Sawicki - Teach Me to Kill

TEACH ME TO KILL was originally published by AVON BOOKS, a division of the Hearst Corporation, in November 1991.

Copyright 1991 by Stephen Sawicki

Cover design of 2019 edition by JD and J Design LLC

Rear cover photographs courtesy (left to right): Tami Plyler, Don Himsel

All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law.

For information address: stephensawicki@yahoo.com.

THE STORY BEHIND THE HEADLINES IN THE YEAR'S MOST SENSATIONAL MURDER TRIAL

On the night of May 1, 1990, a single shot shattered the peaceful town of Derry, New Hampshire and catapulted it into the spotlight of worldwide attention. Twenty-four-year-old Gregory Smart lay dead, a bullet from a .38 revolver in his head. A year later, his twenty-three-year old bride of one year stood trial for his murder in a sensational courtroom drama of lust, hate, and seduction that mesmerized the nation.

Here is the scandalous story behind the headlines. Written by Stephen Sawicki, the only national reporter to cover the case from arrest to conviction, he has interviewed friends, neighbors, former classmates and family members of both killer and victim to write THE SHOCKING TRUE STORY OF PAMELA SMART--THE SCHOOLTEACHER WHO GAVE LESSONS IN LOVE...AND MURDER.

Teach Me to Kill

Stephen Sawicki

About this book

For a brief interval at the start of 1990, no story in America was any bigger. Within just a month or two of Stuarts body being hauled from the Mystic River, Pam was grooming Billy to kill her husband. I have no proof, but I have long suspected that the Chuck Stuart case, and the massive attention that it drew around the country, went a long way in inspiring Pam Smart to have her husband murdered. She had her particular reasons, yes, but somewhere in her mind I also think that she believed that she could pull off what Chuck Stuart could not. That case, which Stuart set up to seem like a carjacking, also involved supposedly stolen jewelry. And, the explanation that Pam unconvincingly tried to float about Gregs killerrobbery by a desperate and mysterious strangeris certainly a familiar diversionary tactic in the true-crime catalog.

In 1992, when I started my next booka project far from true crime and the likes of Ms. Smartsomeone who I met, for reasons that remain bewildering, wrote to Pam and informed her of what I was working on. Better at responding to letters from complete strangers than I am, Pam wrote this individual back and took the opportunity to charge that Id only written Teach Me to Kill for the money. There is truth to that, of course (such troves of riches you have never seen!) But one would think that someone who herself has been accused of being "money mad" would be more circumspect before making such remarks about another person. Especially if those comments might raise questions about that person's well-cultivated reputation for allowing others to pay for lunch.

These days, Pam Smart still resurfaces a few times a year. Someone will air another exclusive interview with her from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York State, to which she was transferred in 1993. Or she will have come up with some new angle in seeking release. Or a television production company or documentary film maker will revisit the whole affair, sometimes with a remarkably nave perspective. (One documentarian passionately questioned why those who actually killed Greg Smart should now be out of prison on plea bargains while Pam has no chance for parole. Id like to ask this director if he has any sense whatsoever about how the justice system in America often works, or at least why he wasn't publicly defending poor Mafia boss John Gotti when Sammy the Bull Gravano copped his advantageous plea.) All of the new stories about Pam Smart are billed as something special, but really, it is the same fiction that she has been peddling since 1991.