Echoes in the Darkness

20

The New Year was a time for diving and digging. They dove when lakes were not frozen. They dug when the ground thawed.

Desperation was driving the task force to follow leads from tipsters, seers and lunatics in Maryland and New Jersey as well as Pennsylvania. They once went down twenty-five feet in a landfill. There were theories that the children had been put into fresh graves in cemeteries. So even the hallowed ground was searched by the task force.

Acting on tips from a former boyfriend of young Stephanie, the state police divers searched a water-filled limestone quarry in Valley Forge Park. This, because a tipster told them of seeing Jay Smith kill cats by dousing them with nitric acid and driving their bodies toward the park.

They even spent several man-days on a lead from a seer who described in detail where the children had been buried by “two men.”

Joe VanNort said, “Well, after thirty years, police work’s come down to throwing your hands up in the air to catch vibrations.”

Bill Bradfield, Chris Pappas and Sue Myers still weren’t talking, and what Vince had given the task force was hearsay on top of hearsay. They hadn’t any way of really linking Jay Smith to Bill Bradfield, let alone to the murder of Susan Reinert.

Agent Matt Mullin had secured photos of all the evidence seized in the basement of Jay Smith in August 1978 as well as photos of several things from his secret life that at that time had no evidentiary value to the local cops: the 79th USARCOM combs and the loops of chain and locks that had been draped over a hall tree and coiled on a chair. The FBI was able to determine the lock brand from the photos.

Luckily, it was possible to size the link marks on Susan Reinert’s body because the way she’d been photographed in the luggage compartment of her car, the marks could be compared to the print size on a Time magazine lying beside her.

Matt Mullin sent blow-up photos of the chains along with the photos of Susan Reinerts wounds to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Four forensic pathologists were able to determine the link size by comparing them to the known size of the locks.

They couldn’t prove anything in a court of law, but those chains that were once in Jay Smith’s basement were exactly the size of the chains that had bound Susan Reinert. The FBI said thank you to the local cops, thank you to Walter Reed, and a silent thank you to Henry Luce.

Though he always referred to Matt Mullin as a “social worker” or “schoolteacher,” Joe VanNort was impressed with the super-prep on this one.

He took his state cops aside privately and said, “Okay, we’re gonna start takin’ a close look at Jay C. Smith.”

In the spring, a tow truck driver named Kramer received a routine call to tow an abandoned car that had been parked too long at the rear of an apartment building near Valley Forge.

The driver found the car, hooked it up and took it to the tow garage where he opened up the trunk and searched for valuables. What he found was very valuable to a squad of lawmen at Belmont Barracks. The car belonged to Sheri, the youngest daughter of Jay C. Smith, and the truck driver recognized her father’s name from the publicity.

They got very excited at Belmont Barracks after the truck driver handed over a letter from Jay Smith to his wife, Stephanie. It was written from Dallas prison one day following his incarceration, one day after Susan Reinerts body was found.

It was a letter within a letter. He’d prefaced the long message by informing his wife that his mail was probably read by prison officials.

Steph,

I hope they are knocking off that cluster near your spine and you are feeling better. I didn’t want to burden you with a lot of tasks so don’t worry if you can’t get to them. When you get well enough, then give these things some attention.

Among things to take care of:

Capri. First, clean it up thoroughly. We will try to sell but not give away. I might use it to store books so don’t sell it too fast.

Steph, we must throw away most of the stuff. Don’t keep things because they just seem too good to throw away. We will replace at an auction or other place cheaply. I can’t stress the importance of this: Clean out and then clean up.

Rug. Downstairs rug is full of matchsticks, cigarettes, old strands of marijuana, etc. from Eddie and Steph and their friends. Every time I walk on that rug something new pops out. It MUST go. I’ll write more later about disposal.

I love you,

Jay

The letter within a letter to his dying wife wasn’t much by itself, but the task force was even more interested in chains than Jay Smith was. They were trying to forge a chain of circumstantial evidence and when it was long enough they wanted to see how Bill Bradfield and Jay Smith liked being hog-tied by links of steel.

The troopers went to the state prison to take a handwriting exemplar from Jay Smith. He didn’t know why they wanted it, but he didn’t like the idea. He tried to fake his handwriting. Dr. Jay gave them an exemplar that was so shaky it looked like it was written by Howard Hughes after he was gooned out from watching Ice Station Zebra ninety-two times.

Matt Mullin was on a roll. The next lead he developed had to do with the fiber samples found on the body and in the trunk of Susan Reinert’s car. Jack Holtz went to the former home of Jay Smith and got permission from Grace Gilmore to cut samples from her upstairs red carpet.

The fiber samples matched the fibers found in Susan Reinert’s hair. The FBI lab reported that they were polyester fibers and that less than 7 percent of America’s carpets are polyester. However, hair and fiber analysis is the most subjective of forensic sciences and the task force knew that any defense lawyer could come up with a couple of experts who would say that they couldn’t tell for certain if the fibers were from the same dye lot or even if they were polyester. But they looked like the same dye lot and they looked like polyester.

Matt Mullin and Jack Holtz later went back to the house on Valley Forge Road, this time with lights and brushes and vacuums.

When Grace Gilmore had gotten rid of the beige carpet in the basement she’d decided to leave the carpet pad. The lawmen divided the basement into quadrants, took out their soft little sweeping brushes and started cleaning that pad. They swept and crawled and vacuumed that basement for hours. They had knees like medieval nuns’ when they were through with that job.

Poor Grace Gilmore. Instead of a Welcome Wagon hostess she got cops snipping at her carpet. And what did they have to show for a brutal day’s work? Four big dust balls. That was it: huge balls of dust and grime and fuzz that she could’ve handed them right out of her Hoover any day of the week. But they looked happy with their dust balls.

The task force sent the sweepings off to the FBI lab in Washington, and went about their trips to communes where the children were allegedly being held. There were more landfills to excavate and more lakes to drag.

One year after the murder of Susan Reinert, and one day before the fifty-second birthday of Jay C. Smith, American justice finally got around to his peccadilloes of 1977.

Jay Smith and his brothers and sisters gave testimony before Judge Warren G. Morgan as to his accomplishments in life. They told how they’d lost their father when they were children and worked very hard to better themselves. They described how Jay Smith had risen through the ranks in the army reserve and very nearly became a general, and detailed how he’d continued his lifelong formal education until he was awarded his doctorate.

The judge had this to say: “The devotion of this family is of course impressive. Touching. And we are saddened that this defendant has brought such discredit upon his family. As I listened attentively to members of his family testify, I had to think that they seem to be talking about a man who is now really two different persons: the brother they grew up with who worked hard to educate himself and this man who has been tried in this courtroom and other courtrooms of the commonwealth.

“It was the duty of this school principal to provide an example of probity to the young minds who were committed to his charge. He has dishonored his profession in a monstrous way. It is rather interesting that we do not sense today in this defendant any real remorse.

“The court sentences the defendant to pay the costs of prosecution and to make restitution to Sears, Roebuck stores in the sum of fifty-three thousand dollars and to undergo imprisonment in a state institution for an indefinite term, the minimum of which shall be three and a half years and the maximum of which shall be seven years. To commence and be computed consecutively to the sentence being served.”

It was a stiffer jolt than Jay Smith expected. That came to a term of five and a half to twelve years. He couldn’t expect parole until 1986. As a pretty fair jailhouse lawyer, he began doing legal research into the appeal process, but he kept being distracted by another matter. The Reinert task force was coming after him hard. He’d long since stopped sending whimsical bulletins to former colleagues. He was maintaining total silence. Prison officials and other inmates described him as a quiet loner.

Matt Mullin called Jack Holtz one day and said, “I’ve got bad news and good news.”

“Gimme the bad news,” Jack Holtz said.

“There wasn’t a blue fiber anywhere in the sweepings. We may never know how she picked up the two blue fibers.”

“Gimme the good news.”

“In quadrant number one they found a hair. It’s the same length as the hair taken out of her head at the autopsy. It’s a positive match in twenty-one out of a possible twenty-five microscopic characteristics. That’s as good as it gets.”

“It’s not a fingerprint,” Jack Holtz said. “But I’ll settle for that!”

They also found red fibers in the basement which indicated that a piece of the upstairs carpet might’ve been down there, but then again the fibers could’ve been tracked down from upstairs on someone’s shoes.

Still, it was another link, and it tied in beautifully with the letter from Jay Smith to his wife asking her on her deathbed to throw away that downstairs rug.

Jay Smith was no longer a lonesome silhouette dancing on some distant crag with little hooves. He was being forced down from the hills. He was giving off pungent goat smells, and it smelled better to Jack Holtz than a gunload of snuff.

Sue Myers was almost through doing needlepoint. She’d done needlepoint when they slashed through Europe like General Patton. She’d done needlepoint through Bill Bradfield’s sixteen and a half love affairs. She’d done needlepoint when his money and hers went down the drain at the art store. She’d done needlepoint through the months of blather about devils and guns and acid and bodies and hit men and murder. She’d sat there quietly as Madame Defarge at the guillotine and … just … done … needlepoint.

And then he went too far. It happened in the office of his Philadelphia lawyer, John Paul Curran.

Bill Bradfield would talk to a radish if he had to, and Curran was an expansive Irish type who liked to shoot the breeze too, and the meetings with Bill Bradfield got pretty windy. Sue Myers was sitting there, apparently placid, when Bill Bradfield made the devastating mistake of talking personally about Susan Reinert.

He said to Curran, “That woman was the nearest thing to a nymphomaniac that I ever met.”

Sue Myers later said, “Stars went off in my head!”

Sue Myers saw more stars than a steer in a slaughterhouse. She saw stars for weeks and weeks after that. The sniggering way he said it. It could’ve been said like that at an Elks club smoker.

Curran looked at her, and Sue Myers, with her fortieth birthday approaching, had never felt so cheap, so used, so foolish.

She’d hated Susan Reinert in life and hated her in death, and never felt much pity for her. In her own words it was an “un-Christian” way to feel, but she was getting close to understanding the core of those feelings.

If there was one thing she had been positive about, it was that Bill Bradfield had despised Susan Reinert, though Susan Reinert was certain that he loved her.

Now, for the first time, Sue Myers was beginning to think: “What if he despises Shelly? And Rachel? What if he despises them all? What if he despises me?”

It was starting to seem possible. And though she was not willing to admit consciously that he might have conspired to murder two children, she was getting ready to concede that he might have badly wanted Susan Reinert dead. So what about herself?

Sue Myers dropped her needlepoint one day and walked calmly to the telephone and called a locksmith. When he came home, Bill Bradfield couldn’t get in his own apartment. Bill Bradfield roared. He sounded like Oedipus with his eyeballs bleeding into his beard, but she wouldn’t open that door.

Bill Bradfield was without a roof over his head and had to go home and live with his parents, and be reminded that he’d wanted a piano and what did they give him? A goddamn stinking miserable little toy truck.

A most unbelievable break came at the time of Jay Smiths sentencing. William Bradfield tried to probate the estate of Susan Reinert. As soon as he filed for probate, Ken Reinert and Pat Gallagher joined forces and filed to block him.

In the Court of Common Pleas of Delaware County, there’s a court division with the Dickensian title of Orphans Court. In that the ex-husband and brother of Susan Reinert had immediately challenged her will, the court appointed a deputy district attorney, John A. Reilly, as administrator of the estate to safeguard the rights of the missing children.

Reilly was a veteran prosecutor with a good reputation, a Civil War buff who’d been around the courts a long time. Joe VanNort and Jack Holtz felt good about him, but he warned them not to get their hopes up.

One of the functions of the court in this estate case was to ascertain the total assets of the estate. There was the missing $25,000 that Susan Reinert had “invested,” and there was a matter of a missing diamond ring that her mother had given her. The court would try to determine what happened to them but Bill Bradfield could stop the bus by agreeing to reimburse the estate on his own. That in itself would cure a big part of the estate dispute even without any admission of misappropriation or criminal conduct.

Sort of a nolo contendere situation, as the cops understood it. And that would send them back to sweeping cellars and digging in graveyards.

Jack Holtz had hoped that in Orphans Court Bill Bradfield would at least be compelled to make incriminating statements. He’d fantasized that Bill Bradfield would take the stand, but now he feared it was going to turn into a drawn-out estate squabble that would never allow them to compel Bill Bradfield to talk.

At the time, Joe VanNort showed his lopsided grin and said, “I ain’t so sure Bill Bradfields smart in the first place. And in the second place I ain’t so sure he could keep his mouth shut if John Curran gagged him with a lawbook. Let’s wait and see if we get a break.”

They got a break.

The Orphans Court hearing was held at the courthouse in Media, Pennsylvania.

Bill Bradfield showed up in a three-piece blue pinstripe, and on that cool summer day he carried a topcoat over his arm and had all the wisps trimmed from his beard, and had a fresh preppy haircut. To Joe VanNort he looked like an FBI agent with whiskers.

He’d gained some weight from nervous eating, and the cops saw fear in his eyes, or hoped they did. To their amazement and joy, Bill Bradfield not only took the stand, but after “affirming” an oath on the Bible, he denied everything.

He had this to say about Susan Reinert:

“She was a sensitive, easily hurt, intelligent young lady, but very troubled. She was troubled about many things in life and would ask my opinion about a lot of things. But she often did the opposite. She dated people I thought she ought not to date. She went to places I thought she ought not to go.”

He told the court in response to John Reilly’s questions that he’d spent many evenings with his friend Susan Reinert, but he’d never “dated” her.

“The frequency of my contacts with Mrs. Reinert grew with her demands,” he told those assembled in Orphans Court. “The term ‘date’ implies the kind of relationship Mrs. Reinert and I didn’t have,”

As in the Jay Smith trial, Bill Bradfield’s husky, sometimes gravelly voice flattened out when he was testifying. It added to an overall impression of distance that caused reporters to refer to his “cold blue eyes” when actually he’d raced through life with all the fluttery heat of Scarlett O’Hara.

Reilly asked, “Did you ever stay overnight with her?”

Bill Bradfield answered, “Never.”

When Reilly asked, “Did she ever discuss an investment with you?” Bill Bradfield answered, “What investment?”

“You didn’t know she had money in the bank?” Reilly asked.

“No, sir.”

“Did Mrs. Reinert give you sums of money for an investment or any other purpose prior to her death?”

“No, sir,” Bill Bradfield said. “I would often give money to her. To make ends meet. As did Mr. Valaitis.”

When Bill Bradfield even took from Vince the credit for buying Michaels cub scout uniform, Jack Holtz’s grin got wider than the Delaware.

“Were you aware that she took out insurance policies naming you as beneficiary?”

“No, sir,” Bill Bradfield said.

“Were you aware prior to her death that she named you as a beneficiary in her will?”

“No, sir.”

As to the Jay Smith trial where he had been an alibi witness, it seemed so unimportant that it almost slipped his mind.

Reilly said to him, “Immediately after leaving Harrisburg on May twenty-ninth of last year, you went to Mrs. Reinert’s house, did you not?”

“Could you refresh my memory,” Bill Bradfield said. “Why was I in Harrisburg?”

“I can refresh your memory,” Reilly said. “But I think you know why you were in Harrisburg.”

“No.”

“Were you in Harrisburg testifying at the trial of Jay Smith?”

“Yes, I remember,” Bill Bradfield said.

The gate wasn’t just opened to them, it was blown off the hinges. Reilly could now call all of Susan’s friends and confidants.

As to the missing ring, Pat Schnure could testify that Susan Reinert was going to have her mother’s diamond ring reset and wear it at her wedding in England, and that Susan had said that Bill Bradfield knew a jeweler who could do the job.

The cops could testify that they’d taken the “ring to courier” notation on Susan Reinerts calendar and checked every courier in the Philadelphia area, and that the ring was gone.

The cops could bring in all the evidence of the “investment” with Bache and Company and produce company executives to testify that it was bogus.

Susan Reinert’s former banker could tell of her extraordinary cash withdrawal. And her brother could tell of her offer to let him in on Bill Bradfields investment.

The neighbors could tell of his car being there at all hours and even overnight.

Bill Bradfield had made so many demonstrably false statements under oath that the cops at last had enough evidence to consider a prosecution based on the theft of the investment.

About the extraordinary performance in Orphans Court, Sue Myers said, “Because all of his friends believed him utterly, he thought that everyone else should believe him utterly.”

Jack Holtz said to Joe VanNort, “We were dead, but now we’re born again!”

The Philadelphia Daily News had this to say in an editorial:

Putting it gently, Susan Reinert had an impressive amout of life insurance. Spectacular Bid is insured for more. So, presumably, is Streisand. But for a schoolteacher the figures a bit high.

What Bradfield is suggesting has a charm all its own. Susan Reinert, under the mistaken impression that she was going to marry Bill Bradfield, tiptoes out, purchases three quarters of a million dollars worth of insurance, didn’t tell him a thing about it, didn’t tell him about her estate, didn’t tell him she changed her will, didn’t tell him she had made him sole beneficiary of the estate and the insurance. Now if Mr. Bradfield could only put that to music we could all dance down the yellow brick road.

Bill Bradfield called Sue Myers the night that editorial ran. He was weeping. He said, “Why have you forsaken me?”

In August, the cops obtained a search warrant from the state of Delaware to search Jay Smith’s blue Capri, now in the custody of his brother.

Joe VanNort, Jack Holtz, a Delaware state cop and another trooper went to the home of the assistant attorney general of the state of Delaware to get a warrant drawn up. The next day it was signed by a magistrate and they waited until Jay Smith’s brother returned home in the evening to serve it. They’d brought a deputy attorney general with them.

Mr. Smith was clearly embarrassed by the presence of all the cops and protective of his niece, the twenty-three-year-old daughter of Jay who was without a real home. The cops searched through all of the belongings that he was holding for his imprisoned brother.

In a filing cabinet, Joe VanNort found another bogus Brinks identification card with Jay Smiths picture on it. The deputy attorney general didn’t think it fell under the scope of the search warrant, and Joe VanNort handed the card to Mr. Smith.

That bothered Jack Holtz Maybe they couldn’t use it in a subsequent court case against Jay Smith, but maybe they could. In any event, why give away potential evidence or contraband? They were outside at the time and he spoke to Joe VanNort about it. He knocked on the door and asked for the card back.

But Jay Smith’s brother had already burned it on the kitchen stove. He said that all of that theft business had humiliated his family.

Jack Holtz later felt troubled that Joe VanNort had lost that card. In the old days Joe VanNort would never have done something so careless. Jack Holtz didn’t say a word to anyone, but he was concerned.

“I hated to think it at the time,” he later said. “But I was starting to feel that Joe was losing it.”

In the blue Capri they found more red fibers, but all that proved was that he could have used the Capri to haul away the carpet remnant they believed had been in the basement on that weekend last year.

The interior of the trunk had been painted with a sticky substance that looked like some sort of rust inhibitor or sealant, and the car had been outside in the weather. The cops were very disappointed with the search.

Then Trooper Dove of the identification unit walked up to Jack Holtz and said, “I found this pin under the right front passenger seat.”

It was dusted for prints but they couldn’t lift anything from it. Jack Holtz took it in his hand and examined it.

It was just a little lapel tab. A green metal pin with a white P on it. At first Jack Holtz thought it might be something they handed out at the ballpark, but it wasn’t the right color and the P was wrong to be part of the Philadelphia Phillies logo.

He didn’t know what it was, but his investigator’s intuition told him that it didn’t belong in this car. Something about that pin wasn’t right.

For two weeks he worked on it in his spare time. The more he looked at the little metal tab, the more he believed it was something a child would keep. He went to the residence of Susan Reinert’s neighbor Donna Formwalt and talked to her eight-year-old daughter.

The little girl said, “Karen wore a pin like that. I think she got it on a school trip.”

Jack Holtz started devoting more than spare time to it. He found another neighbor who told him that the pin looked like something she’d seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

It was a hopeful cop who arrived at the museum that afternoon in August and climbed the steps made famous in Rocky. He talked to the director who verified that the pins had been in use in June of last year, and were given to show that admission was paid. They were handed out by museum guards who used eight different colors on various days.

Jack Holtz went to Karen Reinerts neighborhood school and learned that the fifth- and sixth-grade classes had gone to the museum on a field trip in the spring of 1979. The principal informed Jack Holtz that Karen Reinhert had, in fact, attended school on the day of the museum field trip. Then he learned that four boys from her class remembered the pins. They’d been green. Two remembered Karen being along on the trip. One boy had saved his pin and turned it over to the police. It was identical to the one they had.

Their chain was getting longer. Not long enough to bind. But longer.

The last real duty Chris Pappas ever performed for Bill Bradfield had to do with closing out the safety deposit box. He did an extra-swell job on that mission.

When the bank teller had concluded their business and told him to have a good day, she’d left the signature cards on the counter. Chris Pappas leaned over and snatched three of the four signature cards, so that if the authorities found the box they wouldn’t be able to prove that Bill Bradfield had anything to do with the rental.

His mentor was very proud of him.

Chris Pappas was at Shelly’s house when he saw a news report that detailed Bill Bradfields testimony in Orphans Court. Chris was stunned. Bill Bradfield had lied under oath about everything.

An hour later, Bill Bradfield and Chris and Shelly were strolling through Valley Forge Park having a little rehearsal. Bill Bradfield was positive that when the grand jury sat in September, they’d all get a subpoena. He asked Shelly if she’d take a walk and let him talk privately with Chris.

When they were alone Bill Bradfield asked, “How do you feel?”

“Okay. I feel okay.”

“Will you stand by me?”

“Haven’t I always?”

“Vince deserted me. I think Sue might desert me. You won’t, will you?”

“Desert you? No.”

“Will you keep your silence about certain things?”

“What things?”

“The money? All the other things?”

“I’ll try to stay loyal. Greeks’re stubborn,” Chris Pappas said.

Bill Bradfield didn’t look too happy about the evasive reply.

As they walked, Bill Bradfield made notes on a checklist and scratched things off. And Chris was getting sick to his stomach as he realized that Bill Bradfield was not only trying to maintain his allegiance but was letting Chris know how strong and dangerous was this bond between them.

They sat on the grass, on the ground consecrated by the Revolutionary patriots, and Bill Bradfield handed Chris a brief on what to tell the grand jury. It was actually a scenario. The dialogue didn’t sparkle, but it made its point:

Bill told me that this Smith is really a bad person with a bad character. He said, “I wish I hadn’t seen him at Ocean City but I did, so I’ll have to testify to that because it’s true.”

Smith talked about getting the police and other people. Wishing, thinking, they ought to be dead, wanting to kill them.

Bill said, “I don’t know whether he’s serious or not. I sure hope no one kills Susan Reinert.”

Bill Bradfield must’ve thought that was a wee bit self-serving so he crossed out the last line. He also deleted a reference to Jay Smith wanting to kill the cops, possibly figuring it might not play in Peoria.

That woman has told me she’s leaving her children to me and all sorts of crazy stuff. She’s sure chasing me. She says she’s dating some real weirdos too. I told her she’s going to get herself beat up or killed.

If she gets herself killed and leaves me her children, if she pushes her children on me, I’ll fight it in court. That’s illegal.

But that also seemed a bit over the top for a budding scenarist, so he crossed out the part about her leaving him the children.

That’ll sure put me in a horrible mess. I wish she’d leave Upper Merion, leave the area all together.

They both scribbled changes in the script, which continued with lines that Chris was supposed to say when asked for opinions:

Bill seemed pissed off at Mrs. Reinert and concerned about the weekend and vacation.

After that, Bill Bradfield composed a list of likely questions, and answers to same.

Question: Would you say that Mr. Bradfield suspected that Mrs. Reinert would be killed?

Answer: No. He was worried about her, concerned for her. He told me he wished she’d go abroad or something. I think he said he wrote a recommendation for her for a job.

Question: Did Mr. Bradfield say Smith told him of killing her?

Answer: No. Robbing? No. Drugs? No. Kinky sex? No. Illegal firearms? No.

Question: Did Mr. Bradfield ever show you firearms which he said were Smith’s?

Answer: No.

Question: Did you and Mr. Bradfield ever plan to kill Smith?

Answer: Kill him? No, of course not.

The second page of the script listed many more questions and the answers were supposed to be obvious to a man of Chris’s accomplishments.

Did Mr. Bradfield ever spend the night at Mrs. Reinert’s?

Did Mrs. Reinert visit Mr. Bradfield at Annapolis in 1978?

Did Mr. Bradfield ever tell you about Dr. Smith?

Did Mr. Bradfield ever mention Dr. Smith in connection with any murder or robbery?

Were you involved in the making of a silencer?

Did you ever take out a storage bin?

Did you ever take out a safety deposit box?

Did Mr. Bradfield ever show you a large sum of cash money?

Where have you obtained the money you recently spent on lawyers, bail, etc.?

Did you think Mrs. Reinert was going to be killed on the weekend of June 22nd?

Did Mr. Bradfield seem to think so?

Did you know of Mr. Bradfield and Shelly sharing motel rooms?

Did you know of any romantic involvement between Mr. Bradfield and Shelly?

What is the relationship between Mr. Bradfield and Rachel?

Did Mr. Bradfield order you to go to the shore that weekend?

Did you speak to Mr. Valaitis in reference to Dr. Smith?

Did Mr. Bradfield instruct or influence you?

The last question was almost too much, even for a disciple as dedicated and earnest as Chris Pappas.

And then Chris wrote some of his answers on the margin of the scenario. His dialogue wasn’t so hot either, but he mollified his pal.

I’ll fight that in court. She’s nuts. Delete “pissed off at.”

Bill Bradfield warned Chris that the FBI might try to make something of his past relationship with Tom, the homosexual lodger, but Chris thought they should be worrying about things other than homosexual innuendo.

Bill Bradfield said to Chris Pappas, “Sometimes I think I’ve been pathological about women. Sometimes I think I’ve used them, and that I didn’t try very hard for a lasting relationship.”

Chris Pappas immediately thought of a book by the daughter of Ezra Pound who wrote of her fathers philandering.

As though he was reading Chris’s mind, Bill Bradfield said, “You know, if I went to jail, abandoned and scorned by all those I’ve loved, I’d use the time for study. Maybe I’d even come to enjoy the solitude.”

Chris Pappas thought of Ezra Pound himself, confined first in jail then in an asylum: disgraced, vilified, abandoned by his friends.

He didn’t want to think that this was what it was all about! He didn’t want to go to state prison because William Bradfield wanted to be Ezra Pound!

Chris Pappas’s chest felt like a round cage with a pigeon fluttering inside. Now the bird was pecking at his guts. He was welcoming home the long-gone childhood ulcer.

Chris wanted to talk to somebody. At that moment he knew that he’d eventually be calling the FBI.

When Sue Myers locked out Bill Bradfield, she wouldn’t give him anything but his clothes. She even kept the five thousand books. Among the other things she held on to were documents that he thought were safe from her prying eyes.

One warm autumn day Sue Myers invited Chris to come and “look over some things.”

Maybe she sensed that Chris was already talking to the FBI or getting ready to do it. She gave him some papers and asked him to take them home to determine if they were “important.”

Bill Bradfield had always underestimated Sue Myers. She didn’t miss a whole lot. She knew what she was giving Chris was meaningful and she probably knew what he’d do with it.

When Chris decided to call the task force it was ten times better than when Vince Valaitis had done it. Chris Pappas knew so much more. Chris had been involved in all the activity that was in itself illegal, all the business with weapons and money.

When Chris talked, he implicated Shelly in criminal activity, since she’d kept the money hidden and had disposed of a gun with a silencer. Best of all, Chris and Shelly had both heard a whole lot of talk about Jay Smith, and some of it could be corroborated by physical evidence. Chris Pappas started cleaning out his chamber of horrors and his file boxes.

As the relationship between Christopher Pappas and the authorities blossomed, Chris gave them documents he’d received from both Sue Myers and Bill Bradfield.

One of the documents was a note in Bill Bradfields own hand wherein he made his list of things that had to be addressed in the event of a grand jury probe.

That list included potential witnesses and friends of Susan Reinert, and things to worry about:

Letters stolen. Mail fraud. Fingerprints on money. I was there during insurance man’s call. Visits to New York. Calls to New York and from. Visits to Annapolis. Calls to and from Annapolis. Overnight depositions. Sharon Lee. Pat Schnure. Girls. Pamela, Susan, Rachel, Shelly, Cathy. Unorthodox life. Cuba-killing. Bank deposit slips. Names. Handwriting. No partial fingerprints on car. Shelly and motel. Rachel and room. Calls from Annapolis and to Annapolis. Sailing course. In Reinerts room constantly. Reinerts books in my bookcase. Car missing. Depositions. Smith. FBI. Reinerts people. Vince. Gun. St. Davids. Lured and killed kids and taped her.

Latent fingerprints are a lot trickier than most people realize. They’re rarely indentifiable if a surface is not hard and clean, and are seldom left at all unless there’s an abundance of body secretions, such as sweat and oil, on the fingers. Actually, the task force was never able to get a single indentifiable lift of Bill Bradfields fingerprints from Susan Reinerts house.

So it was awfully decent of him to let them know that he’d been in there “constantly,” the feds remarked.

Joe VanNort’s grin got as lopsided as a Cuban election and he said, “Bradfields even got a big mouth on paper!”

But if the note was another little link in the circumstantial chain, the next document provided them with a foot of case-hardened steel complete with lock and keys.

It was typed yellow lined paper and bore no handwriting at all. It was inside an envelope with the typed address of William Bradfield at Upper Merion Senior High School.

It had been written to Bill Bradfield two years earlier at about the time that he had had the dream that he’d met Jay Smith at the shore while going to Fred Wattenmaker’s house.

The letter began:

In place of VF phones. If contact is necessary, use: 265-9633, or 265-9634 or 265-9635.

These three phones are located inside the Sheraton and are available 24 hours. VF phones are not, as park closes after dark.

Before I leave to go to the phones, if I think I heard the signal, I will take my phone off the hook. After an interval a call to my home phone will give a busy signal since it’s off the hook. This will indicate I heard the signal and I am on my way.

Big problems re last two weeks of August 1977.

I went to see Fred W. if possible on Saturday, August 27th to kill a couple of birds.

1. McKinley to discuss some confidential problems re coaching.

2. Fred W. to see his new house. I’d promised him this.

3. See more of S. Jersey other than shore as lack of such data was hurting in job seeking.

When ran into third party, near Crackerbox, decide it was O.K. since all could go to lunch together.

Since McK and W not available took off after lunch with third party.

Possible approach could be: Told Mitch I remember I saw him in D.C.

He said he also remembered incident. Indicated that you (Fred W.) should have remembered it as JCS called FW a couple times re McKinley appointment. Even told FW that it was to be JCS recommendation.

B: Fred, I think I sensed that JCS may feel you are afraid of Supt. That’s why you have a “bad” memory re Smith in D.C.

Stress silence so other side knows nothing.

The cops called this their “little treasure,” a letter from Jay Smith to Bill Bradfield scripting an alibi performance, even as to how he should try to flimflam Fred Wattenmaker into “remembering” what had not happened on August 27, 1977.

The letter was unsigned, but the task force didn’t care. On the typed envelope were the fingerprints of Chris Pappas, which was to be expected. And a fingerprint of William Bradfield, which thrilled them. And some beautiful huggable fingerprints of Dr. Jay C. Smith.

Bill Bradfield and Jay Smith were gettimg double billing, even with Joe VanNort. They were an item. They were scripting each others performances. They were Gable and Lombard, Tracy and Hepburn, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.

Joe VanNort now said he wanted to see Jay Smith in the electric chair with Bill Bradfield on his lap.

They wanted to put Chris Pappas in a glass bubble. He was more than valuable. He was the most priceless Greek treasure since Schliemann found a mummy he thought was Agamemnon.

Through the weeks of secret interviews, Chris sat and pleaded with them to understand that even if Bill Bradfield had conspired to perjure himself for Jay Smith, and even if he’d swindled Susan Reinert out of twenty-five big ones, he couldn’t have murdered anybody.

Chris Pappas told every agent and cop he met that Bill Bradfield had been sincere on the airplane when he drank a toast to saving Susan Reinert’s life. He tried earnestly to make the cops understand that any man who could discuss Aquinas and Summa Theologica couldn’t possibly commit murder.

They cherished Chris Pappas so much that they humored him about Bill Bradfields absence of malice, even when Chris turned over the practice chains and locks that Bill Bradfield had asked him to keep during the rehearsals. They agreed that perhaps Big Bill wasn’t a Bluebeard even when Chris gave them the acid and his mentor’s magnum pistol.

They humored him even after Chris told them how Bill Bradfield had coached Shelly on her testimony before the grand jury, describing for them Shelly’s anguish over swearing to falsehoods on the Bible.

They showed Chris nods of understanding when he assured them that Bill Bradfield would probably set up trust funds for the kids if they could be found alive.

But the humoring had to stop when he told them one last incredible incident that they would never have believed if they hadn’t become so thoroughly familiar with the Bradfield disciples.

Just before June, 1979, graduation at Upper Merion, Bill Bradfield had come to the Pappas house with urgent news.

“I received a call from Doctor Smith tonight,” he’d told Chris. “He said he’s going out. I know that means a hit, but I don’t know who or where.”

“Do you think it’s Susan Reinert?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. He gave me a hint.”

“What’s the hint?”

“He said, ‘I’m getting all dressed up for it. But I won’t be going inside.’ ”

“What’s it mean?”

“What do you make of it?”

“Getting all dressed up … The prom! This is prom night!”

“That’s silly,” Bill Bradfield said. “Who would he kill at the prom?”

Chris went home feeling silly about the prom idea and went to bed. Thirty minutes later the phone rang. It was Bill Bradfield.

He said, “I’ve got it all figured out. That cop who searched his house. He’s working off-duty at the prom tonight. Doctor Smith wants him dead so he can’t testify!”

Forty-five minutes later, the capeless crusaders were speeding to Upper Merion in Chris’s Datsun. Bill Bradfield was relaxed and cool and chatty. Chris Pappas was so energized he could see everything in detail. Even in the darkened car he could see wisps of gray in Bill Bradfields coppery beard. He saw oil drops on that goddamn homemade silencer that Bill Bradfield held in his hands. Chris Pappas glowed in the dark.

As if Chris wasn’t terrified enough Bill Bradfield calmly rolled down the window and said, “If we’re going to kill a human being, we’d better test our weapon.”

He fired three shots into the night sky over King of Prussia.

Chris Pappas literally felt his pulse jerking in his neck. It was like some maniac version of a Gidget movie: Prom Night, starring Jay C. Smith with a supporting cast of disappeareds and remotes.

They stayed till the last dance but, as usual, Jay Smith danced alone whenever he danced.

Bill Bradfield said, “He must be killing somebody else. Let’s go home.”

The cops could only sit dumbstruck when Chris told this tale.

One of the troopers couldn’t help himself. He looked at Chris like he was something that had materialized at a seance, and said, “Chris, I gotta understand how you felt. When Bradfield had you shinnying up that rope, did you maybe think if you let go you’d fall and vanish forever in a lake of drizzly bullshit?”

Chris later said that he wished the police could’ve tried harder to understand him.

Chris Pappas received two memorable phone calls after Bill Bradfield obviously sensed that Chris was talking to the task force. The first call was angry and contained an implied threat.

Bill Bradfield not only accused his young pal of turning Sue Myers against him, but of having an affair with poor Sue.

He said, “Read the last chapter of the Odyssey, Chris! Read it!”

During the long rambling conversation, he repeated it five times.

Finally, Chris said, “You mean the next to last chapter. You’re talking about when Odysseus comes home and reclaims his woman and his betrayers are killed.”

“Don’t get snotty!” Bill Bradfield wailed. “Read the last act of Macbeth!”

Another call came even later at night. Bill Bradfield was crumbling fast. He wasn’t threatening anybody. He was certain now that Chris was talking to the task force and said so.

Chris described Bill Bradfield as speaking in a “quaking grandmother’s voice.” It sounded like the grandmother was dying. Chris had to press the phone to his ear to make out the feeble little sounds.

“Is … is that you, Chris? Is … is that my friend? I … I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me, Chris! Why does my friend turn against me? They’ll trick you, Chris! They’ll get to you!”

“Somebody’s already gotten to me, Bill,” Chris Pappas said. “That somebody’s you.”

It was the last time in his life that Chris Pappas ever spoke to his friend William Bradfield.