Teen Tells Of Murder Rumors -- Youth Testifies Whispered Words Led To Confrontation

EXETER, N.H. - Ralph Welch tiptoed last June to Vance Lattime Jr.'s bedroom, pressed his ear against his friend's door and heard the whispered words that led one day later to the arrest of Gregory Smart's killers, Welch testified yesterday in the accomplice-to-murder trial of the victim's widow, Pamela Smart.

Welch, 18, told a Rockingham County Superior Court jury that he eavesdropped at the door moments after confronting Lattime, 18, and another friend, Patrick ``Pete'' Randall, 17, with a rumor that they had helped Pamela Smart's purported 16-year-old lover, William Flynn, kill her husband.

Welch's testimony came on the seventh day of Smart's celebrated trial, which has commanded headlines from London to Los Angeles and created such a stampede of spectators that only those who arrive at the courthouse before dawn have a shot at seats.

Smart, 23, the former media director for the Winnacunnet School District in Hampton, is accused of using promises of love and money to lure Flynn, Lattime and Randall, all students at Winnacunnet High School, into killing her husband on May 1, 1990, a week before the Smarts' first anniversary.

As Smart took notes yesterday, Welch identified the source of the murder rumor as his cousin, Raymond Fowler, 19, who allegedly rode with the three from Lattime's Seabrook home to Smart's Derry condominium on the night the 24-year-old insurance agent was slain. Fowler, also of Seabrook, has been charged with attempted murder in connection with the alleged plot.

Lattime and Randall at first denied the rumor, Welch testified. But after they closed the door on him, Welch told the jury, he heard one of them whisper, ``Bill's going to be pissed. And you know who's going to be next.''

Asked what they meant by ``who's going to be next,'' Welch testified, ``I thought they meant they were going to kill Raymond Fowler.''

At that, Welch burst into the room, confronted the pair again, then sat stunned as Randall described in detail the murder of Gregory Smart, he said.

``I couldn't believe my best friends had actually killed somebody,'' Welch said. When he asked them how they could have done it, Welch testified, Randall replied, ``That's what they do in the Army. They do it every day.''

Randall also boasted, according to Welch, that ``he wanted to be a hired assassin.''

In addition, Welch quoted Randall as saying, ``Greg was worth more dead than alive'' because he carried $140,000 in life insurance.

The next day, Welch tearfully detailed the alleged murder plot for Lattime's parents, then rode with them to the Seabrook police station to repeat the account, he testified.

Flynn, Randall and Lattime, who together were known to family and friends as the Three Musketeers, were arrested that night after watching the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie ``Total Recall'' at a theater in Salisbury, Mass.

Initially charged with first-degree murder, all three pleaded guilty in January to second-degree murder charges in exchange for testifying against Smart, who faces a sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted of the charges against her: being an accomplice to first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Also yesterday, a friend of Flynn's, Sarah Thomas, testified that she read several of the estimated 12 love letters that Smart allegedly gave Flynn before Gregory Smart's murder.

A couple of the letters were ``very sexually explicit,'' Thomas told the jury. In another, Smart allegedly expressed jealousy over Flynn kissing a classmate on the ride home from a Motley Crue concert in Providence about two weeks before the murder.

Thomas also testified that she asked Flynn if he loved Smart.

``He said he didn't know, but the sex was great,'' Thomas said.

Lawyers for Smart, who has been held without bail since her arrest last August, say she is being framed by the three Seabrook teen-agers, whom they describe as ``thrill killers.''

The trial, halted unexpectedly yesterday when a lawyer became ill, is scheduled to resume today with Smart's former intern, Cecelia Pierce, testifying about becoming a police informant and wearing a concealed tape recorder during conversations with Smart about the murder.

Gregory Smart's mother, Judith, yesterday described Pamela Smart outside the courtroom as ``a manipulative monster.''

``She picked the right boy with the right personality, and she did everything she could do sexually to get him hooked so he would kill my son,'' she said. ``I hope she spends the rest of her life in jail and rots there.''

Judith Smart said she has yet to see Pamela cry since Gregory's death. Two days after his murder, she said, Pamela delivered Greg's personal belongings to her and her husband's home in plastic garbage bags. ``Even his plants that he liked to care for and she didn't like,'' she added.

``She didn't even keep a picture of him,'' Judith Smart said. ``It's a deep-down gut hate. I really do, I hate that girl.''