced around it … without admitting the facts around what made her ‘fully responsible.’”
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In this March 9, 1991, file photo, Patrick Randall, 17, testifies in Rockingham County Superior Court in Exeter, N.H. Randall held a knife to Gregory Smart’s throat in May 1990 as Billy Flynn, who was Pamela Smart’s teenage lover, shot him in the head. Flynn was eventually paroled; Smart is serving life without parole after being convicted of plotting the murder. (The Associated Press)
The video is part of an 83-page petition – dated June 7 – that includes a lengthy list of academic achievements, jobs and nearly 30 letters of support from fellow inmates, corrections employees, religious leaders and friends.
Even Peter Stern, the Brooklyn Nets CFO, wrote a letter on her behalf.
It’s Pamela’s fourth time asking New Hampshire’s governor and the Executive Council to commute her sentence.
“I do not want to die in prison,” she wrote.
The most recent attempt was in March 2022, when she was denied the right to present her case “within minutes,” her lawyer, Mark Sisti, said.
WATCH FULL VIDEOTAPED PRISON STATEMENT
The petition “illustrates overwhelming evidence” of “rehabilitation, remorse, self-improvement and true dedication to redemption,” Sisti wrote in the filing. “She has matured beyond her years and has grown to realize her part in the murder of her husband.”
Sisti told Fox News Digital that it’s entirely up to the governor’s Executive Council to hear Pamela’s petition.
Pamela Smart gets sworn in before testifying in her own defense in Rockingham County Court. (Getty Images)
The governor told Fox News Digital in an email that her petition will not be on the agenda for today’s meeting. The next meeting is scheduled for June 26, the Executive Council said.
Whether her request will be considered is still up in the air, as the governor has been noncommittal.
In an emailed statement to Fox News Digital, Gov. Sununu said, “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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READ FULL PETITION
She said in the videotaped statement that she can see the missteps she made decades ago, including not taking responsibility for her actions.
“Now that I am older and able to look back on things, I can see so many errors that I made, and I can see how skewed my judgment was and immature I was,” Pamela said in the video.
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“I am such a different person than I was. I’m more thoughtful than before. I think things through before I make decisions and less impulsive and just more responsible and mature than I was back then.”
Pamela is believed to be the longest serving female inmate in the Bedford Hills women’s prison, where she was sent by the state of New Hampshire after her 1991 conviction.
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“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,” she said at the end of the recorded statement.
“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.”
