Criminology - The Reinert Family Murders

Episode Date: May 18, 2019

In this episode of Criminology, we are discussing the Reinert family murders. Susan Reinert was a 36-year-old English teacher near Philadelphia, PA, and mother to an 11-year-old girl named Karen and a 10-year-old boy named Michael. Karen was found brutally murdered and stuffed into the trunk of a car in 1979. Her two children have never been found. This is a case with many different players and several twists and turns. It involves a fellow teacher named Bill Bradfield and a principal named Jay Smith. Both men would be arrested and convicted for the murders. But would the convictions stick? Join Mike and Morf as they break down this bizarre murder case. The details surrounding the players involved are astounding. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. I'd like to welcome everyone to episode 61 of criminology. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you this week? I'm doing good. I'm excited.

It's almost crime con time and that's one of my favorite parts of the year. Yeah, yeah. I just booked my flights the other day and I'm getting a. excited, you know, to hang out with, with fans and, you know, it's just a really fun time. You know, we kind of pump it up for months in advance, but it's not like we're selling it. They don't pay us to sell it. It's just a fun time. Yeah, New Orleans should be a really fun time.

Well, and then you add New Orleans. And that's a whole kind of different level, you know, Nashville was fun. Indianapolis was fun, but it's like you're in. increasing the amount of things that you can do each year. There's just so much to do in New Orleans. I'm looking forward to the food, man. I love the food down there. I like to get me a po-boy, a muffletta.

There's just so much good Creole type stuff. Love it. Yeah. Last time I was down there, I got a kidney stone. So that's the one thing I don't want to bring home with me from New Orleans. Okay. So I'm being super positive. And then you say, I got a kidney stone.

I am too. I'm being positive that I'm not bringing home a positive health kidney stone. No, I would agree with you. I've had a number of those are rough. Okay, Morph, let's give some Patreon shoutouts. We had some new Patreon contributors. We had Kara Greenspan, Donna Bowell, Holly Towns, Brian Gray Beale, David Lee, Kelly Stewart, Abby B, Theodore Razad, Dedy, see Margaret Vatney and Sherry Willard. So a lot of great new support. We appreciate that. We say it all the time, but it's true.

It means a lot. Yeah, we can't thank you enough. And if you want to be a Patreon supporter and help support the show, please visit patreon.com slash criminology. If you're currently supporting us on Patreon, you'll notice that we've had lots of goodies going into the Patreon feed. One thing we have coming up is an interview with Anna Siga, Nikolaazi, who's the star of the investigation discovery show True Conviction at the end of the

episode. We'll play a short preview of that Patreon episode. So one other thing to tell everyone more, we are going to do a Q&A episode coming up sometime soon, probably around the time that we're at CrimeCon, you know, a little bit easier episode, something that we don't have to research as much as we get ready to travel. So because of that, we are inviting listeners to participate. This is kind of an ask us anything type episode. You know, nothing's off limits. You can ask us about the show cases that we've done, cases that we haven't done,

really anything you want to ask us about, favorite music, favorite beer. It's up to you. And we want it to be fun. We can also dive into some serious topics around cases, but, you know, whatever it is that you would like to find out. I think that'll be pretty fun, Mike. And if listeners would like to participate, they can do so by reaching out to us through our social media on Twitter or Facebook, which will give out towards the end of the

episode. You can also call us and leave a voicemount 661-77 crime, and we may be able to play your call on air. All right. It's time to get into this episode. And the case that we're covering today is, it's one of those frustrating cases. It involves a mother and her two children. It was on June 25th, 1979 that the beaten and bound body of English teacher Susan Reinhert was found in the trunk of her car in a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania parking lot. Susan's two children, 11-year-old Karen and 10-year-old Michael went missing at the same time. And they've never been found. The children are presumed dead, a fellow teacher and lover of Susan Reinhardt, and a high school principal were later arrested

and charged in Susan's murder. Both were convicted. But the principal's conviction, but the principal's conviction was overturned and he was released in 1992. This case has become known as the mainline murders. So that's a general overview of this case, but it's the details that are astounding. You know, when we start to get into the relationships between some of these people that are involved, that's where it gets very interesting. And there are some very bizarre things that come out through the investigation, but we'll get to that as we go through this episode. King of Prussia is a small community located in Upper Merion Township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It's home to the largest shopping mall in the United States, the King of Prussia Mall,

and Upper Marion Area High School located at 435 Crossfield Road. Kids in grades 9 through 12 attend school here. In 1979, the school was known as Upper Marion Senior High School. Susan Reiner was born in 1942. Her father, William Gallagher, ran a small town newspaper in western Pennsylvania, where Susan and her brother, Pat, grew up. Their mother was a teacher at a local school. Susan earned a master's degree in education from Penn State University.

After college, Susan married Kenneth Ken Reiner. and eventually gave birth to their first child, Karen, in 1968, followed by a son Michael in 1969. Before the kids were born, during the first few years of their marriage, Ken served as a navigator on a B-52 bomber. And he and Susan lived on an Air Force base. In the early 70s, Susan accepted an English teacher position at up, Marien Senior High School, while Ken got a job at a Philadelphia bank.

The family eventually settled in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. This is a suburb of Philadelphia. And life for the Reinhardt family seems stable. Pretty uneventful. They were a normal family. Not long after Susan started teaching Upper Marion, she met fellow teacher William Bill Bradfield. Bill stood six foot three and weighed. 200 pounds. He had coppery blonde hair, a full beard, and blue eyes that some people described as

poetic, icy, or hypnotic. At the time Susan met Bill, he was already in a relationship with another woman. In 1963, Bill had met 23-year-old Sue Myers when she started teaching an upper Merion. And this Sue Myers is not to be confused with Susan Reiner. Within a year, the two were lovers, and they began a years-long secretive relationship. They eventually moved in together, but if anyone asked, Bill said he lived in Downingtown with his parents. Bill had numerous affairs behind Sue Myers' back, but she was not naive. She knew about them. But through them all, she stayed committed to him. And at one point, Bill admitted that he was, quote, sort of married to two different women. women, one woman named Fran, and another named Muriel. And each of these women bore Bill

a son. So later on, he admitted to sue that he had legally been married to both. He had married Muriel in 1963, and they lived together for three years. We got to break this down, morph. I mean, this is a man who meets this woman that he teaches with. They begin a relationship. At the same time, he's marrying other women. He's having children with other women. She knows about some of it. She know, I think she knows about the affairs. I don't think she knows that he's actually married at that point in time or has kids. I mean, that comes, you know, he admits that later. That had to have been one heck of a shock to Sue Myers to learn all of these things about this man that I'm assuming she was in love with.

And I think it says something about Bill, how shady he is. If he'll juggle women like this and lie to them, deceive them, what other kind of stuff is he capable of? And that comes up later on in this case. Well, yeah, right. That's important, right? It's why we're talking about Bill, his affairs, what he kept from Sue Myers, it all comes into play. I mean, I think you look at it when you're judging his character. When we talk about Bill later in relation to Susan Reiner. Bill was crazy about the poet, Ezra Pound, whose most notable work was the epic poem, DeCantos. When Pound was in a hospital in Washington, D.C., Bill traveled there to meet him and even ran errands for him. From 1972 to 1973, Bill and Sue traveled to Europe

with Bill's two teenage sons to see all the sacred places connected to Ezra Pound. While the group was in London, they got word that Pound passed away from an intestinal blockage on November 1, 1972, while he was in Venice, Italy. This devastated Bill. Afterwards, Bill, Sue, and the boys ran out of Volkswagen bus and began their tour of Pound's sacred places. They traveled to Roppolo, Italy, where Pound was arrested for treason in 1945, and Apisa, where Pound was temporarily imprisoned. Bill cut a piece of barred wire from the former prison compound to take with him back home to the States. He treated this piece of wire as if it were sacred. Then the group traveled to Venice and visited every single spot Pound had been to before traveling to Austria to a tiny town mentioned

in the cantis. Sue never fully understood Bill's infatuation with Ezra Pound, but she accepted it. While they were still in Europe, Sue found out that several women had written to Bill. She made up her mind that she was going to leave him when they returned to the States. But that didn't happen because, as usual, Bill apologized for what he had done. and Sue accepted it. This was a common practice, right? Bill did whatever he wanted.

Sue got upset, but when Bill laid on the charm and he started to apologize, it smoothed everything over. After Bill Bradfield and Sue Myers returned home from Europe, they quickly settled back into their normal routine.

It was around this time that Susan Reinhert developed feelings for Bill, And eventually the two began an affair. It started during a book discussion at Susan's home in 1974. During this time, Susan was still married to Ken Reiner, but the marriage was in trouble. Susan began seeing a psychologist named Rosalind Weinberger for emotional support. She also started writing in a secret diary where she would write down her feelings about her marriage and for Bill, realizing she was in love with Bill, she left Ken and took the kids with her.

She confided to a friend about her relationship with Bill, even claiming the two would be married within five years. Sue Myers eventually found out about Bill's affair with Susan Reiner, and she was furious. She didn't understand what Bill saw on the homely teacher. One time, Sue Myers found an erotic letter written to Bill from Susan Reiner, and this sent Sue into an outrage. When Sue arrived at school one day, she angrily walked up to Susan and threatened to publicly reveal the contents of the letter if Susan didn't stay away from Bill. And even though she feared the letter becoming public knowledge, Susan didn't stay away from Bill and vice versa. So the affair continued. Bill was friends with J.C. Smith, the school principal at Upper Marion Senior High School.

Jay was a tall middle-aged man with receding dark hair and he wore large glasses. Jay had a quick mind and a very sharp tongue. One of the teachers nicknamed him the Prince of Darkness. Due to his evil-looking eyes and hard demeanor, it really was his eyes that people feared the most. Some people referred to them as amphibian-like. Others said that he had the eyes of a goat. When J.C. Smith stared at you, according to many people, it was like he was seeing all the way into your soul.

Jay was an interesting character, to say the least. He never really socialized with the school staff. He'd wash his hands 15 times a day. He'd stay at school well into the night and was once caught by a janitor walking around in just his underwear. Jay loved using secret or mysterious words on staff. Some were made up, and he got a kick out of watching staff open up a dictionary in an attempt to find out the words meaning. He also let teachers run their classrooms however they saw fit. Many student absences were not recorded, and he didn't enforce a dress code.

Jay Smith was not well liked at the school. He would go on a rampage over very minor issues, and he loved shocking his teachers. For example, he once asked a female. teacher what kind of birth control she used. But despite the oddities of this man, he had some pretty good credentials. He had made it to the rank of a principal of a school. And on top of his education work, he had been in the Air Force and Army Reserve rising to the rank of Colonel. And that's pretty impressive, Morve. To be a principal, you think that he has to have been checked out and everything be normal or somewhat normal about him to have that position and to see that he had

this career in the military would make you think that he's qualified and the right guy to be a principal of that school. But then you talk about some of the very odd things in his behavior. Okay, didn't socialize with school staff. I'm okay with that. I think there are a lot of principles that just like managers probably distance themselves to some degree socially from the people that work from them. He washed his hands 15 times a day, right? He had a thing with germs, obviously. A lot of people do. But the one that really catches my attention is staying at school, you know, late at night, walking around in his underwear. I'm I have a problem with that if this is the person, male or female, that is in charge of my kids' education.

Something's awry. That's definitely a bizarre behavior, and it's just the tip of the iceberg with Jay Smith. Jay married his wife, Stephanie in 1951. The two met when Jay was a student teacher at Chester High School. Stephanie was a few years older than Jay and helped put him through college. The couple eventually had two children, Stephanie, named after her mother, and Sherry, the youngest. Jay's wife, Stephanie, was also an interesting character. She was a voluptuous woman who liked to wear hot pants and dire teased hair.

Unlike her husband, Stephanie was very likable, kind, and caring. She called everyone hun. I don't know, when you said hot pants, more of, I can't help but think of the movie Greece. I mean, I go straight to that, teased up hair. Of course, this would have been later in time than when the movie Grease was set. But still, that's where my mind goes. That Olivia Newton-John look. It's a pretty iconic look.

You got to be honest. Now, Jay Smith had some sticky fingers. He liked to steal and was caught shoplifting at local stores on more than one occasion. but because of Jay's profession and his standing in the community, the shopkeepers kept it quiet, right? This wasn't, let's call the police. This was, hey, what are you doing? Get out of here. Type of deal.

And that's probably not good in this situation. These were not the first crimes that Jay had committed. They're not going to be the last that he would commit either. On Saturday, August 27th, 1977, a man dressed in what looked like a Brinks uniform approached a cashier in a Sears store in St. David's Pennsylvania. This woman thought that the man was there to collect the daily bag of money. So she handed it over to him as she probably had done many times in the past with different couriers. The amount of cash in the bag was around $34,000. And there was a large amount in checks as well. After the man walked away, the real courier showed up to collect the bag of money.

And obviously, that's when everybody knew something was wrong. The thief managed to con the cashier and run off with thousands of dollars. On December 17, 1977, a man dressed has occurred. attempted to steal $130,000 from the Sears store in the Nishaminee Mall. It was around the time Arm Motor Service usually made their daily pickup. Because of the August theft at the St. David's Sears store, the clerk at this store was more cautious and demanded to see the man's ID. The name on the ID read Albert J. Wharton.

The clerk compared that name to the list of couriers and found it. But she decided to be even more cautious and compared the signature on the card with a signature by Albert J. Wharton on a posted notice. The signatures didn't match. She walked back to the courier, who was in his 50s and wore glasses, and challenged him further by asking where their money was. She told him they ordered coins and $1 bills to carry them over for a few days. The courier said he didn't bring them because he had a heavy demand that day, so he put it on another truck. The clerk knew the man was lying because the couriers had never needed a second truck. She called security, and the man grabbed his ID card and took off.

One witness later said, the composite police drawing never got the eyes right. There was something about his eyes. Around the same time of the thefts, things were starting to heat up in the love triangle between Bill, Sue Myers, and Susan Reiner. By now, this was three years into Susan and Bill's relationship,

and Sue had had enough. She walked up to Susan in the teacher's lounge at school one day and need her in the thigh, saying, if you care for yourself and your kids, you'd better leave Bill alone. This threat terrified Susan, but she was not willing to let go of Bill that easily in her mind. She believed Bill would eventually leave Sue and marry her. This relationship that she had with Bill. Bill, it bordered on an obsession. Susan wrote Bill letters.

She called him constantly to the point that Bill came to pretty much despise Susan. He told Sue Myers that Susan was neurotic. She was pathetic. And he continued to deny their affair. At one point, Bill even told friends that Susan Reinhert was. was the secret lover of Jay Smith, but that she had dumped Jay and he wanted his revenge. Bill convinced these friends that Jay was going to kill Susan.

But despite the friends having the knowledge of this, Bill was able to convince them not to warn Susan or go to the police. Jay Smith's oldest daughter, Stephanie, was living on her own and married to Eddie Hunsberger. Stephanie and Eddie were addicted to drugs, and Stephanie had been in and out of rehabs. Eddie served time in jail for narcotics and armed robbery. Sherry, the youngest Smith daughter, was also a troubled girl. To top all of this off, Jay's wife Stephanie was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The Smith family was rapidly deteriorating. In early 1978, Jay's daughter Stephanie wrote a troubling letter to one of her ex-boyfriends who turned it into police. In the letter, Stephanie blamed her father for her mother's illness. She believed he somehow induced the rapid-grown cancer through toxic substances and foods. She wrote, so much cancer in such a short period? No way. I'm afraid I'll kill myself if anything else happens.

Not long after this troubling letter, on February 25, 1978, Stephanie and Eddie visited Eddie's parents in North Wales, Pennsylvania. And this was very routine for Eddie. He visited his parents about once a week. On this visit, he was there to complete his tax return. He and Stephanie stepped out and he told his parents they'd be back in a little while. Eddie and Stephanie walked out the door of his parents' home and were never seen again. After weeks of no contact from their son, the Hunsburgers contacted to Smith and asked Jay if he and his wife Stephanie knew where the couple was. Jay told them Eddie and Stephanie owed drug dealers a large sum of money and because of that they took off to California. But what was strange about that story was that they left all of their personal belongings

behind, including an uncashed income tax check. Jay later admitted to cashing. at least two of his daughter's welfare checks after she disappeared. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020.

Blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. At the time of their disappearance, Eddie was on probation for an armed robbery conviction. He was required to seek treatment for his drug addiction and keep in touch with his probation officer. Eddie and Stephanie had an appointment with a methadone clinic around this time, but neither showed up for it. A staff member contacted Jay in March of 1978 to ask about Stephanie's whereabouts. Jay said that he had obtained placidil, a drug for insomnia, and some really good pot. He was going to detox Stephanie himself. After the uncouple missed additional appointments, staff at the clinic assumed they had relapsed.

When Eddie failed to maintain contact with his parole officer, in September 1978, a warrant was issued for his arrest. But as we mentioned, both Eddie and Stephanie were never found and remained missing today. on August 19th, 1978, a young couple was eating pizza on a curb near the central Penn bank in the Gateway Shopping Center in King of Prussia. A brown Ford Granada slowly pulled into the parking lot and parked near a Chevy van. A tall man wearing a cow-like hood that covered his entire head and face got out of the car and peered inside the van.

It looked as if the man was carrying a gun in each hand. Obviously, this freaked the couple eating pizza out tremendously. They were afraid that this man would see them and come after them. So they crawled away and they called police. By the time police arrived, the gunman was gone. But as the couple was giving their statement to police officers, the Ford Granada came back, and the couple shouted to the officers, that's the car. The driver immediately sped away, but was pulled over a short time later at the Route 202 on ramp at Valley Forge Road.

The man driving this Brown Granada was J.C. Smith. When police searched Jay Smith's car, they found multiple loaded guns and a syringe filled with Placidil. Jay was also found carrying his daughter Stephanie's Social Security card. Police searched his home and found three pounds of marijuana, a large amount of prescription pills, and a few security guard uniforms that were eventually connected to several unsolved armed robberies over the past year. Those included the Sears store robberies. Jay Smith was arrested. Jay claimed the drugs found in his car were Stephanie's and Eddie's.

He later told his attorneys that he saw the young couple on the day of his arrest. In the spring of 1979, there were unconfirmed sightings of Stephanie without Eddie. One informant told police that he met Stephanie in mid-August, 1979, and both her and Eddie were alive and well in Philadelphia. So more details come out about this Jay Smith, the man that is overseeing the education of an entire high school. I think it goes to show you, Morph, that you don't really know what people do. in the privacy of their own home.

You don't know what other lives people might have other than, you know, the one that they portray day in, day out at their jobs or, you know, things like that. It's very scary to think that a high school principal would be running around with drugs, guns, and robbing sears stores. Very scary. In December 1978, Susan Robbins. Belied that she was going to marry Bill sometime during the coming year, sometime in the summer of 1979, and then the couple and Susan's children were going to take a trip to England.

So Susan decided to secure a $500,000 life insurance policy through USAA insurance company. In case anything happened to her on her trip, that is. is a very big insurance policy morph in 1979. That's a sizable insurance policy today. But in 1979, that is a very large sum of money. It makes you wonder, did she know something was going to happen or was she worried about something happening for some reason? Well, and the other thing that I wonder about is did she come up with that amount on her own or was she prompted by someone else to say, okay, here's the amount you should get. But either way, the insurance company denied her request. About a month later, Susan secured a term life insurance

policy. She asked for a $250,000 policy through New York Life, but she was only approved for 100,000. Susan negotiated with New York Life and eventually they allowed her to purchase an additional $150,000. So that's $250,000 total. Bill Bradfield was named the beneficiary. In February 1979, Susan went to USA again, but this time requested $250,000 with a $200,000. accidental death rider. It was a one-year policy that would only pay if she died within that year. The rider covered murder. Bill Bradfield was once again named beneficiary and listed on the policy as, quote, intended husband. That same month, Sue received the written cohabitation agreement, which is a contract between two people who aren't married, but are in a romantic relationship

and living in the same household. Part of the agreement required Bill to list his current and future assets. On the disclosure list, Bill listed himself as beneficiary on his mother's $250,000 insurance policy. He listed a $500,000 insurance policy with no description and another item that read, inheritance expected in the near future, $500,000. Bill told Muriel he needed a very quick divorce. but told her that she could remain in his house. He even offered to send her on vacation to Haiti just to get the divorce.

So when you look at all of this, it looks like Bill Bradfield was trying to get all of his ducks in a row. The question is for what? Throughout the spring of 1979, Susan Reinhert's neighbors began seeing Bill Bradfield's light blue Volkswagen Beetle parked on their street. By summer, the car started showing up at night, and it was still there the following morning. On June 15, 1979, days after Michael Reinhert's 10th birthday, the young boy had a baseball game that afternoon.

Ken Reinhert's parents, John and Florence Reinhardt, drove from their home in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, to Ardmore to watch your grandson play ball. When they arrived at Susan's home, it appeared no one was there. They spotted Karen and Michael playing across the street in a neighbor's house. yard. When the kids saw their grandparents, they appeared apprehensive and they didn't run over to them. Instead, the kids went inside their home. Ken's parents waited on the front porch. And eventually, Susan and Michael came out. And Susan quickly shut the door behind her. She didn't invite Ken's parents inside the home, nor did she strike up any type of conversation with them.

and the Reinherts thought this was very unusual. Now, eventually Karen came out of the house as well. So this group, including one of Karen's friends, Leanne, walked to the baseball game. But Susan did not. She told them that she would join them later. Halfway through the game, Karen and her friend decided to buy some water ice, which is a classic Philadelphia area frozen treat. Have you ever had water?

ice, Mike? I've not had anything called water ice. Obviously, I've had Italian ice. I've had shaved ice, Hawaiian ice. I don't know if any of these are similar. You should know because you live pretty close to this area of the country. Yeah, it's very good and it's similar to Italian ice. Okay. So like a shaved ice with some type of fruity flavor. Yeah, that's what it is. After buying the water ice, girls left the baseball game and they had. at home. They wanted to put their treats in their freezers so that they could save them for later. As Karen walked to her house, she attempted to open her front door. She was watched by Leanne's mother Donna. Donna later said that as Karen tried to open the door, it was locked.

So Karen went through an open window and then all of a sudden Donna heard Karen scream and and then start to cry. John Reiner at the grandfather showed up a few minutes later, but he didn't see the girls. So he drove back to the ballpark. Ten minutes before the game ended, Susan and Karen finally arrived, and both were visibly upset.

After the game, Susan and Karen declined an invitation to get ice cream with the Reinhards, and Susan and Karen walked home. Michael went with his grandparents for ice cream, and when they were driving him home, they noticed a late blue Volkswagen Beetle with a bearded man inside, driving away from the house. Susan and Karen ran towards the car. It stopped and Susan started talking to the man.

It was Bill Bradfield. So this probably comes as no shock, but it turns out that Bill had no plans to marry Susan Reiner, had no plans to take her to England that June. But of course, Susan didn't know that. What Bill Bradfield was doing, what he did have plans to do, was to write to Jay Smith. Jay had been arrested for the robberies, but he was out on bail. Awaiting his trial, Bill Bradfield began to write to him. Bill was obsessed with trying to prove that Jay was innocent.

And when Jay's trial finally did take place, Bill took the stand. and lied for him, giving Jay an alibi, but the jury didn't buy it. And Jay Smith was convicted of the robberies in late 1978. He was sentenced to two to four years. But apparently he wasn't in there very long. I think it was less than six months that he did. And once Jay got out, Bill started telling his small circle of friends that Jay was going to kill Susan Reiner. And again, the very strange thing about this is that no one tried to either

warn Susan or to call the police. So I think more if we talked about these two men, right, Jay Smith, Bill Bradfield. Bill is Rico Suave. All the women love him. But he's a serial cheater. He's also very manipulative. He's able to, you know, keep all of these relationships, you know, juggling by sweet talking some of these women. And then you get to Jay walking around his underwear in the school late at night. He is committing, you know, grand theft. He's robbing sear stores.

This is a very dangerous friendship. right, that takes hold between these two men, Bill Bradfield and Jay Smith. And as Bill is the beneficiary of some pretty hefty life insurance policies, coupled with Bill going around telling people that Jay is going to kill Susan, this all seems to be adding up to something really bad. On Friday, June 22nd, 1979, Bill wanted to get away for the weekend. so he talked his friends into joining him, and they drove to the Jersey Shore. Bill had to be back home by Monday because he was due to fly out to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to attend a summer program with Chris Poppice, a substitute teacher at Upper Marion Senior High School.

Bill had about $4,000 on him, and at around 7.30 p.m., he had his mistress withdraw more money from his bank, telling her that if Jay killed Susan that weekend, his assets might get frozen. He instructed her to take the money home and stash it where no one would find it. So again, more of I think you can see, right, Bill keeps talking to people about Jay killing Susan Reinhard. He's been doing it for quite a while. Now, after he left his mistress, Bill's whereabouts are unknown. Until he arrived back, home later that night around 11.15 p.m. And as soon as he got home, he along with Sue Myers, Vince Valadis, a friend and teacher at Upper Marion, and Chris Pappas drove to Cape May, New Jersey.

So it was pretty late, right? After 11 o'clock p.m. that they made the drive to the shore. But I think the key here, Morp, lies in the period of time where Bill Bradfield's whereabouts are unknown. Now, earlier that evening, Michael and Ken Reinhardt attended a father-son softball game for the Cubs Couts. It was at a local church about a half a mile from their house. Michael was wearing his Philadelphia Phillies baseball shirt, had pin stripes on it, and a big red peat. The game didn't last long due to a storm that was approaching. So, they halted the game and everyone went inside the church. Ken and his new wife Lynn sat in the back of the church while pack leaders tried to control the kids.

Ken saw his ex-wife Susan standing in the doorway, dressed in a white-knit blouse with multi-colored stripes and blue jeans. He was supposed to drive Michael home, but Susan decided to take Michael home herself. Ken Reiner and his wife drove home at around 8.30 p.m. Michael called his father. The boy apologized for leaving in a hurry, but said he had to get home to scrub his floor because they were going away. This made no sense to Ken because Michael had never scrubbed the floor in his life. Ken asked his son where they were going, but Michael had to ask Susan. She replied, Why don't you tell him you're going bowling with parents without partners, or PWP? PWP was a support group Susan joined after her divorce from Kent.

That evening, Susan called the president of the regional council. of PWP. She said something personal came up in that she couldn't talk about it, but she asked if someone else could cover her at a bowling event that was to take place on Saturday. At around 9 p.m., a hailstorm broke out in Ardmore. One of Susan's neighbors watched Karen and Michael run out to the street to catch as many hailstones as they possibly could. At 9,000, 30 p.m. Susan called the kids inside. A moment later, the neighbor heard two car doors slammed shut and saw Susan's Plymouth Horizon pull out of the driveway and head toward Belmont Avenue. This was the last time Susan or her children were seen alive.

Two days later, on June 24th, two men from South Carolina were going to be working at the three-mile island nuclear power station. The men pulled into a parking of the host in hotel, which is now the Red Line Hotel, located at 4751 Lindle Road in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They spotted an orange Plymouth horizon in the parking lot with a hatchback partially opened. One of the men saw something white in the car and assumed it was a laundry bag. After they went into the hotel, they forgot to tell the desk clerk about the open hatchback. At 5.20 a.m. on Monday, June 25th, 1979, the Dauphin County Police and Fire Dispatch received a call from a man who said there was a sick woman in a car at the Host Inn Hotel. The caller identified himself as Larry Brown. A short time later, Sergeant Joe Van Ort of the Pennsylvania State Police received a call at home.

from dispatch about a body in the parking lot of this host and hotel, he notified his criminal investigator, guy by the name of Jack Holtz, and Jack arrived on the scene about two hours after the body was found. In the rear of the Plymouth Hatchback, a female victim was lying in a fetal position. Her hands were bound behind her back with chains. She had abrasions and bruises on both of her forearms, a discolored bruise around her right eye, and dried blood in her mouth and nose. The victim had more bruising and abrasions on other areas of her body as well.

They figured she was either beaten with the chains or they were bound so tightly that they left bruises on her back. The hatchback was registered to Susan G. Reinhardt of Ardmore, Pennsylvania. But there was no purse. No clothing, no keys to suggest the victim was actually Susan. inside the car, police found several items of little importance. They found a hairbrush, candy wrappers, and a girl's beret. In the hatchback, they found a sex toy and a brand new blue comb with an inscription

that read USARCOM along with the insignia of the Cross Lorraine. U.S.R.com happened to be Jay Smith's Army Reserve Unit. And this comb was very important because it was found under the victim's body. The body was taken to the hospital for an autopsy. The pathologist estimated the victim died late Saturday evening or early Sunday morning. She was not stadd, shot, or strangled. Before he was able to run test, he told Jack Holtz, she most likely died. from asphyxiation. Lab results later came back that showed she actually died from a fatal dose of

morphine. After speaking with friends and neighbors of Susan Reiner, police were positive the victim was Susan. When they contacted Ken Reiner to inform him with Susan's murder, that's when they learned that Karen and Michael were missing. The following day, there was a very serious miscommunication between police and Susan's brother, Pat Gallagher, and the few. funeral home. And it resulted in Susan Reinhert's body being cremated when more if that's not what the family wanted. That would be absolutely horrible. On top of you've just found out that your sister, your daughter, your loved one has died in a very brutal way, right? Let's say has been murdered. And then her body is mistakenly cremated.

Then on top of that, the call from the mysterious Larry Brown to dispatch that we talked about earlier was recorded over. And police never found out who Larry Brown really was. So you have to look at these and you have to say, these are some goofs, right? Some mischances to possibly gather more clues. In the case of Larry Brown, you no longer have his voice on tape. to be able to compare it to individuals. And in the case of Susan Reinhert, you no longer have her body in case you need it at some point later in time.

As the police investigation began in Susan's murder and her children's disappearances, the investigators shifted their focus to Upper Marion. Just a few weeks into the investigation, police found out about Susan's insurance policies and who the beneficiary was in each of them, Bill Bradfield. They questioned Sue Myers and Vince Valadis right away. Bill and Chris Pappas were still in Santa Fe. So Joe Van Orte and Jack Holtz traveled there. They tried separating the two men to interview them separately, but Bill Bradfield

refused. He also refused to answer any of their questions without his lawyer present. Joe and Jack left Santa Fe, but returned with a court order. towards the end of Bill's summer program. The court order required Bill and Chris to submit to fingerprinting. And Bill was very angry over this. He did not want to give up his fingerprints and his actions put him on the suspect list, I think, rather quickly.

But the problem is Bill had an alibi. And we've kind of touched on it a little bit. He was at the Jersey Shore. He was at the beach in Cape May, New Jersey when Susan was murdered. Bill had school teachers who could vouch for him and his whereabouts that weekend. Just about everyone that Upper Marion police spoke with thought principal Jay Smith was downright creepy. When investigators discovered his connection with Bill Bradfield and learned about Susan's insurance policies, the motive to kill Susan became clear. Bill and Jay conspired together to kill Susan for insurance money, totaling over $700,000.

They've most likely killed the children so there would be no witnesses left behind. Bill Bradfield, Vince Valadis, and Chris Pappas were all suspended from classroom duty during the investigation. And the rumor mill was in full swing. It went as far as to suggest that Susan's murder was linked to a. sex ring, that it was linked to a satanic cult. This stemmed in part from Jay Smith's wife Stephanie's diary being leaked to the newspapers. In her diary, she revealed information about her husband's sex fantasies that included attending swinger parties.

And while Jay Smith was in jail, he wrote his former colleagues. He denied the rumors. and he asked them for money. At the same time, Bill Bradfield tried cashing in Susan's insurance policies. And this started an all-out legal war with Susan's brother, Pat Gallagher, Ken Reiner, and the insurance companies all fighting Bill to keep him from getting the money. The investigation lasted for several years until April 1983 when Bill Bradfield was arrested in charge with three counts of murder, one count each for Susan, Karen, and Michael.

He was first charged with stealing money from Susan years before. While Bill was in jail on a charge of stealing Susan's money, he reportedly told a fellow inmate, none of this was meant for the kids, only Susan. Bill's trial started in October of 1983. There was very little physical evidence tying him to Susan's murder. so the state sought to connect Bill to Jay Smith and suggested that both men had been involved in a conspiracy to kill Susan Reiner. And this trial did not last long.

Bill Bradfield was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the three murders, despite the fact that the bodies of the children have never been found. He was sentenced to life in prison. And then on June 25th, 1985, the sixth anniversary of Susan's murder, Jay Smith was arrested and charged with her murder as well. He was ultimately convicted of three counts of murder. But in September 1992, the convictions were thrown out on appeal after Jay's defense attorneys accused the prosecution of withholding evidence. In 1987, author Joseph Wombal wrote a book title.

echoes in the darkness about the Reiner family murders. Not long after, the book was turned into a television movie starring Peter Coyote as Bill Bradfield, Robert Logia as Jay Smith, and Stockard Channing as Susan Reiner. Right before Jay's exoneration, it was to discover that Wambal paid Jack Holtz, one of the criminal investigators in Susan's murder, over $45,000 in 1986 for information for his book. records show that Jack purchased a Porsche 944 and a resort home on North Carolina's Outer Banks. All of these purchases occurred in the year following the trial. And all while Holtz was earning a salary of only $35,000 a year. Karen and Michael Reiner, as well as Eddie

and Stephanie Hunsberger, have never been found. Some believe that Eddie and Stephanie are alive and well and raised Karen and Michael. Others believe that all four of them, are dead, and some believe that Jay Smith killed his own daughter and her husband. In 1987, Karen and Michael Reinhert were officially declared deceased. Bill Bradfield died in prison in 1998. On his cell wall, authorities found a picture of a stone marker in the woods. The stone marker resembled a hooded figure. This might possibly be the location where Karen and Michael were buried. Police didn't release the photo to the public until 2009 after the death of Jay Smith in May of that year. They were hoping that someone might be able to ID the location, but no one ever came forward to say that they recognized it.

Jay's wife, Stephanie, succumbed to cancer in August 1979. Up until their deaths, Bill and Jay accused each other of killing Susan and her children, and each man denied any participation in the murders. Ken Reinhert passed away in 2002 without ever knowing what happened to his children. But that's it, Morph, that's it for the Reinhert family murders. I mean, this is one of those cases where you know deep down in your heart that this was a crime of greed, right? Money was involved. It was at the root of the murder and possibly murder.

I think for me, the really tough part about this, aside from the fact that Susan was killed, that was horrible. But the fact that we don't really know what happened to Karen and Michael, that's just really tough to take. And I think these crimes might have been a result of these two men linking up together and one with all the money to gain and the other one with the criminal history. history, it just seemed like a really bad mix. Thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com for research and writing assistance in this episode. If you haven't done so already, go out,

give us a five-star rating if you love the show. Keep telling your friends. That makes a world of difference. And if you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. We're also on Facebook. You can find us by searching for Criminology Podcast. You can also join our Facebook discussion group, which is Criminology Podcast, Discussion, and Fans. So we will be back next Saturday with an all-new episode of criminology. But as we leave you, we want to play a short one-minute clip of the Patreon episode that we mentioned at the top of the show. Homicide as long as I did. You're always learning something.

There's always another facet you haven't thought about before. So here I get to by others, but also see how it was that these cases were worked on in the different places. Because one thing that you see is if you're in a small town in Nebraska, there are different factors to be considered versus if you're in a large city. All of them are challenging in that. You read about them on paper. You go out ending up face. The case that we did here this season, the Elisa Tremba case. It took place in Las Vegas, Nevada.

the one that took place in Speedway, Indiana. The thing about that case, to meet the Indy 500. Talk to you next Saturday. Take care, everyone.