opera. unfortunately it was my life and wasn t a soap opera for me. it was tv s first blockbuster trial. scandalous and sensational. her sexuality was the star of the pam smart show. the explosion of flashbulbs. it s body heat, it s fatal attraction. pamela smart accused of bewitching a teenage student into murdering her husband. i pulled the trigger. another look at the frenzy. it was just crazy. the trial. i made a mistake. was killing your husband one of those mistakes? no. it s not at all who she was or is. the case some say changed the way americans witnessed justice. i don t know enough will ever be enough for anyone in this case. pamela smart liv. the beautiful, young widow stepped hello and welcome to dateline. you ve heard about it. pamela part lived it. the beautiful young widow from her small town into america s most gripping trial. a very real drama that inspired a hollywood hit movie. now you re about to hear the chilling story from th
and they ruined their lives. the story of the wedding ring was devastating. my wife will kill me. there s no soap opera to this. it s real stuff. it s real stuff. if the testimony from the young conspirator wasn t enough, prosecutors have courtesy of another student. pamela s intern, cecilia pierce. prosecutors believe cecilia knew about the murder plot, but they didn t have enough evidence to charge her with conspiracy. but police did convince her to cooperate. when cecilia came on board and she decided to cooperate with us, she would talk to pamela smart. investigators hope pamela smart would implicate herself in gregg s murder. on the tapes, she didn t come right out and say i did it, but she did sound like someone worried about being arrested. i m afraid one day you re
please don t hurt him, begging for his life. i asked him for the ring on his finger. what kind of ring was it? at first, i thought it just was a normal gold ring, but it turned out to be a wedding band. and what happened at that time? he told me he couldn t give it to me. why? said his wife would kill him. at the center of this r-rated courtroom drama was the lovestruck teenage killer, billy flynn. he took the stand on his 17th birthday and testified about how he and pamela smart became intimate. flynn testified that while pamela s husband was away on a ski trip, she invited him into her bedroom. and then she told me she was going to dance for me like that. what did like that mean? like provocative. like a striptease type thing. what happened after that? we had sex. by that you mean intercourse? yeah. we made love. on the stand, billy went on
a hundred years it seemed like. i said, god forgive me. after you said, god forgive me, what happened? i pulled the trigger. viewers were like jurors rendering a verdict in real time. i feel sorry for the kids. they re so young and everything and they ruined their lives. the story of the wedding ring was devastating. don t take that wedding ring, my wife will kill me. oh, my lord. there s no soap opera to this. it s real stuff. real stuff. if the testimony from the young conspirators wasn t enough, prosecutors had pamela in her own words, courtesy of another student, pamela s intern, cecelia pierce. prosecutors believed cecelia
the wedding ring, for example, i heard the story, those are all very significant. sounds like she is really hearing, processing everything, and being able to execute these commands in a way that s improving day by day. eye opening again as i mentioned earlier, you really, you look at people s motor skills, which she is showing. their eye opening, which she s now showing, verbal skills would be sort of a third category. she can t do that right now because of the breathing tube that she still has in, but, you know, forward movement, anderson, every single day. yeah, good news, indeed, always good to report. more with sanjay in the hour ahead. more breaking news as it comes in tonight. after the break we are going to play an extended portion of the president s speech in case you missed it. also our panel will weigh in. let us know what you think, the live chat right now, ac360.com. we ll also talk about the key moments tonight including more about the news of the congresswoman s recover