Echoes in the Darkness

23

They decided in the fall of 1981 to try for a murder indictment against William Bradfield. From October of that year until March of the next, Jack Holtz and Rick Guida had to contend with the aggravation of running back and forth on the turnpike between Harrisburg and Philly to interview witnesses for grand jury testimony.

The grand jury term ran for five months, but each months session lasted only a few days. Because their case was so complicated they never had enough time, and actually had to present their evidence piecemeal and hope they could finish by March.

In November Bill Bradfields day arrived. He had to begin serving a four-month jail sentence for the theft of Susan Reinerts money. He was sent to Delaware County Prison but knew he had a good chance of getting out on bail pending his appeal. Cops have long suspected that the law dictionaries of America have omitted the F’s, as in “final,” “finish,” etc.

Jack Holtz made an uncannily accurate prediction, He told Rick Guida that Bill Bradfield would find himself a friend in prison, and he described the friend. He said it would be a big, street-smart black guy, and that Bill Bradfield would have to talk about the case sooner or later because he always had to tell his troubles to somebody.

Jay Smith had been in prison quite a while before he made any friends at all, but Bill Bradfield was no soloist. He needed friends worse than Mary, Queen of Scots. He started looking around.

It wasn’t long before he was playing chess with a twenty-four-year-old black inmate named Proctor Nowell. And it wasn’t long before Proctor Nowell stepped between another black con and Bill Bradfield in the role of protector. Nowell later said that Bill Bradfield had promised that when they got out of jail he’d buy an apartment house in Philly and let Nowell manage it.

After a month in jail, Bill Bradfield was successful in getting a release from prison on bail pending his appeal. Jack Holtz figured that a month had been plenty of time for a man as garrulous as Bill Bradfield. Lou DeSantis called Franklin Center, the state police station closest to the prison, and discovered that Bill Bradfield had been friends with two black inmates, one of whom was Nowell.

During the months that the grand jury was hearing portions of their case, Jack Holtz and Lou DeSantis paid a visit to Nowell at the prison.

Nowell was an alcoholic who’d been convicted of robbery and had a history of petty crimes.

Jack Holtz learned that Nowell had kids, and he played on that angle, describing Karen and Michael Reinert to the convict. It was a short interview in which Nowell admitted that Bill Bradfield had told him “things,” but said he didn’t want to talk about it.

The cops said to call them if he changed his mind, and that was that. Jack Holtz wasn’t holding out too much hope, but within two days he got the call.

It was Nowell who, like Raymond Martray, said, “I know stuff, but it scares me.” He didn’t want to talk to them in prison.

Jack Holtz went to the district attorney’s office in Delaware County to see his old friend from Orphans Court, John Reilly, and had Nowell placed on a court list. The convict was brought in with prisoners who’d be attending hearings.

They met in a private room in the court house, and Proctor Nowell told them of conversations with Bill Bradfield. Jack Holtz called Rick Guida and they arranged yet another session with Nowell who remained constant throughout their questioning.

Proctor Nowell also needed a friend. He was committed to the alcohol rehabilitation program as an alternative to jail, and agreed to appear before the grand jury.

With Nowell as the last link in their circumstantial chain, they decided it was time to arrest Bill Bradfield, this time for three counts of murder. The arrest plan was only a little less complicated than the Falklands invasion, and about as necessary.

The date was April 6th, the time was 5:00 A.M. Bill Bradfield, according to their intelligence reports, was living with Rachel in a guesthouse on his mothers property. Reports from neighbors said that he had a large attack dog, and from Chris Pappas they learned that he had other hunting weapons in the farmhouse.

The arrest team was composed of Jack Holtz, Lou DeSantis, another trooper, and a woman trooper to make the call just as before. Prosecutor Rick Guida went along, and by 5:00 A.M. he’d already smoked half a pack of cigarettes, but after all, it was his first arrest.

Before daybreak they started watching the house with a nightscope they’d borrowed for the occasion. It outweighed two bowling balls and through the thing they could see nothing but green haze.

Jack Holtz and the woman trooper went to a neighbor and awakened the household. Not wanting to alarm the folks in rural Chester County unduly, they said they were working a burglary investigation and needed to use the phone.

But the neighbor said, “You shouldn’t waste your time with burglars. We have murderers around here.”

And while the woman trooper called, the neighbor proceeded to tell them all about this fellow Bill Bradfield. He said they should throw him in jail instead of some burglar.

Rachel answered the phone and said that Bill Bradfield was in Birdsboro and wouldn’t be back until the next day. She seemed used to female callers.

So the whole shooting match was off to a house in Birdsboro where they’d already heard he was spending time with a friend and was selling diet products.

The police code was “We’ve located the package,” presumably because they feared the master criminal was tuned in to the police frequency Actually, Bill Bradfield would probably have approved of this caper.

It was still dark when they arrived. Their quarry was a notoriously bad driver and they spotted a VW Beetle parked half on the sidewalk. It was a quiet neighborhood. They said their code words and synchronized their watches and got all dressed up in their flak vests and jacked rounds into their shotguns.

The chief of police of this little place moseyed by in his car, and wondered what in hell was going on. The only thing they didn’t have were helicopters and a chaplain.

When they knocked at the door and scared the living crap out of the resident, he admitted that he was forming a company to sell diet products with his pal Bill who was in bed sleeping. They pushed by him and crept into the back of the house with enough firepower to knock down the Luftwaffe.

The first thing Jack Holtz saw in the darkness when his pupils dilated was a set of flashing teeth. Canine teeth. Large.

He yelled, “If it moves, shoot it!”

And Bill Bradfield, who was awake in bed, thought they were talking about him. He went as rigid as Lenins mummy. He wasn’t even breathing as the cops crept toward the flashing teeth. He didn’t twitch when Jack Holtz yelled, “Show me your hands!”

Somebody turned on the lights. The “attack” dog was an English setter named Traveler who needed attention and cuddling almost as much as the guy in bed. Traveler was so happy he leaped up on Jack Holtz and started licking his face. Bill Bradfield almost turned blue before someone told him it was okay to inhale.

Jack Holtz got a great deal of joy out of reading the arrest warrant to Bill Bradfield. He read it with verve. He wanted to read it twice. He was crazy about the part where it said conspiracy to commit murder with person or persons unknown.

He finished it when Bill Bradfield was standing and dressed. Big Bill gave his famous stare to Rick Guida who’d been told by an FBI agent that the Bradfield stare had once made him fall back two steps.

The stare practically demolished Guida. He was literally floored. He sat down on the floor and played with Traveler.

When Jack Holtz got Bill Bradfield back to the lockup in Harrisburg and took off the handcuffs, his prisoner, who’d been as silent as fungus, decided to make life hard for him. Bill Bradfield just dropped down on the floor and lay there on his back.

Jack Holtz said, “If you’re gonna act like a baby, I’ll treat you like one.”

But no baby ever got this treatment. Holtz reached down and grabbed two handfuls of Bill Bradfields whiskers and curled him straight up until they were nose to nose.

Bill Bradfield gave Jack Holtz the stare, but Jack Holtz stared back and said, “That bullshit only works on intelligent people.”

Tack Holtz had called Betty VanNort earlier to tell her they were going to arrest William Bradfield for murder, and he went to her house at 7:30 A.M. after they had him in custody.

Betty VanNort said that she’d been awake half the night praying for them. They had a cup of tea together.

Bill Bradfield was sent to the state correctional institution at Camp Hill. He was placed in “Mohawk,” the administrative custody section for new fish who haven’t been placed in the general population yet, or who need special protection. Prisoners in Mohawk are in individual cells and shout messages down the corridor to each other.

According to the information relayed to Jack Holtz, Bill Bradfield was trying to sleep when a black convict yelled, “Braaaaadfield, you killed my schoolteacher. Braaaaadfield, you killed those little babies.”

Courtroom number four in the Dauphin County Courthouse was far too small to accommodate the spectators and reporters.

Judge Isaac S. Garb was highly respected in Harrisburg, known for keeping a trial moving and for being fair to both sides. He was a very diminutive man and once when Rick Guida said, “Your honor, I need a few minutes. I have just one short witness,” the judge replied, “Mister Guida, there aren’t any short witnesses in this case. There are brief witnesses.”

The defense attorney for Bill Bradfield was a nice-looking young fellow, Guidas age. Joshua Lock was a second-generation Harrisburg lawyer, his father having been a county district attorney.

By his own admission he became “personally involved” almost from his first meetings with Bill Bradfield. It isn’t the best idea in the world to become personally involved with clients, and he knew that, but he truly admired Bill Bradfield. Once during a strategy session, apropos of something they were discussing, Bill Bradfield gave him a thumbnail sketch of the study of grammar and linguistics, as well as literary criticism that the lawyer wished he could’ve put before the jury.

Unlike Guida, Lock believed that Bill Bradfield was highly intelligent, as was the one remaining disciple, Rachel. But Lock found Rachel to be “very very very very very very strange.” And that’s all he’d say for the record.

There may have been trial lawyers who worked harder for their clients in 1983, but if so, they probably didn’t live to tell of it. Lock personally, and without assistance, compiled notebooks bigger than the Philadelphia telephone directory on virtually every important witness for the prosecution. With the most elaborate and precise cross-references to each FBI report, state police report, and every bit of testimony given before state or federal grand juries or during any other proceedings thus far. His idea was to present a dozen different possibilities for the jury as to where to look for killers.

Naturally, one possibility was Dr. Jay C. Smith. Lock viewed him as a depraved maniac, street-smart and complicated, who’d battled his way up in ways that Bill Bradfield never had. As far as Lock was concerned, Jay Smith had proved himself a liar a hundred times over. He hoped to provide other suspects for the jury to consider, and to point out that a circumstantial case could be viewed many ways. His approach was to be intellectual and scholarly.

He’d spent twenty-eight days in the prison visiting room with William Bradfield. He would spend a total of fifteen hundred hours on the defense of his client.

Lock respected Rick Guida, because when other prosecutors were backing away from the notorious circumstantial case, he’d seized the opportunity. He saw Guida as an egocentric, ambitious, aggressive prosecutor, and he was probably right on all counts.

In fact, Guida was too egocentric to analyze the opposition. Josh Lock was obviously a competent lawyer and that was that. Guida didn’t spend much time thinking about the other guy’s strengths and weaknesses. As far as he and Jack Holtz were concerned, their case could almost rest on the credibility of only one witness. Jack Holtz said that he would be Guidas best witness: that was William Bradfield.

Rick Guidas strategy was to put on the weakest first, and that would encompass all of the forensics. Josh Lock was very strong on forensics. By the time Lock got through with the pathologist, it sounded as though Lock could have done the autopsy.

Through his cross-examination the jury learned that lividity becomes irreversible after four to six hours and that one way to determine if the lividity is fixed is to press the flesh and see if it blanches. Josh Lock knew all the terminology and could refer to “hemolysized portions of red blood cells.” Lock extracted an admission that the time of death could have been Sunday afternoon or evening when Bill Bradfield had been at the beach for a longer time.

Lock got it into the record that there were as many as twenty thousand blue combs disseminated by the army reserve in eastern Pennsylvania, and that there was a fingerprint or two on the outside of the car that didn’t belong to anybody else in the case. So whether they belonged to “kinky Alex” or somebody else, no one would ever know. He was extending the possibilities from a killing by Jay Smith to persons unknown, not necessarily having anything to do with Jay Smith.

As far as the hair that the prosecution believed came from Susan Reinert’s head, he didn’t spend time refuting that, but rather he used it by pointing out that the entire root was intact and therefore it had fallen out naturally rather than being pulled out. He had a theory saved for his closing argument.

If the case had been based solely on forensics, the prosecution would never have filed it. The troubles for the defense started when the neighbors of Susan Reinert started taking the stand and talking about Bill Bradfields car being there at night and in the morning. Lock did a good job of spreading a little confusion as to the days of the week and the times they’d seen the cars.

Susan Reinerts friends testified, and Lock got everyone to say that Bill Bradfield had never admitted that he was romantically involved with Susan Reinert and had certainly never hinted that he intended to marry her.

All of Susan Reinerts financial transactions were described by witnesses, as well as the alibi testimony for Jay Smith, and the missing $25,000, and the huge insurance policies, and the will.

And then came the disciples. The jury started giving those “Are you kidding me?” looks as Vince Valaitis and Chris Pappas and Shelly and Sue Myers started talking about silencers and acid and money wiping and all the rest of it. Everybody on the jury at sometime or other kept hearing one word and that word was “bizarre.”

Sue Myers said, in private, that two years after she’d locked out Bill Bradfield, she happened to be cleaning out the bookshelves when she found a large cache of meticulously catalogued packages of hardcore pornography. She said he must have spent days cutting out pictures and subdividing photos, and swinger ads and telephone numbers. It was as detailed and methodical as his lesson plans and seating charts. She was shocked by the discovery.

Jack Holtz believed what Proctor Nowell had told him and thought that the jury would too.

When the witness was called, the prosecutor got the criminal record over with in a hurry.

“What particular institution are you in at the present time?” Rick Guida asked.

“The ABRAX program, an alcohol drug program.”

“Are you sentenced there as a condition of a criminal charge?”

“Yes, I am.”

“What sentence are you currently serving?”

“Eighteen months to five years.”

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have children?”

“Two.”

“Tell us what trouble you’ve been in.”

“When I was sixteen I was incarcerated for aggravated assault. I served four to twenty-three months. I did, like seven months, and I got out. I was arrested for burglary twice but I wasn’t convicted. I was charged with receivin’ stolen goods, possession with intent to deliver, and two gun charges.”

“What was the disposition of all your cases? Did you have a trial or plead guilty?”

“I pled guilty.”

“Are you an alcoholic?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any outside hobbies?”

“Yes. Amateur boxin’. I boxed Golden Gloves. Ten wins and one loss.”

“Mister Nowell, can you associate your criminal problems with your drinking problem?”

“That’s the only time I would get in trouble was when I had got intoxicated.”

“When did you first meet Mister Bradfield?”

“I was sittin’ in the dayroom on B block and I was playin’ chess with another inmate. Mister Bradfield walked up to me and asked me when I got time would I teach him how to play the game.”

“Did you eventually play chess with him?”

“Yes. It was about one or two days later. I was in my room, me and this guy Stanley. We were sittin’ on the bed playin’ chess and William Bradfield walked past the cell. I hollered. I told him, I said, ‘Bradfield, I got time to show you how to move the pieces, but, you know, the rest got to come from you mentally.’ ”

“How many games did you play over the time that you knew him?”

“Approximately twelve times.”

“How did he do?”

“He beat me eight out of twelve. I started playin’ when I was, like twelve years old, and it was, you know, not easy to get beat like that. I took for granted that he already knew how to play.”

“Did you have the opportunity to help Mister Bradfield with regard to another inmate?”

“Yes. Me and Bradfield was comin’ from upstairs. Another inmate asked him somethin’. He says somethin’ about doin’ somethin’ to him. I said, ‘No, man, you ain’t gonna do nothin’ to him because that’s my friend.’ He walked on about his business.”

“Did you have an occasion to get a letter from your wife and make a comment to him?”

“Well, I received a letter from my wife that day and I read the letter and I got upset, you know, and she’s tellin’ me, like ‘I’m tired, baby,’ you know? ‘I don’t think I’m gonna wait this time.’ I got angry. I told Bradfield, I said, ‘Good a provider as I have been.’ I said, ‘You know, I’m goddamn gonna kill that … that … I don’t wanna say what I said. ‘I’m gonna kill that hussy,’ or whatever.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘No, no, no. You don’t ever wanna kill anyone. They never get off your ass.’ ”

“Did you have the occasion to speak with Mister Bradfield when he got back from a court proceeding?”

“Well, I was lookin’ for him because I had some coffee for him. I walked outta my room and he was standin’ on the tier. He was standin’ there lookin’ up to the ceilin’ with his finger pointed in his head, you know, like real angry and disgusted. And I called him, I said, ‘Bradfield, come here.’ He came in the room. And I said, ‘What’s wrong, man?’ ”

“What did he look like when he was standing out there and what did he look like when he came in your cell in terms of his facial expression?”

“Like, the veins was up in his head, poppin’ up. Like, he really had a major problem, like real frustrated and real angry. He came on in the cell.”

“What did he do when he was in the cell?”

“He was walkin’ around in the cell lookin’ up, lookin’ out the window and stuff. And he said, ‘They’re fuckin’ over me, man. They’re fuckin’ over me. They denied my bail reduction.’ Then after he said that, he said, ‘You know, if I wasn’t in a financial bind I wouldn’t be here nor would this have had to happen to Susan.’

“I didn’t really know what he was talkin’ about. He said, ‘I was there when they were killed but I didn’t kill them.’ And I said, ‘Damn, Bradfield! The children too?’ And he said, ‘None of this was meant for the kids, only for Susan. But there couldn’t be a stone left unturned. You have to tie up all the loose ends.’ ”

And that, Guida and Holtz noted, was a Jay Smith expression from way back. Bill Bradfield had used the same words to Vince and Chris describing what Dr. Jay had told him. And Raymond Martray had used the same words as well when he described conversations with Jay Smith.

“After he made that statement did you speak with him very much anymore?”

“No, I limited my association with him.”

“Did any law enforcement officer or deputy attorney general make any promises with regard to testifying in this matter?”

“No, the only thing I was told was, you know, that my judge would be made aware of my cooperation. That’s it.”

“When the police first came to you and talked to you, did you tell them about this situation?”

“No, I didn’t. I told them I didn’t know nothin’ because I really didn’t want to get involved in it. You know, the name the people start callin’ you while you’re incarcerated. And man, I was just scared, really.”

“Why did you come forward with your story, Mister Nowell?”

“Because they told me to sit down and think about it. They said, ‘Okay, we’re not gonna pressure you, but think about it. It was two innocent children involved.’ I went back to my room and I was just layin’ there thinkin’ about it, you know? I finally started thinkin’, like, damn, what would happen, you know, if this was my kids? Would I want somebody to do this for mine? That’s when I got up and I went in my box and got the number and called them.”

“Are you telling us the truth today?”

“Yes.”

“So help you God?”

“So help me God.”

On cross-examination, Josh Lock attacked Nowell’s credibility by trying to show that he was seeking favors from the authorities. He dissected the statement “I was there when they were killed,” because he’d already shown and the prosecution stipulated that Bill Bradfield could not have been there when Susan Reinert actually stopped breathing.

But Jack Holtz was never prouder of his idea to look for a Bill Bradfield “protector” in the Delaware County prison. He thought that Proctor Nowell had done just fine.

His moment came. Bill Bradfield wore black frame glasses for the trial, and the day he testifed he had on his most dignified three-piece blue suit and a subdued striped necktie. His testimony was flat, as unemotional as before. But this time his voice kept fading and the judge had to continually remind him to speak up.

“State your full name, please,” Josh Lock said when the direct examination began.

“William S. Bradfield, Jr.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifty.”

“And can you tell us your educational background, please.”

“I graduated from Haverford College in 1955, and have a masters in liberal education from St. Johns. I’ve done other graduate work at various institutions.”

When Lock asked him to describe his relationship with Sue Myers, he said, “We had not been living as a real romantic pair for many many years.”

“Do you remember when your relationship with Miss Myers ceased to be intimate?”

“Nineteen seventy-three or seventy-four,” he said.

Poor old Sue. That was when they’d first started living together. She always claimed that the sex hadn’t stopped until 1978. No wonder she needed facials and chiropractors.

Of his early relationship with Jay Smith, he said, “He was a very very intelligent man, very intelligent. And he liked to indulge in a kind of intellectual combat. During teachers’ meetings he’d come up to you in the hall and begin talking tongue-in-cheek about some item of education. And he’d use very big words and if I’d ask him what the word meant, Doctor Smith would say, ‘Mister Bradfield, I don’t get paid to teach you vocabulary.’ And I would go look it up and there wasn’t any such word. He’d say it was Hindustani or Old English.

“The most characteristic thing he did in the cafeteria or in the halls was to interlude very elaborately embroidered conceits. A conceit is a kind of extended metaphor in literature. He would, for example, begin by saying to me that the essence of civilization is the foot, and that it’s the most important organ of the human body, and massage of the foot is the most important thing that one person can do for another.

“Another time he talked about the central importance of boots, and it turned out that he’d sold cowboy boots at one time. He wasn’t serious, but it was a kind of practice of his skill in rhetoric without reference to the substance of the idea.

“And sometimes if I went down to him with a grievance from a student, Doctor Smith would say, ‘Mister Bradfield it’s really not incumbent on me to speak. Let’s go back and discuss it in my office.’ We’d go back and close the door and his language changed into a basic kind of street language. And never have I heard obscenities come together in quite the way that he would do it.”

Bill Bradfield testified that he had never taken Susan Reinert to a movie, show, dance, party, play, concert, or on a boat. He said that he’d done all these things with other women friends such as Rachel, and he admitted to being romantically involved with Shelly.

There was a danger to the defense in all this, because the prosecution might run with it by showing that, yes indeed, he’d treated Susan Reinert differently from all his others. The prosecution’s inference could be that there was a “five-year plan” for this one, and that the five years had ended abruptly in 1979.

Bill Bradfield gave his own version of the business of trying to protect Susan Reinert from Jay Smith, but it didn’t differ considerably with the Chris Pappas version, though he glossed over the wiping of the money, things like that. He said that he was so distraught that he’d begun to look haggard from all that protecting.

Once, he said, he baby-sat for Susan Reinert in his capacity as adviser, and she came home at 4:00 A.M., and he warned her then and there that she was dating some bad folks.

He said that she’d never admitted dating Jay Smith, but that she’d admitted dating a man named Jay, and he’d put two and two together and got goat vibes. He did not mention the Tweetie Bird term of endearment.

He admitted to taking Shelly to motels, and claimed never to have had sex with her, and by then the prosecution believed that much, at least.

The direct testimony ended like this:

“Did you kill Mrs. Reinert?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you plan to kill Susan Reinert?”

“No.”

“Did you kill either of her children?”

“No.”

“Did you plan to do either of those things?”

“No, I did not.”

“Are you responsible for the deaths?”

“Absolutely not. I never hurt Mrs. Reinert or her children in any way.”

“Are you guilty of these crimes?”

“I am not.”

Rick Guida was one of those prosecutors who live for cross-examination, and possibly in his entire career he’d never looked forward more to one.

Since Josh Lock’s last question had solicited denials of murder and conspiracy, he began with the next logical question:

“Who did kill Mrs. Reinert, Mister Bradfield?”

“I don’t know,” Bill Bradfield said.

“Now, in 1979 you told a number of people that Jay C. Smith was going to kill her, and you were so afraid that you went to the shore just to have an alibi. Don’t you think Jay C. Smith killed Susan Reinert?”

“I don’t know who killed Susan Reinert.”

“Do you believe that he did, Mister Bradfield?”

“Do you want me to speculate?”

“Sure, just tell us what you think.”

“Objection,” Josh Lock said.

“Overruled,” said the judge.

“He may have,” Bill Bradfield answered.

“He may have,” Guida said, with a double dollop of sarcasm. “Now what about this other person that you identified in the summer of 1979, do you think he may have killed Mrs. Reinert?”

“I think he may have.”

“What was his name? If you think he killed her I’d like to know how you know that.”

“Mrs. Reinert mentioned the name in the winter of 1979, the name Alex. The only details I knew were that Alex was tall, very well spoken, from the Harrisburg area. And one of the others mentioned was Ted or Jay, I don’t remember which, but one was extremely well educated. The other three, she said, were into group sex. They were advocates of bondage and discipline, and deviate sexual practices such as urination during the sex act, and oral sex, and such as that.”

“Do you think somebody else did it, other than Jay C. Smith?”

“I think somebody else may have, yes.”

“Even in spite of all these threats that Jay C. Smith made, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you think that Jay Smith didn’t do it?”

“Because I found out from the newspapers that her body was found in Harrisburg. That’s where she said Alex was from. Secondly, it seemed to involve some kind of sexual misuse. There was a dildo found in the automobile. And thirdly, the thing that made me really wonder about Doctor Smith doing it is that nothing he ever told me indicated that he would kill in this way. There were chain marks on her as it was reported to the press, and in addition to this, under the body was found a comb from his same outfit. That certainly didn’t make any sense to me.”

“Does it make any sense that Alex, an unnamed person, would come all the way from Harrisburg to get Jay C. Smith’s comb to plant in Susan Reinert’s car? If Alex killed her and Jay C. Smith wasn’t involved, how did Jay C. Smith’s comb get in the car unless it was planted there by Alex from Harrisburg?”

“My wonder about it is that if it was in her car it means that Mrs. Reinert and Doctor Smith had been in the car and perhaps he’d lost his comb. Why the comb was where it was, I’m not sure.”

“It was in the wheelwell storage area. Would it make sense that he might have been in the hidden luggage area where his comb was found?”

“I didn’t know where the comb was found.”

On the subject of untouchable Sue Myers, Guida asked, “Why did you move in with Sue Myers for six or seven years if you were no longer lovers and not intimate?”

“Sue Myers offered me the first real comfortable home base that I’ve had since leaving home for college. We had what I thought was a close, warm and comfortable relationship. That was the place where I felt the most at home, in that apartment.”

“You were not in love with her?”

“I loved her.”

“You were not intimate with her?”

“Correct.”

As to the money he’d put into the Terra Art store, he said that Sue Myers didn’t like teaching very much and it was a “privilege” to put up $45,000 to help her ease out of the profession and begin as an entrepreneur. As to where he’d gotten the money he said that he’d mortgaged a house for $25,000 and took out a second mortgage for an additional $25,000.

It was all getting down to the stash of $25,000 that everyone was hiding and wiping. He called that his “boat fund” and said that he’d been saving it secretly for years.

“Why didn’t you use the boat fund for the art store?” Rick Guida wanted to know.

“Because I wanted to retain it.”

“Why didn’t you put that money into Terra Art? Because you weren’t getting any interest on it anyway, and you could’ve used that instead of paying interest on these loans. Why didn’t you do that?”

“Because Sue Myers, for all her good points, was impossible when it came to money.”

“Mister Bradfield,” Guida interrupted, “money is money, whether it comes from selling land, or borrowing it, or if it comes from your boat fund. It’s the same thing. Now, again my question is, why didn’t you use the boat fund instead of borrowing at ten or twelve percent?”

“Because the ten or twelve percent interest that I would pay back on the loan would be paid through monies that were controlled by Sue Myers and me. If, on the other hand, I used the boat fund for the business, I never would have seen that money again for my own use.”

Guida didn’t bother to ask why he didn’t put the secret money in an interest-bearing account, but moved along to the alibi testimony. Bill Bradfield said that the court reporter in that case had misquoted him in his testimony.

And then they moved along to the chains and acid that Jay Smith showed Bill Bradfield during the lazy crazy days of summer.

Guida’s tone during the cross-examination of Bill Bradfield never varied. His incredulity was blended with only as much sarcasm as he figured the judge would permit. If you could bottle it, it would’ve been about 80 proof.

“That brings up something interesting,” he said. “You saw tape and you saw chains and yet you said you didn’t believe Jay C. Smith had anything to do with the death of Susan Reinert. Did you hear the testimony that there was tape residue around her face and chain marks on her back?”

“Yes.”

“To this day you have a relationship with Rachel, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“You lived with her in 1981 through 1982, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear her testimony that you had a romantic relationship during the summer of 1978?”

“I don’t recall.”

“If she did say it she would have been wrong, is that right?”

“I didn’t view our relationship as romantic. My relationship with Rachel has been of a different sort than that which you would accurately characterize as romantic or sexual. It’s not what we really had, I would say.”

“Over all this time you never had any sexual and/or romantic relationship?”

“Well, we have had some sexual incidents. What I’m trying to do is characterize it fairly for you. It was not the essential relationship with Rachel, and never with me, and never had been. It wasn’t in the summer of 1978 and it isn’t now.”

“I believe you’ve described your relationship with Rachel as artistic and intellectual, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Was it that same with Shelly? Sex was not at the center of her universe either?”

“It was not.”

“How did you rekindle the relationship when you spent a four-day weekend with Rachel over Thanksgiving, 1978?”

“It was not a sex holiday, as you’re suggesting.”

“A romantic holiday then. What happened?”

“We went to see a number of art films in Cambridge. We went to see the glass flowers at Harvard in the exhibit there. We attended a lecture. We went to the museum of art.”

“Where did you stay?”

“With Rachel.”

“In her bedroom.”

“Yes.”

“But you wouldn’t characterize this weekend as intimate?”

“I don’t mean to suggest that the relationship with her or with any of the other people in my life was either orthodox or proper.”

“Now speaking of that weekend, what did you do to protect Susan Reinert?”

“Nothing.”

“You told this jury that you drove around her house and did many things over that time period when you found out about the threat, even to the point of sending Sue Myers away because Smith would kill on holidays. Why did you take that critical weekend off and go to Massachusetts if Susan Reinert was in such danger?”

“I tried to spend as much time as I could, do what I could about the situation with Doctor Smith. I couldn’t do so much that I gave up my life. And by Thanksgiving I was alarmed and concerned and afraid. By Christmas I went away again and I was even more alarmed and desperately tired. I couldn’t park in front of Susan Reinerts house during the whole holiday weekend without simply moving in. I couldn’t do it.”

“So you just gave up on the critical weekends and went someplace else so you wouldn’t even be anywhere near her house or near Jay C. Smith, is that right?”

“It was more than I could do. I really don’t know how I could’ve done much more and not ended up in the hospital.”

“How about calling the police?”

“Looking back, I wish I had done that. I think we all wish that.”

“Why didn’t you go to Susan Reinert and say, ‘Jay C. Smith has chains, he has locks, he has guns, he has silencers, he has all these things. And by the way, he’s threatening to kill you. You better do something about it.’ Did you ever say that to her?”

“No.”

“That would’ve been another way you could’ve protected her, could it not have been?”

“I don’t know that it would’ve worked, but it could have. I was not sure that there was a relationship between Susan Reinert and Doctor Smith. I could never find out for sure.”

“Wouldn’t that be all the more reason to tell her if this person you think she’s having a relationship with was going to kill her?”

“Looking back, I think it was.”

“But that didn’t occur to you at the time?”

“No.”

“It occurred to you to tell the police, but you dismissed it, is that right?”

“It occurred to us to speak, but we decided not to do that.”

“We. You keep saying we. Wasn’t it you that was bringing all this information to Mister Pappas, Miss Myers and Mister Valaitis? You were the one that brought all the information back, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“You were the one that was making decisions. You were the leader, weren’t you?”

“I was not making the decisions solely. I sought their advice in everything I did.”

“The group was making decisions on the basis of your facts, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“You indicated that you didn’t want to tell the police because they were corrupt, is that right?”

“Correct, and involved with Doctor Smith.”

“How many police departments did he control?”

“Not just the Upper Merion Township police. He mentioned that he knew someone with the West Chester police. He mentioned several people in the Philadelphia police. And he mentioned the police in Bucks County.”

“In other words, he had connections, so that nothing would happen to him and you’d be in trouble if you told?”

“Nothing would happen to him, but something would happen to me.”

“In other words, they’d tell him and he’d come and get you, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever hear of the Pennsylvania State Police, Mister Bradfield?”

“Yes.”

“Are they listed in your telephone book at home?”

“Looking back I wish I had gone to them.”

“You could’ve picked up the phone and called the Pennsylvania State Police and said I don’t trust the Upper Merion Township police and I’m going to tell you people about these strange goings-on. You could’ve done that, is that right?”

“Any one of us could have done that.”

“You could have, couldn’t you?”

“We all could have.”

“But you could have.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“You didn’t, did you?”

“None of us did.”

“Have you heard of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

“Yes.”

“Did you call them?”

“No.”

“Did Jay C. Smith have contacts in the state police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

“He never indicated that.”

As to the character of his relationship with Susan Reinert, William Bradfield said, “In 1976, Sue Myers had already had a confrontation with Susan Reinert and she said to me, ‘You’re wasting your life on this woman. She’s not worth your time.’ But I told her that anyone who is interested in literature to the point of teaching it, let alone of trying to write poetry as I was trying to do, should feel that any other person who is willing to be open with him in a real and honest way, in a personal way, is someone that anybody who’s interested in the arts can’t turn his back on.”

“I see. So, the relationship with Susan Reinert, if not romantic, was at least artistic? Is that what you’re telling us?”

“On my part?”

“Yes.”

“I guess all of my relationships are.”

“Artistic?”

“Yes.”

As to the prom night adventure and other Dr. Jay business, the testimony contained even more “we’s” and fewer “I’s” than the rest of it.

“Why did you need a silencer to protect yourself?”

“Because both Chris and I felt that if Doctor Smith were to threaten me while I was in the car I would have to try to wound him or disable him or kill him. We agreed that I’d call Chris and he’d come immediately and we’d figure out exactly what we were to do. If I’d have tried to defend myself with my.357 magnum it would’ve alerted half of Chester County.”

“When you’re talking about protecting yourself from an armed man who threatens you with a weapon, why did you need a silencer?”

“We were concerned not only with Doctor Smith, but with people in the drug world because of his daughter and so forth. And …”

“Mister Bradfield, let me interrupt you for just a second. You’re telling me about your fears. I’m asking why you needed a silencer.”

“Because I wanted to do more than simply disable him. I wanted after that to be able to call Chris, and for Chris and me to decide where we would go and take Doctor Smith.”

“Were you planning on murdering him?”

“We talked about it. Chris and I had talked about it.”

“If you had a plan to murder him and he threatened you with a weapon, why didn’t you just finish him off right there in self-defense and be done with it? Were you going to take him to a hospital? Why did you get a silencer so that no one would come around? Tell me that.”

“We didn’t know what the best plan would be. We were afraid if I had to produce the weapon quickly and tell him not to move, disable him, tie him up or whatever, and call Chris … If I produced a weapon, and if he’d come at me and I had to use it, and if it were an unsilenced.357 magnum, and we were anywhere within earshot of people, all options as to what we could do after that would then be closed. People would hear and they would rush to see us.”

And so it went. The jury, Jack Holtz noted during all of this, was slack-jawed, and he was hoping they weren’t getting fuzzy like Chris Pappas used to get. He was relieved when they hoisted their chins back up onto their faces.

Bill Bradfield testified that he had believed Dr. Jay Smith to be deranged and dangerous, but still, he was morally obligated to testify for him as an alibi witness in the one crime he had not committed. All things considered, Bill Bradfield didn’t tell it much differently than it was told by Chris Pappas, Vince Valaitis, Sue Myers and Shelly. If the disciples had believed, Bill Bradfield obviously felt that the jury would believe.

As to the neighbors of Susan Reinert seeing his car parked in front of her house at all hours, he said that he would park his car and leave it there to deter Dr. Jay Smith from creepy-crawling her house.

“Did you move your car occasionally?” the prosecutor asked.

“During the four- or five-month period I parked my VW quite often in front of Susan Reinert’s house.”

“Overnight?”

“Yes, for days and nights.”

“How did you get home?”

“I took my Cadillac to school.”

“But how did you get the Volkswagen to Susan Reinerts house?”

“Susan Reinert would come in with a lady teacher and then she would drive the Cadillac. And I would drive the VW to her house.”

“And then you would get in your red Cadillac and go home?”

“Or wherever I was going.”

“Then you must have told Susan Reinert why you were doing this?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Then you told her that Jay C. Smith was after her, and you were parking the car in front of her house as a deterrent, is that what you’re telling us?”

“No. I told her that parking at my apartment was very crowded, which it was.”

“What about the testimony of the neighbors who saw you coming out of the house at seven in the morning? Were they mistaken?”

“No, there were times, particularly on Saturdays, when I would come by very early to see Susan before I went to my eight A.M. Greek class.”

“But they saw you doing it during the week.”

“They’re mistaken.”

“That brings me to Mary Gove. Mrs. Gove said that on at least three occasions a week, she would see your car there at times when she would get up at five in the morning, and then when she’d go to work at seven-thirty your car would be gone. Was she mistaken?”

“It could have happened a couple of times.”

“Are you saying that there were occasions when you left Susan Reinerts house very late, say around midnight, and came back at five A.M.?”

“There were many times that I stayed late and there were many times that I went over early in the morning. And I think it would be easy for Mrs. Gove to feel that it happened all at once. I was taking a course at Villanova in Greek at eight o’clock in the morning and I would try, when I could, to come before class and sometimes I came early enough to make breakfast.”

“You made breakfast for them? You would drive all the way over to Susan Reinerts house early in the morning on Saturday just to have breakfast with the kids?”

“Yes.”

“Can you explain your comment to Sharon Lee when she called you on the phone and you said, ‘Oh, yes, how old were the children?’ ”

“I knew that Karen and Michael were grade-school children but I didn’t know what age. I really didn’t know them that well.”

“Why did you use the word ‘were’? Why did you refer to the children in the past tense on June twenty-sixth, 1979?”

“The assumption was that something awful had happened to the children.”

One clever bit of business that Rick Guida conceived was to subpoena the court reporter and prosecutor who’d been at the Jay Smith trial of May 30, 1979, when Bill Bradfield had been an alibi witness.

Guida staged a reenactment of that testimony. He played the part of Jay Smith’s attorney, and on cross-examination he played the part of prosecutor Jackson M. Stewart, Jr.

Stewart himself played the role of William Bradfield and with each of the performers holding a certified copy of the transcript of that proceeding, they reenacted Bill Bradfields alibi testimony for this jury, just as it had happened then, without editorial comment.

This was a very effective piece of lawyering. The testimony didn’t sound any more believable coming from Jackson Stewart’s lips than it had from Bill Bradfields back in 1979. This jury got a very good idea of what that alibi tetimony had been all about and what it meant to this trial.

One of the scores of witnesses against William Bradfield was Special Agent Matt Mullin of the FBI. While he was waiting to testify, he walked up to Jack Holtz and said that he’d been wrong with Joe VanNort, and that the arrest of Shelly had helped turn the case around.

Jack Holtz thought that was a decent thing to say and told him so. He said that Joe would’ve appreciated it.

By far, the saddest testimony in the William Bradfield murder case was given by Ken Reinert and his mother.

Once when Florence and John Reinert were on vacation in Vermont they’d seen a boy who resembled their grandson Michael. They’d tried to follow his school bus. They’d reported it to the FBI.

They were still unable to celebrate Christmas.

When Ken Reinert had first read in the newspapers that a murder charge was being filed, he was as happy as he’d been in four years. Until he saw that three murder charges were being filed. He’d called the state police in tears.

He said, “But you can’t file three murder charges! Not three murder charges!”

Just before that time, in a newspaper interview Ken Reinert had said, “I’m optimistic that the children are still alive. I know there’re people in the world who murder children, but I can’t really believe that anyone would kill these children. Not these children.”

It wasn’t until the murder trial in 1983 that Ken, Florence and John Reinert were able to describe the children in the past tense. The children were no more. It had been decreed by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.