Episode 463: The Pamela Smart Case (Part 1) | Morbid

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there's a fucking fruit fly in my face and he's about to catch these goddamn hands it's fruit fly season you get the apple cider vinegar out fellas get it out everywhere on these little bitches it's that time of year someone's gonna be like i love fruit flies and you shouldn't kill you bitches um no they're not great no i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm not a fan i will never be a fan just like i'll never be a fan of house centipedes oh god yeah even though i we got to see a lot of our network um babies this the last week yeah and i was talking to sean um from mostly horror go listen to it it's great and he

was saying he would much prefer a house centipede over over a cockroach and I said I would take neither please.

You know what I just heard in my head choose your fighter.

That's yes that's basically the conversation we had and I can't choose.

I don't want either.

No that's a Sophie's choice.

I can't do it. I can't do it.

No. And actually yesterday this is pretty funny and also embarrassing.

Oh I like this story.

I was getting I was getting it was Mother's Day so I got my like allotted you know however much time just by myself to get ready like that was my like anytime I just want to take a shower alone like without kids being like hello like can I ask you questions while you're showering and just like put makeup on do my hair you look super cute in your hair I was like damn girl appreciated that's what happens when I get uninterrupted time to do my hair but I was doing that and I had picked up my towel to get something and my hair tie a black hair tie fell out of it onto the bathroom floor and then somehow

it rolled on its side i've seen that so it rolled very quickly across the floor i thought it was some kind of awful bug that fell out of my towel oh my god and i yelped so loudly i don't blame you i have never yelped like that for like like a natural reaction you just yelped yelped i yelped straight up yelps like my dogs like oh it was like i can't even recreate it because it was just a real like organic nervous system response can't happen a place you don't even know of but when it settled on the floor and i said oh that's the hair elastic i was very embarrassed all by myself that's that's funny

though it was funny but it was very embarrassing no one was there to witness it but it was embarrassing did you lol at yourself i did i laughed immediately afterwards but i was like damn that was really ridiculous and then you look in the mirror and you're like that's a moment we just had literally like i looked at myself and i was like don't tell anyone but here you are telling everyone here i am that's hilarious but yeah that's how afraid i am of things that run really fast on the floor i don't like it nobody needs that many legs no no like thank goodness i have two dogs now who will eat everything

never on across the floor you i don't want them to eat a house centipede yeah they're fine they're good all right how do we change the subject they're also gonna be fucking huge these dogs what do you mean gonna be they already are massive they're getting huge and they're just gloops and i love them they're like 35 pounds yeah they're like huge dickens mcgee's they're getting big and they're gonna be like 100 pounds those are my ladies those are my hellhounds 200 pounds of badassery oh yeah they are they're literally gonna be 100 pounds each i think and like give or take we're basically they're

gonna and they are already like ready to protect my kids um with their lives oh hell yeah i'm just gonna train them to like eat people alive yeah i'm totally kidding so don't call like an animal shelter or something i don't know i'm not training them to to eat people don't worry no no never they just eat like dog food yeah and like they'll just eat you if you're a dick yeah don't be a dick yeah because they'll eat you don't be a dick because my dogs will eat you glitch and sydney will eat your ass so i'm just kidding everybody funny but they're great and you know now i think it's time to get into

some true crime because we have had our chitty chat our little chit chat a little chit chat chit chat pit pat um yeah this is honestly a long one settle in and it's gonna be a two -parter oh we got a two -parter so get ready for a cliffhanger my guys oh my goodness all right I'm ready we're going over especially because it's like you know like five years of morbid holy shit let's do big cases Alina did five parts of the HH home series which if you haven't listened to that yeet yourself back there and now I'm doing a really big story also about somebody from New Hampshire look at that except Except

my whole thing takes place in New Hampshire.

Oh, she doesn't vibe around the country?

Thank goodness she doesn't.

Or the world, I should say.

Nope, nope, nope. She doesn't do any of that.

We're going to be talking about Pamela Smart today.

Ah, I know that name.

You know that name.

I do. I feel like a lot of people, at least here in New England, are familiar with that name.

Yeah. But if it's a name you've never heard of or it doesn't ring a bell quite yet, we're going to start at the beginning.

Here it is. Here it is, honey.

so one of the key people at the center of this story obviously is pamela pami i believe her maiden name is wojas or vojas okay i tried to look it up and it like nope nowhere they were like no you type in w -o -j -a -s pronunciation and it gives you many many pronunciations for every other word i love that yeah so i tried you gave it a shot i watched her do it she did it was live yeah so So, anyways, Pam Pammy was born on August 16th, 1967, in Miami, Florida.

She was the second of three children born to John and Linda.

Wohas, wohas. There you go.

Now, John and Linda, they had gotten married pretty young, and in the early years of their marriage and as parents, they struggled to make ends meet.

But both of them worked super, super hard. John worked at a printing company, and Linda was a stenographer.

Whoa. I know. We got stenographers again.

stenographers in the house.

Wow. But so they both worked like super, super hard. And eventually that hard work paid off and they were both able to kind of climb that corporate ladder.

Good for them. So now they were more like upper middle class and they had money to spend on their kids that their parents never really had to spend on them.

But at the same time, they were living in late 60s, early 70s Miami.

And while their neighborhood was a safe place to live, the rest of Miami was was not exactly the safest at this point in time violent crime was on the rise social tensions were flaring so john and linda were going back and forth throughout the years deciding on whether they should stay or if they should move back to mass where they had both grown up mass you say massachusetts massachusetts i know that place but the decision kind of made itself for them when the riots in miami started now if you're not familiar with the miami riots they did take place in 1980 80 after an all -white jury acquitted

four policemen who had beaten a black man arthur mcduffie to death which like really scary how history repeats itself hmm they were like yeah we should get out of here yeah so they had both grown up actually in lowell massachusetts and this is so weird to hear like i know you know not a lot of like our stories are this close to no and this one's like i was in new hampshire this past weekend like i was like in this area Yeah.

So, they had both grown up in Lowell and they would always take their kids to New Hampshire during summer vacation.

So, after thinking about it for a while, they decided, you know what, why don't we move to New Hampshire?

Like, we love it so much. We love to spend our summers there.

Why don't we move to Wyndham, New Hampshire?

And it was in 1980 that they decided to do that.

Now, Wyndham was a safe, quiet town and the nearby areas provided a lot of job opportunities.

So, they knew it was going to be like a good move.

Yeah. John actually got a job at Boston's Logan Airport.

Oh, hey. Which it was weird to write Boston's Logan Airport because it's just Logan to us.

It's just Logan. And he actually eventually became a pilot.

Damn. And flew commercial jets for Delta.

Wow. Good for John.

Isn't that crazy? That's badass.

He made really good money and he was able to provide a lot for his kids like as far as home and activities were concerned.

But because his job was as a pilot and he worked for a commercial airline he did have to travel a ton and he was away from the family for stretches of time yeah that's a big toss -up i'm always amazed at pilots imagine just what a fucking flying through the air like imagine being like yeah i just fly planes for a living that's my job is i just bring 180 people onto this plane and then i fly them across the country and then i have to land it safely and do it all again like an hour later like if you're a pilot listening pour one out for pilots because my my guys my gals like you are woo also imagine

how fun that would be yeah i would love to fly well you can't but i would love to fly a plane i would love that i mean i imagine if you are a pilot you love to fly so i'm sure it is a fucking blast for them just like yeehaw and also pilots always make me feel better Whenever I talk to a pilot they're always very good at making you understand how safe flying is.

I'm always like I trust you.

Yeah. I trust you with my life literally.

So I guess you would have trusted John.

I would have. Another good John.

He did love. Yeah, I'm pretty sure.

Okay, cool. But the thing was he was struggling with his family, especially like his wife and his kids because that's what your family is.

But because he had to be away for so long and most of Pam's high school friends, they have a ton of memories about her.

her mom but they don't really remember her dad that much because he was away yeah now some of those close friends that is tough but some of those close friends who did remember pam's dad really just remembered that he and pam were never close one of those friends sonia simon would put it that pam quote didn't really have a close relationship with her dad but then again he really wasn't home much i think she thought he was kind of cheap oh which is like damn i think think he's just working he's trying and the thing is like from what i read at least again i did not grow up in this house i don't

think he seemed very cheap i think it was more that he wanted his kids to know how it took hard work to make money well they had lived through living paycheck to paycheck and dime to dime yep they know what it's like to have to stretch that dollar as far as you can so getting money after that i think it's like you are automatically still in that that mindset of like i need to make this last yeah so you make smart decisions with your money to be honest they're just trying to like make it last and you know they're teaching their kids that like like for instance pam was to get a job when she was 13

and i think that was probably the age back then i'm sure so i think she was like why do i have to work so hard yeah like you have money why am i not doing this yeah it's like typical kid shit exactly but i also can't imagine like one of my kids describing our relationship is like i wasn't really close to her that was like kind of cheap a lot like that would be like oof I would think you know like that's a eek yeah that's a knife to the heart right there yeah and also it's like it's not like he was off on the weekends like gambling and like picking up girls he was just being a pilot but like I

said Pam got a job when she was 13 it doesn't sound like she was that happy about it but it was right when they moved to New Hampshire she worked part -time at a bakery and also a dairy queen queen which like makes me want one of those chocolate dipped oh yeah so fucking good the swirl now later people seem to think that pam had it a little hard at home and they felt like she grew up too fast but these were like her friends talking okay those friends would point to little things like the fact that her room was very tidy spick and span at all times and she didn't have posters hanging up for magazines

or anything like that like you would expect but it's like if if If that's how hard it was, like, oh no. Well, that's the thing.

It's like, okay, sure.

I guess that could be like, okay, well, that's a different way of having a room as a teenager.

Yeah. But I also had some of my best friends, that was what their room was like.

And I know their family life and it was perfectly fine.

Same here. They just were that kind of person.

Maybe she was just a minimalist. Yeah.

That's the thing. I'm a minimalist. Always back to TikTok.

Always. but either way even though Pam had been uprooted and moved halfway across the country at a pretty shitty time in her life and her home life was like maybe a little rigid yeah she still maintained her personality okay she was known at school and in public as somebody who was assertive outspoken and had a great sense of humor she really had an easy time making friends especially because she moved when she did like some people might struggle with that but she did not and in high school or or she went to a high school with over 2 ,000 students because the high school that she went to um is it's

like in a smaller town so they take kids from the surrounding towns and it's one of those kind of high schools where it's like multiple towns in one oh okay which is never fair when you play them in sports i was just gonna say i used to hate this we have one that like um you know in massachusetts is this in this is in new hampshire this is in new hampshire so it's not the same because we have one i was like is this the one i'm no but we have one in massachusetts that i used to hate playing in softball because it was just like they they got more pickings yeah way more pickings and they always fucking

creamed us in softball it was so embarrassing they also had one pitcher that fucking loved to hit people on purpose was that pitcher me no no but she would always hit me and i would get so pissed anyways enough reminiscing about softball pam went to a high school like that but she was among one of the most popular students which is really saying in something i guess with all those students yeah with all those students you know her sophomore year she became the class president and she also earned a spot on the cheer team all good things well yeah all things that are good but at the same time she

still had what people would call her dark side her dark passenger a la dexter yes one of her classmates after they graduated said said about her i think she was an insecure person i don't think she thought she was better than everyone else but she wanted people to think she was i know a lot of people like that we all do now pam always wanted to be the center of attention especially if that attention was coming from guys and she was known to be super aggressive if she thought somebody was stepping on her toes no matter what the situation was if you took something she thought was hers you were done

for okay now you can argue that maybe her possessiveness came from a place of knowing that she worked hard for something and she wanted to guard that thing that she had worked so hard to achieve but by all accounts she never really did work that hard for anything she had her father would later say quote pam was the kind of kid who could get good grades and excel without putting in all that effort you know the kind of kid you always hated in high school pam would get the A with one quarter of the effort.

Damn. Which like is kind of relatable because I didn't study that much, but I always did pretty well in school.

Relatable. I totally get that.

But it's also been said that she did what she wanted to do when she wanted to do it no matter what the effect was on anybody else.

Oh, that's not good at all.

We don't love that.

No. Stephen Sawicki, I believe is how you say it.

He wrote Teach Me to Kill, which is a great reference on this case.

I would definitely read it he wrote pam was always the student who would steer the classroom discussion away from whatever the teacher had planned on talking about hold on i fucked that up i'm gonna start that over pam was always the student who would steer the classroom discussion away from whatever the teacher had planned to talk about to what pam wanted she often undermined them to draw attention to herself wow that would annoy the shit out of me if i was the teacher i would be really pissed Yeah, I would not like that at all.

He also wrote that as her high school career went on, school officials were catching on to Pam's ways.

Oh. She was suspected to have rigged the election that won her class president sophomore year.

She rigged an election?

Allegedly. Allegedly.

She did not run again her junior year, but she did rig the election allegedly a sophomore year.

They also think that, they also think, I just. I mean, they think.

They also thought that Pam may have stolen money from the class funds.

Like she was skimming off the top while she was president.

She was a straight up politician.

And she was drinking on school grounds.

She was a straight up politician.

She really was. She said, I'm ready for the White House.

Let's go. Honestly.

All the way to the top.

They were like, we suspect that she rigged the election, skimmed off the top and was like real boozy while doing so.

It's like, give that girl a seat in the Senate.

For real, honestly.

But while the adults around Pam were questioning her behavior and finding her attitude pretty disrespectful, her friends were starting to idolize her.

She was a bad bitch in their eyes.

Oh, yeah, bad bitch alert.

To them, she was this super cool metal chick who worshipped Van Halen and prioritized always having a good time over everything else.

We're not here for a long time.

We're here for a good time, my guys.

no according to her senior yearbook pam's greatest life pursuit was quote to dance the night away with david lee roth then singer of van halen for those that don't know wow yeah what a pursuit yeah an old friend laura talked to reporters about pam in 1991 and she told them that pam was quote extremely energetic very involved and always smiling everyone wanted to be close to her I guess they felt that some of her power would rub off on them.

Just like the power thing.

Very varying degrees of people's opinions on Pam.

But those not infatuated with her started hearing rumors about her being a little promiscuous.

Cue up Nelly's promiscuous.

Nelly Furtado, right?

Promiscuous? Yeah. Yeah, you're right.

It's Nelly Furtado and the guy.

Yeah. uh am i throwing you off didn't think so yeah well oh my god look it up oh i was gonna say because everyone's screaming right now and i feel so bad everybody might be screaming in a second too because i also didn't look up this pronunciation by accident but some classmates called her seca or sika um it was a reference to an adult film actress seca known as the platinum platinum princess of porn oh yeah i can i don't know what that is but okay um timberland timberland that's what that's what it was my goodness i almost i was like it's not timber lake i don't know it's timberland oh he timberland was like

in every ma loves timberland cool i almost said music is what i meant cool music he was in every cool he was in every cool music of the time oh me no he was but yeah yeah even ma likes him she does she loves him well uh but yeah i don't know who sika or seca is well she's the platinum princess of porn or she was back then cool so they called her that because she was a little promiscuous girl damn um but outwardly she actually seemed to embrace the nickname other students they skipped the references and they simply referred to her as wham bam thank you pam pam i'm not i'm not joking i'm not joking

they called her wham bam thank you pam okay which just reminds me of kesha it just reminds me of uh the office with pam beasley there you go and now instead of saying bam bam he says pam pam i like that you know those photos sitting in your phone the ones that make you smile every time you scroll past them well at smallwoodhome .com they believe that you deserve better than that smallwood home transforms your favorite memories into stunning gallery quality artwork that tells your story All you have to do is upload your photo to smallwoodhome .com, choose your style from classic framed prints to

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Now, Pam's high school boyfriend, who in my opinion sounds like a grade -A douchebag, he would later tell the Boston Globe, Wild, about Pam saying, he would tell her, he would talk to them about her and he would say she was a wild wild girl we were doing everything your parents tell you not to do cool you're so cool oh it gets worse what cool guys it gets so much worse they dated from the beginning of their senior year in september until may and he was apparently the one to break things off uh one day in the school parking lot and literally told the boston globe i just got sick of her that's terrible

that's how i was in high school oh man everybody watch out for this cool guy i'm like i have a feeling that's where you peaked oh put on your shades the star shines too bright for all of us i love that he said to the boston globe journalist like yeah i was in high school i was just a fucking asshole i was just a dickwad in high school no big deal if i was sick of you i was sick of you yeah that's it like how old are are you now dude okay my guy that's stupid and i do think you peaked there but even though pam also may have seemed to peak in high school and she was popular in wyndham she always missed florida because remember

she's a miami girl she lived there until she was like 13 and she decided after graduating from pinkerton high school that she wanted to head to florida state university in gainesville okay now she enrolled there in 1985 and then she would uh start there but then Then later she transferred to the Tallahassee campus.

Okay. And she was studying media performance.

So she tried to keep in touch with her friends from high school, but she was starting to find that she just didn't have that much in common with them anymore, which happens.

Oh, yeah. So as those friendships drifted, she actually had no problem making new friends in Florida and actually even back in New Hampshire when she would come back for breaks.

Oh, wow. She made new friends over her first break from school.

Damn. and it was through one of her new hampshire friends terry schnell that pam would meet greg smart they had met in passing before but it was at a new year's eve party in 1985 that they would really hit it off greg was also from new hampshire he was born september 4th 1965 in london berry new hampshire i don't know why i said it like that i just want to like not actually london but but but, like, London.

I said Londonberry.

It's Londonderry. You know.

We're all here. We're all here.

His parents were Bill and Judy Smart.

Now, Greg was, like, a super active kid from a really early age.

He had two brothers, Dean and Rick, and the Smart family loved to take vacations together.

They were always in attendance at each boy's little league games, and they were genuinely just a very close family unit.

Adorable family. Yeah, they really were.

if you see pictures of all of them i'm like oh my god i love you guys i love you guys love you guys now judy smart described her son as a late bloomer and she said while other kids around him competed for spots on teams and clubs greg was pretty shy and seemed happy just blending into a crowd oh he was somewhat reclusive too and even into his high school years just kind of blending into the crowd was his thing yeah i just want to be there yeah and he did just well enough enough in school to get by but after high school he decided to skip college and go right to work and he started working for a company

called consolidated utility equipment services that sounds awesome he assembled the heavy equipment truck booms damn which reminded me of your youngest because yep they love truck booms i sure do and construction equipment but around that time he met terry schnell who would later introduce him to pam they actually got to be like super duper close friends and people were speculating a ton at that point on their close closeness they were like are you sure you guys are just friends terry and him or pam and him terry okay but they really were just platonic friends they were like yeah we're just we're

just friends we're just friends we're just friends terry said greg was basically a stud he didn't want a girlfriend he just wanted to have some fun he's just here for a good time just here for a good time and like pam pampam greg was a big fan of heavy metal which i don't really know if this is heavy metal uh motley crew and van hallen hallen van hallen that was just a spirit i know how to say van hallen uh yeah i mean at the time for sure motley crew was like motley crew it was like heavy metal yeah okay yeah all right cool so heavy metal there you go but so they both loved that but more importantly

and as as far as pam was concerned greg sorry i don't mean to interrupt you i think it's like hair metal i think that would be like hair metal oh my god okay yeah i said that later in the in the thing because that's what um dave said he was like i think that's it's hair metal for sure sorry i didn't mean to interrupt because they have hair and they whip it around while they meddle and like i think motley crew and all them were like um like very pretty yeah like you know and i think that's what qualifies them as like hair metal okay like like heavy metal ah i see i see yeah so yeah i'm actually

glad you interrupted to talk about hair because as far as pam was concerned greg fit the image she had in her head of the perfect guy he loved to party he didn't seem all too concerned with building a respectable career and his long rocker hair his long rocker hair quote reminded her of the rock star john bon Bon Jovi.

Oh my god the topical references here are really great.

Aren't they wild? So of the time.

Also if you look up a picture of Greg when he was younger he had beautiful hair.

Oh sure. He reminds me more of the adorable little kid in Stranger Things with super curly hair.

Oh my god Dustin. Yeah because he has curly hair.

Yeah. Now even though Greg was completely uninterested in monogamy at first he and Pam did hit it off and they ended up going out with each other a few times over Pam's winter break that year.

They go sledding, they go to the movies, they were just getting to know each other.

Now, Greg enjoyed Pam's company and the fact that she was always down to party, but he still wasn't interested in having a girlfriend and especially not one that lived thousands of miles away in Florida.

Yeah. So because of that, he was pretty relieved when Pam went back to school after break.

But Pam, on the other hand, returned to school desperately in love with Greg.

Oh, damn. Like fell in love with him that winter break.

greg is adorable he is i just looked it up i mean greg is a cutie patootie he is super cute i'm gonna warn you now that they are there are issues in their relationship that stem from both sides okay that's good to know so don't like i just get i'm not gonna root for anybody here because like i know it's all bad but like i get why they were both like into each other totally in the beginning like totally get that totally agree yeah hair hair so their relationship actually started slowly like we know, and somewhat uncomplicated.

They would talk on the phone after Pam went back to school and they'd write letters to each other.

And by Valentine's Day, Pam upped the ante by using her cheap father's connections.

I'm like, you're going to call him cheap and then you're going to use his connections?

She used his connections at Delta to travel to New Hampshire at no cost. Oh, he's so cheap.

I'm like, it kind of sounds like you're a little cheap, Pam.

Yeah, seriously. Now she would do that plenty more times through the long distance phase.

and by spring break of 1986 though greg still wasn't ready to commit to pam quite yet damn actually he was still going on dates with another girl oh pam would later tell reporters quote he basically said that he didn't want to break up with her and that he didn't want to break up with me he wanted to go out with both of us so i said well it's either her or me and he said okay i'll see you later wow damn him was pissed because she went into this situation fully thinking like Like, oh, I always get what I want.

So this ultimatum, he's going to be like, oh my gosh, how could I lose Pam?

Yeah. But he was like, okay, you're not going to ultimatum me.

He was like, okay, bye.

He gave me a choice.

She was not expecting Greg to give up so easily.

So she caved as soon as he rejected her ultimatum and they kept on dating while he was dating this other girl.

It sounded like they were like in the talking phase, I guess is what we would say.

This is very messy.

It's super messy. It's also very 80s.

Yeah. With the hair.

with the hair. So over time, though, Greg did decide that he wanted to be with Pam and Pam only.

He was ready for monogamy at some point.

Yeah. And in the fall of 1986, they had become completely exclusive.

Okay. Love it. They were still doing long distance, but Pam was able to pull her Delta airline strings when she needed to, and Greg would make the trips when he had the money and could get time off from work.

Okay. By 1987, though, it was getting harder and harder to maintain the distance.

so Greg decided he was going to move out to Tallahassee and be with Pam.

Damn. Crazy. Pam was able to be her complete self in Tallahassee since she wasn't living under her parents' roof anymore.

She could love her metal as much as she wanted to, and this is where I said, or hair bands if we're being honest. We are being honest. And she could also pursue the career that she wanted to in the entertainment industry.

She landed a position through her program at school to be a news intern for WCTV, which which at the time and possibly now is an affiliate of CBS.

Impossibly now. I'm like, I don't really know.

Who's to say? Who's to say?

Not me. Whoa, I just dropped pens.

I'm sorry, everybody.

Now she also started working as a promotions director for the college radio station, which was actually a position she made for herself.

They didn't have any open positions, and she was like, that's fine.

I'll make one. Yeah, I mean, if you want it, you might as well make up a position that fits.

I kind of love that.

I will say I do love that.

Now, eventually, that role led to her getting a new position as a DJ on the heavy metal show Metal Madness.

This is really 80s.

I love it. Oh, it's about to get so much more 80s because Pam referred to herself as she was DJing as the Maiden of Metal. Oh, hell yeah.

And she spent one night a week playing all her favorite records from bands like Van Halen.

Van Halen. You keep saying Van Halen.

Van Halen. It's Halen.

I don't know. It's a spirit.

Because I know how to say it.

I think it's just a weird accent that I have. This is going to be another Nin moment.

But I know this one.

Van Halen. Van Halen.

She also loved Aerosmith and Queensreich?

Queensreach? Reich, I think it is.

Queensreich. She liked that Queen band.

But not Queen. A Rake.

I think it's Rake. Queensreich. Queensreich. Somebody will tell us.

now with greg moving to florida it seemed like pam's life and the vision she'd crafted for her future were finally coming into focus once he arrived in florida greg moved into his own apartment or yeah he didn't move in with pam straight away and his mother said it appeared to be quote from a refurbished motel complex adorable yeah his parents bought him the essentials they got his furniture and some decor and pam kept living in her dorm according to his mother judy Greg never really liked Florida though.

He just stayed because of Pam.

Wow. Which is really sweet.

Lerve. But he missed New England a lot.

And he was just trying to get acclimated by going out with Pam and her friends.

And eventually he made his own friends.

Now, his family back home was absolutely shocked that he had made a move to Florida because they knew him mostly as this like non -monogamous recluse back in New Hampshire.

I love it. We were like, wait, what?

Like what's happening right now?

you moved to florida to be in a monogamous relationship that's crazy and they were even more shocked when he and pam ended up getting an apartment together just after a few months of him being there shacking up shacking up not completely by themselves because they worked with one or they lived with one of pam's co -workers the situation was ideal for pam but she couldn't tell her parents about greg living with her they had expectations that she was out there to study work hard and get a good job not be distracted by a boy no because and they liked greg but they definitely wouldn't approve of pam

living with him okay a friend of pam's from college would later tell author stephen sawicki quote every time her parents came down greg would move all his stuff out and go live with another kid until they left are you kidding me like what a hassle that's intense you guys should just tell them you should definitely tell them a lot it's a lot to To have to move out of your place of living every time her parents come, I'd be pissed.

Move into a new dwelling every time they visit.

Hey, can I live with you for a minute?

For a minute. For a minute.

Now in January of 1988, Pam got home from work one day in a super shitty mood.

She had just had a shit day.

She later recalled, I don't know what happened, but I was totally aggravated.

I had had the worst day and I was crying and complaining about something.

So Greg was consoling her and he was like, you know what?

Like, I think you should take a shower.

That always makes you feel better.

I agree. If you're pissed off, go take a shower.

I love a shower. And at first she didn't want to, but he was like, just take a fucking shower, Pam.

Like, you'll feel better.

And she was like, okay, fine.

And when she got out, she reached for her powder puff.

And when she lifted it, she saw that Greg had left her a diamond ring that she had told him she liked while they had gone ring shopping just casually a few weeks before.

That's cute. She said she opened it up and yelled, oh, my God.

oh my god and went on to say I started crying and he wasn't even saying will you marry me so I started saying get down on your knee and finally I said yes I'll marry you even though he never really asked me oh no so I don't know if that was a proposal or if he was just like leaving a present here's this diamond ring present but also you can't do that don't get a girl a diamond ring that you're living with if it's not an engagement ring yeah so now they were engaged Okay.

Whether he knew that they were going to be or not.

Beautiful story. They were now.

And since he'd gotten to Florida, Greg was having a hard time finding work.

And he was getting by landscaping and taking on other small jobs here and there.

But the engagement really started to seem to get him thinking more seriously about the future.

Yeah. And according to my guy, Steven Sawicki.

My guy. Greg started to understand that the nice home and boat and other possessions his parents had acquired would not come easily at 3 .35 an hour.

Yeah. So he started thinking realistically about joining his dad, and his dad worked in the insurance business.

Okay. So while Pam worked hard to finish out her last year at Florida State, Greg started studying for, and actually eventually passed the exam to sell insurance in Florida.

Now, the insurance industry was definitely not what Greg had envisioned for himself, but he had seen his dad make a comfortable and stable life for his family, and he wanted the same opportunity.

Now, Pam knew that the changes that Greg was making were for a better future for the two of them.

But there were some changes that came as a total surprise to her and that maybe she wasn't super happy about.

One day, for instance, after Greg passed the real estate exam and he got an interview with MetLife, which is actually the company that his dad worked for.

He surprised Pam while she was out for coffee with her friends.

He had gotten a haircut to look more professional.

professional because like he couldn't be selling real estate or he couldn't be selling insurance with like crazy hair like a metal head right so he showed up and sat down next to her and she didn't even know it was him at first but it didn't really seem like this change was welcome uh for hair loving pam yeah now bigger changes came a few months later when he surprised pam again but i think this is a good surprise because he surprised her with a shih tzu puppy be as a graduation present.

I love that. They'd been going back and forth deciding on whether or not to get a dog over the last couple of months, but they ultimately decided against it because they thought it would take a strain on their budget.

But Greg saved up the money from his landscaping job so that he could buy the dog, and he figured that his new job at MetLife and whatever work Pam was going to be able to find now that she had graduated, they would be able to afford the dog and she'd be happy about it.

That's so sweet. Now, she actually wanted a Yorkshire Terrier at first like that's what she really wanted so i think maybe she made that comment so she wasn't super excited about the idea of a shih tzu but then she saw the little baby dog and she was happy i was gonna say it's a baby dog that's just a baby that's just my baby dog i would take any baby dog so she was happy when she saw okay i'm like girl she would later say that her heart melted and she immediately declared that it was the best present she had ever gotten of course it is it's a baby dog it's a baby dog and they named the baby dog

halen halen halen van halen oh my god i can't say it i know how to say it i don't think she knows how to say it everybody get out of here it's van halen yeah but i can't say it keeps saying halen i know well because it it looks like halen when you read it so they named the dog halen yeah okay it was named after their favorite band.

Cute. And now they had a wedding on the horizon.

So they had a puppy, they were gonna have a wedding, Greg's got this new job, things seem to be falling into place.

Of course. But there were also some red flags on both sides.

You don't say. Here I am to tell you.

Back in New Hampshire, Greg had been known, like we said, as a carefree loner.

And after high school though, he developed a strong personality and now just like Pam, he liked to be the one in control of things but so did pam oh so two strong personalities in the house was starting to lead to more arguments i wonder what their signs are uh he's a virgo oh um she was born in august 16th i think that would make her a fucking why can't i think of this is it leo leo you're right right okay so a leo and a Virgo.

Yay. Do you know, does that, does that check?

Like those feel like two strong personalities, right?

I know Virgos are in love with one.

Uh, yeah. I created one.

Those are two very strong personalities and people that want to be in control of things.

I would think. That makes sense.

You know what I'm saying?

Hold on. Now I got to find my place.

I had to bring it back to your, uh, to your area of expertise.

I'm happy you did. Although I guess it's not not my expertise area anymore no you got it i got it you got it i got it i believed in you and you got it oh my goodness thank you so much so yeah avra you can pick it up right here yeah so yes two strong personalities a virgo and a leo maybe it works for you but i don't think it was bound to work for them and i'm gonna tell you about a shitty story that happened one night while they they were still in Florida, Greg and Pam decided to go out to a bar with some friends.

Now, Greg and his friends sounded like they were being a couple of jerks.

They were making gross comments about the waitress right in front of Pam.

Oh, fuck them up. Yeah, fuck them up.

So eventually, Pam had had enough of this stream of inappropriate comments and she started arguing with Greg about it.

She's like, what the fuck is your problem?

Now, the argument escalated to the point where Greg spit a mouthful of beer on Pam.

pam like in her face that's not okay and he had to be forcibly removed from the bar oh that would be the end for me it would also be the end for me uh throughout all that throughout that fight and all the ones to follow pam and greg for some reason or another stayed committed to each other okay like they said this is what we want you do you now and since pam had graduated at this point there wasn't any reason to stay in florida anymore so they decided that they were going to move back to new hampshire greg figured he could work with his well -respected and well -connected dad and Pam now had a degree

so she could find a job out there.

Yeah. Now Pam definitely wasn't against moving back home to New Hampshire after graduation because the cost of living was cheaper and the rural nature of the state made it very safe, I would say, especially in comparison to Florida.

But at the same time, she also always kind of considered herself a Florida girl.

She liked the warmer climate, she liked the things you can do out there, and she liked new hampshire but she struggled with the harsh new england winter she was that wasn't for her yeah so it wasn't the easiest transition moving back greg on the other hand he had struggled like i was saying from the moment he arrived in florida so he was super happy to be back in new england he loved the colder climate he loved doing winter sports and he was happy to be back with his family because like i said they were a super close family yeah it was hard to say stupor connected to them while living so far away

and he was happy to be back he was feeling like himself again he was settling into a new routine it was great he actually got back to new hampshire a few weeks before pam did she stayed back in florida to finish the last of her responsibilities at school but when she did make her way back to new hampshire like i was saying the decision was not an easy one to make she'd spent four years trying to find career options out in florida and trying out different roles in the entertainment industry but at the same time she knew very well that the actual paying jobs in the industry were few and far between and they

usually required a person to move around a lot if they wanted to advance professionally yeah and new hampshire though at the same time was not the state that you would move to for a high profile career in television journalism no and that's what she wanted and moving back meant that she'd have to sacrifice that for a life of stability.

Her best friend at the time, Sonia Simon, remembered that Pam was really torn about this.

She said, I remember her saying, am I making a mistake?

Should I be going and following my dream?

This is like everything she ever wanted.

And all of a sudden she was faced with choosing Greg and New Hampshire over being an actual reporter.

Okay. You know? Yeah.

But she did end up moving back to New Hampshire.

She made the choice.

All right. Now there was one place she could apply to help advance her career in professional journalism over in new hampshire it was the manchester abc affiliate wmur she applied and they rejected her oh so that was kind of that's a tough hit so since there weren't a lot of other options she went to work at a temp agency and then she landed a job as the new media center director with the school administrative unit 21 the job was in hampton which was about 40 minutes from where she was living.

And at the time she had to move back with her parents.

So Greg was living at his parents and she was living at her parents.

Okay. Now the job was a straightforward admin position.

She'd have to maintain and distribute the audio and video equipment to the six schools within her district.

But there was also the potential to move up the ladder and become more involved.

And also video production was still new and exciting at this point.

And so the school board Ford really hoped that the new media center would engage parents and students and lead to some positive press for the district.

And Pam was the kind of young, energetic person they were looking for, so everybody collectively was pretty excited about this.

For Pam, the job felt like an ideal alternative to chasing her dreams of journalistic stardom.

Like, she wasn't going to be a star kid, but she could be star adjacent.

There you go. Perfect way of saying it.

And the pay was really good at that point in time.

She was going to be making $22 ,500 a year.

Now, the salary and benefits were great for somebody just out of college, and the work made it so that she was still connected to media.

So she was still doing what she liked to do.

And she also got her own office in the basement of Winniconnet High School, where she was pretty much left to do as she pleased without any superior working in the office with her.

Yeah. And she even got her own secretary.

Whoa. So she really felt like a big shot.

Shit. it. Now, like I was saying earlier, when they moved back for the summer and fall of 88, Greg and Pam were living separately with their parents until they could find a place of their own.

But they both had really good jobs, so it didn't take long for them to find a place to move into.

In January of 89, they moved into a condo together on Misty Morning Drive in Derry, New Hampshire.

Misty Morning Drive.

Isn't that just pretty?

I love that. Misty Morning Drive.

imagine just waking up in your house on misty morning drive oh i love a misty morning doesn't misty morning drive sound like a soap opera now that we're saying it yeah it does yeah it definitely does i like it yeah and their new place was just a five minute walk from greg's parents who also lived in a condo in the same complex adorable now the wedding was getting closer so they were in full -blown prep mode their plan was to get married in the catholic church so at the the time they were going through the counseling sessions that you have to go through if you want to get married in the church yeah

and while they were going through that period pam actually got a call from somebody at wctv which was the tallahassee affiliate where she interned okay and they wanted to know as she's planning her wedding and going through all of this they said are you interested in an on -air position with our station whoa like everything she had ever wanted damn it was the call that the old pam was waiting for but this pam was determined to commit to her married life so she declined wow yeah that's shocking i know deborah keeney who had been pam and greg's roommate back in florida said of this time she always

wanted to be a broadcaster and she loved the spotlight but she turned it down in order to stay with greg it was because she loved greg so much and that was the truth damn it's wild to think that had she accepted that job I would never be sitting here telling you this story that's really wild to think about like it's so crazy how one decision yep can alter an entire course of events that's wild had she said yes to that who knows what would have happened I know but she did not the world would be a different place it would technically yeah I think so you know a little bit of it yeah so the The wedding

finally came after over a year of planning, and on May 7th, 1989, and I said this in your thing, I wrote, which is weird because as I'm writing this, that is tomorrow.

Ooh, yeah. Because remember, something happened in your story that was on May 7th, and I was like, wait, me too?

Yep. So that's when they got married.

Oh, that's so weird. And Pam and Greg had a traditional ceremony at Sacred Heart Church in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Oh, damn. And the reception was held in nearby Pelham, New Hampshire.

sure they had more than 250 guests which stresses me the fuck out because as i'm planning my wedding i'm like oh my god no wait how many two more than 250 that's a big ass wedding damn like i have 150 and i'm stressed i don't know 250 people nor do i that's the thing but i think it's one of those things where your parents start to ask you to invite people i'm like lucky there's a limit my friends yeah i'm in a lucky position where nobody's asking us to do that and i'm happy about it it just cooled me yeah cool with me um and their wedding song was honestly by the christian heavy metal band it's

either stripper it's probably stripper because it's definitely not stripper are you sure um yeah they're a christian heavy metal band are you sure yes i listened and i'm not gonna lie it does pop off in the chorus it pops off it pops off in the chorus i recommend it for sure damn like listening to it damn now once the wedding was over they decided to have their stay in Bermuda, their honeymoon stay in Bermuda, which I also 10 out of 10 recommend.

No stories from Bermuda that I could find, but pretty much as soon as they got back from their honeymoon, the cracks were starting to show in Pam and Greg's marriage, which had lasted at that point all about a month, I was gonna say.

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Judy was just like sitting at Pam and Greg's place one day after the wedding and Pam showed her a list that she had written down with the names of people who had given them money for the wedding next to the amount that they'd given, which is normal.

Like you got to do thank you cards.

Yeah. But Pam went through the list with Judy and pointed out every single member of Greg's family who had given them a quote unquote small amount of money as a gift. Oh my God.

can you imagine sitting with your mother -in -law and being like john's uncle gave this much and this guy gave this much i mean my god wow my mother -in -law would smack me and should smack me my mother -in -law would just laugh yeah my mother -in -law absolutely not smack me but i would tell her to my mother -in -law would punch me in the face like if i was somebody's mother -in -law i'd be like you're talking shit on my family i would just be like oh who do you think you are are like i can't imagine having that audacity you are who are you but it wasn't actually really the first time that judy had seen

pam act this entitled apparently right before their wedding pam's parents called greg's parents and said that they were concerned that greg wouldn't be able to give their daughter the things in life that she deserved wow basically they were like he didn't go to college he likes to party and he only just got a good job so like what do you think about this like is he good enough for our kid wow and judy said of the whole thing we had to sell greg to the wool houses like he was a piece of merchandise i'd be pissed what is happening like i don't think you guys were meant to get married i was just

gonna say this is a very strange way to begin your lives together i can't imagine ma and papa calling drew's parents and being like i don't know like do you think he's good enough for us like you know what you should always be closing and i'm not sold on this guy yet like what so let's go what give me a powerpoint presentation on why i should invest in this guy you have to literally like think that thought walk to the phone dial the number wait to connect to like there are so many stops along the way where you could have stopped yourself yeah what you doing what you doing do it over there guys

i don't like it now at this point to a lot of their friends pam and greg did not seem like like they fit together anymore no no they were fighting constantly and it was starting to seem to everybody to everyone else like they enjoyed pushing each other's buttons they also both really seemed to like to get attention from other men and women which um didn't go too well when it came to pam's jealous nature especially when it came to came to things that she considered hers and only hers and finally their goals and ambitions weren't the same greg since he had cut cut his hair, he'd started on a more

narrow path in the industry.

And he seemed at this point to be embracing kind of like a simple, easygoing lifestyle.

He was happy to stay in the town that he grew up in.

He'd go to a party or two.

He was just living.

Yeah. Like a very normal, chill lifestyle.

Just living. But Pam wanted more.

She wanted that big career.

She wanted to acquire.

She wanted to climb her way up the social ladder.

They were, they had very different paths paths in life but then at the same time while it had its rough points their marriage wasn't quite as strained as you might think looking from the outside greg and pam they still enjoyed spending time together i guess um they were at the very least a good example of opposites attract some people said okay it seems like everybody had very varying opinions on the two of them thank you because my next thing was going to be like okay all right like i'm i'm hearing a lot of different different outlooks on what they are or what they aren't.

Yeah it's even like Pam growing up though like in the beginning I was like some people thought she was fucking awesome other people were like uh she was dipping in the school funds.

She's conniving as hell.

She's conniving like nobody is in the middle of any of these.

I feel like that was kind of it seems like that some people just like that like they like being in the middle where like nobody can pinpoint them yeah i mean like they know who they are but nobody else does yeah and it's they only think like one extreme or the other yeah and they're like a chameleon who can just slide on either side and yeah it makes sense kind of thing and i kind of think that like their closest friends were like yeah i don't think you guys are working anymore and then maybe the friends that they weren't super close with the people looking from the outside were like no i think

they're a great couple i know it's good you know like whatever yeah they said pam was the one who tended to to dominate and control and greg took what his friends considered a let's go no problem whatever approach to life all right if greg wasn't irritated with pam all the time though his friends and family absolutely were they seemed to find pam overbearing controlling and they could tell that she felt threatened by greg's close relationships which that's not good yeah that's always a red red flag Greg had a lot of close friends and making friends was easy for him but now in this part of her

life Pam was struggling to make new friends which was new for her because she used to have an easy time but now she's not and when she did make friends they were according to my guy Steven Zwicky often younger than she was less educated and tended to admire Pam and her forceful personality okay so i feel like a lot of people know somebody like this that likes to be friends with younger people in the sense of so that they look up to them and admire them 100 because they're actually insecure and can't be friends with people their own age because people their own age will call them on their shit

yeah like people their own age will be like you're really immature exactly and like you're not you're not being rational you're not being like an actual adult about bet anything but people younger than them are like wow you're so cool and carefree and you've got like you know exactly exactly exactly now so depending on who you ask Greg and Pam's marriage might have seemed like somewhat stable in the first few months that they were married but that's also most likely because they hadn't gone through that much as a couple yeah I mean they just got married they weren't struggling with money they

still had that excitement of being newlyweds they had that whole thing yeah and they also had a house full of things that people had bought for their wedding and a bank account filled with money that they'd also been gifted so they were like living they were good and greg had done really well during his first year of selling insurance he actually did so well that he won rookie of the year award oh damn but because of the rough points that i've already told you about it wasn't long before the magic started to wear off and old habits were starting to return greg or no excuse me pam would push greg's

buttons to get his attention he would spit beer in her face and send her out of the room pissed off it was like a vicious cycle yeah and one night things got even worse it was about seven months after the wedding and greg went out to boston for a night with his friends oh damn he wasn't supposed to be gone super late it was just supposed to be like a night hanging out with your friends uh but he didn't come home until the next morning oh he and pam obviously got into a huge fight when he finally did get home and they spent that entire full day fighting and the next day greg woke up to a note from pam

that said you can't find me i'm not at my mother's i'll be somewhere else don't even try to find me yeah yikes now somehow they got over that okay um after After a few days, but things only continue to slowly get worse.

Judy noticed his mom that they weren't spending a lot of time together.

And Greg seemed to be spending more and more time by himself with his friends anywhere he could away from Pam.

Damn. On the weekends, he'd go out with his friends.

And if he wasn't with his friends, he'd just go for drives around town in his truck.

All right. He just didn't want to be with his new wife.

Marriage, you know.

And adding more fuel to the fire was that Greg wanted to start having kids.

and Pam didn't want kids.

Yeah I don't know if this is the place you want to bring kids into my guys.

Numero uno no you guys don't want to bring kids into this because it's not gonna fix it.

No. And then also like that's a conversation you have to have before getting married.

Yeah. Like like you can't wait until later and be like oh wait you don't want kids.

Like that sucks. If you want kids you need to be with somebody that wants kids.

if you're planning to lock yourself to someone for life you got to know what what's going on here where your ideals what are your principles what are your beliefs how do you want do you want kids how do you want to raise kids because certain things are deal breakers like for me i would never be with somebody that didn't want kids and a lot of people would that's a deal breaker yeah either way and vice versa like if you don't want kids you don't want kids yeah and you're not gonna be with someone who is dead set on having kids which is why you gotta talk about that beforehand so So, Greg wanted

them. Pam did not. Greg also wanted to put a down payment on a house.

Pam didn't want to move.

Pam and Greg were drifting apart and they hadn't even been married for a year yet.

Oof. So, while Pam's personal life was taking hit after hit after hit after hit, her professional life was actually going really well.

She was doing great at work and she decided in the fall of 1989 that she wanted to get more involved with something called project self -esteem it was the high school's drug and alcohol awareness program like essentially dare yeah the which we have over here um and it was going to be mandatory for all incoming freshmen it was mostly run by students but it needed to be overseen by an adult staff member and pam volunteered to be that staff member okay the school agreed and it was via project self -esteem that pam would meet a boy named billy flynn and and his group of friends.

Uh -oh, I know that name.

You sure do. Now, I'd probably say it later, but it's important to stress, she's not a teacher.

She worked at the school as an administrator.

Yeah, because she is always, it's always the teacher.

Everybody always says she's a teacher.

She wasn't. It doesn't make it any better or any worse.

It does not make it better.

But it's annoying that it's always written that way because that's not the truth.

Because there are plenty of teachers who have done this kind of thing.

We could cover, like, a million and five cases like this, unfortunately.

this is slightly different slightly different just as bad but slightly different exactly so let's talk about billy flynn let's talk about him let's do it billy flynn's family had moved to seabrook new hampshire from california california california man and they moved in 1987 when billy was 12 years old so interestingly enough uh he and pam's story kind of starts the same ah which is weird when you think about it now the move was tough for billy because it was a huge culture shock.

Seabrook wasn't necessarily the nicest area at the time.

When Pam started her job, actually, Seabrook had the highest unemployment rate in the state of New Hampshire, and it was mostly filled with, like, just shops, like, tattoo shops, firework stores.

There was a lot of porn stores, I guess, along Route 1.

And the surrounding towns were filled with people from Mass and beyond Mass, and those towns had kind of been transformed throughout the years while Seabrook was sort of just frozen in time.

Yeah. Now usually the people living there had strong a strong New Hampshire accent which I don't know what a New Hampshire accent is.

I would I know it when I hear it.

But you couldn't do it.

I don't think I could I could recreate it.

I don't know if I know it to be honest with you.

It's slight. It's slight.

Yeah. But you like you don't know the characteristics.

No I would I was gonna say I I could try to look up, like, an example of it.

But it's one of those things I just, when I hear someone, I'm like, you're from New Hampshire.

Oh, okay. I've never noticed it.

I think I, like, don't notice those things sometimes.

You just have so many souls.

You know, I probably have a New Hampshire soul that's like, that's not an accent.

It's my voice. That's just me.

It's just who I am.

Yeah. But apparently the people living in Seabrook, to other people, seem to have a strong New Hampshire accent.

And they also use specific slang words that other people weren't using.

Friend of the pod and research assistant of the pod, Dave, is pretty familiar with that area.

And he actually let us in on some of the slang.

Are you ready? Oh, Dave. A quick lesson if you're down.

From Dave. Stove you up means you're going to fight someone.

Oh, damn. I'm going to stove you up.

What? Ike bub means all right or yes.

Ike bub? Ike bub. But according to Dave, it's more of an exclamation.

Ike bub. Ike bub. like let's go hell yeah let's do it um and then there is what dave calls the classic which just means yes so like oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah i'd love to do that are you going there i guess is what it is so that means yes all right thank you for joining us class dismissed back to the case thank you dave thank you dave now unfortunately residents of seabrook and just the the Seabrook town in general were the butt of a lot of jokes, which makes me sad because I also came from a town that was the butt of a lot of jokes.

Yeah, that's true. The jokes were especially abundant in high school and the Seabrook kids were usually called Brookers.

Brookers. Brookers.

Now Billy Flynn was known at the time as a quintessential Brooker.

He loved heavy metal. i liked that and he fell in with a crowd from seabrook that didn't really do much else but listen to heavy metal and vibe yeah that was their shit yeah man that's what they did rock on yeah just one year after moving to new hampshire from california this is fucking terrible and tragic oh his father was killed in a car accident oh he was 13 years old so now he had to lean even harder on these brand new friends and his mother had to get a second job working as a maid so that she could support their family.

She was now the sole provider of a family of four.

While grieving. While grieving.

Cool. So Billy could usually be found most afternoons just killing time with his friends, Pete Randall and Vance J .R.

Lattime, I believe is how you say it.

They would work on junk cars in J .R.'s front yard. Okay.

Now J .R.'s house was kind of a home base for Billy and his friends.

It was overcrowded, especially when another friend, Ralph Welch went to stay with JR's family after he was kicked out of his own house oh so it was overcrowded for them but it was also like home I was gonna say yeah it's like a cozy overcrowded exactly now outside of the house that group of teens didn't really have the best reputation in town they were known to shoplift they were known to break into cars and steal things like sticky fingers sticky fingers McGee's they would steal like small shit around the car or they would steal radios which is a dick move yeah that is a dick move let me tell

you yeah didn't your radio get stolen yeah it did yeah and toby the probie yeah and debbie's radio i don't know if her radio got stolen but i know her entire book of cds got stolen and there was a lot of like burned cds like mixed cds to this day we are sad about it if you're listening and you did that go fuck yourself fuck you and i hope limewire gave your computer a virus i hope you got a virus i hope the feds came to your house we were so mad like how dare you yeah that's fucked up those thick books who steals a book of cds dicks like that's not you didn't even make that no fuck that wasn't

your hard work that wasn't yours no but yeah they like to do that they like to steal things from the car like cd books and radios and sometimes if they were lucky enough to find a car that still had the keys in it they would take that car for a joyride and then dump it across town from where they found it so you would wake up in the morning and you'd say holy shit my car is gone but at school they were a little more well behaved and their grades were like all right but none of them were interested in extracurriculars until billy jr and their friend cecilia pierce were asked to be among the students that would facilitate project

self -esteem oh and for one reason or another they all agreed it's very strange because i can't picture this group of friends being like yeah Yeah, I'll work with Project Self -Esteem.

Yeah, that's a little strange to me.

But they did. I think they were probably pressured into it.

Probably. One day that fall.

What'd you say? They were probably threatened.

Absolutely. Now, one day that fall, they all got together for their first meeting.

And it was there that the guidance counselor introduced them to their staff supervisor, media center director, Miss Pamela Smart.

Pamela. So to the teens in the room, Pam seemed pretty cool.

She was young. She was pretty.

She treated them like they were normal.

She never made them feel like a waste of time like some of the other adults in their life did.

But Billy, Billy liked her for a totally different reason.

He thought she was smoking hot.

He was immediately feeling the ba -dum, ba -dum, ba -dum for her.

And he turned to his friend J .R.

and whispered, I'm in love.

Wow. Damn. Like, you've known her for one minute.

That's a lot. She could have terrible views on life.

It's true. So Pam, even though she was an adult and obviously in a position of power and authority, she was 22 years old.

She was a lot closer in age to the students than pretty much any other staff at the school.

And she also wasn't one of their teachers, like you usually hear she was.

She was an administrator for the school district.

So to them, she felt more like a cool older friend versus what she really was, an authority figure.

But Billy right away did whatever he could do to be in Pam's company.

to him her love of heavy metal and her experience as a college radio dj made her even cooler and less like any adult he knew and before long he was opening up to her about everything in his life his dad's death how he didn't feel like he fit in in seabrook at first but then he found this great group of friends you know telling her things that he wasn't talking to anybody else about he also was not serious at all about project self -esteem but what he was serious about was pam Pam.

As the weeks went on and he was spending more and more time with her in the administrative building, which remember was in the high school, they were getting closer and closer.

Oh. And also I'm pretty sure that her office was in the basement so it was away from a lot of important guys.

Oh. But anytime he had a free period, anytime he had lunch or a class he didn't feel like going to, he went to Pam's office.

And it was easy because it was right there.

Yeah. Now Now, Billy, though, he wasn't the only one wanting to spend more time with Pam.

Cecilia Pierce, Billy's friend and fellow Project Self -Esteem volunteer, was also fascinated by her.

Now, Cecilia was somewhat of like a wallflower, and she had big dreams of becoming a journalist. So Pam was the embodiment of what Cecilia wanted for herself.

She seemed like she was attractive, successful, and she had this commanding presence that Cecilia wanted to have, aspired to have. have um her parents both worked full -time so they weren't home a lot essentially what i'm getting at here is that like cecilia didn't feel like she was noticed by a lot of people and pam's always seemed to be the one to make time for her and then they also had a lot in common because she wanted to be a journalist and la -di -da -do you know yeah it makes sense so pam eventually found out that cecilia had an interest in media and journalism and she was like oh would you

like to intern like at the media center with me yeah and cecilia jumped at the chance totally normal yeah right then cecilia's energy an internship goodbye you got there in our internship began in november and for two periods a day she joined pam in the basement office where she helped with typesetting the school board's newsletter she cataloged the av equipment and basically did whatever else needed to be done now of course during her time as an intern cecilia and pam pam got closer yeah because remember pam is this young uh administrator and cecilia's looking up to her she thinks she's so cool

yeah cecilia said they only ever got into one argument and that pam's response to the fight was asking cecilia to please not be mad at her she remembered thinking here's this girl she's 22 she's my friend and she's actually apologizing to me for cecilia who was really used to being ignored and overlooked the attention that she was getting from pam was intoxicating oh boy intoxicating i was gonna say what a word i know right now to anybody looking and unfortunately nobody actually seemed to be it was it would have been clear that pam probably wasn't the best person for this position no the kids

really didn't necessarily respect her as an authority figure they just saw her as a peer and she was not really good at setting professional boundaries what could have been a positive mentoring experience pretty quickly quickly spiraled into something wildly inappropriate.

Pam really, really loved being the center of attention and, like I was saying earlier, she liked to be friends with people that she had power and influence over.

There it is. So this new quote -unquote friendship that she had with Billy and Cecilia, aka their infatuation with her, started to make up for the distance that she was feeling was growing between her and Greg.

Yeah. It's like this is exactly what she wants.

Her little high school friends.

yeah who are like sophomores in high school I don't like it at all are making up for the issue she's having with her husband and while Greg was kind of like growing up and losing interest in the music that they used to love and avoiding partying Pam's new teenage friends were still interested in those things and that she was super cool for loving them just as much as they did yeah man so she's leaning even more and more of course these kids now in December Cecilia saw a flyer on Pam's desk for the Florida Department of Citrus' annual high school video competition the 80s like a video competition it

was the 80s it's almost the 90s but she mentioned to Pam that it sounded fun so Pam agreed and with Cecilia's help they recruited Billy Flynn and Cecilia's best friend Karen Crowley to work on a submission.

They were like let's go win this Florida thing.

Let's go. Oh, no. None of them actually really thought the project was all that interesting.

And their concept, which was a rap song describing orange juice in the life of a caveman, wasn't really that original or clever.

No, but it meant that they got to spend more time with each other throughout the week.

And by January of 1990, the group was meeting several times a week at the school.

and eventually they started meeting up on saturdays too at pam and greg's condo oh no where they would take long breaks to go sledding or eat dinner together i don't like this inappropriate yep so much singing you're welcome yeah now the video that they made did not win it did not even get any kind of positive response from the department of citrus nobody really gave a shot about it no but the time that they spent making it led pam and all all the kids to get closer and she was becoming especially close with billy billy's mom like i said was working multiple jobs to support the family and billy

was usually in charge of his brothers jimmy and larry while she was gone i guess in public he was considered very quiet and polite he didn't talk much about his feelings or really anything at all he was quiet his mother elaine said of him outside of the family people saw a kid that was polite and charming inside the family is where he took out his anger at home he could be whatever he was feeling like and most of the time he was feeling like a prick oh wow that's his that's his mother she was like he was a dick damn she tried actually because she could see that billy was struggling i mean he had

just lost his dad and now he's acting out so she's like okay he needs help yeah so she tried to get help for him and she went to her friends and family for advice on how to handle him but she said quote everybody's solution was beat the shit out of him and she really didn't have any interest in beating any of her children my god so she just tried to keep the peace when she was home i'm glad she didn't have interest in beating her children me too i was happy to hear that goodness but unfortunately like we were saying to provide that home she wasn't able to be there much yeah because she's gonna work

billy was struggling emotionally and left mostly to his own devices and then now he's really starting to struggle with feelings that he's having for pam he knows they can't be together because she's 22 and he's uh 15 at this point but it's confusing for him because she seems to be paying special interest to him and she seems like she likes him too so he's like i don't really know what to do about all this so instead of really like talking to anybody about it he just would go to pam and keep hanging out with her oh no the two of them would flirt with each other yeah In 1920, a broke immigrant in Boston became

one of America's richest, most infamous men practically overnight.

He swindled the modern equivalent of a quarter billion dollars and etched his name into history as the mastermind behind one of the most notorious scams ever, the Ponzi scheme.

Hosted by Maya Lau and featuring award -winning comedian and actor Now, Pam, as we know, she was going through a lot of changes and a lot of turmoil in her life.

Her marriage was crumbling at that point.

She and Greg barely had anything in common anymore.

more and one night around christmas 1989 greg spent the night out drinking with friends and he didn't come home it was another boston night oh man didn't come home until the next morning at first he was like i didn't come back because i was too drunk and i didn't want to drive so i slept at my friend's house but she was like i know that's not the truth like what really happened and eventually she got the truth out of him he had cheated on her oh no so the tension grew between them and over the course of a few days things reached a breaking point one night when pam showed up at greg's parents house

in the middle of the night dressed in her pajamas and she says to them in the middle of the night just in her pajamas that greg had slapped her across the face bent her over a railing in their condo and attempted to strangle her oh my god i I know.

Now, obviously, it was just Greg and Pam when this happened.

So none of us have any idea if this happened or not.

Very well could have. Very well could not have. It's unclear.

But when Bill Smart confronted his son about it, Greg, Greg denied it and said, I haven't even touched her.

She's a pain in the ass.

I just told her to get the hell out of here.

And then Pam would later claim that the slap was accidental.

Okay. And none of their friends had any recollection of it it happening but whether it happened or not that incident kind of seemed to be the trigger point for the end of the marriage makes sense you know and it's one of those things where it's like there's three versions of the story yours mine and the truth we're never gonna know what actually happened like do i think they probably got into a fucking nasty argument yes but i am nobody to say what happened past that yeah like the physical portion of it would it shock me no but i can't I wasn't there.

Exactly. Now, as Pam's life in Derry was rapidly disintegrating, she opted to spend more time in Hampton, where she was getting idolized by Cecilia and worshipped by Billy.

Now, by February, they were still meeting several times a week, and Billy was still spending any free time he had hanging out with Pam, either in her office or at her condo.

And one day in early February, Pam brought some undeveloped film to Billy.

he had previously told her that his upstairs neighbor or one of his upstairs neighbors owned a one -hour photoshop so he could get her a discount on photo processing okay so later that day when the photos were ready to pick up pam and billy drove together to get them and pam immediately opened them up in the parking lot and just started like lolling to herself about them them she was uh posing seductively in her bra and underwear and she then handed those pictures to billy to look at oh i hate that a lot please remember that she's 22 and this boy is a motherfucking sophomore in high school yep

she knew exactly what she was doing yep also the photos are laughable and you can google them oh god it's just like what are you doing like it's you took Took those knowing that you were going to give them to a 15 year old.

Come on. And that's so yucka yucka.

It's very yucka yucka.

The most yucka yucka.

So the next day she brought the photos to work with her and she told Billy she didn't think any of them were very good.

So he could take any of them if he wanted to keep them.

Like how do you even have that conversation?

I don't like I don't want to know.

How? How you ask? I retract.

attract. So later that afternoon she called Cecilia into her office and she was like I really have to talk to you about something but it's personal.

Now clearly like from the outside of this as adults we're like oh she's grooming them.

Yeah. She's slowly testing the waters while she plans to lead up to something more shocking.

Yeah. Crazy requests and then eventually straight up violations.

She knows her audience.

She knows that they're looking for positive attention, attention validation and that because they were in the position that they were they weren't going to catch on to all the red flags that she was throwing their way this is so sick it's fucked so once cecilia went into pam's office pam was like oh my god girl sit down i gotta talk to you and by now they had had so many chats about personal matters so this wasn't strange so it didn't feel weird to cecilia exactly because i'm she was groomed now pam just blurted out to cecilia i think i'm in love with bill oh my god now cecilia just smiled uh

probably very unsure about what the fuck she was supposed to make of what pam just said to her yeah and i mean the idea was absolutely insane pam was an adult billy was a teenager so at first cecilia probably was like lol like what well and it's like she's making it seem like she's confiding something in you so like you you are on that level you're my you're my good girl yeah like i'm confiding in you like this is like so cecilia's like what and like so pam had to convince her that she was serious and once she was convinced pam asked her if she could pass a message along to billy she said ask

him to come by the media center after school so i can tell him myself oh my god so billy did as he was asked but when he showed up in pam's office she was like really flustered and couldn't get what she wanted to say out so he left because um he had to catch the school bus home because he's a child he doesn't even have a license y 'all he's taking the school bus home yep and his administrator was about to tell him that she's in love with him i hate this this full -grown married individual is putting her two index fingers together like i think i have a crush on you billy ew i hate it like get a grip

so the next day billy skipped his free study period and went to pam's office again and he was like what the fuck is going on like why are you being and so weird around me this is coming out of nowhere yeah so she started being like awkward and seemed like she was embarrassed and she put her head down to avoid eye contact with him and said do you ever think about me when i'm not around oh my god and billy was like oh my gosh i know exactly what you're talking about like yes i always do and i mean he was completely stunned of course but he was also over the fucking moon of course he's a 15 year

old she's 22 so he told told her, yeah, I do think about you all the time.

And then they like talked about their feelings for each other briefly before Billy had to go back to his high school classes.

Oh my God, I hate it.

He was like, yeah, Pam, I really do think about you all the time, but I got to get back to biology.

I have to go to fifth period.

Like Jesus fucking Christ. That's so gross.

So things were awkward in the days that followed, but eventually that awkwardness just went all the way to the wayside.

oh no a few weeks later pam visited billy at his home while his mother made dinner in the kitchen and pam went up to his bedroom closed the door behind her try your best not to picture this but billy was laying on his bed pam was leaned against the door and starry eyes by motley crew was playing in the background i hate everything about this don't picture it i'm not nope pam asked billy if he was going to kiss her you know with the romance of starry eyes and he was like Like, oh, my gosh, totally.

But being the timid boy that he was, he wasn't getting up to make a move.

So Pam strode across the room and kissed him while his mother was making spaghetti downstairs.

Oh, my God. Because he can't even cook his own meals.

I hate it. I'm losing it.

I just threw my computer.

I'm closing my eyes and just trying to, like, rub away.

This is called disassociating.

Like, his mom is downstairs, you fucking crazy woman.

Oh, that's so awful.

And she isn't thinking any of this because, again, this is not a teacher.

No. And she's probably like, I don't know what the fuck's going on.

This is a violation of all kinds.

So a couple weeks after the kiss, it's going to get so much more violent.

Greg went out of town on a ski trip.

And Pam asked Billy if he would like to spend the night with her at her condo in Derry.

So for Billy, who had been fantasizing about this very scenario since the moment he fucking met Pam, this entire thing is feeling surreal and he's like hell to the yeah i hate it so he went and that night he basically just shared an ordinary night with pam like a like a cut like an ordinary couple would except he's 15 it's very upsetting they had dinner together they watched nine and a half weeks and then they retired to the bedroom pam dressed up in lingerie and danced seductively for billy oh my god reenacting a scene from the film and billy would later tell a jury she said she always wanted

to dance for somebody like that but there was never anybody she could do it for how about your full -grown husband how about the man that you married how about that like i wrote an asterisk here and i wrote fucking twisted so fucking twisted that's exactly what it is twisted oh so now she's got her hold on billy secure and she is quickly quickly escalating things between them now she's discussing her relationship with greg with billy and according to billy pam only married greg quote because back then it was the thing to do to marry the greg and also back then it was like two years ago you motherfucker

back then but she would always talk to billy about the different ways that greg was physically and emotionally abusing her according to her because again we don't know yeah i mean it's abusive to spit beer in somebody's face absolutely it is but she said there was also supposedly a time where he locked her out of the house in the snow and she was only wearing her bra and underwear jesus and i was like i would hope not because like his parents lived uh five minutes away like that's awkward but we don't know if that's yeah we don't know but she was very very clearly trying to appear like she was was a damsel

in distress a woman in need of saving and it was working because billy never liked greg obviously because he's pam's husband and a newfound rival but now he's hearing regular descriptions of domestic violence at greg's hands yeah so he hates greg for what pam claims he's doing to her of course so a few weeks later during one of her rants about greg's dismissive and sometimes abusive behavior pam reminded billy of a time when she asked whether or not he knew somebody that would kill for money i don't know how that had come up previously you know that doesn't often come up in my conversations i

will say i don't think i've ever asked anybody yeah they just happen to know someone that was a hitman yeah that's never really something that just casually comes up in my life Not me, either.

Not me. Not me. Couldn't be me.

No way. But apparently when she first asked, she had made the question a joke.

It was something about, like, needing to get rid of her secretary so she could get the job for her friend.

Like, it was silly.

Yeah. But now Pam seemed serious.

Only this time, obviously, it wasn't her secretary that she wanted to have killed.

It was her husband.

Uh -oh. So after a few weeks of hearing how terrible Greg was, Billy understood that Pam was angry and frustrated.

But at the same time, he also found it very hard to believe that she actually wanted her husband murdered.

Yeah. It might be pretty tough to wrap your head around that.

Yeah, I would hope that would be strange to hear.

Later on, he would say he did become convinced when Pam, quote, started crying and said the only way she could, excuse me, Pam started crying and said the only way she could see for us to be together is if we kill Greg.

And the thing is, and I know he's 15, so this isn't like, wow, you should understand that.

When you're looking at it from an outside perspective, you're like, but there is no way for you two to be together because you're an adult and he is a child, and that is not consensual or okay in any way.

So whether your husband is dead or alive and you divorce him, you still can't be together.

Nope, sure can't. She's still against all laws of goodness and law.

Law. Like, how are you going to tell your mom that you're dating a 22 -year -old, Billie?

You can't do that. I don't think she's going to go for that.

So it's like, guys, no matter what, I don't know why it's like he has to be dead.

That's the only thing stopping us from being together.

No. The law of the land is what's stopping you from being together, you idiots.

Right. Like, are you kidding me?

Well, so Billie did understand that there were other options.

He was like, what about divorce?

Yeah. Yeah. And she said divorce simply wasn't an option.

Pam said, quote, because everything was in Greg's name, or I believe it was Billy that said this, excuse me, because everything was in Greg's name and he'd take the car, the dog, the furniture and the money and she'd have to move in with her mother.

Okay, well, if you guys have loves, then that should be it, right?

And also like she'd have to move in with her mother.

She'd have to be an accessory to murder.

Like I think one outweighs the other.

I think one is better.

Like even I have a shitty mom, but I'd move in with her over killing my husband.

been and it's like he's not gonna take everything like you're gonna go through like an equitable equitable division of the assets exactly like get get fucked girl get fucked get fucked get wrecked get wrecked so knowing how attached and infatuated billy was with her though pam took one took things one step further and she told billy we won't be able to spend time together outside of school as long as greg's alive you can't spend time together anyway outside of school he is a child even if he's alive and you're divorced you still can't hang out outside of school you can't she's so manipulative

and horrible manipulative even like in in prison I'm pretty sure she there's been like stories that have come out over the years where you're like oh yeah people don't stop yeah these kind of people don't stop from the moment though Pam brought up the potential of killing Greg the subject became an almost constant topic of conversation first but just between Pam and billy but then eventually between pam billy and cecilia at first it was like an air of secrecy thing and it was like excitement around the affair their relationship was like part teenage romance they would like pass notes and have sex

in parking lots and also dangerous yeah like there was that whole side of it but they loved that like they fed off of that um but it was also illegal and and at the very least, Pam would get fired if anybody found out.

But eventually, her repeated appeals for Billy to kill Greg took on a way more serious and way more urgent tone, and it made it seem like she was ready and serious.

So after a few weeks of badgering, Billy finally caved and agreed to kill Greg Smart.

He would later say, I was afraid if I didn't do it, she would leave me, and that would be it.

So once Billy agreed to kill Greg, it was like there was literally no No other subject between them worth talking about.

Just like she had with the orange juice video and every other project in her life, Pam took over.

She planned the murder like it was a project she was working on for school.

She settled on the old classic.

They would make the murder look like Greg had been killed in a...

Accident. Robbery gone wrong.

Close. Robbery gone wrong.

I mean, also an accident.

Accident. You should have seen her face.

I got very excited.

That was cute. I was like, I nailed it.

Accident. I was like, almost. Yours makes more sense.

At that point, though, everything still seemed like it was fantasy or a movie.

Pam was like, Billy, here's what you're going to do.

You're going to dress in all black.

You're going to park the car.

He doesn't have one or a license to operate one.

A few blocks from the condo.

Then you're going to walk to my house.

And you're going to wait for Greg to get home.

And every day the plan was refined more and more.

Billy should wear gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints.

He should tie his hair back so nobody could identify him.

He should wreck the house to make it seem like they've been robbed and so on and so forth.

Now Pam, meanwhile, was going to establish a strong alibi by going to a school board meeting in Hampton at the time of the killing.

Genius. Genius. Brilliant.

Oh my god, Pam. How'd you come up with it?

Wow, this is just the brain trust at work.

Excuse me, I had to cough.

Stop coughing. How dare you?

But what the plan seemed to lack was any realistic discussion of what it would be like to actually murder somebody or how Billy should even go about murdering him in the first place.

Yeah, that'll just come.

You know, why talk about that?

What? Why figure that out?

Now, even though the plan was for Billy to murder Greg, Pam wasted absolutely no time in making Cecilia an accomplice by keeping her updated on the plan.

She knew every last step.

She was there for many of the discussions between Pam and Billy, and her knowledge would later make her an asset set to potential investigators and potential prosecutors okay now when it came time to do the actual killing pam had everything planned down to the smallest detail she was going to leave the door to the basement unlocked so that billy could slip in undetected once inside he was to bring the couple's dog halen halen fuck why can't i say it you said it right oh i said it right and then i said yeah you said it right and then you changed it so you were correct thank you brother nailed Once

inside, he would bring the couple's dog, Halen, into the basement so as not to cause any commotion.

I always hate that part of things.

I know. When they, like, throw a dog in, like, a bathroom or something to kill the owner.

And it's like, what do you do?

And it's always a tiny dog because they can do that.

Like with a tiny dog.

Like, a big dog's going to fuck your world up.

Hell yeah, they are.

But it's like, these poor little tiny baby dogs are always just, like, tossed in a bedroom or a closet or something.

And then they hear the commotion.

A person is being murdered out there.

Yeah. Like, I always...

That part always gets me.

It's like when somebody takes off somebody's glasses before they do something or, like, rips their glasses off.

It's just, like... That's exactly it.

It just, like, stresses me out.

It, like, adds to it.

Yeah. But, so, once Halen was in the basement, then Billy would return to the first floor and wait for Greg to come home, at which point he was to shoot Greg in the head and then trash the apartment to make it look like he'd been killed again when he walked in on a robbery yeah now even as they planned meticulously cecilia definitely never thought that these two were actually going to go through with the plan she was just like wow this is fucking wild that you guys are talking about this guys everybody stop assuming they're not going to go forward in the plan every fucking story i tell every fucking

story it's like i heard them plan it like meticulously but i didn't think they'd do it but i never thought they'd do it and it's like yes i understand it sounds like you're like a more logical person cecilia in that way where you're saying well there's no way that these two idiots are gonna kill her husband like that's wild but like also if they're talking about it like normal people don't talk about killing their husbands no they don't that's just that's not a that's standard practice that's really not something that just gets thrown about and then you all lull about it and you move on no if they're

talking about it they in some way in some part of their soul they are planning to do this it's true just a little psa to everybody you should go home and tell your mom yeah so tell someone anybody now she would later tell investigators that billy just wasn't a violent kid sure he was angry but enough that he would um execute somebody in cold blood probably not probably not so that was most likely why she continued to go along with it even when they started brainstorming where billy was was going to get a gun because they plotted that whole part before they even had access to a gun now cecilia actually

did contribute to the plan and suggested that billy could use her father's gun but she hadn't seen her dad in several years so that wasn't really a viable option wow yeah then she suggested a woman she worked with at papagino she said she knew this lady kept a handgun in the glove compartment of her car and that actually seemed like a pretty easy option because billy loved stealing things from vehicles so he said whoa another one let's go yeah i love doing this so he hung around the parking lot of the papagino's several nights in a row until he finally was able to break into the woman's car but when he

did there was no gun in the compartment ah so ultimately they would use a gun that they stole from jr's father okay with hollow point bullets billy convinced a friend to buy for him now he said the reason for the hollow was quote because they would be the quickest and most painless oh this is like really chilling it's so chilling now pam and billy had spent so long talking about killing greg that the whole thing thing kind of just seemed like a perverse game and for that reason it probably came as a shock to billy when one afternoon in late march pam insisted that it couldn't wait any longer and and it

needed to be done that night.

But the problem was that Billy still didn't have a gun, did not have a car or a license to operate one.

Because he's a child.

Pam, your lover is a virgin who can't drive.

Okay. That was a perfect insertion of that line.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Now, when Billy pointed all these facts out, all Pam had to offer was, well, hurry up and get them by tonight.

Okay. What? What? What?

Huh? So Billy was like, okay, I'll try.

But he couldn't figure that out.

No. And he wasn't ready to murder somebody in cold blood.

He said, it's not something I wanted to do.

And I didn't think she'd be mad or anything if I didn't.

At least at first, he didn't think that.

But unfortunately, Billy was very wrong.

Pam was in fact very angry that he didn't follow through with the murder of her current husband.

when he called her later to tell her that he hadn't done it she exploded on him and screamed at him through the phone you don't love me if you did you would do this for me it's the only way we could be together and if you loved me then you would want us to be together wow now this was the first time he had seen her pissed off because uh she's been grooming him so she's been building him up building him up and building him up and not showing any of her real and now she's about to fucking lose it on him now through tears he probably started crying and was like okay next time i'm gonna go through

with it but she persisted and screamed at him i know you're never gonna do this you don't have any intention of doing this and i can't go on seeing you like this if we're not gonna be together and then she slammed the phone on the receiver and hung up on him that's so fucked up it's so manipulative so fucked up this is a child this is a 15 year old and she She knows that like, yeah, a 15 year old should know better than to murder someone.

That is absolutely 100 percent true.

But on the other side of this, a fucking adult should know that a 15 year old in a 15 year old boy who is clearly like in puppy love with you is highly impressionable.

And she does. She does.

Exactly. And that's the thing.

It's like there's wrongs here on each level.

But her bet this imbalance of power here.

years so beyond fucked absolutely and remember everybody it never would have happened if it weren't for pam smart yeah billy never would have murdered he wouldn't have just randomly murdered this guy like if it were not for pam he wasn't showing any kind of like sure he was like a little thief yeah he was like he was a shitty kid like for sure but it's like his mom was like he was kind of a prick he didn't really show like true like who knows none of us really know but But it's like likely wouldn't have. No. No. No. So the next day Cecilia pulled Billy aside and she said Pam wants to see you.

Now in her office in the media center Pam apologized for yelling at Billy on the phone and said don't worry.

There's another school board meeting scheduled for next month so you'll have another chance to kill Greg.

And Billy said later.

Yeah right. Billy said later that's when I started getting serious about it.

I thought that if I do something like I thought that if I do something like not go through with it she's gonna leave me and that's gonna be it this is the time i really started talking to jr and pete about it those were his two friends and that is where we're going to wrap up for part one i knew it but next week we're going to get into the final plan the night of the murder and the subsequent trials of those involved but something to think about more people are involved than you might think oh later on okay this this plan gets finalized with a lot more players than you're probably thinking at this moment

this is just so messy it's a bunch of fucking malarkey so messy from the beginning of this marriage until the end i'm sure it's all messy it's absolutely terrible these are two people that definitely should not have gotten married no these are uh two people that never should have met like billy and pam yeah and this is a relationship that never should have occurred exactly multiple relationships that never should have occurred between billy and pam and pam and yeah inappropriate relationships for sure so with that being said we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but never this fucking

weird or else literally never this weird don't be a listener of the show and keep it that fucking weird don't you know how weird to take it okay and this is not it it's not it If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

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[The Dark Web of Manipulation: The Pamela Smart Case (Part 1)]-[Episode 463: The Pamela Smart Case (Part 1)]

📋 Summary

The Unraveling of an Ill-Fated Marriage

The Grooming of a Teenager

The Anatomy of a Murder Plot

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript