CONCORD — An aunt of 1990 murder victim Gregory Smart Thursday sought to have one of the teens convicted in the murder barred from living in New Hampshire after his release on lifetime parole June 4.
Debbie Smart told the adult parole board: “I am deathly afraid of this man. He murdered my nephew.”
In granting his release Wednesday, the adult parole board wasn’t willing to banish Patrick “Pete” Randall, 41, from all of New Hampshire, but was willing to bar him from communities the Smart family specified, including Nashua, Gilford, Laconia, Belmont and Weirs Beach.
Board chairman Donna Sytek drew the line at barring Randall from Manchester. “I think we have to balance,” she said, noting Randall has been living in the prison’s Manchester halfway house and working in the city since June 2014, without incident.
But Sytek did restrict Randall to traveling to and from work. No going to a gas station, the movies or shopping in Manchester, Sytek told Randall, adding the Smart family can contact Randall’s parole officer if concerns arise.
If Randall is somewhere he’s permitted to be and sees a Smart family member, he is to walk away. That’s what the Smart family wants, said board member Leslie Mendenhall.
“It’s what I want, too,” Randall said.
Randall, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for holding Gregory Smart at knifepoint in Smart’s Derry condo May 1, 1990, while William “Billy” Flynn shot Smart in the back of the head, was sentenced to 28 years to life.
Smart’s wife, Pamela, 22 at the time of the murder, admitted seducing then 15-year-old Flynn, after meeting him at Hampton’s Winnacunnet High School, where she was a media coordinator. She denied telling him the only way they could be together was for him to kill her husband, taking care not to frighten her dog.
Pamela Smart, now 47, was convicted of accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy and witness tampering and is serving a term of life without the possibility of parole in a New York women’s prison.
At Randall’s sentencing in Rockingham County Superior Court Aug. 21, 1992, he told Gregory Smart’s parents: “I’m truly sorry for what happened … [but] I can be sorry to the end of the world and it will never mean anything to you.” Gregory’s parents, William and Judith, have both since died.
At Thursday’s parole hearing, Randall told Gregory’s brother, Dean, and other relatives, that as he has gotten older, and experienced the near-loss of his mother and the recent loss of his grandfather, “It made me realize how much I really hurt you … [and that] nothing I say can make it better.”
No one from the Smart family was ready to forgive.
Val Fryatt, Gregory Smart’s cousin, said she recalled: “You wondered what it would be like to kill someone,” adding, “What if you still wonder? … I’m very afraid of that.”
Dean Smart said he recalled Randall testifying at Pamela Smart’s trial that he wanted to be a hit man when he grew up.
“I don’t see any remorse,” he said
After the hearing, Dean Smart elaborated, saying he’s “unsure what really happened inside that condo.”
Eleanor Pam, a spokesperson for Pamela Smart, has suggested it was Randall who actually fired the bullet that killed Gregory Smart, but that Flynn confessed so the boys could get better plea deals.
Pam says Pamela Smart is innocent and would prefer to spend the rest of her life in prison rather than falsely admit guilt in return for a lesser sentence.
Following the hearing, Fryatt said she had a message for Pamela Smart, who asked in a recent televised interview about forgiveness from the Smart family. “If you do want to confess, we can talk about forgiveness,” said Fryatt.
Randall, who was 16 at the time of the murder, is the last of four teens involved in the murder of Gregory Smart to be granted parole. Vance Lattime and Raymond Fowler, who went to the Smarts’ condo May 1, 1990, but remained outside in a vehicle during the murder, were paroled earlier on lesser sentences.
Last month, the parole board approved the release of Flynn, who will also be on lifetime parole. Flynn, who married while in prison in Maine, will remain in that state after his release, also June 4.
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