Tuesday, 26 Nov 2024

Pamela Smart, who recruited teen to kill husband: Taking blame won’t ‘ever be enough’

Pamela Smart, the former high school employee serving life in prison for recruiting a student she was sleeping with to kill her husband in 1990, says she takes responsibility for the killing. But, in a new “Dateline” she says she doesn’t think that will “ever be enough” for those who have long regarded her as the ultimate vixen-villain.

Smart was 22 and a high school media coordinator in New Hampshire when she began an affair with the student, William Flynn, and was later convicted of conspiring with him to fatally shoot her husband, Gregory Smart, 24.But Smart has always denied knowledge of the plot carried out by Flynn, who cooperated with prosecutors, along with three other teens, with prosecutors to receive shorter sentences. All three have since been released.

“I’m not placing blame on everyone else. I’m saying, it’s my fault my husband’s dead. I don’t know what more responsibility I could take, you know, for that,” Smart, now 51, said in an interview from prison that is slated to air on NBC’s “Dateline” Monday night.Pamela Smart takes the oath before testifying in Rockingham County Superior Court in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1991.

The 1990 murder was one of the first high-profile cases to revolve around a sexual relationship between a school staffer and a student, resulting in a trial that swiftly became a media circus and later inspired books including “To Die For,” which was adapted into a 1995 movie starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.

“I know that there are a lot of things that contributed to this verdict — the media, the judge all of those things that happened. However I know, bottom line, if I never had this relationship, he would still be alive. So, therefore, I know I am responsible,” Smart said during the interview with “Dateline.”She added that she doesn’t think her concession of responsibility, while not an admission of guilt, will ever satisfy her critics.

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