True Crime Campfire - Episode 2: The Puppet Master and the Prince of Darkness, Part 2: Storm's Brewin'

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

Odd things are beginning to happen in and around the town of Upper Merion. First, a man dressed as a Brinks armored car courier robs one Sears store, then attempts to rob another and gets away before security can stop him. Then, "Prince of Darkness" Dr. Jay Smith's daughter Stephanie and her husband Eddie go missing under odd and suspicious circumstances. Bill Bradfield is busy romancing his various lady friends, and for reasons no one understands, he seems to be cozying up to Dr. Smith. Last but not least, the man responsible for the Sears robberies gets caught red-handed in the middle of yet another crime, and the secret life of one of our major players is about to burst wide open, to the shock of everyone in town. Sources available on social media. Follow us, campers! Patreon: https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. So, campers, last time we learned about the major players in our story, brawny but tweety English teacher Bill Bradfield, handsome, charismatic, manipulative, does a mean impression of a romantic emu, claims to have worked for the CIA, cheating on his longtime girlfriend with a harem of colleagues and students. And Dr. J. Smith, hands-off permissive principal of Upper Marion High School, respected colonel in the Army Reserve, pervert, bestiality fan, wearer of tidy whitties, otherwise known as the Prince of Darkness. Now that we've got a general idea of who these people are, we can get into the story.

And you're going to want to buckle up, guys, because it is quite a story. The Puppet Master and the Prince of Darkness, Part 2, Storms a Bruin. So, August 27, 1977, a cashier at Sears. in St. David's, which is about a 15-minute drive from Upper Marion, looked up to see a smiling, armed courier from the Brink's security company standing at her counter. Guy was in his 50s, tall, receding hairline, glasses, ordinary-looking chap. He presented her with an ID card in the name of Carl S. Williams, and she went and checked her log book. Yep, Carl's been here before. All seems in order, so he signed the book.

She handed him a bag of cash worth about $35,000, and remember this is nice. 1977 money. So multiply by three. Yep. And he just waltzed right out. All in a day's work. No big deal, right? Well, the problem is, five minutes later,

she looked up again to see another Brinks courier standing at the counter, and he told her he was there for the day's take. And, of course, she's confused. She says, but you were just here. Nope. No, I wasn't. So, whoopsie. Sears got robbed, y'all.

35 grand in cash. Yikes. Yeah. Not an insignificant take. And a very bold crime to just waltz right in and pull that, right? Yeah. Now, a few months later, on December 17th, 1977, there was a similar attempt made at a Sears in Nishamini Mall in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.

I hope I'm saying that right. About 45 minutes from Upper Marion. At this time, the take would have been well over $100,000 because it was right around the holidays. So this would have been a major hall. But because of the Sears robbery months earlier, this manager, who I think is amazing,

really smart, was on her guard. So this badass lady thought to check the signature on the courier's ID card with the signature on the logbook from the last time that that dude was there. Now, this store used a different armored car service. This one was called armored motor service. and the courier's name was Albert J. Horton.

There's always a middle initial, just like with serial killers. Have you noticed that, Katie? Yes, absolutely. It's always like, or a middle name. It's always like Earl Wayne Williams. And there's usually a Wayne or a Dwayne frequently and Earl. You don't want to confuse your Earl Williams is, so you've got to have the middle name. That's right.

It's always like Dwayne Earl Roberts, the third or something, you know. So apparently armored car couriers have the same thing. It's armored car guys and serial killers. Who knew? so anyway she checked the signatures against each other which was really smart and when she checked they didn't match now on top of that when she asked the guy if he'd brought the ones and coins that they'd asked for to make change for the customers he said he hadn't he said oh you know we've had so much demand over the past few days that we had to put that on another truck now this smelled off to the manager she'd never known the company to need a second truck before and all the years that

she'd work there. And although this guy who's standing in front of her was cool as a fridge full of cucumbers, she had a bad feeling in her gut. There was something in particular unsettling about his eyes. Oh my God. Good for her for listening to that gut feeling. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's hugely important. Don't ever talk yourself out of that bad feeling. Right. Because I don't think our little voice generally lies to us. Now, that certainly is not to say that some of us aren't prone to unnecessary anxiety. I know I am.

Sure. Oh, me too. Yeah. But I do think that when that primal lizard brain voice, that spitey sense, if you will, starts to tingle, you better listen. Absolutely. And the worst case scenario is you look a little dumb. Absolutely. If you're wrong.

If you're right. you're right absolutely it is much better to be safe and possibly look stupid or rude than to ignore your instincts and end up robbed dead in an abusive crappy relationship that's going to suck out your self-esteem for the next months or years of your life whatever it might be but when that inner alarm starts clanging sit up and take notice you all absolutely it's really important and she did that that day so she made an excuse and went to call mall security from her office office. And I guess it took her too long, and the guy in the courier uniform started to sense that something was up. So this guy comes barging into her office, knocked a clerk over in the process.

Now, remember, this was an armored car service. So this guy was armed. He was packing. Oh, my God. And he was pacing around her office saying, and this is according to Joseph Wambaw's book, Echoes in the Darkness, which was one of our main sources for this podcast, I want my card. I don't have to take this type of treatment. I'll just go back downstairs and send somebody else up. But I want my card. He was obsessed with getting his ID card back, right? And before this poor manager could respond,

he just reached over, grabbed his ID card out of her hand, and he booked it before mall security could get him. And he was literally pushing people out of the way on his run for the stairs. Just like a bowling ball going through bowling pins. It must have been something to see. So he didn't get his money,

but security didn't get him either, unfortunately. So, holy shit, right? There's a very clever, very bold thief on the loose. One with, hmm, unsettling eyes. I wonder if we've heard something before in this podcast about unsettling eyes, Katie. So that's what was going on in the summer to winter of 1977. What else is going on that winter, Katie? Well, for one thing, Jay's wife, Steffy, was diagnosed with terminal stomach and colon cancer. It had already started spreading to her lymph nodes, so she didn't really have that much time left, unfortunately. And I do think I mentioned last time that Jay and Steffy had two daughters. The youngest was Sherry and the oldest was Stephanie. Not long after her mom was diagnosed with cancer, Stephanie wrote a letter to an ex-boyfriend, a letter he'd eventually hand over to the police.

now Stephanie had told her ex that she was terrified of her father she wrote that she believed he'd somehow given her mom cancer maybe by putting some kind of poison in her food she said according to the Wamba book again so much cancer in that short of period no way I'm afraid I'll kill myself if anything else happens it's it was bizarre and at first her ex didn't take it super seriously well you might be asking why, but the answer is simple. Stephanie was troubled. At the time, all this was going on, she was married to a guy named Eddie Hunsburger, and they were both struggling with heroin addiction. Jay Smith's secretary, Ida, said Stephanie and her dad seemed to have some kind of dysfunctional

relationship. Stephanie would show up at the high school, sweep past Ida's desk, and barge it on her dad, which we already know was not... Risky. Yeah, not a safe endeavor. Yeah. I'm shocked that Stephanie and her... dad didn't have a great beaver cleaver, Ward Cleaver-like father-daughter relationship based on what we know about Jay Smith thus far. Well, and she was always there to ask for money. Yeah. She'd tell him she needed to get her hair, nails done at the swan, but Ida knew it was for drugs. And surely Jay must have known too, but he gave it to her anyway, like total enabling relationship. On top of that, Jay didn't like Eddie. I don't know if it's because he blamed him for

her drug addiction or what, but according to Echoes in the Darkness, he was trying to center up with another guy. Yeah, that's going to leave a bad taste in your mouth when you're, you know, married and your dad is trying to set you up on blind dates. And with her dad, it could have been with like an Alsatian or something. Like, it might not have even been with a human man. Yeah, yeah, you never know with Jay. And, you know, this all brings us back to the letter. So when Stephanie sent that letter, her ex-boyfriend's first reaction was, this is probably drug talk. Sure. Paranoid talk. And it wasn't until later that it would take on a scarier significance. And Whitney, can you imagine how scary it would be to be terrified of your own father? No, I cannot. Especially, and to think that he might be poisoning

your mother, that's a heavy thing. And, you know, I can understand. why her ex-boyfriend didn't necessarily run straight to the police station with that letter. Right. Because obviously she was going through a rough time. But, yeah, I have a huge amount of sympathy for her because that must have been really, really scary to live with. And, yeah, the fact that she was going as far as to say, oh, he gave my mom cancer, that just sounds totally at a left field. Which I'm pretty sure is not a thing that you can do. But the fact that she would worry about that, I mean, home is supposed to be your son.

place to fall. And family is supposed to be your safe place. And obviously, Stephanie didn't have that. Oh, totally. And I think that kind of fear doesn't come out of nowhere. Absolutely. Talk about a little voice, right? Right. And unfortunately, Wamba's book doesn't really make it clear whether Stephanie ever discussed this with her mom. But it seems pretty clear that the mom was entirely devoted to Jay Smith, despite his creepy bestiality talk and his relationship with love woman. So I really doubt that she would have even listened. She was a true believer. We'll see that more and more as the story goes on. Oh, my God. So Stephanie and Eddie went to rehab that winter, and when they got out, they were both pretty optimistic that the treatment was going to take this time. In February

of 1978, just a couple of months after the attempted robbery at the Sears in the Shamney Mall, Stephanie and Eddie Hunsberger visited Eddie's parents. And the Hunsburgers loved Stephanie. Eddie's addiction had, of course, devastated them. So they were thrilled that the kids had been through rehab. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits. They all had dinner together, and afterwards, Stephanie and Eddie said they were going to Stephanie's dad's house to pick up some stuff to work on their tax returns. They said they'd be right back. They weren't. And as far as we know, that was the last time anyone saw Stephanie and Eddie Hunsburger alive, except for Dr. J.C. Smith. Nobody has seen or heard from them since. Jesus. Yikes. And Eddie's parents were frantic, as you'd expect any parent to be. Their son

usually visited them once a week. It was entirely out of character for him to drop off the map like this. And I think we have had this conversation so many times over the course of researching this podcast, but I wish we knew so much more about Eddie. Yeah. But unfortunately, there's not a lot of information out there about him, even in Wamba's book. What we do know is that Eddie was handsome and smart. He loved to read. He was his parents' only child. Oh, God, I forgot about that. That's so sad. He was the only child of Hunsburgers. Yeah, it's so sad. And his folks tried, like, hell to figure out where he'd gone. Jay Smith told Mrs. Hunsberger that shortly after he and Stephanie arrived at the house that day, Eddie had discovered a warrant out for his arrest for writing fake

prescriptions before he went to rehab. And he said, quote, unquote, the kids had decided on a whim to go to California to skip out on the warrant. That seems plausible, right? It does, actually, yeah. But here's the thing. Mrs. Hunsburger checked. And there weren't any warrants out on Eddie. No state warrants, no federal warrants. It was a lie. Oh, that's so creepy. Yeah. And later, Smith told her he'd heard from the kids, and they'd made it out to California. But why wouldn't Eddie call his parents to tell them that?

So the Hunsburgers, concerned, as they were, went to the police and filled out a missing person's report on Eddie. But as we see too often, the police didn't have much to go on. And based on what they'd been able to determine, it doesn't look like they showed a lot of interest in the case, at least not at first. Yeah. Yeah, and if I remember correctly, the Hunsburgers were the only ones to fill out a missing person's report in regards to this case. I do not believe that Jay or Steffie Smith ever did so about Stephanie, which I think is telling as well. Right. And, you know, I think when adults go missing, it's hard to get police interested in the case because... Very much so, yes, unfortunately.

It was the 70s. You could just, like, get up and leave. abandon your life. Yeah, and it actually could be really difficult to track people down back then because, you know, there wasn't the computer presence that there is now, you know, there's no internet, obviously. People could drop off the map much, much more easily than now. But even today, I mean, those of you guys who are true crime aficionados will know this, that so often when an adult goes missing, the family just has a hell of a time getting the police to even investigate it. because they'll be told, well, you know, they're an adult. They have the right to go missing if they want to.

And it always frustrates me because it's like families will go to the police and say, this is vastly out of character for this person, and they'll still have that reaction, which I understand, you know, if there's law enforcement folks listening, I do get that you guys see a lot of this and that most of the time missing people are not victims of foul play or an accident or whatever. But at the same time, when everybody in this person's, life is telling you, this is hugely out of character. Come on, come on, guys. And stacked on top of that, they were drug users and drug users may drop off the grid for a while, live a more transient

lifestyle, at least from the police perspective. Right, certainly. And I think there's some truth to that, I mean, most definitely that, that, you know, people who are substance abusers can sometimes drop off the map for a few days to go in a binge or whatever. Now, this, I would think, would not go on for months and months and months. But again, it was just really difficult for them to get the police to really pay attention. Right. Unfortunately, when Stephanie and Eddie went missing. Yeah, and, you know, the Hunsberger's tried really hard to get Jay to care.

Or both of the Smiths to care, but I think, you know, Stephanie was dealing with their own stuff. But the last Mrs. Hunsberger heard from any of the Smiths about the situation was this. At one point, she called Steffie Smith, who was very sick at this point. And Steffie said, oh, my God, I hope Jay didn't do them in. Oh, my God. I hope Jay didn't do them in. Yeah. What a bizarre thing to say about your husband, the father of your daughter, who was missing.

Bizarre, indeed. And Mrs. Hunsberger chalked it up to Stephanie's illness and the drug. was on. And at that point, at least, that's kind of what she thought. But later, she'd come to feel a little differently. Yeah. Yeah, I bet. So is our theory that he definitely killed his daughter and son-in-law? Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the official true crime campfire opinion for what that matters is that it seems like Jay Smith killed his daughter and the son-in-law, most definitely. Now, of course, we don't have a proof. But I, you know, we'll get into this more later, but it eventually comes out that Jay was

pocketing their disability money month after they disappeared. Yeah, huge red flag. Yeah, a little bit. And if they were out in California and he was in touch with them as he was telling the Hunsburgers, why would he do that? Why wouldn't he forward the kids their money? I mean, he has a job. He's a school principal, why would he need to pocket the piddly little disability checks that are coming in for Stephanie and Eddie? So I think that is highly suspicious. So yeah, I think he killed her and him. I'm saying it. So moving on, now that you've digested that stunning little tidbit of information, that spring of 1978, Jay Smith announced that he was leaving Upper Marion High for a position in the administration building. Now, supposedly, this was about

him moving on up in his career, but there were rumors flying around that it was really about something else. What was really going on was that Jay had a little habit that had apparently been something of an open secret among the business owners of Upper Marion for years. And that was that Jay liked to shoplift. Ooh. Yeah. Now, not necessarily high dollar stuff, just little odds and ends, but he did it a lot. And for some reason, the shop owners and police just let him get away with it. Like he'd make restitution and they just let it drop, which just absolutely baffles me. But, I mean, I guess it's what happens when you're a colonel in the Army Reserve and General John Eisenhower is your buddy, which is just gross. I hate that good old boy network crap. But it makes

me think that this may have been part of the reason why Smith took early retirement from the army before he could become a general, which had been his lifelong ambition prior to this. I mean, his superiors may have just gotten wind of this and sort of took him aside and quietly told him, look, bud, this is not a good look for the army. We're not at all interested in saluting general sticky fingers, you dig. So I kind of need you to pack your stuff and head out. Yeah, you can't really have a general who pockets your fountain pen on the way out of your office. He'll, like, bro hug you and walk out with your purple heart.

It's really not good. the optics are pretty problematic on that. The optics are not good on that. Absolutely. It doesn't look good. It doesn't look good. So, by the way, by the way, by the way, this is interesting, too. Once Smith started as principal, the faculty at Upper Marion High had also started to notice things missing from their desks.

Now, I'm sure that was just pure coincidence, right? I'm sure. So anyway, he announced he was leaving and almost everybody was thrilled because this asshole had creeped out or offended or just baffled almost every teacher at that place. He'd make disgusting sex jokes. He'd gone on those bizarre rants over the PA system that he talked about last time. You know, walked around in his friggin' underwear. He'd done nothing whatsoever to try to discipline the kids.

And when a guidance counselor had expressed concern about his hands-off approach to principaling, Smith had said, you should consider getting out of education. There are other ways to make money, you know. Now, what way was that that he was suggesting? He told this guidance counselor, I am not making this up, that you could make some nice money by running ads in the newspaper, offering to silence guns. Cheese and crackers, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So, and I think this is really interesting, his tendency to come out with just extraordinary statements like that to coworkers, employees, etc. I think this is where, and we've talked about this a lot, our theory about the difference between Smith and Bill Bradfield comes in, that they are likely both antisocial personalities, psychopaths, sociopaths, but they're different kinds. And there's a theory, not all forensic psychologists, criminal psychologists, subscribe to this, it should be said, but it is a theory that psychopaths are born and sociopaths are made. and that contrary to the usual public perception,

psychopaths are actually the ones that tend to function better in society. So these are the charmers, the smooth operators, the Bill Bradfields, right? The Patrick Bateman's. Whereas the sociopaths are rougher around the edges. So less able to function smoothly in society, less able to modify their behavior, not as able to resist their impulses in order to get what they want from people, i.e. the J. Smith. What do you think? I venture to say like Dahmer, too, would be in there.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Dommer was falling apart. Definitely. I needed to get drunk to do what he did. Yeah. Certainly. And Bill Bradfield would like totally understand that you can't say stuff like, you don't need this job anyway. You live on a farm. Why don't you raise dogs as sexual surrogates for unsatisfied women? Oh, God. I'm not saying that he maybe didn't have. those types of thoughts. But he'd know that he can't just say that without damaging his reputation and, you know, hampering his ability to maneuver other people to his advantage. Right. Exactly. It's like Bradfield's mask was always firmly in place. Correct. Yeah. Exactly. And you can see,

you see flashes of it falling off or slipping, but J. Smith either didn't get that you can't say stuff like that. He didn't care or he just simply couldn't resist his disgusting impulses. Right. Right. But, you know, they're both very bad for similar reasons, but they're in different categories for very different reasons. Yeah, I think so too. Like, I would definitely think that they both certainly lack empathy and fit that, you know, anti-social personality. But they're just kind of different flavors, if you will. Different flavors of villains. And I think that's one of the fascinating things about this case for me, which is why we're spending so much time, and we gave you a whole episode on each one of these guys before we even got into the story. And we'll, of course, learn more and more about both of them as we go.

And it's weird because they, like, were able to identify each other from, like, across a crowd of dance floor. That's the most fascinating part. Yeah. So just going back to Smith and his sort of catalog of. greatest hits at Upper Mary and High. He had told one female teacher that he wasn't used to being around a beauty like her and that he knew he wasn't

very attractive, but that didn't mean he didn't have needs. Oh, my God. And he asked her if she liked massage. I mean, and by the way, this was during, like, he was giving her a ride home. So she's trapped in a car with this creep and his creepy goat eyes and his melifluous, kind of

silky voice saying all this horrible stuff. Eh, must have been horrible. But despite all of this, How gross he was. When Bill Bradfield heard that Jay Smith was leaving, he organized a retirement dinner for him. And, I mean, gave him a glowing send-off. He compared this perverted weirdo to Albert Schweitzer, you guys. I shit you not.

Albert Schweitzer, the Nobel laureate. And everybody was just baffled by it. Like, what possible reason would Bill Bradfield have to suck up to Jay Smith at this point? I mean, was it just because Smith was moving up to, an administrative position, and he wanted to be in his good graces, if he needed a favor, career-wise, or something, that could certainly be. But maybe there could have been something else going on as well. Makes you wonder. So what was Billy Bradfield up to while two Sears stores were getting robbed and Jay Smith's wife was getting sicker, and the Hunsburgers were trying

to find their son and daughter-in-law? Well, that spring and summer of 78, Bill Bradfield was busy wooing his harem and occasionally pitching in at the arts and craft store that he co-owned with Sue Myers and his little buddy Vince Valetus, the choir boy slash trekkie who thought of him as a dad. So Bill was juggling, his living girlfriend of 15 years Sue, Susan Reinerd, his girlfriend of a year and some change, who as we know is going to be one of our three victims in this case. She was the body that was found naked and bruised in the hatchback of her car at the beginning of episode one. Wendy, his former student, again, disturbing, and I'm sorry I have to tell you that, who was heading off to college in the fall. This girl absolutely worshipped the ground that Bill

Bradfield walked on. She must have, because Elliot frickin' emu was enough to keep her coming back for more, because supposedly, according to both of them, they apparently were not having sex. I mean, at least she swore up and down, and so did he, when the police question, questioned her much later in the story that they never had sex, that they met in motels and they cuddled and they kissed and they talked about Ezra Pound and... What? Yeah, supposedly, and he would channel Elliot Eboo for her and that was apparently enough to keep her around.

And Bill told his friend Chris that he wanted to marry Wendy, that she was in fact his ticket into heaven. Now, his plan during this time, you know, 1978 was he wanted to buy a boat, he wanted to Scoop Wendy up and sail to Barcelona. And I guess the plan was to write, you know, capital G, capital P, great poems about their adventures, but that one going so great, given that the arts and craft store was crashing and burning, and that macromay owl money wasn't rolling in like he thought it would be.

So that was a problem. So he's juggling Wendy. He's also juggling yet another girlfriend, whose name was Joanne, and Joseph Wambaw, refers to her as Charlotte Bronte, which I think is very descriptive of who this woman was. I like to call her the ice queen. I kind of picture her as Lilith from Frazier, but like minus any sense of humor, which I have to kind of apologize to Lilith, because I always kind of liked Lilith. Yeah. She was good at one of my favorite things, which is making vicious fun of pretentious men. So I always kind of liked her, but I don't think I would like Joanne.

like at all. No. Far from seeing through Bill's pretentious crap, she fell for his big bag of bowl-ish, just hook, line, and sinker. And this woman was fiercely, absolutely loyal to Bill,

despite knowing that he was cheating on her left and right, she didn't like it, but she knew it, and she let him get away with it. And despite her criminal taste in men, Joanne was undoubtedly brilliant. She was doing post-grad work

and something or other at various places, including Harvard. So, I mean, she had an impressive intellect, and that was the level on which she and Bill seemed to connect the most. There are some of her letters to Bill Bradfield in the Womba book, and they're very lofty and academic. So I think they connected on an intellectual level, and she probably made him feel smarter than he was. Yeah.

And that summer, she and Bill were both attending a summer study program in Annapolis, Maryland, along with Bill's buddy Chris Pappas, the philosopher. And there is a really telling story about Bill from this summer program. So one afternoon, Chris was in his dorm room and he heard this rip-roarne argument between Bill and Joanne. And Joanne was pissed because Bill had referred to Wendy as a perfect human being. Little Wendy, the student. So she told him she was hopelessly in love with him and she wanted to have his babies and how could he have anything to do with that child and what could he possibly have in common with a with a former student and blah blah blah and after that argument kind of died

down bill came running into chris's room he was all excited and flushed and his face was all lit up and he said i just didn't realize how much i'm loved by her oh yeah so let's just take a second not i didn't realize how much i love her i didn't realize how much she loves me yeah yeah So, and that was not a slip of the tongue. It was, I just didn't realize how much I'm loved by her. This man had a fetish for being adored. And interestingly, along those lines, there's some indication that Bill may have actually been bisexual or even gay.

So the basis for this is that he had a close gay friend, Tom, who had been a traveling buddy of his years earlier. And a few of his friends and lovers suspected that he may have actually been deeply closeted. Toward the end of their relationship, his living girlfriend, Sue, actually found a letter from Tom where he said that Bill was the only man he'd ever loved and, you know, it was a very romantic letter. Yeah.

Now, Bill was extremely politically conservative. And that plus, you know, it'd be in the 70s and the sexual mores of the time, that could have kept him in the closet if he was gay or if he was bisexual. But the interesting thing to me is, regardless of his true sexual orientation, I think what got Bradfield off was just being worshipped. Like, to me, that's what rang his bell more than anything else. And it might be that the gender of the worshipper just didn't really matter that much to him. Totally.

Because that's what he seemed to love more than anything else was just being surrounded by people who thought he hung the moon and stars. So Susan Reiner called him a lot while he was in an announcement. And every time somebody caught him talking to her, he would make sure to give them his bullshit line about how pathetic and needy she was and how she just latched on to him for some reason and wouldn't let go and, you know, all he was doing was advising her and sometimes he'd loan her money. And he'd already done a lot of work to create this perception among his friends and among

some of their colleagues because they taught together at Upper Marion High. But there are many, many witnesses who can verify that, in fact, Bill and Susan were romantically involved. I mean, he spent the night at her house often. According to her neighbor, people would see his car there overnight. They'd see him leaving in the morning. She confided about him to her best friend and her therapy group. So it's a complete line. Like, he's completely creating a misapprehension among all of his intimates that this woman is neurotic and pathetic and that they're not involved. They absolutely were involved. So as Summer drew to a close and the new school year approached, Billy Bradfield came home to poor Sue Myers and his failing arts

and craft store and Susan Reinhardt's growing demands on his time. And Susan was talking ultimatums. She was sick and tired waiting around for this man to make up his damn mind. And Bill was just absolutely drowning financially. And at the same time, he's dreaming about buying this boat and sailing away with Wendy, his ticket into heaven, girl. And he was really starting to get desperate to just, you know, get out there and make a name for himself. So he wouldn't just go down in history as a teacher of high school English and not much more than that. So what does all that add up to, campers? Storms are brewing. Storms coming. Yeah. And, you know, for someone that only wrote four poems, there's not much time left if you're

thinking, you know, basic poem per year ratio. It takes, genius takes time. Katie. I don't know what you're talking about. You're right. You're right. I'm sorry, Bill Bradfield. And that brings us to one sweaty, sweaty night in August. Two college students were hanging out on the curb eating pizza as you do. And, you know, talking in the mall parking lot when they saw a man dressed like a ninja in dark clothes prowling around the parking lot. This guy was peering into cars with a little flashlight. And he was like trying doors, so don't leave your doors unlocked.

Yeah, lock your doors, always. One of the students found a pay phone and called the cops. Remember those? Pay phones? Oh, most definitely. So the police had been getting reports lately of burglarized cars in various shopping centers all over town. So they rushed right over. And when they got there, they cut the guy red-handed as he's getting into his own car.

As they approached him and asked him what he was doing in the parking lot, they realized he was going for a gun that was lying on the seat of his car. So they drew their weapons on him, told him, ass right there, freeze hole, and put the old habeas gravis on him. And lo and behold, it's so good. And lo and behold, it's none other than, you guessed it, the Prince of Darkness himself. Dr. J. C. Smith. Wow. Breaking into cars in the mall of parking lots. A doctor. Shocker. It's like, this is like the, the backstory of like a Spider-Man villain. It really is. Wow. It really is. Yeah. Army Colonel. He'd be part of some experimental

program under General Eisenhower. It'd be something with his eyes. It's got to be. It would be for sure something with his goat eyes. Absolutely. So yeah, Jay Smith. breaking into cars in the parking lot and getting ready to pull a gun on the cops, which, by the way, not smart. No, God. And with the impulse control problems that we've noticed in Jay. Yeah, all he saw there was it's between me and them and it's going to be me. Yep.

But, um, Bill would have talked his way out of it. Oh, totally. Or try to. Yeah. Yeah. So they cuffed him. They cuffed old goad eyes. Popped him into the back of their squad car and searched his car. And oh, boy. Boy, campers, did they find some stuff? There's a list. So first, they found some homemade silencers made from oil cans, like he was suggesting the guidance counselor make. Super creepy. They found multiple guns.

Also creepy. Didn't tell us how many, just guns, plural. Yeah. Surringes already full of sedatives, ready to go. Super. Incredibly creepy. Super creepy, yeah. Duck tape and rope. Creepiest, possibly, yet.

Tate tape and rope. And the icing on the cake. They would have put him away with just this. The fake Brinks Courier's uniform and ID cards. Bing, bang. And to top it all off, the names on those ID cards? Well, Carl S. Williams and Albert J. Wharton. Dr. J. Smith was the Sears robber. So they arrested him on the spot and charged him with the Sears robbery and the attempted robbery at the Nishamini Mall. Dr. Smith has secrets campers.

Holy crap. So we'll leave it here for the day. Next week, you'll get to find out what the police found in Smith's Man Cave basement. If you think the stuff in the car is creepy, hold onto your butts. And how will Bill Bradfield react to the arrest of his former employer? I think you're going to find that very interesting. Until then, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire.

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