In 1991 Pamela Smart was sentenced to life in prison for plotting the May 1990 murder of her husband, Gregory Smart. The most publicized murder case in New Hampshire history, the trial was televised and gained national attention because of its lurid details: Smart, the 22 year-old media services director at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, had convinced William "Billy" Flynn, her 15 year-old lover, to murder her husband. Flynn and three accomplices killed Gregory Smart in his home "execution-style" and tried to make it look like a botched robbery. When the police discovered Pamela's love affair with Flynn, they turned their attention to the ambitious young newlywed. Eventually Flynn, Patrick Randall, and Vince Lattime, Jr. struck a deal with prosecutors in January and agreed 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. On television 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 all sentenced to long jail terms for their part 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 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.