Teach Me to Kill

by Stephen Sawicki

  “The other day I just had—my God, I don’t know what to call it—a breakdown or something, when sometimes when I’m crying so hard I feel like I can’t even breathe.

  “And there’s nights when I pray to God that I’ll just die in my sleep because I want to be with Greg and I just pray that God will just kill me. But there are times that I’ve sat in here and wondered if I slit my wrists or if I hung myself which way I would die faster.

  “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t such a wimp, you know? That I would just kill myself. I just can’t because it’s like everyone would just be so sad. And I know, I just see what death does to people.”

  We talked about many things. Her high school days, career aspirations, the night she became engaged, her marriage.

  Pam was concerned about how Greg would be portrayed, so I asked her to talk about him, tossing her a softball of a question: What did you and Greg have in common?

  “I don’t know,” Pam said. “We’re both like, I don’t know. That’s a good question. I never really thought about that.

  “Well, one thing I remember that we used to do a lot is that we both liked just being around each other, and we’re both like real cuddly people and we liked sitting around just being together and stuff.

  “But as far as doing things, I don’t even really know because like Greg loves the winter and I hate it. I love summer and the sun and the beach and I think I’ve been to the beach once or twice with Greg, both times dragged. And he used to go on the weekends dirt bike riding and I would go to the beach. Or he likes to go skiing. And I hate skiing.

  “So we did have a lot of differences. But I think one of the things that made us have a good relationship is that we never set standards for each other. We just accepted the things that were different about each other. I never, ever once said to Greg and he never once said to me, ‘You can’t go out with your friends,’ or ‘You can’t do that.’”

  What’s more, she said, the couple seldom had disputes. When they did, everything was usually resolved quickly. “Our life was so good that we didn’t even really have any problems,” Pam said.

  Eventually, we moved on to discuss the charges against her. To Pam, the accusations were ludicrous and surely the public must see it the same way. She talked about how immediately after the murder people were saying what a wonderful marriage the couple had, but now that she had been arrested they had completely new versions.

  “I can only speculate, but if somebody was going to murder somebody, I would think that there would be signs,” Pam said. “You know, the relationship would be bad; they’d be getting into fights or something; there’d be like abuse of some sort; people would be noticing these things.

  “And then they would try and get separated or try and get divorced and then go through counseling. I mean, none of these things happened.

  “The first step is not just that you murder somebody. I mean, I don’t think that’s any step. It’s not a resolution.

  “When I hear about somebody murdering their spouse, it’s usually like a cycle of abuse or something, like an escalating situation. It’s not like one day they got in a fight and the next day they were murdered.”

  What motive could she possibly have? Pam asked. Her marriage was happy. Financially she was fine. To suggest that she killed Greg for $140,000 in life insurance was outlandish.

  “I had every single thing that I wanted,” she said. “There’s not a single thing that I didn’t have that I wanted. Not only that, but it’s like a notion that you could just kill somebody that you married, that you loved, that you planned to spend the rest of your life with, for money is just crazy to me.

  “Money only lasts so long. If I’m so frigging money mad, why would I be going out with a sixteen-year-old person that doesn’t even have a job? To me it would make sense if I had like a forty-year-old lover that’s like some millionaire or something.”

  So who did it and why? Pam said that she was reluctant to say that the arrested teenagers were involved. Just like herself, perhaps they were being falsely accused.

  “I always have this picture in my mind of the killer,” Pam said. “You know, this drug-addict scum with like long greasy hair, this like big man with this big green jacket. This is what I pictured the killer to be. Not this little kid who is standing in front of me. That’s why I’m just so baffled by the whole thing. Because for me, I almost want the killer to be some scum that fits in my mind of someone who would have done this.

  “I feel like that when I found out who the killer was that I was going to find out that this was going to make some psychotic sense. Not that any reason would ever make sense for murdering Greg. But that person was going to be like on drugs or whacked out or something crazy like that. They were going to have been like someone who escaped from the mental institution and was nuts. It wasn’t going to be someone that went to school the next day.”

  But as matters stood, that was whom the state of New Hampshire was accusing. School kids, among them a boy named Billy Flynn, whom Pam insisted she never knew intimately.

  In a retrospective article, months later, Nancy West, the reporter from the Union Leader who interviewed Smart on June 21, would write that she had been struck by how Pam rarely mentioned Greg in the course of her interview, and Billy’s name “seemed to come easy to her lips.”

  So it was during my interview with the widow. When discussing Greg, it was often in the terms one sees on greeting cards. She spoke of his “unconditional love” for her, but she never could easily articulate the reasons she loved him.

  Nancy West hit it right on the head. Flynn simply seemed easier for Pam to discuss, even though she was not admitting to her relationship with the boy.

  “The way I remember him is like, if you were walking around and you were carrying something that was wicked heavy or something, Bill would say, ‘Do you want some help with that?’ He was just, like, kind.

  “I used to think he was one of the most sensitive people I’ve ever known. Yeah, he was just really sensitive about things. If you would ask him something about his father, he had a hard tome talking about it. But once he would, he would come out with all these really sensitive things. He would be able to go into deep feelings and stuff. But you would have to get it out of him.

  “He cared about things. He cared about people and stuff. And when I would talk about things, he always seemed like he was interested in what I was talking about.

  “I don’t know. If he was totally in love with me and murdered my husband, then obviously that’s why he was interested. But, you know, I don’t know that.”

  We also talked about Cecelia Pierce. Pam never explained why her former intern would, as Smart said, lie to the police and destroy Smart’s life. Pam simply hinted at the possibilities, which standing alone were hardly credible.

  “There’s speculation about Cecelia possibly having a crush on Bill or some involvement with Bill and feeling like I caused Bill to do this,” Pam said. “And that if Bill’s going to jail, I’m going, too. Like she’s going to be Bill’s savior.

  “I just don’t know. I can’t give you reasons. The only reason that makes any sense is if she was personally involved. In some way small or large. And everybody she knows was suddenly in jail, everybody else that was involved. Maybe she thought she better do something fast or she’s going to be where everybody else is.

  “And you know what? I can’t even tell you that I hate Cecelia. Because I feel sorry for her if her life is this bad and minimal, that she’s planning to do this to ruin my entire life. Then I feel sorry for her. I do.

  “This is going to sound crazy, but I pray for people like her, that their lives won’t be so bad anymore. I feel sorry for every single person that’s involved in this, because it’s not happy for everyone.”

  And finally, why? If the boys did kill Greg and Pam was not involved, why would they do it?

  “They could have done it for a lot of reasons,” said Pam. “They could have been burglarizing my hou
se and brought a gun because that’s just how they were; they thought they were tough or whatever; and Greg came home and they freaked out; and he saw their faces—or I don’t know—and they killed him.

  “Or they could have drove there and wanted to kill him because—you know, I don’t know—one of ’em, like they said, could have been in love with me or something and had some crazy idea.

  “But that doesn’t make any sense to me because why would the other two go, or the other three?

  “Nothing makes any sense to me. Even the notion that they're accusing me of this doesn’t make any sense to me.

  “You're going to say that—that I’m in love with some sixteen-year-old lover? Why wouldn’t I just get a divorce? And if I’m so money mad that I’m murdering my husband for insurance, what is a sixteen-year-old lover going to offer me?

  “I mean, what was I going to do? Run off into the sunset with my sixteen-year-old lover, who’s not even a junior in high school? It’s stupid.

  “My worst fear is that the kids are going to realize if they're guilty that they're facing life in prison and that if they jump on the bandwagon of everybody else’s story, which the state wants them to, then they're going to get some kind of deal.

  “And I swear, I’m going to be like a lunatic if the person who murdered my husband walks. I want whoever murdered Greg to go to jail for the rest of their life.

  “But it’s not me.”

  Chapter 11

  One of the first things young prosecutors learn is never to be afraid to point at the defendant.

  To point during one’s opening and closing statement is a sign of strength and self-confidence.

  It also sends an unequivocal message to a juror’s subconscious.

  And that message is: I am not afraid. I am not afraid of this person. I am not afraid to tell you that this person has committed a crime against all of us. And you should not be afraid to say he is guilty.

  Paul Anthony Maggiotto was never afraid to point.

  He had been working in the attorney general’s office only eight months when he became lead prosecutor, or what is known as “first chair,” for the State of New Hampshire v. Pamela Smart.

  Maggiotto, who is lean, with jet-black hair, and a full moustache, grew up on the west side of Buffalo, New York, a predominantly Italian section that also once was home to Mark Sisti. Four of Maggiotto’s six siblings, in fact, went to Canisius College, the small Catholic school in Buffalo where Sisti did his undergraduate work.

  The prosecutor himself went to the University of Buffalo, where he majored in English and sociology. He got involved in public interest work in New York, ski bummed in Vermont, and managed his father’s gas station, Maggiotto’s Mobil, before going to law school at Northeastern in Boston.

  Maggiotto met his wife at Northeastern and they both ended up with jobs in New York. She was an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. He became a prosecutor in Brooklyn, where he started out working on misdemeanor sex crimes and moved his way up to homicides.

  It was in Brooklyn that Maggiotto’s fellow prosecutors took to calling him “the Finger,” or as they liked to say it, passing him in the hallway with a smile, “the Fingah, the Fingah.”

  The nickname was derived from the movie The Sunshine Boys, where in one memorable scene Walter Matthau complains about George Burns always poking him in the chest with his “fingah.”

  What Maggiotto had done to earn the moniker was that he took to heart the advice about pointing at the defendant. In his summations, Maggiotto would point relentlessly. It wasn’t long before people noticed that he was pointing maybe a bit more than necessary.

  Prosecutor Paul Maggiotto (Mike Ross/ Foster's Daily Democrat)

  In fact, when he left the Brooklyn DA’s office to enjoy the outdoors and slower pace of New Hampshire, one of his colleagues made a photocopy of a finger and presented it to him as a farewell gift.

  Maggiotto, age thirty-four, took on the Pam Smart case in December 1990. The original lead prosecutor, Cynthia White, had a scheduling conflict and opted for another murder case she had been working.

  Maggiotto’s second chair was Diane Nicolosi, who at thirty-one years old brought a range of experience to the Smart case that none of the lawyers on either side could match.

  A psychology major at the University of New Hampshire, Nicolosi had worked with troubled youths after graduation. She was also the only woman to be working the case when it came to trial.

  As a result, Nicolosi had unique insight into the minds of the teenagers the case revolved around. For one thing, she had an ability to talk to kids, which helped her to establish a rapport with Ralph Welch, for instance. She also had the understanding of teenage girls and patience to work with Cecelia Pierce, who at times would become moody during the endless stream of questions.

  Nicolosi, whose long face and prominent features were much in contrast to the defendant’s, was also the only lawyer who had worked the case from day one, when Gregory Smart’s body was found. Only Dan Pelletier knew the case better.

  What Diane was lacking, though, was trial experience. She had only recently joined the AG’s criminal division after two a half years of working civil cases in transportation and construction.

  Nicolosi liked the people side of her work. At the same time, though, she was remarkably reserved for someone whose job demanded that she stand in the spotlight and ask twelve people to convict murderers. Outside court, she avoided reporters and said little to them when she did talk.

  Prosecutor Diane Nicolosi (Mike Ross/ Foster's Daily Democrat)

  As it would turn out, Nicolosi proved to fall in well as the prosecution’s second chair. She could bring Maggiotto up to speed on the case. At the same time she balanced his well-developed ego and unabashed style of prosecuting.

  Twomey and Sisti, meanwhile, were pushing hard for Pam Smart’s trial to begin as soon as possible. February 4 could not come soon enough.

  Billy Flynn, Pete Randall, and JR Lattime each had to move through the machinery of the certification hearings in district court in Salem, as well as the follow-up process in Rockingham County Superior Court before they could face trial as adults.

  If the boys somehow remained in the juvenile justice system, they would undoubtedly put in their two years at the Adolescent Detention Center and never testify about their crime.

  On the other hand, if they were finally certified—and it seemed inevitable that they would be—their lawyers would probably want to cut deals with the state. Tried as adults, each of the boys faced the possibility of life in prison. Surely the prosecution would be willing to cut time off their sentences in exchange for the boys’ testimony against Pam.

  It was the last thing Smart or her lawyers needed.

  As it stood going into 1991, however, none of the kids were breaking rank. There had been discussions, according to JR’s parents, that he could receive five to ten years if he would turn state’s evidence against Pam and his friends, but the boy refused. None was willing to testify against the others.

  One month before Pam’s trial was to have started, Bill Spencer went on the air with a report that a Hillsborough County grand jury in Manchester had secretly indicted Pam for attempting to hire a hit man to have Cecelia Pierce murdered.

  Early in her stay at the Goffstown prison, Pam supposedly asked Marianne Moses, an inmate doing two to four years for welfare fraud, to help her find someone to kill Cecelia.

  The man who would arrange the hit, Moses said, was the first of her five husbands. Supposedly a bank robber in hiding, he told Moses that Pierce could be done in for fifteen thousand dollars. Moses would later say that Pam tried to secure the money from Linda Wojas by saying it was needed for attorneys’ fees. “I told Pam they don’t take credit cards,” Moses later told Manchester magazine.

  Besides the hit-man charge, Pam was accused of asking Moses’ son George to testify that he overheard Cecelia Pierce saying that she fabricated the story about Pam’s involvement. Geo
rge, who attended Winnacunnet High School, was now living with relatives in Massachusetts.

  Officially, the grand jury charges were for criminal solicitation to commit murder, criminal solicitation to commit tampering with a witness, and tampering with a witness. Pam would come to plead not guilty to all charges.

  With Spencer having reported the secret indictments, the court unsealed them and all the newspapers jumped in. “These indictments as far as we’re concerned are just garbage,” Mark Sisti was quoted as saying. The defense lawyers called it a “publicity ploy” on the eve of jury selection and said the charges would self-destruct in court.

  Back in December, Pam, too, complained about the impending charges: “I’m going to drop over dead if someone can get indicted on the word of an incarcerated individual,” she said. “I mean, what is the justice system coming to?”

  Maggiotto, meanwhile, had little to say about the indictments except for a remark that found its way onto page one of the Nashua Telegraph. “Someday some of you in the press are going to pick up on the fact that Pam is not so smart,” he said, trying to be funny but never expecting to be quoted.

  Twomey and Sisti must have had a good laugh as well. Normally, Twomey might have picked up the phone and simply told Maggiotto to lay off. But now, irritated at the prosecutor for his attempts at preventing them from deposing Cecelia Pierce, the defense lawyers loaded the cannon and fired off a motion to the court: Maggiotto’s remark, they said, might have prejudiced the case.

  Obviously, the comment was not a case breaker. Judge Gray, in fact, would merely note the motion. At the same time, however, Gray told the lawyers to behave, urging both sides to be “mindful of the code of conduct and the requirements of this noble process in which we are all involved.”