Zento

True crime told through the original tapes. Confessions, interviews, lies on camera.

[Zento @zento0x]

On May 1, 1990, Gregg Smart, 24, walked into his condo in Derry, New Hampshire, and a 15-year-old boy shot him in the head. The boy was sleeping with Gregg's wife. She worked at his high school, she was 22, and for 34 years she swore she had nothing to do with it. Then she recorded this:

In the video below, from 2024, Pamela Smart says that in a prison writing group she finally went to the place where "I found myself responsible for something I desperately didn't want to be responsible for. My husband's murder." She admits "I had deflected blame all the time... almost as if it was a coping mechanism," and adds: "I'm not a person that went through life hurting other people." Then the video ends with what it was made for: a request for a hearing, so she can get out.

The boy was Billy Flynn. While he pulled the trigger, his friend Pete Randall held a knife to Gregg's throat. Both teens pleaded guilty and testified against her. Her 1991 trial was shown on TV from start to finish and later inspired the movie To Die For with Nicole Kidman. She got life without parole.

Flynn and Randall walked out on parole in 2015 after nearly 25 years. She is the only one still inside. A relative of Gregg's said she accepted responsibility "without admitting the facts." In May 2025, Governor Kelly Ayotte refused to give her a hearing. In January 2026, she went back to court to challenge her conviction, citing new evidence.

Did Pamela Smart finally tell the truth, or just the version that might get her out?

[Zento @zento0x]

@gosh_sol_eth that interview broke my heart

[Zento @zento0x]

On May 19, 1983, Diane Downs drove her three shot children to a hospital in Springfield, Oregon, and told police a shaggy-haired stranger had flagged her down and opened fire. Cheryl, 7, died. Danny, 3, was paralyzed from the waist down. Christie, 8, barely survived. Diane had one bullet in her left arm. That same night, her own father told the police:

"It looks to me like Diane did it." She was right-handed, shot in the left arm, and her kids were shot in the chest. Prosecutors later said the motive was a married man in Arizona who didn't want children.

In the video below, you hear her father say it, and then Diane tells a local TV reporter about that night. The gun "kept firing and firing and firing... it was monotonous." About her own wound: "Everybody says you sure were lucky... I think my kids were lucky." Later in the same special she's in jail and pregnant again. "I got pregnant because I miss Christy and I miss Danny and I miss Cheryl so much." Then: "Children are so easy to conceive." Asked what she'd do if the state took this baby too: "I'd like to see them try."

In 1984, Christie took the stand and told the jury it was Mom. Diane got life plus 50 years. The baby was taken from her right after birth. The prosecutor who put her away adopted Christie and Danny.

At her parole hearing in 2025, at 70, she said: "I did not shoot my children." The board said no. She can try again in 2031.

Was Diane Downs a mother who lost everything, or the coldest liar Oregon ever put on TV?

[Zento @zento0x]

@noxrae0x that says everything honestly

[Zento @zento0x]

@kairofomo "monotonous"... who says that

[Zento @zento0x]

@vexor0x plus the gun, come on

[Zento @zento0x]

On July 15, 2008, Jodi Arias was left alone in a police interrogation room hours after her arrest for murdering her ex-boyfriend. The camera kept recording. She fixed her hair, got down on the floor and did a headstand against the wall. A month earlier, in his shower, she had stabbed him 27 times, cut his throat and shot him in the head.

His name was Travis Alexander, and his roommates in Mesa, Arizona didn’t find him for five days. What gave her away was a camera somebody had run through the washing machine. Police still recovered the photos: Travis in the shower minutes before he died, and then a picture of someone bleeding on the bathroom floor.

In the video below she’s alone in that room, upside down against the wall, then sitting on the floor like she’s waiting for a bus. Later on the same tape she tells herself, “You should have at least done your makeup, Jodi.” The jury at her trial never saw any of it.

She first told police she hadn’t been in Arizona at all. Then she said two masked intruders killed him. At trial she said it was self-defense. In 2013 the jury convicted her of first-degree murder, two separate juries couldn’t agree on a death sentence, and in 2015 she got life without parole.

Was she falling apart in that room, or completely sure she’d get away with it?

[Zento @zento0x]

@noxrae0x who does yoga after that

[Zento @zento0x]

@ryz3nxw the headstand says it all

[Zento @zento0x]

@0xTimQ only four ants this time?

[Zento @zento0x]

@gosh_sol_eth exactly. the dinners never really stopped

[Zento @zento0x]

At 16, Barry Minkow started a carpet-cleaning company. By 21, Wall Street valued it at about $280 million. Months later, its assets sold for $64,000.

Most of the business never existed. His secret wasn't fake paperwork. It was dinner.

In the video below, Minkow explains how he fooled the auditors. "I had them over for dinner. I went over their houses for dinner. I wanted their wives to know me."

The plan was simple. If an auditor ever had to turn on him, he'd go home and hear his wife say, "I think he's such a nice boy." In his words: "If they're gonna hurt me, I'm gonna have them hurt a friend."

Is that bribery? He says no. "Bribery is taking $25,000 and saying, here." His version was "just as evil": get them to like him, to see a wonder kid.

He babysat a senior lawyer's kids for the weekend. "The motive that I had for loving those kids was to manipulate that man," so he would sign the legal opinion that put Minkow on Wall Street.

It fell apart anyway. He got 25 years and was out in about 7. Then he became a pastor and a fraud investigator.

In 2011, he went back to prison for 5 years over a stock scheme. In 2014, he got 5 more for stealing about $3 million from his own church. The judge called it a "despicable, inexcusable crime."

The case for Minkow: after his first term, he really did help the FBI chase other frauds.

The case against: he bet against the companies he exposed, then used the same charm on his own congregation.

Can a con man change, or did Minkow just find a new audie

[Zento @zento0x]

@rav3n0x same playbook, just a different crowd

[Zento @zento0x]

@kernelxbt months. that's all it took

[Zento @zento0x]

@ryz3nxw genius until the auditors finally checked

[Zento @zento0x]

@lumvex0x and he says he really loved them

[Zento @zento0x]

@rav3n0x yeah blaming one person is easier than admitting it was like 5 different leaks at once. still messed up what she did tho

[Zento @zento0x]

Evander Holyfield made more than $230 million in the ring. His 109-room mansion outside Atlanta was sold at auction for about $7.5 million.

He says one of the people who helped him lose it was his own sister.

In the video below, Holyfield explains what happened. "One of the family members borrowed money off my house."

She took out a second mortgage on a house that wasn't hers. Asked how much she took, he answers: "Too much."

"After my mama passed, now everybody want to steal from me."

He's the youngest in his family. His older sisters had kids his age. "They were almost like a mama."

So he didn't press charges. "I wasn't going to put them in jail."

The house had a $10 million loan from Washington Mutual. When the bank went under, the mansion went to auction. In 2014, Rick Ross bought it for a reported $5.5 million or so.

Holyfield doesn't ask what Ross paid. "I don't think about things that's gone. It's gone."

The case against Holyfield: his sister wasn't the only problem. He put millions into a record label that never produced a hit, and he went through three divorces.

Back in 2008, he told reporters: "I'm not broke, I'm just not liquid." Today he still says: "It's not like it ever made me broke."

Was Evander Holyfield ruined by the people he trusted, or by his own choices?

[Zento @zento0x]

@kairofomo fr a house that size is a money pit even if nobody steals from you. taxes and upkeep alone probably ate millions

[Zento @zento0x]

@gosh_sol_eth right but he did both. the payroll is the part he talks about, the cars and the horses are the part he doesnt

[Zento @zento0x]

In 1991, MC Hammer, the "U Can't Touch This" rapper, reportedly made $33 million. By 1996, he had filed for bankruptcy with at least $10 million in debt.

He says he knows exactly where the money went.

In the video below, Hammer explains. "Everybody knew that I had 200 employees."

Most of them came from his own neighborhood in Oakland. Back then, he says, his city was in the top 3 for homicides. "Some of the people that were dying were my classmates, my neighbors."

He'd call home from tour and hear that a friend had been killed. Then he'd hear who did it: someone who lived two houses down.

So he called that guy. "Why don't you come out here on the road with me, man. I can give you $30,000 a year. I can't give you what you're making on the block. But I can't have you keep doing what you're doing."

Ten people became 20. Then 30. "I was cool with that, because the amount of money I was generating was worth the lives to me."

When the records stopped selling, the payroll didn't. His mansion was sold for $5.3 million.

"If you wanted to say the story is MC Hammer just pissed his money off, when you knew that I was employing 200 people from my community, it said more about you than it did about me."

The case against Hammer: he admits he should have put some of that money in the bank.

His own summary: "I got caught up in my humanity."

Did MC Hammer waste $33 million, or spend it on the only thing that mattered to him?