At the age of 22, Smart allegedly coerced her lover into committing murder by threatening to withhold intimacy unless he eliminated the husband she had wed just a year prior.
Her plans unraveled when a wiretap recorded her discussing the murder, leading to a confrontation with a detective in the school parking lot.
The detective approached her with a stark announcement: “I have some good news and some bad news for you.”
Continuing, he said, “The good news is we’ve solved your husband’s murder. The bad news is you’re under arrest.”
The case became one of the first in the United States to be broadcast on television, catapulting Smart into the national spotlight.
During the trial, her teenage accomplices painted her as the calculating orchestrator behind the crime.
She was given a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.
She remains behind bars, though her co-conspirators have since been freed.
