Episode 33 | The Murder of Gregg Smart: A Fool's Game. Derry, New Hampshire (part two)

Anngelle Wood
Oct 4, 2022
2 min read

Updated: Jan 10

I often cover stories that shaped me, and this is one of them. I lived in Southern New Hampshire in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing the name Pamela Smart.

Part two in the series continues the story of Gregg Smart’s murder and the teenagers who planned and carried out the plot to kill him. It’s almost impossible to imagine anyone following through with such an ill‑conceived plan -- yet four teenagers from Seabrook, New Hampshire did exactly that, acting at the urging of a 22‑year‑old high school media coordinator.

The case was sensational, and it captivated the region for the better part of a year between 1990 and 1991.

Gregg Smart is too often the forgotten victim in what has repeatedly been called the crime of the century, a case marked by a long list of firsts. Gregg was murdered on May 1, 1990. The 24‑year‑old insurance broker was shot to death in his own home just six days before his first wedding anniversary.

At first glance, it appeared he had interrupted a burglary - exactly the scenario the killers were instructed to stage. But as investigators dug deeper, the truth unraveled into a plot filled with salacious details and explosive headlines, driven by a mastermind who was tried in the media long before ever entering a courtroom. The Smart case became a spectacle: the original “crime of the century,” and the first fully televised trial of its kind.

WMUR‑TV Channel 9 in Manchester, New Hampshire preempted its regular programming to air the entire two‑week trial live. People lined up at 2 a.m. just to secure a seat inside the courtroom. The pretrial frenzy was unlike anything the region had seen.