Pamela Smart

Convict

Name at birth: Pamela Wojas

Pamela Smart was sentenced to life in prison in 1991 for plotting the May 1990 murder of her husband, Gregory Smart. Her trial was televised and gained national attention because of its lurid details: Smart, the 22 year-old media services director at Winnacunnet High School, had convinced William "Billy" Flynn, a 15-year-old student and her lover, to murder her husband. Flynn and three accomplices killed Gregory Smart in his home with a gunshot to his head and then tried to make it look like a botched robbery. Flynn, Patrick Randall, and Vince Lattime, Jr. were captured and then struck a deal with prosecutors in January 1991, agreeing to testify that Smart had masterminded the plot. Also used against her at trial were incriminating recordings made secretly by the police with the help of Cecelia Pierce, a high school student who had interned with Smart. During the televised trial, Smart came across as pretty and poised -- but to many she seemed a little too poised, and the tabloids dubbed her "Ice Princess." The young men were sentenced to long jail terms for their roles in the crime, and Smart was convicted in March 1991 and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. The story was made into a TV movie starring Helen Hunt and was the basis for the Gus Van Sant feature film To Die For (1995, starring Nicole Kidman). Smart, who maintains that she is innocent, is serving her sentence in a New York prison.

Extra credit: Pamela Smart is no relation to 2002 kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart.