Echoes in the Darkness (1987)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  I have had no romantic involvement with Sue Myers or Susan Reinert or any teacher or any student or any parent in the Upper Merion area school district, in or out of school, since I've lived and worked there. No sexual involvements either.

  I never considered William Bradfield an "adversary" as he puts it; and I never had a "secret close relationship" with him as Mr. Anonymous or Mr. Synonymous puts it. I viewed William Bradfield as a superior teacher who had an uncanny influence on the brightest students and on much of the staff. He also had an unusual influence on the powers that be (superintendents office and the school board). Thus, he could influence the operations of the senior high. I viewed him as someone I had to be alert about, always. The principals office is not a windless isle in a tranquil academic ocean. It is a turbulent place with many winds blowing. Bradfield was a strong wind. Not friendly. Perhaps hostile. Perhaps.

  Susan Reinert was a pleasant, conscientious teacher, always willing to do more than was required of her. I knew nothing of her out of school activities. The same applies to Sue Myers, an excellent teacher and person. I knew nothing of her out-of-school life.

  There was no secret meetings with any witnesses or anyone at any time. I met with each of my witnesses. The topics were substantially the same: don't let the police scare you off; tell the truth; keep it succinct. At the direction of my lawyer, I met with William Bradfield. We met openly in a public place.

  I was never a member-(echoes of the fifties)-I was never a member of any sex cult or Satan cult. I have never participated in any group sex or abnormal sex. As defined by my interrogators abnormal sex includes homosexuality, anal sex, bestiality, sado-masochism, bondage and discipline, or the use of any accompaniments such as vibrators, dildos, or special clothes. My home has been searched many times, legally and illegally, by police and lord knows who else. They have my permission to display at any place they choose any items they took from my house that relate to sex cults or Satan cults. They can even display my trash.

  Not only was I never a member or participant in any cult activities, but in my whole time in Upper Merion I never heard anyone discussing such things. Until "those authoritative sources close to the investigation" initiated the rumors, it was unknown to any in-school or out-ofschool dialogue. I am eager to see their proof of this slander on me, and the Township of Upper Merion, and the other professionals reputed by the rumors to be members.

  The first letter is a short introduction to what I want to tell you. There is much, much more. I hope that you will give me a chance to give you my views before you slam the cell door on me and throw the key away. You still have not heard of my secret life, as one Harrisburg paper put it. But now I want to ask your help.

  Please send me any newspaper clippings you have or any ideas you have concerning the following matters: my wife's property. It should all be in the hands of the court. (My wife's will and my will are the same, viz., what we have goes to our two daughters.) Susan Reinerts murder. Especially newspaper items that indicate my involvement. The Satan cult slander: items that include my name are especially important. Drug use or sex orgy articles. Any that name me as a participant.

  Embarrassed, I end this letter as a mendicant. No matter what the amount, I ask you to please send me a postal money order or bank money order. Personal checks and cash are verboten. If you do not wish to think of it as

  alms for IRS purposes, think of it as an IOU that I will redeem from you in the future. Regardless, no hard feelings; I know you just got back from a huelga.

  Ciao.

  Jay

  RS. I am sure there is no Satan cult in Upper Merion even though I am just as sure that Satan is active there as everywhere.

  The chains, and much that surfaced in Stephanies diary; along with Bill Bradfield's use of women, got the FBI wondering about something new: could there be a homosexual bond between Jay Smith and William Bradfield?

  Vince Valaitis told them that Bill Bradfield had warned that the FBI might try to find out about his long-ago lodger, Tom. The feds tried to track Tom out on the west coast, but agents in Los Angeles who located his apartment were never able to speak with him directly. Nor could the FBI ever verify that Bill Bradfield had gone to Cuba with or without Tom to kill for Castro.

  At about the same time that the Terra Art store was going under, and Bill Bradfield was trying to unload the stock and dissolve the corporation, Sue Myers learned a little something about the elusive Tom. When the publicity hit. Torn sent a letter to Bill Bradfield along with a book of Ezra Pound's poetry.

  Bill Bradfield was deeply touched by-the gesture from an old friend and read the letter to Sue, but not all of it. She noticed an ellipsis in his reading.

  When he turned his back she dashed straight for his files and read it for herself. Tom told Bill Bradfield about his new life as a married man, and how content he was. In the context of the letter it was clear that Tom was married to another guy.

  And then Tom told Bill Bradfield that despite his conjugal bliss he would always remember Bill Bradfield as the only man he ever truly loved.

  Sue Myers had one thought when she finished that letter. She later said, "I wondered if he'd been any more faithful to Tom than he had to the rest of us."

  Ken Reinerts favorite FBI agent, Matt Mullin, was the quintessential FBI prep. He looked as though he could be Big

  Brother Biff to any of the coeds at Bryn Mawr. He looked like a cousin of The Main Line's most famous daughter, Grace Kelly.

  His old man might have pumped gas at Sloans Super Service, but to Joe VanNort he was Eights-with-coxswain. The agent's clothes had something to do with it. Matt Mullin always wore the FBI prep uniform: three-button suit, buttondown Oxford shirt, paisley tie okay but only if you're feeling revolutionary, cuffed pants at least two inches over the wingtip brogues, and those well run over at the heels because you're a lawman, after all.

  Matt Mullin's strawberry-blond hair had never seen stickum or spray, and he was forever pushing it off his forehead, boyishly. He looked like he'd spent his entire life blushing, or his systolic pressure matched Rod Carew's batting average. His accent even sounded like a Kennedys. Okay, so he'd gone to college at La Salle in Philly, he was still more Ivy League than F. Scott Fitzgerald. When you saw guys that looked like Matt Mullin, you didn't bother trying to spot the bulge under the coat. They had to be FBI.

  The FBI's sex research had outdone Masters and Johnson. They'd interviewed several women who the gossips claimed had been intimate with Bill Bradfield. One of them, described unkindly as "another plain-Jane schoolteacher," agreed to meet Matt Mullin to reveal some information of an intimate nature.

  He asked the lady in question to meet him at a precise location in the Sears parking lot at St. Davids, and informed the state cops that he wanted a backup unit. After all, the talk was going to be of a sexual nature, and he didn't want the woman to accuse him of anything.

  The cops were amused by this to start with, and Jack Holtz and another trooper agreed to provide the backup for Matt Mullin so there could be no accusations of rape in either direction. Before they left for the parking lot, Matt Mullin started telling Jack Holtz how not to be seen, and where to park, and how to behave, implying that the staties didn't know how to conduct a surveillance. That did it.

  In the late afternoon, Jack Holtz and his partner were running all over the Sears store trying to find fake noses and glasses. They arrived at the meeting place fifteen minutes early and roared in fifty miles an hour, sliding up bumper to bumper with the FBI unit. Both state cops then picked up newspaper pages with eye holes cut out and pretended to read.

  Matt Mullin told them okay you've made your point, and now could we please get down to business, but the cops weren't through yet. They wanted to see Matt Mullin's scarlet kisser go into terminal blush.

  They went to an observation point and composed a report while the agent interviewed the schoolteacher. The next moming at the regular task force briefing the special agent in charge read a st
ate police report detailing Matt Mullin's surveillance.

  1703 hours. White female parked car east of SA

  Mullin's car. Female exited vehicle and entered FBI car.

  1730. Windows began to fog.

  1740. Car rocked violently.

  1750. White Kleenex thrown from car window. Large

  German Shepherd seen roaming parking lot. Door

  opened driver's side. German Shepherd entered FBI car.

  1815 hours. Kleenex obtained by reporting officers.

  Sent to lab for analysis. Refer lab report.

  The information revealed to Matt Mullin by the former lover of Bill Bradfield was noteworthy. Just before Rachel arrived in May at the downtown hotel. Bill Bradfield had persuaded this schoolteacher to meet him at the same hotel for a quickie. He told the teacher that he often thought of their past romance and because he'd been celibate for so long he now needed her "to bring him back to manhood."

  This, when he was already juggling Sue Myers, Susan Reinert, Shelly and Rachel. So okay the agent wanted to know, is this guy a superstud or what? And to his surprise she told him.

  Bill Bradfield was a creamy cuddler and a super snuggler, but not worth a nickel when it came right down to the real stuff, ostrich or no ostrich.

  It verified what several of the feds were already beginning to suspect: the charismatic womanizing Renaissance man of Upper Merion was, alas, a bum lay.

  Bill Bradfield, Chris Pappas and Sue Myers weren't talking at all, but toward the end of the year Jack Holtz and Chick Sabinson took a trip to Boston to talk with Rachel. That conversation was about as relevant as the Harvard football program. As to the murder weekend she said she'd been alone looking at architecture in Philly, and that she'd never heard of Jay Smith before the murder. She'd desert Bill Bradfield, they figured, when they started pronouncing their r's in Boston.

  Jack Holtz was relieved to get a few days off over the Christmas holidays. He spent them back in Harrisburg with his son, and saw his brother and parents. It was impossible to be with his boy and not think about Karen and Michael Reinert. He'd never thought he'd still be working this case after the New Year, but he assured his family that they'd have to get a break soon.

  When they asked if there was any hope that the children were alive, he shrugged.

  Ken Reinert had a Christmas of sorts for the sake of his wife and stepdaughter, and the new baby. His parents, John and Florence Reinert, could not bring themselves to celebrate anything.

  They all refused to think that the children were not alive. Ken Reinert had recurring nightmares and sleeping disorders. These people were in torment.

  About Susan Jane Gallagher Reinert, it could be said that there were mixed feelings that Christmas. The lawmen said that she'd walked into danger with her eyes open, holding a child by each hand. The more that was learned about the $25,000 investment, and especially the $73,000 worth of insurance policies, the angrier the task force became. It would've been hard to find a cop or special agent who spent much time pitying the woman who ended up in the trunk of her car in a Harrisburg parking lot. You would often hear a lawman say, "She got what she deserved."

  But every one of them was working hard in the hopes of finding the children dead or alive. The bulletins showing those handsome young faces were heartbreaking.

  What they could deduce about Susan Reinerts death was this: she'd been called away from her house suddenly. When she and her children arrived at their rendezvous, they were met by more than one executioner. It took more than one to control a desperate mother and two hysterical children.

  The one-hundred-pound woman fought hack but was beaten severely, possibly with fists. Her mouth was taped and she was lashed in chain and cinched so tight that the links gouged a trail around her body.

  As she lay helpless she may well have seen and heard her children being murdered. She may have seen and heard more than that.

  She could not die until such time as a killer could establish an unshakable alibi. It was at least twenty-four hours, perhaps thirty-six, before Susan Reinert was murdered, in order to fix an acceptable time of death.

  One could speculate about the night and day and night of unimaginable agony this mother suffered as she came to understand the folly that brought her and Karen and Michael to this. When the lethal injection came, she probably welcomed it.

  Task force members in frustration would often say, "That woman's stupidity was a crime."

  To call Susan Reinerts pathetic love for a man a "crime" was acceptable cop hyperbole, but no crime deserved this punishment. To devise a death as cruel as Susan Reinerts required a supremely Gothic imagination.

  Chapter 20

  Rebirth

  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 works 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

  Reinerts 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 Smiths 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 fo
und.

  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. 1 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. fn>in 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.