True Crime Campfire - Episode 3: The Puppet Master and the Prince of Darkness, Part 3: Puppeteering

Episode Date: September 12, 2019

We learn what police found in "Prince of Darkness" Dr. Jay C. Smith's car and basement after his arrest for the Sears robberies. And Ezra Pound-obsessed English teacher Bill Bradfield lets his nearest and dearest in on an explosive secret. The lives of our key players are about to get much more complicated--and much more dangerous. 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, in the last episode, Prince and Principal of Darkness, Dr. J. Smith, was arrested and charged with impersonating a Brink's courier. to rob a Sears store, and then attempting to do the same thing a few months later at another Sears. Upper Marion was about to learn more than they ever wanted to know about the secret life of this prominent educator and former Army colonel. And while Smith was busy getting arrested, Ezra Pound-obsessed English teacher Bill Bradfield had a lot of plates in the air. His long-suffering living girlfriend Sue Myers, his teenage former student slash girlfriend Wendy, and humorless but intellectual girlfriend Joanne, his floundering arts and crafts store, and last

Last but not least, girlfriend Susan Reinhert, who was getting increasingly tired of his excuses about why he couldn't be with her and her alone. He had to keep all these women away from each other and carefully monitor which of his adoring band of disciples got to know about which parts of his complicated life. It was a lot of stress on a guy who just wanted to be adored. The Puppetmaster and the Prince of Darkness, Part 3. Puppeteering So after J. Smith's arrest on the robbery and attempted robbery charges,

Word quickly got around about all the creepy stuff the police had found in his car. The evidence of robbery, for sure. There was the Brinks uniform, the fake ID, but also the homemade silencers, the syringes full of sedatives, the guns, the duct tape. Not only that, but the cops had searched his man cave of a basement and found, oh, my God, all kinds of stuff. Including, you ready for this, Katie? Oh, so ready. Chains.

My God. Huge jugs of nitric acid. Oh, my God. Apparently stolen, which for some reason cracks me up and also creeps me out from the Upper Marion High School Science Lab. So he just helped himself. And I want to make this clear. I'm not talking about a couple of mason jars of nitric acid. We're talking about big old vats of nitric acid, which is truly disturbing.

I mean, the mind boggles, right? So we also had a rather impressive collection of dildos, including an enormous one operated by a hand crank to squirt water. Just get a good menace. image. I'm so confused. It's one of those situations where you have many questions and you really aren't sure you want any of them answered. None at all. I know. I don't want to know. Like, what the, what the water? I don't even want to know what the, what is the water for? The hand crank. Like, where would that even go? It just, ugh. Yeah, like a Nerf gun. Yeah, like a Nerf gun or like one of those Have you seen, like, the medical apparatuses they used for hysteria back in the Victorian era?

Oh, God. Dr. Kellogg. So, yeah, he was probably a great fan of Dr. Kellogg. A massive collection of sadomasochistic porn. Books on his pet subject, of course, bestiality. Gross, bad pun, Whitney, I'm mad. Pet subject. Oh, God.

That was actually completely unintentional. And gross. and I apologize to everyone for that. There were also Swingers Mags and those spicy, spicy letters between him and his mistress depicting the love story for the ages between Love Woman and Lovecock.

God, do we know who she was? We do not, and that's probably a good thing for her anyway. It's probably, yeah, it's good for her, but I want to know so bad. I know she was a professor's wife, so she was probably a very distinguished lady and she had a secret love affair.

with old goat eyes, and last but not least, more drugs. Specifically, weed and syringes full of placidil, which was a pretty heavy-duty sedative, valium and morphine. Now, we're not talking Tylenol here. These are heavy, heavy narcotics, heavy sedatives. Stuff that your average school principal probably is not packing in syringes in his basement. And he told the cops that the drugs were his daughter and son-in-laws, that they were using them to kick their heroin habits.

Now, you know, obviously, as we learned in episode two, Stephanie and Eddie had been through rehab recently. And so, you know, maybe the argument could be made that they didn't need these anymore. But I think most people who've been through recovery would tell you that, you know, you're probably not going to leave a giant stash of drugs that can help you through drug withdrawal behind

if you're moving to another state. You're probably going to want to take that with you just in case. because, you know, addiction is prone to relapse. So that I have some doubts about. And, you know, most of that stuff is well and good for a consenting adult. No judgment here, except obviously, about the bestiality, which is disgusting. Gross.

And horrifying and shame on him for that. Oh, those poor sweet babies. Although, again, I want to remind everyone they did not own a dog. Thank God for that. Thank God, yeah. Because, you know, animal stuff is tremendously upsetting, and I want people to know that. that there was not an actual dog. I think this was in the realm of fantasy for Jay.

Yes, yeah, but God only knows. God, I don't know. Let's not go there. But anyway, so most of it's all well and good. You know, he's a consenting adult, so was a lovewoman, presumably. Although what the hell he was planning on doing with all that nitric acid, that boggles the mind. But, of course, the press was all over it. And as would be the case in any smallish-sized town, people talked.

And when school started up again at Upper Marion High, the teachers, I mean, you can imagine, they were huddled up every day in the teacher's lounge and speculating about all of this fascinating stuff. I mean, they already knew Smith was a lech. There was hardly a woman or, for that matter, a man at that school who hadn't been on the receiving end to one of his gross sex jokes or comments about what kind of birth control they used or whatever. But now people were starting to talk about his missing daughter and son-in-law. And people wondered. I mean, especially when word got around that on the night he was arrested, police found his daughter Stephanie's social security card in his wallet.

And especially, especially, when the police discovered that for six months after they went missing, somebody had been forging Stephanie and Eddie Hunsberger's names on their welfare checks, which were, interestingly enough, still being sent to Jay Smith's address. Hmm. Hmm. I wonder who it was, Katie. There are two people that are suspects, and one of them is incredibly sick, so... Yeah.

It's a humdinger of a mystery. I wish we had Robert Stack to guide us through this unsolved mystery. God rest his soul. We may never know. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was Jay. I'm going to go ahead and say it. Yeah, that's quite a stretch. Did you do some yoga before that?

Allegedly. He allegedly did it. But I'm pretty sure. And the cops had also established... that all of Stephanie and Eddie's stuff was still at Smith's house. Now, if they had gone to California, as he claimed, why wouldn't they take any of their things? I mean, you don't typically move to another state with just the clothes on your back and your wallet, right? So, for his part, of course, the Prince of Darkness denied everything. Of course, he hadn't committed any robberies. How

absolutely absurd. And he blamed the sedative-filled syringes on his son-in-law, Eddie Hunsburg. And interestingly, this is really funny. He seemed more upset about people finding out about his, what do we want to call him, Katie's sexual eccentricities, than he was about the robbery charges. That really bothered him that people got to know about his dildo collection and the, you know, the S&M porn and the Swingers magazines. He claimed that the erotic books and magazines were for research. In particular, this is charming. He was planning to publish a book called How to Prevent Homosexuality in Your Children. How nice, right?

Oh, my God. What a public service. Oh, God, what a massive dickhead this guy was. And I should add, by the way, that although homosexuality was apparently offensive to his sensibilities, he copped to the bestiality thing, no problem. Like, he said, I admit I have an interest in raising animals as sexual surrogates for unsatisfactory. satisfied housewives. That he was willing to cop to, but God forbid that your kid should be gay, right? Clutch the pearls. So yeah, he was a champ. And people who knew Jay, this is astonishing to me, spoke up in the

press. One of those was General John Eisenhower. Yep, the president's son. And this guy was the general under whom Jay had served in the Army Reserve, and he spoke, for some reason, very highly of him, said he was clever and loquacious and a fine officer. But he said he had always been a little bit of a loner, which is, of course, what the neighbor of the serial killer always says. Every time. It's always, he kept to himself.

He was a quiet type. Take a shot every time somebody says that in a true crime doc. Right, absolutely. We got to put that on our true crime bingo card. So General John Eisenhower talked him up big, and then his wife, Steffie, oh my God, you guys. So Stephanie was really sick by this time with her cancer, but she seemed to really revel in the press coverage of her weirdo husband's arrest.

And she gave multiple interviews, and she would always address the reporters as Hun. Love it. I really kind of love Stephanie. I wish that she had found a better wagon to which to hook her star than J.C. Smith, because by all accounts, she was a really lovely person, and very loving and kind and big-hearted and obviously a huge character.

But, you know, somehow he must have had some kind of, forgive me, animal magnetism for her. And he just got into her head early and stayed there. Once she was committed to him, she was loyal to a fault and she was in it for the long haul.

She saw something in him, obviously. But it's a shame because she seems like she was probably a pretty good person herself. I think she was just in denial about who and what he was most likely, but whether she was trying to make Jay look bad or just didn't have a filter on her mouth and couldn't really predict people's reactions to her words, I'm not sure. But in one interview, she said,

Jay used to always say that the devil would rule the earth. That was just one of his little sayans that he would always say. That's just perfectly normal, right? Sure, sure. You know, as with much of what came out of Dr. Smith's mouth on any given day, that's just a perfectly rational, normal, everyday thing to say, right? Right, yeah, totally. The devil would someday rule the earth.

And in another interview, she said, and I quote, "'Hun, you can live with a man for 27 years and not know him. Jay didn't even let me know he was in jail to 36 hours after the arrest. I was shocked. I hadn't seen Jay since Saturday, and I thought he went to Army Reserves or something. He would always come and go without telling me nothing. It wasn't unusual not to see him for days at a time. Taffy.

Girl, what are you doing? It wasn't unusual not to see him for days at a time. So, you know, based on that, you would be forgiven for thinking she was trying to bury the guy. You know, maybe getting her revenge in for lovewoman. But she also spoke really admiringly about him, his great mind, and his beautiful speaking voice. And so I don't really know what her motivation was, but it's interesting to speculate. What do you think? Do you think she was trying to screw him over? Or do you think she just didn't get it? I think from everything we know about her, I think she just didn't get it. And I

suspect it's because she spent so much time living with Jay Smith, who had zero percent filter at all times. True. That is very true. That she just didn't realize, because she was the gossip at the the laundromat. She would talk all the time. And she was telling people things that no one should ever know. Yeah, I'm sure she was vastly entertaining to listen to when you would come in with your duvet cover to be dry cleaned or whatever. But I think you're right. I don't see her as somebody who has a lot of guile. So she probably just didn't have a filter and really genuinely seem to be enjoying being asked, you know, about her private life with her husband. So anyway, the police had an interesting theory about what

Jay Smith was doing in that mall parking lot on the night he was arrested. This is fascinating. So apparently the owner of a grocery store chain in Upper Merion apparently had a van like the one that Smith was poking around that night. And the cops thought that he might have been planning to kidnap

the guy, presumably either for ransom or to force him to withdraw money or something like that. Holy shit. So yeah, so apparently he was poking around a van just like the one that this wealthy guy owned. So Upper Marion was riveted naturally, especially the teachers at the high school. And interestingly enough, when Bill Bradfield would walk in on these conversations, like in the teachers' lounge or whatever, and that place, by the way, must have been lit.

That was where the shin kicking happened with Sue and Susan. That teacher's lounge must do, I'd love to be a fly on the wall in there. So whenever Bill would walk in on these conversations, he would leap to Jay Smith's defense. You know, it was all, well, we don't know what really happened. And I can't imagine Dr. Smith would be guilty of anything like this. And we shouldn't make assumptions until all the facts are in, et cetera, et cetera, which is interesting, you know, because for all his pomposity and his flaws, Bill strikes me as a massive gossip. So the fact that he would shut this down is, I find kind of interesting that he's already sort of starting to suck up, you know, to and about J. Smith. So that's what was going on in the fall of 70s.

and while J. Smith was dealing with his newfound legal troubles and trying to get bail to get out of jail, Bill Bradfield wrote him a letter of support. And Smith wrote right back, told him to drop the Dr. Smith thing and call him Jack. How cozy. Seems like a bromance might be afoot, Katie, right? Wow. I know. The plot thickens. So what was going on with Billy B and his entourage that fall? Well, we know Bill Bradfield has always told his friends and his living girlfriend, Sue Myers, that he wasn't romantically involved with Susan Reiner. Sure. She was, yeah, she was just a pathetic little mouse who was obsessed with him, and he was just trying to be a friend and advisor to her.

Well, in the fall of 78, this narrative evolved a little. He wanted O-U-T out of his advisor role. He wanted nothing to do with Susan Reiner anymore. She was driving him crazy with her neediness. Ugh. Right. Worse than that, she was still writing him disgusting, sexy letters. Just like the one Sue Myers found on his desk earlier, the day she kicked Susan

in the shins. Yeah, that was the impetus behind the shin kicking, right? The sexy letter. And he told them, this woman is crazy. She won't leave me alone. I despise her. meanwhile behind closed doors he continued his relationship with susan neighbors reported seeing his car there overnight many times and susan was a dedicated journaler and she wrote about the relationship

she talked to her closest friends and therapist about it how he just kept telling her to be patient he couldn't leave sue meyers just yet she was too emotionally fragile she might hurt herself Plus, you know, their finances were all tied together. And he'd always managed to buy himself more time with this big bag of bullshit, but not anymore. Susan was fed up. She was saying, nope, this isn't going to work anymore. You need to make up your mind or I'm going to be gone. Damn right.

And, yeah, good for her. And Bill was starting to think she meant it. Now, campers. If you are in a relationship with somebody who's also in a relationship, first of all, stop. Yeah, good idea. Second of all, they are never going to leave their partner for you. Yeah, it's highly unlikely. So just end it before it hurts.

Worse. But I digress. I love that she was like, she was the first woman that ever dared to say, no, this is not going to work for me. I'm going to need you to leave this person. He wasn't used to that. No, and I'm sure that that rankled him quite a bit. Oh, it definitely did, yes, as we'll see later on. One afternoon, after Bill had stood her up for dinner the night before, Susan sent a student to Bill's classroom with a bag full of leftovers and a note that said, this is the dinner you failed to get last night. Wow, I love this. She sent a student.

Man, you could just get away with murder in the 70s as a teacher, apparently. You would get this so tired. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? Hey, come here, Jeff. I need you to take this to Mr. Bradfield's office. And you know the kid read the note, right? Of course he did.

Oh, of course he did. I would. God, totally. The point is, Homegirl was not messing around. She had one foot out the door and Bill knew it. And Susan had more to worry about. One day, she told Vince Volitis that she had it on the quote-unquote

very best authority that Sue Myers meant harm to her and her children. Sue wanted her and her kids dead. What the fuck? Now, I know it's going to be like a stretch of the imagination, but who do you think was the very best authority in this case? Oh, that's a toughie. I'm going to go out on the limb and say, Elliot Emu? Yeah. Yeah, perhaps. Yeah, I'm guessing that was a Bill Bradfield secret squirrel moment. Oh, totally. And I mean, it probably served him to keep those two apart, right? Yeah, that's probably the most obvious explanation for why he would tell her that, you know, that he just wanted to keep them separate and keep them from comparing notes for various reasons.

But I sometimes do wonder, and we can get into this much, much later, but I sometimes wonder if there was a more nefarious purpose to that. But he definitely wanted to, you know, to keep them apart. He wanted Susan to be scared. And she believed it. I mean, she told her therapist about that. She talked about it in her parents without partners group that she was a part of. It was on her mind.

Another situation where she didn't go to the cops. Yeah, no, obviously wasn't scared enough to go to the police. But, I mean, of course, she could be forgiven for believing it when Bill told her because, A, she trusts him and B. I mean, the woman did kick her and attack her in the student in the teacher's lounge. Right. I mean, she has every reason to believe it, too. Yeah. So, well, Vince, being her friend, didn't believe it.

of course, and tried to comfort her. But like you mentioned, Susan was genuinely afraid. She really was. She wrote about it in her journal, too. Yeah. And one day that fall, Bill took Vince and Sue into his confidence. He used his best secret squirrel voice and dropped a bomb. What I can tell you is this. Susan Reiner has been dating Jay Smith. Oh, God. Now, again, Vince didn't believe it. Vince is a very unbelieving individual, I guess.

He couldn't imagine a more unlikely couple, and for the record, neither can I. Yeah, that's some... It's just absurd. And Sue, by the way, believed it just fine. She hated Susan's guts and was more than ready to accept any awful story about her. Yeah, especially if that story puts Bill Bradfield as far away from her as possible. He's not dating her. No, no.

No, no. Right. Yeah. Sure. But Bill crossed his heart, swore it was true. And just as he always did, he added a juicy little detail to make the story more believable. Dr. Smith's pet name for Susan Reiner was, drum roll, please. Tweety Bird.

Oh, God. Almighty. Tweetybird. Adorable. Tweety bird. It's genius. It's an example of what a skilled liar he was. And you remember from an earlier episode about the alligator shoes with his story about cutting the Cuban guards throat when he was supposedly working with the CIA and he was wearing alligator shoes in the middle of this revolution.

There was always some little specific, too weird to be made up detail that made his lies seem like the truth. It's just too weird to be made up, right? So we've got to believe it, Tweedy Bird. I mean, it's better than love woman. Certainly better than love cock. Definitely. You guys have seen the pictures of him by now, right? If not, head over door Facebook page, they're all posted.

But be prepared to get the hebes and the jeeps and the Wiggins for all of the pictures of Jay Smith. His eyes are, I mean, we're not joking. They're terrifying. Yes. In October, Susan Reinhard's mother, guide. She left Susan $34,000, which is about $134K in today's money, and also left her a $1,500 ring in half of some Timberland property. It was a nice chunk of change, all told, a lot more money than Susan had ever had before. And it seemed to give Susan some added confidence. People noticed it. Bill noticed

it, no doubt. Shortly thereafter, Bill woke Sue Myers up from the dead side. sleep one night. He was all worked up. He'd had a dream, he said, about Jay Smith. He said, he's innocent of the Sears robbery. It came to me in my dream. I'm certain of it. He said that in this dream, he'd remembered that on the day Smith had supposedly committed the robbery, Bill had been in Ocean City visiting a friend, and he'd seen him there. Sue said, She didn't remember him mentioning it at the time, but of course that wasn't important. Yeah. Bill?

Yeah, no. It's minor detail. And Bill quickly began trying to make sure everybody, quote-unquote, remembered this the way he did. Oh, he's so awful. He's also really stupid because it didn't work out too well. See, this was Labor Day weekend, and people tend to remember holiday weekends. How inconvenient for him. When Bill brought this up with a colleague who had a vacation cottage in Ocean City,

hey, remember on Labor Day weekend when I saw you at the shore? The colleague was quite sure it wasn't that weekend. And Bill made a valiant effort, but he couldn't find anybody willing to back him up on this. But it didn't stop him. He was convinced. J. Smith must be innocent of these charges. And he was off and running, the latest crusade. Bill started going to visit Dr. Smith in jail to talk this over and spending time with him outside of jail once Smith was released on bail.

And people saw them together a few times in restaurants and a park and once on the front lawn of Smith's house. Romance. What did I tell you? I'm telling you, they were going on little dates. At some point in all of this, Jay Smith called up his former secretary, Ida, who was, A, grieving the loss of her husband. and B, recovering from surgery, and, you know, asked her if she'd be cool with letting his wife Steffie move in with her. You know, you know, Steffie with the cancer, with the dying. Oh, my God. Just the unmitigated gall of that is astonishing to me. Just, you know, hey, Ida, oh, you know, I'm sorry I didn't call you when your husband died, but, you know, apropos of nothing.

wouldn't mind letting my dying wife move in with you, would you? And taking care of her presumably? Sure, in her last days. That's no problem, right? I mean, it's like some kind of what he had in mind, it seems to me, is like some kind of dark, bizarre version of the golden

girls. With Steffy, poor Steffy, dying of cancer, and Ida recovering from hip surgery and grieving loss of her husband. Thank you for being a fan. Yeah. And unsurprisingly, Ida was like, yeah, no.

Yeah, no, I will say no to your casting call, dear sir. That's not going to happen, Jay. Jeez, Louise. Well, you know, she said no, like she was used to telling Jay no all the time. Yeah, you got to give Queen Ida a hand. She was the one person that wasn't intimidated by this guy. God, I found, like, yearbook photos of Ida, and she looks cold as ice, and I fucking love her. She does, actually. Yeah, she's got a gimlet eye.

Yeah. Total badass. But... Regardless of Ida saying no, it seems clear that Jay was pretty desperate to get Steffy out of the house for some reason. I wonder why. Yeah, because that's a weird move. Yes. To say, can my dying wife, I mean, of all the times to move your wife out of your house, that's not the time you'd normally pick? Right. So, yeah, why was he so keen to get Steffy out of the house? Very, very interesting question, right? We can only guess, yeah. And anyway, Bill Phil.

bad for his poor, poor innocent man. And once he, well, he once persuaded Sue Myers into going with him to take a casserole over there. And Sue stayed in the car, because she still thought Jay was a creep. Yeah, as did 99% of the residents of Upper Merion, I'm sure. Good God. A casserole. Yeah, you know. For the Prince of Darkness. I wonder what that contains. Yeah. It was probably something with potato chip crumbs on top, I would guess. Yeah, it's very Midwestern, you're right. It's very 70s as well. True. Bill started staying out later and later, hardly ever home, and Sue wondered where the hell he was, but she had the feeling that it had less to do with her competition for his

affections and more to do with Jay Smith. Both Sue and Vince noticed Bill was stressed. He had nightmares, his hair and beard got all grizzly Adams. Obviously, Bill had a lot on his mind. I bet. And soon, Vince Vlytus got a pretty good idea why. Bill took him into his confidence one night to tell him a terrible secret. Dr. Smith was a killer.

A hitman for the mafia. he wow yeah he said smith has confessed to having murdered lots of people and he was a quote unquote screened hit man meaning that he never knew his victims or why they needed to sleep with the fishes oh my god it's the sopranos all of a sudden exactly and poor Vince poor sweet innocent Vince was I know bless this little hard right poor guy He was, yeah. Little Clark Kent. Oh, God.

I feel, I feel so bad for him. Yeah, he's definitely, like, one of the victims in this case, in my opinion. Well, Bill said to Vince that Jay Smith was furious at all the people who had put him in jail. Like, he was some kind of deaf eater. And the ones who weren't supporting him now. And he was planning to clean some house. Yeah. Bill named, naturally.

Bill named a male friend of theirs, a police officer involved in Smith's case, and drum roll, please, Susan Reinhert. Of course. Susan Reinhert, according to Bill, knew too much about Dr. Smith's trash. And remember in episode one, how we told you about Smith bringing his trash from home to dispose of an Upper Marion High? Well, now Bill told Vince that Dr. Smith had used the Upper Marion High School dump to dispose of the bodies of his daughter and son-in-law.

He'd cut them up, wrapped the parts in paper, and chucked him in the trash. Holy shit. Wow. So here we go again, by the way, with the top secret dudes, just blabbing their top secret stuff to anybody who will listen. Because apparently hitmen just go around just telling their bros about their hitman stuff. Right? You know? Oh, my lord.

Okay. Well, so interestingly, Bill told Sue Myers most of this stuff as well. But when he got to the part about Susan Reiner, the story changed, as Billy B's stories tended to. To Sue, he said he didn't know why Smith wanted Susan Reiner dead. So not a word about Stephanie and Eddie Hunsberger and neatly wrapped parcels of body parts and dumpsters or any of that. It was just, I'm not sure why. Later, he would tell Chris Poppice it was about rejection that Susan had jilted Smith and he just couldn't stand. to let her win. So, again, it was the story. And this is where the bonehead part comes in for me, because you have these genius tactics as a liar. Like Tweety Bird is a stroke of bloody genius. And then you do this, where you've got three people who are relatively close with each other.

You know, we've got Chris and Sue and Vince who talk to each other. And you're telling them all different stories. That's a lot of arrogance. It's either stupidity, and I don't think he was a stupid man. Or it's just pure... arrogance, that you're just so certain that every word that comes out of your mouth will be believed, and that people will not talk about you behind your back, and most of the time

they didn't. That's the astonishing thing, is it actually worked. So, anywho, different people got different stories, and poor Vince, bless his heart, was a fan of horror movies, but this was real life. I mean, he was freaked, and he didn't really believe it at first, but Bill was very convincing, and it didn't take long for him to buy in, and he was just scared to death, as as anybody would be, and determined to support his father figure slash best friend Bill in whatever he thought was best, because he's the clear leader in this little group. And soon Bill started telling Chris Poppus the same stuff. Not only that, he said Smith had taken him under his leathery bat wing to make him a hitman's

apprentice. Now, I would like to see the Disney version of that. Please. The hitman's apprentice, right? We're going to end up making so many movies before this thing is over. instead of dancing brooms, maybe dancing piano wires. I think so. Yeah, that works. Yeah. So dancing rolls and duct tape. Bill's, you know, and Bill said, you know, look, I'm, I feel like I have to go along with this for the moment to appease him. Because we know this is an evil man and we have to try to gather enough evidence to put him away for good. You know, for the murder of his daughter and son-in-law, that would be something we could give. If we could just get some proof. And of course, the natural. question was, well, why don't we just go to the police? And the answer would inevitably be, oh, no, no, we absolutely can't do that because he's connected, you see. He's got the police

in his pocket. Sure, sure, right? Right, sure. He's got the cops in his pocket. He's got the state department in his pocket. He was in the military. He has top secret clearance. He has little, he's his grubby little fingers and pies all over law enforcement and the government and the highest levels of the military, he knows John. And he did. He was like buddy, buddy with John Eisenhower, for God's sake. So it's not like there wasn't some basis for this for the friends to sort of think, well, maybe that's true. So we can't go to the police. So I've got to try to appease him. Let him think he's teaching me to be a hitman. And somehow he managed to convince them that testifying as Smith's alibi witness in his Sears trial was part of that. which is just that is such a disconnect to me so if you think he's evil and you believe that he's killing people

and that he wants your friend Susan Reiner to die and is planning on murdering her why don't you just let him go to jail for God's sake for the Sears robbery instead of getting up on the witness stand as you're planning to do and testifying on his behalf

but of course Bill was an honest man he had to tell the truth regardless he did see him at the shore that day And, you know, I have to tell the truth, right? So, of course, Bill's friends were just petrified. Bill told them all sorts of scary stuff about Smith. He said that he'd admitted to killing upwards of 250 people as a hitman. That he had admitted to killing, of course, his daughter and son-in-law, as I said,

and disposing of their dismembered bodies, that Smith had shown him how to make those oil-cans silencers like the ones they found in his car. That he'd shown him how to incapacitate someone and tape up their wrists in one. one quick, ninja-like, jungle-cat-like motion? Wow. I know, right? I'd like to see that. That Smith had told him that the most important part of getting away with murder

was disposing of the body where no one would ever find it. And that Smith had apparently dissolved the bodies of some of his victims in acid. He said, you can make a person totally disappear. Okay. And in addition to that, of course, the connections in high places and everything. and, you know, he's spinning all of this stuff out and he, by all accounts, was a masterful storyteller. I mean, people would just be transfixed.

Sue Myers, for her part, is his long-suffering girlfriend. She pretty much just decided to turn her ears off when he would start with all this stuff. Number one, she hated Susan Reinhert. And she didn't care if she got murdered, that would be fine with her. She was pretty honest about that. And she knew Bill who was a blowhard.

She knew he was a drama queen. She thought all this cloak and dagger hitman stuff was most likely just a midlife crisis. Now remember she'd been with the sky for 15 years at this point and she wasn't stupid you know she knew he made stuff up. She'd heard the

Cuba stories, all the different versions of the Cuba stories, no doubt. So she was just kind of like sure, Bill, okay fine and she would just kind of turn the other way and focus on trying to resurrect this terribly spiraling arts and craft store

that I think is most likely a hefty chunk of the motive in this case because they were failing so badly financially and by the way in the midst of all of that Bill's telling her and Vince who are watching days when literally they're bringing in $5 all day in sales like that was it you know it was just circling the drain

and he's wanted to open up three more stores all over Pennsylvania because that's the level of delusional narcissism that this man operated on at all times so Sue was just like whatever, dude. Chris and Vince, on the other hand, were scared, shitless. And they wanted to go to the police, of course. But he convinced them, completely convinced him that that would be dangerous.

They would all end up murdered. And their families. He said, look, Smith knows everything. He knows where your parents live. He actually told Vince his parents a dress. And he said he'd gotten it from Smith. Oh, my God. He knows everything about everybody. So Bill's response to all of this fear was, look, I think I can control him. I think I can talk him out of harming anybody. Just let me handle it. Just trust me. Right? By the way, when somebody says trust me, just don't. Don't do it. It's just a general rule of thumb. So Bill convinced Chris and Vince not to tell anyone. Bill was getting in close with Smith, pretending to want to be his apprentice and to learn the hit manning trade. And when the time was right, he'd have proof of all these crimes. They could put him away forever.

And as he's spinning all of this and convincing them of all of this that we, you know, we don't need to go to law enforcement. I imagine he probably tossed an Ezra pound quote or two in there somewhere. And Bill was decent at knowing how much of each of his entourage could handle at one time. He knew Vince was naive and easily flustered and could only handle so much. But Chris was a little bit more worldly. And so he got drawn really deeply into this hitman's apprentice drama. For example, one day he showed. Chris, an oil can silencer. He said he swiped from Smith. And Chris was a skilled handyman,

and Bill asked him if he could make one for Bill. Just in case, he said, you know, Smith is dangerous. I might have to kill him one of these days. And Chris, of course, said, sure, anything I can do to help. We're on the side of right after all. Lord have mercy. So, you know, it never occurred to him that he might actually be creating this for a nefarious purpose to him. He was buying Bill's whole narrative about we might have to protect ourselves. And this is my favorite part of the hitman lessons as Bill relayed them to Chris Pappas. And this is my favorite part. One day, Bill demonstrated a technique, he said Smith had taught him to incapacitate a victim.

And this, of course, involved duct tape and some ninja moves, as I said. And in the process of trying to show this to Chris, Bill got duct tape stuck so badly in his big old zizi top beard that they had to interrupt the lesson and go to the barber and have it cut out. Oh, man, it doesn't seem like Smith was that great of a teacher. Right. That's what I was thinking. And by the way, why does Bill need a teacher? Wasn't he with the CIA at one point in Cuba?

Have his garotting skills just completely gotten rusty or what? But for some reason, it just apparently didn't occur to anybody to ask that question. So while all this is going on, Susan and Bill are still doing their kind of back-and-forth dance. And at one point he tried, this is just mind-blowing. He tried to buy himself more time with her by asking if she'd give him a chance to, quote, ease Vince into a relationship with Sue Myers. I'm sorry, what? Yeah. Jesus Murphy.

Like, he really thought he could do that, that he had manipulative powers the point where he could just decide to take two people like a Barbie and a Kendall and just, you know, kind of click, click, click them together. Oh, my God. just astonishing the arrogance of that. And Susan, you know, reacted predictably, I think, for someone who really was an intelligent. She wasn't a stupid person. And she said, uh, no. That's ridiculous. And this is it. You are either going to leave Sue Myers by summer and be with me and move out or we're done. Yeah. And she meant it. And that was the ultimatum. I'm giving you a deadline. Summer. And Bill's initial reaction? Pure fury. Because no woman had ever dared to talk to him like this before. I think it was genuinely a first for him for a woman to put

her foot down and say, I'm not taking this anymore from you. And he just absolutely went off on her, thunderous rage. And, you know, I'm sure it was a shock to her. And we know he can get into a rage. I mean, we remember from an earlier episode how he beat up that husband of one of his girlfriends who said, hey, maybe don't sleep with my wife. So we know he has it in him. But eventually he did cool off and he said, okay. And he promised. to move out of his and Sue Myers' place by a certain date in June, and he asked Susan to marry him.

Wow. Now, she had no way of knowing that he'd already promised to marry Wendy once she graduated college. Again, he's 45, and this is a girl in her teens. This was the girl who was his ticket into heaven, his former student. Ew.

Dress. She had no way of knowing he was still seeing Ice Queen Joanne and visiting her in Annapolis. I mean, when this man slept, I can't imagine. and in between his meetings with Jay Smith in the evenings and all these women and everything and work, obviously. I don't know. So she didn't know about any of that.

I know. It's insane, right? He must have had, like, incredible energy. Maybe. It's just driven by pure narcissism, just running. It's better than a monster energy drink, just pure unadulterated narcissism. It's like meth, apparently. So eventually, you know, he finally concedes.

And Susan was just riding on Cloud 9. They were planning on getting married in England. England, very romantic. They were going to go on an extended honeymoon there with the kids, Karen and Michael. And they might even stay there. And shortly after the proposal, Susan wrote a letter, this is so interesting to Jay Smith. And the tone of this letter, I think, is very telling because it's just a simple business letter, just asking if he would write her a reference for a teacher exchange program in England. And he wrote her back right away, and his reply was every bit just as bland and business-like,

certainly nothing in there to suggest that they'd been having a torrid affair. No. No Tweety Bird. No nothing. So that I think is very telling. That's a little piece of the tapestry here. A little bit of circumstantial evidence.

But anywho, so in December, as part of the marriage slash possible relocation to England preparations, Susan Reiner contacted a moment of silence, her life insurance agent. Oh, God. And I think everybody listening probably has a pretty good idea of the significance of that.

And she asked, could I get a million-dollar policy, please, with my future husband, William Sidney Bradfield as the beneficiary? Oh, my God. Now, this is, again, this is in the 1970s. A million-dollar policy is a lot. So that's probably about four-mill today. And that's for a school teacher. I mean, she was just an English teacher. So the agent, of course, immediately balked at that insanely huge amount of coverage for a teacher,

but she talked him into letting her have a policy for $250,000. And then over the next couple of months, she managed to score a couple of additional policies for a grand total by February or so of nearly three quarters of a million dollars. Oh, God. In 1970s money. So that is a lot of scratch. She didn't quite get the mill, but she got close. And one of these policies paid more than double in cases of accidental death.

And accidental death includes murder, interestingly enough. And at some point in here, by the way, Sue Myers managed to get a little peek at Bill's journal while he was in the shower one morning. She didn't have time to see much, but what she did see was the line, I'd like to kill Susan Reinhardt. Oh, my God. And I'm sure that made her day, right? right? It's, woohoo, he hates her. Reinforced his whole, oh, I'm not interested in that neurotic lunatic and I hate her gross sexy letters and everything. And meanwhile, Susan was picking out wedding dresses and dreaming about England. And soon after that little incident with the insurance agents, in February, there was a bit of a hubbub at Susan Reinhart's bank. She had gone in wanting to withdraw $25,000 in cash. hash. The teller had a bad feeling and called for the bank manager, and the bank manager smelled a rat. And that's because usually when somebody wants to withdraw this kind of money

in cash, it means they're getting scammed. It means there's some kind of con scheme going on. And she said the money was for an investment with her dear friend, guess, just guess. Bill? Yeah, uh-huh, nailed it. And it was a, I'm smart. It was a top secret deal. And of course, he insisted on cash. And to his credit, this bank manager tried like hell to talk her out of it. He said, listen, there's no legitimate reason for you to need cash for an investment. Let me give you a cashier's check. That way you'll have a record, like a paper trail. Right. Something to to show that this has happened, not just handing over cash. And this is a moment where I get infuriated with Susan Reinhart because she was adamant. No, it has to be cash. I'm not a child. Are you going

to give me my money or not? The manager said, Mrs. Reiner, this is very concerning. Let me arrange a wire transfer to his bank. And she said, no, I don't need you to call anybody. I need you to do this for me. My friend has promised me a 12% return on my money. And, you know, if you're not familiar in, you know, investments and returns, 12% is unheard of. That is an insanely good deal. And the bank manager told her that. And she said, I know, right? That's why it's such a good deal. Bless her heart. God. That is so frustrating. So frustrating. This is the moment in... It's like watching a horror movie and you're like, don't run up the stairs. Exactly what I was going to say. It's like when the power goes out and you go down to the basement to flip the breaker, don't do it. Don't go down there.

Please don't. Just through time, I'm just begging her. Please don't do this. And, you know, this guy wasn't going down without a fight. He said, bless his heart, right? He really tried. Let me at least call your friend and ask some questions on your behalf. There's no reason for anyone to pressure you to provide cash like this. And she said, no dice. This investment is top. Secret. Top secret. Top secret. Secret agent man.

Exactly. Trouble 07 strikes again. This guy, he finally was able to talk her into taking a smaller amount of cash, like $1,500. But I don't think he talked her into it so much as she just got sick of arguing. Because within a couple of days, she withdrew all her money from that bank and transferred it to a new one. And... Oh, Susan. I guess that bank manager didn't give a shit because they gave her the rest of the 25K in cash.

That bank was just like, whatever. Make it rain. Screw up your own life. It's fine with me. I've got other stuff to do. This is also telling, I think, she tried to talk her brother into investing, but once she mentioned that, you know, magic number 12% return rate and Bill Bradfield's name, he said, are you effing kidding me? No way. And you shouldn't be doing this either.

Yeah, her brother had heard some things about Billy Bradfield. Oh, God. And, of course, saw through it right away. But, I mean, she had the love goggles on. Yeah. She just had the love goggles on. That's another lesson from this case, you know, people listening, campers, is if every single person in your life dislikes your partner and warns you off of them, there's a reason. Absolutely. Unless you're just hanging out with really shitty people.

Right. But even then, I mean. Yeah, it's certainly something to look at. if everybody who cares about you is saying, wow, you really want to think about this. And that was the case. That really was the case with most people in Susan's life. She had a therapy group that she went to and she would, you know, tell them the whole story and they were saying to her, look, this guy's manipulative, you need to get out of this.

And she just didn't see it. No. She just didn't see it. Bless her heart. And God, I wish she had. And don't you know, Bill showed up at Chris's house with 25 big ones in cash. No way. I know, right?

It's shocking. Shocker. And a couple bottles of that sweet, sweet nitric acid from Dr. Smith's basement. Yeah, in the trunk of his car together, right? And he and Chris opened the trunk, like in a movie, very cinematic, look down in, they see the cash, they see the nitric acid. And Bill goes, this is my life savings. And he said he was going to put it in a safety deposit box because he was convinced that the big banks were going to fail any day now. And everybody really ought to be keeping their money in their mattress.

which is specifically not, which is specifically not a safety deposit box. Right. Oh, he's so stupid. But Chris was incredulous. Bill, you silly goose, you've got all this cash in the trunk of your car right next to these jugs of acid. What if it leaks and destroys it all? And Bill, I'm sure, looking very pensive, goes, hmm, you're right. You're right, Chris.

Let's get it out. and he had this like insanely genius way of making plans seem like they were your idea because then he goes master manipulator yeah because then you know first chris i'm worried that if the shit hits the fan with smith the cops might find this money and take it because of course he's smith's apprentice now and right now that chris had touched it His fingerprints would be on it. And, God, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to have the cops take you into custody and focus on you as a scapegoat. If Smith did go off half-cocked and kill Susan Reiner, so I don't.

Oh, my God. Oh, God, poor Chris. So Chris, now in a conundrum, and Chris loved problem solving. So this was a perfect word problem for Chris, I think. He was the philosopher, absolutely. He sat there and thought about it a minute. And he goes, hmm, well, we could wipe my fingerprints off of the money. Oh, Chris, you are so, so smart, said Bill.

What a good idea. And this is, I think, a masterclass in manipulation. Absolutely. Never once occurred to Chris that it might be Susan Reinhardt's prince he wanted off the money. Because as far as he knew, this money had nothing to do with. Susan Reinhardt and all that inheritance money and all that life insurance. All that life insurance. And if I remember rightly, they spent an entire afternoon sitting at Chris's kitchen table and wiping fingerprints off of $25,000 in cash. And Chris speaks very fondly

of this afternoon. He called it male bonding. He thought it was one of the best afternoons of his life. He and Bill just sat and shot the shit and wiped fingerprints and evidence off of cash. Peaceful way to spend an afternoon. Absolutely. Especially if you think that you're on the side of the angels. Yep. As Chris did, of course. So, oh boy, guys, we'll end here for today, campers. Join us next time as we'll learn more about Bill Bradfield's hitman lessons with Dr. J. Smith, because believe me, I've barely scratched the surface there. We'll also get into Jay's trial for the Sears robbery and Bill's attempt to give him an alibi.

Is it going to work? Well, we'll find out. Thanks so much for listening, and we will see you again very soon. Until then, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. You can follow us on Twitter at T.C. Campfire, Instagram at True Crime Campfire, and be sure to like our Facebook page.

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