Smart's tale of seduction, murder still making rounds

The infamous bikini shot that helped seal the fate of Pamela Smart. (Courtesy photo)

The trial credited with the birth of tabloid TV and crime docudramas will be the feature of a new film that debuts on HBO beginning tonight.

“Captivated: the Trials of Pamela Smart” tells the tale of the media’s role in the infamous murder trial that took place 24 years ago.

Director Jeremiah Zagar reintroduces the concept Marhall McLuhan made half a century ago, that “the medium is the message.”

Zagar makes the point in his movie, which is an official Sundance Film Festival selection, that whether it be a TV news report, newspaper article, magazine tome or movie, the way the story is told becomes a fabric of the event, itself, and a narrative unto its own.

Smart, 22 in 1990, worked in the media center at Winnacunnet High in Hampton where she met and seduced student Billy Flynn, then 15, who with three teenage friends  - Patrick Randall, J.R. Lattime and Raymond Fowler - later went to the Derry home of Smart and her husband, Greg, where they murdered him.

Smart says she never asked Flynn to murder her husband.

The jury saw otherwise.

 The four young men reached a plea deal for a more lenient sentence in exchange for their testimony against Pamela Smart.

Smart got life in prison. She is currently held at a correctional facility in Bedford, N.Y.

During the trial, the infamous photo of a bikini-clad Smart surfaced and her story made the rounds of TV talks shows, including Geraldo. Oprah and Phil Donahue.

Smart’s was the first murder trial to be televised gavel-to-gavel, and TV couldn't get enough of it.

WMUR ran the entire trial live, where it outshone afternoon soaps. Journalist Joyce Maynard wrote a novel based on the case, "To Die For," that was turned into a film with Nicole Kidman as Smart. A TV movie starring Helen Hunt was also made.

Maynard is a well-known writer but also famous for her brief affair with the late author J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye), who formerly lived in Cornish, N.H.

Salinger, by the way, stopped giving media interviews after a newspaper I formerly worked for ran a story about him helping out at the local high school on the front page instead of on the school page where he wanted it to run.