Teach Me to Kill

  Business matters settled, their connection to Pam being all but completely through Billy, the boys would discuss the murder virtually every day.

  JR’s grandmother, Mary Chase, owned a camper that she kept adjacent to the Lattimes’ house, where the boys liked to kick back and talk. Inevitably, their conversations would drift onto how best to eliminate Pam’s husband. Sometimes they talked about it at Raymond Fowler’s house.

  Some twenty discussions about the murder took place, mainly involving Billy, JR, and Pete. The boys spoke, for instance, about the most effective method. Someone mentioned having it look like a mugging gone wrong. Or they could make it a drive-by shooting; they could steal a car and gun down Greg outside of his office in Nashua.

  In time, they would settle on Pam’s basic plan, complete with the wearing of dark clothes, the parking by the shopping plaza, and setting up the burglary.

  Inherent in such a plot, however, were some problems: Pete and JR never completely accepted killing Greg with a gun and it caused some friction among the friends. Repeatedly, Flynn said that Pam wanted Greg shot, but Pam’s desires carried less weight with the boys than they did with Billy. To them, it was as if Pam, who would be doing nothing but sitting in a meeting over in Hampton, wanted everything her way.

  Like Fowler before him, Pete figured a knife would be quieter than a gun, no small matter since the murder was going to be in a high-density condo complex. A knife would also be more difficult for the investigators to trace.

  Where were they even going to get a gun? JR’s father, of course, had a collection of firearms in his bedroom—among them more than a dozen rifles—shotguns to muzzleloaders—and two handguns, a .22-caliber Ruger and .38 Charter Arms.

  Despite Billy’s requests, JR told the boys to forget about using any of them. He knew full well that his father’s guns were not to be touched without permission and his old man’s word was law.

  What’s more, it was impractical to use one of those guns. Vance would know it was gone if they dumped it somewhere, which would bring a hell to pay all its own. And if they returned the weapon, ballistic tests might someday connect it to Greg’s death.

  So the boys asked around. Pete Randall would say in court that he knew a drug dealer in nearby Haverhill, Massachusetts, known as Zeppelin, who had plenty of street connections. Besides selling cocaine, Zeppelin also bought stolen goods and moved them into the black market. When Billy and Pete Randall inquired about a gun, Zeppelin said he might be able to help, but the price could be as steep as $300. Billy reported that to Pam, who said it was too expensive. She would not pay.

  The boys also talked about transportation. Someone suggested Pete’s mother’s car, but that was soon rejected. Stealing one was also out, as the last thing they would need on the night of the murder was to be pulled over in a hot vehicle. Pam’s CRX, easily identified with its vanity plate, was also inadequate.

  Soon, however, the final plan began to materialize. JR had hesitated to commit himself, but by Monday, April 30, he said OK. He would later say that he thought his friends would never kill someone anyway, so he might as well come along.

  Certainly the murder seemed dubious. Among other things, simply too many people knew the crime was in the offing. There was, of course, the three boys and Pam. But Raymond Fowler was on the fringes as well. And Cecelia. And Billy’s friend Sal Parks, to whom Flynn revealed much and at one point even tried to talk into driving. Raymond Fowler, court records show, had mentioned bits and pieces of the previous attempt to others as well.

  Equally troublesome—or at least it should have been—was that at least a dozen other teenagers, probably more, had seen evidence or heard rumors of Billy’s affair with Pam.

  But events marched on, and Lattime, who figured his friends lacked the cold-bloodedness to kill someone, became the linchpin of the whole matter.

  JR was the only one of the three boys with a driver’s license, and he often borrowed his grandmother’s 1978 Chevrolet Impala, a yellow four-door. Originally, toward the end of April, JR had planned to use Mary Chase’s car to go job hunting, but now he agreed to drive it to Derry.

  Lattime’s grandmother owned a place in Seabrook, but she was staying in Bradford, Massachusetts, a little town just over the state line, near Haverhill, where she was caring for an elderly woman. Mary Chase had planned to bring the vehicle to JR’s house on May 1, so the car would be there when the boys returned from school. JR, in turn, would take her back to Bradford.

  As for the murder weapon, Randall had made up his mind that he would stab Greg, using whatever cutlery he could find around the condo. JR agreed that his father’s .38-caliber Charter Arms revolver could serve as a backup.

  Pamela, in the meantime, was also making sure that her end was hammered down.

  Although Pam might well have felt something similar to affection for Cecelia Pierce and Billy Flynn, her first priority appeared to have been making sure that the kids, easily malleable thus far, stayed in her camp as her husband’s final day edged closer.

  While Greg was in Rhode Island, Pam allowed Cecelia Pierce to stay with her in Derry the week of Monday, April 23. Cecelia got permission from her mother—Pam, after all, could drive her to and from school every day—and in so doing won at least four nights of freedom from her family, plenty of time to drive Pam’s car to practice for her upcoming driver’s test, and a chance, quite simply, to play at being a grown-up. That Monday night, Cecelia’s friend Karen joined them at the condo, and they watched some videos and talked.

  Tuesday night and part of Wednesday night, Billy also stayed, and had sex with Pam again. They also went out to see Pretty Woman and watched some videos.

  At one point, Pam, Billy, and Cecelia took the CRX and cruised around Hood Commons. Pam pointed out where Flynn and the boys could park the car, the dumpsters behind which they could change their clothes, and the grassy hill that would lead them to the back of Summerhill Condominiums.

  On Wednesday morning, Billy called his mother from school to explain why he failed to make it home the night before. He had been at a party, he said, and with everyone drunk, he thought it would be safer to stay put than to have someone drive him.

  Pamela was busy providing explanations for her activities as well.

  That spring, Winnacunnet High School and Pam’s employer SAU 21 were moving toward honoring her request to teach a course, “Mass Media: An Introduction to TV Production,” the following September. Pam lacked teaching credentials, but permission was likely to be granted based on her education in television work. Her wanting to get involved seemed to be positive. Most schools appreciate it when talented people can help out in select places.

  At the same time, the SAU 21 building, where Pam worked, was to be renovated. The media center’s space would be cut back so that the business staff could have more room. Her employers had discussed the matter with her at length and Pam agreed with the plans.

  What was mildly unusual, though, was Pam’s interest in following these matters through by attending a series of school board meetings, both at the high school and at SAU 21. For the most part the meetings were administrative, sometimes for no other purpose than setting the agenda for other meetings.

  She had gone to one interminable SAU 21 meeting on April 5, a struggle no doubt for even some of those who were required to be in attendance, and was planning to be at the continuation on April 12, possibly the day that Flynn and Fowler drove to Derry. Her boss, Norman Katner, then superintendent of SAU 21, vaguely recollects taking her aside. Pam had no reason to attend that evening’s Administrative Operations Committee meeting, he said. Non-administrators rarely came to such sessions.

  It was true that several matters that involved Pam were scheduled for discussion—her new course, a pay raise, and the renovations. But the committee was only making recommendations and setting the agenda for the larger school board meeting on May 1.

  Still, Pam attended. The session lasted three hours. The committee overwhelmingl
y agreed to recommend that she be allowed to teach the course and that she receive a pay raise to $26,000. As Katner had said, her attendance was unnecessary.

  As for the upcoming May 1 meeting, Pam again did not have to be there. The recommending committee obviously supported both her course and her pay raise, relatively minor matters. They were all but shoo-ins for approval by the larger board.

  The renovation questions, meanwhile, simply were out of Pam’s bailiwick. She had given her opinion long before and now it was an administrative matter.

  On Monday, April 30, though, Pam told Fred Engelbach, an assistant superintendent, that after all the planning she now had second thoughts. Out of the blue, almost at the last minute, she no longer was willing to surrender the office space for the business staff. She needed more storage space, a problem Engelbach saw as miniscule.

  Yet to Pam it was a most important issue. “I do recall that she indicated a very, I would say, violent objection to the whole plan,” Engelbach would later testify.

  Disturbed, Katner called a meeting with Pam and the assistant superintendent for Tuesday. The matter had to be ironed out before that evening’s session.

  ◆◆◆

  For many people, autumn is the loveliest season in New Hampshire. That is strange somehow because the fall signals that an ending is near. The October chill warns of winter and its hardships. The brilliant foliage in the end is simply leaves that are dying. All around, autumn is a reminder that nothing survives forever.

  Less renowned is the New Hampshire spring, when life comes to those same leaves. Anyone who has seen the month of May arrive in the state knows well that green in all its shades can inspire as much wonder and awe as any offering of scarlet and yellow.

  Spring in the Granite State is not about retreat or hibernation or dying. It is about living. It is about being young, laughing a silly laugh with friends, and knowing that troubled lives can start anew.

  Yet danger lurks in the New Hampshire spring. For sometimes, even on the most beautiful days, electrical storms kick up out of nowhere. With the mountains and trees covering the distant skyline, storms can creep in undetected, leaving boaters, for instance, who were tranquilly dropping lines out on a pristine lake one minute, madly paddling for shore the next.

  And it is strange to think that on such a day, such a deadly force can be rolling ever closer without one even knowing it is coming.

  On May 1,1990, Gregory Smart was back in the routine of selling life insurance. Around nine, he left for work for his usual morning of phone calls, paperwork, and an appointment or two.

  As was his custom, Smart took the afternoon off and planned to see some customers that night. He was driving home on Route 102 when he saw Tom Parilla, his best man at his wedding just a year earlier, heading the other way. Greg flicked his headlights on and off. “Hey!” Parilla yelled. The two friends waved as they passed each other.

  The day, which had started out cloudy, turned nicer by the time Greg dropped by to see his parents. He talked with Bill and Judy Smart for a bit, romped around the house with his younger brother’s baby daughter, fixed a flat tire, then slapped his father on the back and said he would see him later.

  That night, Greg had scheduled two appointments, one in Salem and another in Pelham. He pulled on a pair of gray slacks, gray sports coat, and a light green shirt and green plaid tie. Around dinnertime, he got in his Toyota pickup and headed out.

  His last sales call of the day was to customers he had never met, Charles and Nancy Sargent of Pelham. Smart was to review their existing policy and talk to them about supplementing it. Greg had arrived at 7:30, about a half an hour early, and sat down with the Sargents at their kitchen table to make his pitch.

  They talked business for a while and by the time Greg was through, the husband who had turned sixty-five that day, was writing out a check for the new policy. Before Greg left, he chatted with the couple a bit about basketball—the Chicago Bulls were on television—and some aspect of the Sargents’ television remote control that intrigued him.

  Finally, he said good-bye and climbed into his truck for the half-hour drive home to Derry. It was 8:30.

  ◆◆◆

  On most mornings, Pam was the first one out the door at 4E, Misty Morning Drive. On May 1, though, she had the evening meeting and stayed around the condo until quarter to ten before leaving for Hampton.

  Billy Flynn would later say that Pam dropped by his locker at the high school that day. She told the boy that she had left the bulkhead doors open at her place. Everything was set and ready to go.

  At work that morning, Pam met with Katner and Engelbach to discuss her sudden change of mind about the renovation plans, but by the time the meeting was over neither of the men was exactly sure what her strenuous objections were all about. Still, she insisted that she would be at that evening’s meeting in case any of the board members had questions for her.

  Katner was agitated. “Pam, you do what you have to do and I’ll do what I have to do tomorrow,” he said.

  The superintendent was sending a message: If Pam dared to go over his head and voice her concerns directly to the board, there would be hell to pay in the morning. He was prepared to call her on the carpet and give her a lesson in protocol. The renovation question was an administrative matter and she was out of line, particularly since it seemed to be such a minor dispute.

  Fine, Pam said, but she would be at the meeting all the same.

  For the remainder of the workday, Pam did not accomplish much. At lunchtime, most of the SAU 21 staff, about fifteen people, got together at the Library Restaurant in nearby Portsmouth. The supervisors, including Pam, were taking their secretaries out for a long lunch. It was about 2:30 when Pam got back to work.

  When she did, it was not very long before the telephone rang. It was Billy Flynn. A snag had come up.

  Flynn, JR, and Pete had taken the school bus to Lattime’s house that afternoon. When they arrived, though, Mary Chase’s car was not there. JR’s grandmother had forgotten to drive it over and when Lattime called she told him that if he wanted to borrow it he would have to find a ride to Bradford.

  Billy asked Pam if she would give them a lift. She said OK. She would be over in a little while.

  Vance and Diane Lattime were at work that afternoon when their seventeen-year-old son stepped into their bedroom, went to the dresser, and pulled open the top drawer. There before him was his father’s underwear, a coin collection, some rolls of quarters, and, in the right hand corner, on top of some personal papers, the gun, a Charter Arms .38-caliber snubnose revolver, in its holster.

  The weapon, dubbed Undercover by the manufacturer, was stainless steel with a brown grip, and had originally belonged to JR’s great-grandparents, Naomi and Don Rogers.

  Naomi was 65 when she bought it at Big Al’s Gun Shop in Seabrook in 1981. Her husband had been a hefty, active man until he became bedridden with cancer. Then one night someone broke into their home on rough-and-tumble Collins Street. When the old man managed to make his way into the hallway to see what was going on, the hoodlums easily knocked him down. Worried afterwards that he was unable to protect his wife, Don Rogers instructed her to buy the gun, just in case.

  As far as the Lattimes knew, neither of JR’s great-grandparents had ever fired the handgun.

  Then in 1983 after Don Rogers died, Vance Lattime paid the widow about two hundred dollars for it. Lattime, who liked to hunt and target shoot, did not need the gun for protection. There were enough weapons around his house to stave off a small invasionary force. Vance wanted the gun for sentimental reasons: he wanted something to remind him of Don, one of his favorite relatives.

  JR most likely was the first person to fire the gun. It had stayed in its box for several years. Then Vance took to bringing it along when he and JR would go bow hunting in the backwoods of northern New Hampshire, an extra precaution should they ever stumble upon an angry bear or some such threat.

  The son would regularly pester h
is father about letting him try out the .38. Finally, one day in 1988 at a gravel pit in Pittsburg, New Hampshire, near the Canadian border, Vance said OK. JR set up some doughnuts as targets and at a distance of about thirty yards fired off less than thirty rounds.

  After that, the gun was left in the bedroom dresser and largely forgotten.

  Now, however, JR took the weapon from its holster and closed the drawer. He strode out to the kitchen and set the gun, unloaded, on the table, so either Bill or Pete could pick it up when they came in.

  Then JR went down the hall to talk to Ralph Welch to distract him. Welch, to whom they all had been so close, was now too far out of the circle—especially to be told about something like this.

  Ralph had been in on his share of scams all right. But none of the boys thought he would be so crazy about this one.

  ◆◆◆

  JR Lattime loved cars. He loved to drive them, work on them, talk about them. It mattered little what car you owned. JR wanted to know how you liked it, how fast it could go, and any specs you could remember.

  So, when Pam pulled up in her Honda CRX, JR saw a golden opportunity. He didn’t care to scrunch up in the back with Billy. And he had his license, so what the heck. He asked Pam to let him drive to Bradford.

  Pam agreed and stretched out in the back of the car with Flynn, their legs between the front seats and their heads toward the rear. Pete Randall got in the front passenger seat. And off JR drove.

  Lattime had a notorious “need for speed.” He already had a couple speeding tickets on his driving record. But no matter. Merging into the Massachusetts-bound highway traffic, he wanted to get a feel for the CRX’s power. He gave it some gas. Then some more. And more.

  If the final result of that day was not so tragic, it would be the stuff of comedy. For there was JR Lattime, Coke-bottle bespectacled, pushing eighty-five miles per hour—possibly even faster—as he drove along a busy highway to pick up a getaway car from his grandmother to be used in a murder that evening.