In the news this week, the Have I Got News For You podcast is back for series two. I can't believe they've let us back for a second series. We'll be taking you through the big and not so big stories in the news this week when the TV show can't. We'll make sure to give every story and subject the complete lack of respect it deserves. Listen and subscribe to In The News This Week, the Have I Got News For You podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
The in-between is intended for mature audiences and may include topics that can be unsettling, such as emotional, physical and sexual violence, murder and animal abuse. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not reflect the views of Mel Barrett. Ruby Grace Productions, or Grab Bag Colab. Listener discretion is advised. Can we admit that we're...
all transfixed by that sick little soap opera trial in exeter new hampshire what time did you get here today 1 30 this morning 1 30. why want to get a front row seat i guess If this story were a made for TV movie, and it surely will be, you might not believe it. He sat around brainstorming the pros and cons of slitting a man's throat rather than firing a .38 caliber projectile through his head. Yes.
There's only one person in the state of New York who is sitting in prison tonight with a sentence of life with absolutely no possibility of parole. Hi, welcome to the In Between podcast. I'm your host, Mel Barrett. I'm about to do something that's never been done before in the history of podcasting. I'm going to tell you about a crime and a trial so beyond belief it will shock you to your very core.
It's a story you've never heard before. Just kidding. I'm making a podcast about the Pamela Smart trial. Why am I hearing crickets? You know this case, right? 1990, New Hampshire, the heavy metal teacher who seduced a 16-year-old student and then convinced him and his friends to murder her husband. The Helen Hunt movie, Murder in New Hampshire. Joyce Maynard's book-turned-movie to die for. Remember?
Those movies were loosely based on the Pamela Smart case. To be a star. You've got to be able to do things that ordinary people wouldn't do. Was the opportunity she would kill for. Okay. And that's exactly what she did. This case was the first ever gavel-to-gavel trial, even before O.J., before the Menendez brothers, before Casey Anthony and Mary Kay Letourneau. that the media was allowed to cover inside the courtroom, and it happened in my tiny home state.
Folks were lining up in the middle of the night to be the first to get into the courtroom. We all wanted to have a front row seat to this modern day witch trial. But we had other options, too. There was the overflow room and the local television station, WMUR, airing the trial every day. The smart trial is the hottest show in Exeter. So hot you have to have a ticket to get in.
This has to be ringing a bell for you now, right? If you do remember this trial, I'm sure you have your opinions. They may even be set in stone. Mine certainly were. Until they weren't. Live free or die. That's New Hampshire's state motto. And let me tell you, folks in New Hampshire believe in it. My grandfather, an orphan from West Virginia, made his way to New Hampshire in the 50s to start a family based solely on the state's motto.
He was a diehard old school libertarian, not the kind you know today who fly that yellow snake flag and beg you not to trample on their freedoms like racism and homophobia. No, Pop believed in you do you. He believed in autonomy built within community. He believed the government should stay out of his life, whether that meant refraining from requiring him to wear a seatbelt or not giving a shit if his granddaughter was part of the LGBTQ community. Hi, that's me, the granddaughter.
In fact, libertarians of the 70s in New Hampshire passed a resolution at its 1977 convention condemning Anita Bryant for her anti-gay rights activities. Go on, old school libertarians. Pop paid his taxes, took care of his family and his neighbors, and owned small businesses all over New England. My first jobs were working for him on home builds and painting apartments. I even helped build the house I grew up in. It was kind of cool to believe that we should all live free or die.
But then there was a shift. I started growing up. The 80s became the 90s. Trickle down economics was not working. And those freedoms we all held dear sometimes became weapons. I started to understand that when people demand. you stay out of my business and I'll stay out of yours, maybe accountability becomes a gray area. An in-between, if you will. I grew up in a tiny town called Nottingham.
Nottingham is about an hour from Boston and 20 miles from Derry, New Hampshire, where Greg Smart, Pamela Smart's then 24-year-old new husband, was brutally murdered in their condo in 1990. I was 15 when Pamela Smart, 22 at the time, went on trial for murder.
I remember thinking that everyone was watching our tiny little state. This was international news. My friends and I plotted going to hang out in the parking lot of the Exeter courthouse just to try to get on camera. Boston and national newspapers were writing about our podunk towns.
Every day after school, I ran home from the bus stop and sat myself down in the living room with my mom, my nan, and an occasional neighbor mom or aunts that had stopped by to watch the Pamela Smart trial. I listened to all the women around me spitting vitriol at the screen. That whore. They should hang her in the Exeter Town Square. She's cold as ice. No expression. She's totally dead inside. Of course she did it. Looks like Pammy dressed up for the cameras today. Sharon, a local.
remembers the trial and how she managed to get some inside info from her friend Debbie. Here's Sharon talking about Debbie's inside source, her uncle. My girlfriend Debbie, her uncle was the bailiff at that courthouse. So he would call Debbie and say, they're bringing her in at this time. And we'd all run over to Debbie's house and hang out the little hallway window and we'd watch them bring her in the back and her like orange.
The hair bow. Pam wore it in her hair almost every day. It wasn't the same bow. Some days it was pink to match her outfit. Some days black. Some days she wore barrettes. But people were obsessed. Pam came from an upper middle class family who believed appearances were important. She was dressed to the nines every day that she entered court and the bow. Well.
It was pretty typical for the 90s, but when Pam wore it, it enraged people. Sharon's not the first person I've heard say they wanted to rip it off her head. In my opinion, they were pissed because they felt she was trying to sway the jury with her attire. She was pretty, well dressed, well spoken.
In the hierarchy of society, she was somehow above the lower income kids who'd murdered her husband. We see defendants do this all the time. Change their appearance to appear more subdued, well-mannered. It's not a new tactic, but in this case, it incensed people.
They were also enraged by the fact that she had an inappropriate relationship with a kid who was 16. 16 was and is the age of consent in the state of New Hampshire. I'm not saying that to excuse the behavior. Pam was in a position of authority and power over Bill Flynn. who at 16 had just murdered her husband. But he was also allowed to make decisions about sex for himself.
She worked within the school system and the fact that all of this started from the school system just says one thing to me that this could have been anybody's kid. I have two 16-year-old brothers and I think she should...
Definitely go to jail. I can't even imagine getting kids involved in something like this. It teaches our school children. We don't need them around. My stepfather would come home from work and sneer at the screen, grab a beer, make some joke about how Bill Flynn was the luckiest guy in town.
Until his dumb ass got talked into murdering that slut's husband. I grew up in a time in a place that didn't put much stock in women's empowerment, let alone equality. My grandmother once told me that if I didn't start wearing dresses and drop some weight, that no boy would like me.
Because live free or die, sure, but God forbid I developed my own fashion sense. My mother once caught me mimicking a model walking down the catwalk and told me that if I kept walking like that, I'd get raped. 16 days after Greg was murdered, I did get raped.
but it wasn't because I was pretending to do a catwalk. Needless to say, at 15, I had a pretty skewed vision of my place as a woman in the world. And, at the time, I believed what my family and neighbors thought. Pamela Smart got what she deserved. She was a murderer. And life in prison without the possibility of parole was too good for her. Hang her in the town square, why don't you? Lock her up, right? Burn her at the stake. Well, from here on out, I'll let you be the judge of that.
In the news this week, the Have I Got News For You podcast is back for series two. I can't believe they've let us back for a second series. We'll be taking you through the big and not so big stories in the news this week when the TV show can't. We'll make sure to give every story and subject the complete lack of respect it deserves. Listen and subscribe to In The News This Week, the Have I Got News For You podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Pamela Smart accomplice to murder conspiracy case, here's the Cliff Notes version of the story. It's told to me and everyone I know by Bill Spencer, a local New Hampshire reporter who found a spot of fame.
when he gained access to local police, local high school students, and Pamela Smart during the days after the murder and through the trial. Side note, Bill still gets a little buzz of fame every time he talks about this case today, but more on Hollywood Bill later. Here's an appetizer of Spencer's coverage.
It is now seven days since the murder. This would have been their one-year wedding anniversary, she tells me. Throughout the lengthy interview, Pamela is composed. Sometimes I ask myself, I can't figure out where the strength is coming from. As we sit talking, Pamela's dog, Halen, named after the rock group Van Halen, snuggles up to her. Luckily, nothing happened to him, she says. He was locked in the basement.
On New Year's Eve in 1986, Pamela Wojcik and Greg Smart met and fell in love. They were married in May of 1989. But less than a year into their marriage, Greg was starting to drink more and became physical with Pamela. He'd also admitted to having an affair.
Heartbroken and unsure of how to handle her feelings of despair, Pamela, then 21 years old, turned to Bill Flynn, a 16 year old, whom she mentored in a self-esteem program at the local high school. Bill was enamored with Pamela and soon became a victim of sexual misconduct.
in an asymmetrical power dynamic with a woman who was five years older and held a position of authority over him. When Pamela and Greg came clean about their infidelities to one another, Pamela broke it off with Bill as the couple tried to work out their issues. But she went back to Bill. and eventually told him that the only way that they could be together is if Greg wasn't in the picture. She couldn't get divorced because she'd lose her condo, the furniture, and the dog.
Early in 1990, Bill and his friends Pete, Cecilia, J.R., and eventually Raymond plotted a murder completely orchestrated by Pamela Smart. She would leave the bulkhead door to her condo open for them, and then they would come inside and ambush Greg while she was at a school board meeting.
As a media services director for the school district, she attended the meeting because several agenda items would affect her work. It also gave her an alibi while Bill and his crew made their way to her condo, attacked and killed Greg.
They put Halen, Pam's beloved shih tzu, in the basement before they ransacked the condo to make it look like a burglary gone wrong, which Pam had instructed them to do. Pamela told them not to use a knife because it would be too bloody. She said that they had to get a gun.
She instructed them to wear black and to cover their fingers with gloves so there'd be no fingerprints. They would need to park in the plaza and sneak in through the woods behind the condo so no one would see them. And if Bill couldn't pull it off, well, they were over, for good this time. Here's Bill Flynn testifying about the pressure he felt. For months, the teens attempted to find a gun. Cecilia Pierce, 15 at the time.
told them her dad had a gun. Also, one of the women she worked with at Papa Gino's, a pizza restaurant chain in New England, had a gun in her car. Here's Cecilia Pierce testifying about what she told Bill Flynn about where they could find a gun. I told them my father had a gun. That's the father you live with?
No. And where did your father that had a gun, where did he live? In Hampton. And besides telling that your father had a gun, what else did you say? I said that a girl that I worked with at Papaginos had a gun. I'd said she had a gun. And after telling them that the person you worked with at Papaginos had a gun, whatever became of that? I went to work one day and that person was working and I called Bill and told him that they were working and he came over and...
He broke into the car and looked through it, but he didn't find a gun. Just my father's house. Finally, one of their friends, J.R., was like, let's steal my dad's gun. They agreed that Bill and Pete would subdue and kill Greg and J.R. and Raymond would wait in the getaway car. May 1, 1990 arrived and Pamela went to a school board meeting.
bill pete j r and raymond went to dairy and just like they planned bill and pete snuck into the condo through the basement ransacked the place waited for greg to arrive home ambushed him and bill praying God forgive me, unquote, shot him point blank in the head. Pamela came home after her meeting and found Greg dead.
For weeks, the police thought it was a burglary gone wrong. But then funny things started to happen. Kids at Winnicutt High School, where Bill and his friends attended, started talking. The rumor was Bill and Pete had killed Mrs. Smart's husband. Then an anonymous tip came in from someone claiming to work with Cecilia Pierce at Pappagino's that Cecilia had told her that her friends were going to kill Greg. Finally, Ralph Welch, a neighborhood friend of J.R.'s,
told police that he overheard Bill and crew talking about the murder and that they used J.R.'s dad's gun. So he went to J.R.'s dad and told him. J.R.'s mom called the police and said they had information about the Greg Smart murder. Then, J.R.'s parents brought Ralph Welch in to talk. Sure enough.
J.R. Sr.'s gun had recently been cleaned. He immediately brought the gun to the police, and thus, arrest and warrants were issued for the four boys. Cecilia was the anomaly. The police wanted to use Cecilia to get to Pamela.
When the Derry police told Cecilia she'd be arrested as well unless she helped them get to Pamela, Cecilia agreed to wear a wire and tape conversations with Pamela Smart. They had her, though the assistant district attorney, Paul Maggiato, wasn't so sure because the tape Cecilia made. were almost unintelligible. But from what they thought they could hear, Pamela Smart had masterminded this whole thing.
Detective Pelletier of the Derry Police Department and several other police officers showed up at Pamela's office just before putting her in handcuffs. Pelletier said in his famous line, Pam, we've got good news and bad news. The good news is we've solved the murder of your husband. The bad news is you're under arrest.
She was charged with accomplice to first degree murder. But at this point, the case against Pam is entirely circumstantial. The boys are in custody, but they are refusing to speak. Eventually, the boys all talked plenty.
They took plea deals and testified against Pamela during the trial in 1991, and a jury of 12 New Hampshireites convicted her of life in prison without the possibility of parole, which isn't unusual because in most cases, the mastermind usually gets longer sentences than the perpetrators.
I celebrated along with everyone else when the verdict came down. And if you had told me at the time that not even Charles Manson had been denied the possibility of parole, I would have huffed. So what? She still deserves it. Granted, Manson was sentenced to death before the state of California got rid of the death penalty, but eventually he received parole hearings. Regardless, I believed both Pamela Smart and Charles Manson got what the hell they deserved.
Today, I know folks are split right down the middle when it comes to the question, did she do it? Did she conspire with her teenage lover to kill her husband? Or is she also a victim of an unfair justice system that railroaded her? If she did it, imagine the fear that instills. She's your neighbor. She's your kid's mentor. You've known her since she was in diapers. She's the ultimate boogie monster, the seductress, the cold-hearted ice princess, the witch in the woods.
Should she be burned at the stake or serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for being convicted of accomplice to first degree murder? If you believe she did it, then the answer is probably yes. But if you're on the other side. If you don't think she did it, if you believe she didn't receive a fair trial or that the evidence or lack thereof and the testimony was false, coerced, scripted, that's even scarier because if she didn't do it.
She's a symbol that it could happen to any woman, anyone even. It could happen to you. It could happen to me. There's no in-between for anyone in the state of New Hampshire. It's completely black and white. And I want to find the gray areas. In the news this week, the Have I Got News For You podcast is back for series two. I can't believe they've let us back for a second series. We'll be taking you through the big and not so big stories in the news this week when the TV show can't.
Listen and subscribe to In The News This Week, the Have I Got News For You podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, I want to get this out of the way before we go any further into this season. Full transparency, about seven years ago, after seeing the documentary Captivated on HBO, I had an existential crisis. No one had ever seen a television show where you watched real life play out in real time. There's no soap opera to this. It's real stuff.
Nothing happens. And it's totally fascinating. As I mentioned earlier in this episode, I spent most of my life thinking Pamela Smart was guilty as fuck. But this documentary came out when I was 38 years old and as an adult, as a woman. I was able to see and feel things differently than I did at 15. I was so captivated by Captivated that I spent weeks doing research and eventually reached out to Pamela Smart's representatives to see how I could help bring awareness to this case.
Not that it needed awareness after the thousands of articles, interviews and films that have been made about it, but I did feel it needed a different perspective. Side note here, though I've communicated with captivated producer Lori Cheadle for many years about Pam's case. She would not give me permission to use clips from Captivated in this podcast.
So you'll hear an intro to the clip and then a reenactment every time I feel a clip is needed to help my audience better understand the narrative. Thanks for understanding. I still encourage you to check out Captivated. It's an interesting take on how the media played a pretty big role in this case. And I'll touch on the media influence in a later episode. It's hard to imagine the same story Bill Spencer sold everyone in 1991 has stuck after all these years and that no one's reevaluated it.
Back in 2015, I wanted to investigate further, and I tried. I became an activist for Pamela. See, I had a guilty conscience. I had believed everything Bill Spencer and company had told me about the case. I wanted to right a wrong. I worked with Pam's reps and even spoke with Pam herself weekly. Hey, Pam. Hi, can you hear me? I can. Yeah. Audio from back in 2015 was shit, depending on which phone Pam was calling from.
I didn't have the greatest setup or mic and fancy transcription programs weren't totally a thing back then. So I had to manually transcribe the interviews. Pam was either on the good phone or the bad phone. For the first recorded interview I did with her, which was mostly just questions from her supporters, with a few questions about the case from me sprinkled in, the audio quality was horrendous and reminiscent of the wiretaps used against her in the trial. More on that later, obviously.
So there I was in my apartment in Boston jumping in and conducting interviews, creating media, showcasing all the holes and inconsistencies I saw in the case and the trial that I hadn't paid attention to when I was a kid. Which is kind of funny, right? I was both enamored with this case as it unfolded and completely oblivious to its details at the same time because, you know, I was a kid. Anyway, adult me spoke with Linda Woges, Pam's mom, and friends and family members.
Most of the time I spent on the case, I was trying to find new evidence to help prove her innocence. And I still believe there's enough there to at least warrant a new trial or a commutation of her sentence. But this is a big but. As I've mentioned already, in the state of New Hampshire, this is a very black and white issue and a political one. On the one side, there's undying devotion to Pamela Smart. On the other side, there is absolute hatred and contempt for her very existence.
I stepped away from the case in 2017 after the true crime fans who supported Pam got a little bit too zealous and culty for my mental health. Here's a sampling of what was coming at me. I had friends reenact these messages to protect folks and not stir up any further unwanted hate. But these are based on real messages, texts and DMs I and a team of volunteers received while working on the case.
Pam's letter campaign with a moot and frivolous campaign to an other governor's civics 101 they're not able to impact the executive orders of any other state please remove yourself as you have been asked to do so by the legal team I'm not calling anyone names you wouldn't need to be managed if you would stop
and so reckless and oppositional. It's not my choice to micromanage anyone. If the professional courtesy and skill is absent from your advocacy, it's time to concede. You've been asked kindly. And after, I started receiving threatening messages about my continued work on the case from the haters.
Two sides. Both felt radicalized in some way. And today, I don't fall into either camp. I'm squarely on the side of truth. I just want to state that for the record. My opinion... is that Pamela absolutely holds responsibility for the death of her husband, but that she has also most certainly served her time considering Bill, Pete, and J.R. have all been out of prison for almost a decade.
I didn't reach this conclusion overnight. It's based on a lot of digging into information that you've probably never heard, and I think it's at least worth sharing and discussing. When it's all over, I'm interested to hear what you think, too.
In this season of The Inbetween, I'm going to be speaking with New Hampshire locals on both sides. Witnesses, jurors, my own family, law enforcement, the legal community in New Hampshire, Pamela's family and friends, organizations who helped to reduce sentences and release the wrongly convicted, and...
Pamela herself. I'll also share with you, dear listeners, the hunt I'm on for new information about the case, evidence that may be hidden in the police files that's never come to light, and possibly a new legal strategy that might lead to a new trial in the state of New Hampshire.
This is a closed case, but one that's very much ongoing in my book. Watch this space. In the in-between, I hope to bring us all a little closer to the truth, to justice, and to humanity. This is an experiment. Let's see what happens together. next time on The Inbetween. Yeah, she's been in for a while.
Speak to me, see me, see what I've been doing in here. No, not one person in the attorney general's office in New Hampshire, from government, from corrections or anything, has ever met with me for two seconds of my life to even know. They did not want it. So the state was gambling on the fact that if they keep him quiet, don't put him in the trial, that they could have this slam-down case that they put together.
The attorney general is afraid I'll get on the stand and say she's innocent. And it's almost like retaliation, saying that they're cold or hysterical or manipulative. when it's just that they're seeing a situation where a woman has power over a man and the way to fight back about that is to label them all those things. There's 85 people serving life without parole in New Hampshire right now.
Pam's pretty far down the list. And that's because she's never accepted responsibility for what she does. And until she does, she'll never get pardoned. But she can't do that. I'm going to tell you something now that has been so hard for me. And it's just, Pam, don't be selfish. you fucking did it so you can go home so your mother can rest Pam, did you have anything to do with your husband's murder?
We ended up divorced, but I still cared about him. And if somebody murdered him, I would be devastated. The shit he's saying, he's got to have something to back it up if he wants people to believe him because it is pretty explosive shit. If her fingerprints were on the locking mechanism, then... Pam didn't let the boys in. And that blows the entire prosecution's case.
I had no idea, and I'm not the only one, because the judge came in, sent its terms mandatory in the state of New Hampshire, life in prison with no parole. Life with no parole, she, you know, that's forever. That's not fair. Stay pleased. Hi, my name is Mel Barrett. I'm an investigative reporter and I'm trying to track down or try to figure out where evidence might be from a case that happened in the 90s.
The in-between is written, edited, and hosted by me, Mel Barrett. I also do some of the audio editing, but I couldn't content edit this sucker without the amazing Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Amber Hunt, my editor. Amber keeps me on track and helps cut the bullshit. Thanks, Amber. Thanks as well to my research partner and cousin-in-law, Lacey Umble. I also couldn't get this done without the kick-ass team at Grab Bag CoLab, Amber Hunt, Amanda Rossman, and Daisy Egan.
The in-between wouldn't exist without the encouragement and support of my dear friend, fellow podcaster, and all-around rock star, Yellen Marie Marsh. I love you, Ellen. Thanks for all you do. And I want to send another shout out to Rebecca Lavoie over at Crime Writers On, who gave me my first feedback on the series and encouraged me to pitch it. Thanks, Rebecca. Finally, my love, my partner, Lindsay.
Your support and belief in me always keeps me moving forward, even when the way ahead is very dark. Thanks for doing this with me. Also, your reenactments are my favorite. If you want to dive deeper into the cases I cover, visit inbetweenpod.com for source material and updates. You can find all the episodes and bonus content of the Inbetween on the Grab Bag CoLab main Patreon feed. Until the next time. Be good people and don't do murder.
In the news this week, the Have I Got News For You podcast is back for series two. I can't believe they've let us back for a second series. We'll be taking you through the big and not so big stories in the news this week when the TV show can't. to LizTrust. We'll make sure to give every story and subject the complete lack of respect it deserves. Listen and subscribe to In The News This Week, the Have I Got News For You podcast wherever you get your podcasts.