Echoes in the Darkness (1987)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  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 Reinerts 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 Reinerts 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 huls. 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 Smith's 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 tum 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 Bradfield's 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. Reinerts 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 mothers 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 Reinerts 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.

  Tlie 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 bumed 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 Reinerts 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.