True Crime Campfire - Episode 7: The Puppet Master and the Prince of Darkness, Part 7: Recoil

Episode Date: October 11, 2019

In this episode, the investigation into Susan Reinert's murder and the disappearance of her two children continues. The investigators dig into the lives of Bill Bradfield and his entourage, and they begin to zero in on Dr. Jay Smith as well. Bill's posse begin dropping him, one by one, and Bill does NOT handle these "betrayals" well. Some key evidence surfaces. The pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place, and justice is on the horizon.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 told you about the start of the biggest police investigation in American history, at least as of 1979, we introduced you to very. veteran detective Joe Van Nort, a curmudgeon with a heart of gold, and his partner, Jack Holtz, a perfectionist obsessed with the job, both right out of central casting. We heard about a major early mistake, the loss of Susan's body to cremation before investigators were finished with her, and saw Bill Bradfield frantically trying to maneuver all his minions into the most favorable position possible, for him. And at the end, we learned an important detail about

the blue comb found underneath Susan's body. It bore the name and insignia of the Army Reserve unit in which Dr. J. C. Smith was colonel. The Puppet Master and the Prince of Darkness, Part 7, Recoil. So, as we told you last time, Bill and Chris didn't give the detectives anything to work with at those first two interviews in Santa Fe, where they were taking summer classes, along with Ice Queen Joanne. Bill just told him he and Chris were represented by counsel and refused to answer any questions.

But he did have a question for them before they flew back to Upper Marion from Santa Fe. He wanted to know, and I love this, how long did the state police stay on a murder case? Bless his heart. How long do the... Until they solve it, you imbecile. Or until they've exhausted all their leads,

but, you know, we're just going to... work it for like a couple days and then we're probably just going to go get a donut seriously he's so dumb and also wow way to not put yourself under the microscope bill smart man smart my theory is that he started panicking pretty much from like minute one oh yeah and he didn't stop until the end of the story anywho so bill was on high alert now that the investigation was shifting into gear and as usual he had little homework assignments to dole out to all his minions. Wendy, in particular, this is his young, former student-girlfriend, had a nice little honey-do list

to take care of while Bill was away. This included, take $300 cash out of the $28,000 hoard that he'd given her for safekeeping earlier and put it in the safety deposit box, because of course an empty safety deposit box looks suspicious, according to Bill. I have a question. Now, remember most of this, sure. I'm sorry, but why not just close the safe? safety deposit box.

That's a damn good question. That would be the kind of thing that might occur to us, but not to Bill for some reason. I don't. I mean, there are many things like this. He wasn't maybe the smartest when it didn't come to analyzing, you know, literature or whatever, even when it did, honestly. He was just a dumb ass. Let's just say it. Okay?

He just wasn't that smart. He just pretended to be smart. It's like, I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV. I'm not an intellectual, but I play one in real life. So this was the, most of this anyway, was the money that Bill had scammed from Susan Reiner with that phony investment deal. This is, of course, the cash that he and Chris

had spent a pleasant afternoon wiping fingerprints off of that day in which he had had Wendy take out of that safety deposit box the weekend before Susan was murdered. Now he decided, oh, it looks suspicious if the police find out about the box and it's empty. They might, you know, be suspicious about that so he wanted her to put just a little bit back just for appearances sake which this is just stupid all over it's just stupid all over i completely agree with you so that was the first thing he

also wanted her to go over to chris's house and dismantle the gun and the silencer that chris had agreed to hold on to for bill and dump the pieces in the river now astonishingly wendy brought a friend along for this little errand she brought a friend to dispose of of evidence. Wendy. Wendy. Honey, what are you doing? So first of all, in the midst of a murder investigation and the disappearance of two minor children,

somebody asks you, hey, can you take this gun and this silencer and go dump them in the river? And your first reaction is, sure. And also, hey, Gail or Mary or Sue or whatever, you want to come along for the ride? Really? this kid so did not seem to be computing what was going on or it's possible she just didn't care

I don't know I mean obviously she never liked Susan much she didn't like that Bill was involved in quote unquote protecting Susan so maybe she just didn't care I honestly don't know but it's it really goes to show just what a crack team Bill had assembled here to help him in his criminal enterprises doesn't it yeah Avengers move over the Brad King is in town

It's astonishing at these people I caught, really. I'm shocked that this wasn't the perfect murder. But Bill was forever the manipulator, and he somehow found the time to maneuver people outside his immediate circle of minions as well. And one of these was a former student named Jeffrey Olson, who, I'm not going to lie, I kind of want to smack upside the head. Oh, God, yeah. Jeffrey, baby doll. And I'm sorry, Jeffrey, if you ever hear this, I mean, I'm sure you learned your lesson and all. But like so many other poor misguided souls, this guy loved Bill, admired Bill.

And he'd been one of the people to get an earful before Susan's murder about her supposed rough sex with the guys that she picked up in bars. You know, he was planning those little fictional seeds strategically to make Susan seem like a high-risk victim before the murder. And Jeffrey was one of the people that he confided in about this, secret squirrel again, right? And how Bill was worried that she might get murdered. if she kept it up, et cetera. So after the murder, Jeffrey, of course, supported Bill 100%, even to the extent of letting Bill come over and burn a bunch of Susan's papers in his fireplace for God's sake. In the middle of a murder investigation and possible abduction or murder of two children and will never know what evidence was lost that day. so good job

Jeffrey good job you massive gullible twat for some reason Jeffrey in particular I just want to backhand him like are you serious

even if you believe in someone's innocence completely you just don't interfere with a murder investigation it's just completely inappropriate not to mention illegal oh god and here's my deal

is Jeffrey wasn't in the inner circle. No. Oh, no. Bill just showed up at his door and was like, hey, I have these papers that'll make me look guilty. That belong to a murdered woman. Right. Yeah. It's astonishing. I mean, you know what?

You say there, you say, oh, and you call the police. Right. Even if you think the person is innocent. Because that person is highly misguided if they're trying to dispose of potential evidence. Even the appearance of impropriety, you want to avoid. void in that situation. It just astounds me that he did this. Anyway, so there was also a lot of Rasmataz going on with a typewriter. So Bill had this typewriter, and he kept shuffling this thing around from minion to minion, and he tried really hard to talk Chris into switching out the

ball mechanism from his typewriter, which had a Gothic typeface, of course, right? And Chris's typewriter, which had a different typeface, because, you know, he said that he had used this typewriter to write Susan some letters and worse Susan had used it to work on some quote legal documents sure and bill was afraid the police would link him to her if they discovered it so he tried like hell to convince Chris to switch out this ball now why he didn't just throw the damn thing in the lake I cannot imagine and Chris asked him the same question because by now Chris is starting to actually ask some questions occasionally he's starting to think about protecting his own ass.

It's about time. Yeah, about time, exactly. And he didn't really want to switch out jack shit. And Bill said, I'm afraid to. You never know when you might need something. And if you throw it away, it's gone for good. I'd feel so much better if you kept it. Oh, my God.

Oh, Bill would make it for a great episode on hoarders, I think. He was a pack rat, and that's a big fatal flaw with Bill Bradfield. I've said it before. In many ways, Bill Bradfield is one of the dumbest criminals I've ever come across, down. So he ended up talking Joanne, by the way, into switching out the ball with hers, ice queen intellectual Joanne, because she would never dream of saying no to Bill, of course. That woman was loyal to the absolute end. Like, I think she would have thrown herself into a volcano for this guy. Definitely. And what the hell she ever got out of that

relationship? I can't even imagine, but whatever. So because they were missing kids involved in the case, it didn't take long for the FBI to get involved, much to Detective Grumper's pants Van Nort's chagrin. Now, the lead guy was a down-to-earth dude named Special Agent Redden, and Van Nort stormed up to this guy early on and said, I want to make sure everybody knows who's in charge of this investigation. Me. That's who's in charge.

Oh, Joe. And in Joseph Womba's words, this convinced Agent Redden that Van Nort was a, quote, daddy cop. Which in this year of our Lord 2019 sounds a little critical. creepy, but which I suspect at the time just meant he was an old guy who'd sort of been there and done that and expected to be obeyed, right? And this kind of set the tone. The state police and the FBI would not always see eye to eye as the investigation progressed. And the first time that that surfaced was with regard to the blue comb, the one that led back to Dr. Smith's Army Reserve Unit. Now, when they had searched his basement during the Sears robbery investigations, they had found some of that comb, some more of that same. blue comb. Yeah, they found several pieces. Several combs. Yes, exactly. And the FBI loved this. They thought it was a sweet lead. Van Nort was suspicious of this. He thought it was too obvious kind of thing that Bradfield might plant to divert attention from himself. But the feds thought it was worth checking out. So they started kind of zeroing in on Smith. And unsurprisingly,

given Jay Smith's reputation in Upper Merion, the tips came eroding in. So here were some of the tips that they got and investigated about J. C. Smith during the investigation. One tip led them to Times Square in New York to look for a snuff film that they believed Jay had made of poor Susan. They did not find such a thing, thank God. They followed up on a lead that Jay was running a mail order penis enlargement scheme. Which he was. Yeah. That one was true. That was true. They followed up on a lead that he had murdered and mutilated a couple of Dobermans, which they'd never found any evidence of, thank God. They investigated the murder of a sex worker on a tip that he did it.

Again, didn't pan out. And they followed a lead that he wanted to open a massage parlor, which I strongly suspect would not offer Shiazhu or Hot Stone massage. I suspect when we say massage parlor, we mean something else. This one did turn out to be true. And interestingly, the woman with whom he had planned to go into business on this massage, parlor had backed out because Jake creeped her out so badly, which I think is really interesting. So Van Nort, at least for the first few months, he thought all of this investigation into Smith was just a waste of time and resources.

He thought, look, Bradfield acted alone or was some of his little minions, and he understood Bill so well from day one. He said, look, I can get that guy because he's got a mouth he can't control, and he'll never be able to control it. He'll talk his way right into the joint. And boy, does that turn out to be prophetic. Oh, absolutely. Now, I mean, as you would imagine with a case like this, two missing kids, young mother, dead, the media was all over it. They printed so much sensationalist bullshit that was little more than a rumor. They were salivating so much over the story that they didn't care much about the validity of their sources, it was real gross.

So one newspaper insinuated that a sadomasochistic swingers group was involved, despite the fact that there was no indication whatsoever that Susan was a member. The people close to her said, no way. Of course, this echoed Bill's lies about her penchant for quote-unquote rough sex, so that part of his gross little plan was working. He'd managed to spread that around town enough that it was getting reported in the papers. Oh, that's infuriating. And, oh, by the way, the paper made sure to include the fact that there were homosexual acts taking place in the Swingers Club,

just to be sure that the good, pure citizens of the main line were clutching their pearls for dear life. God. Oh, man. And this is equally gross. One of Jay Smith's wife, Stephanie's co-workers, released her dad. diary to the newspaper while Stephanie was dying in hospice. Good God. Shame on whoever did that. Oh my God. I hope they're listening so we can just say shame on you. What is wrong with you? Yeah. Oh, no. Betrayal of the highest order. That's ridiculous.

That's disgusting. Shame on that person. And of course, I think any true crime aficionado will have seen this coming. No tricky murder case is complete without the satanic cult theory making an appearance. Absolutely. What makes this different, though, is how it came about. And it was because of some of Jay Smith's letters, which had been quoted in another paper. And I'm not, like, 100% sure how that came about, but it referenced Jay wearing a Satan costume during sex.

Oh, sweet, baby Jesus. Just take a minute, campers. Let it sit. old goat eyes all randy and ready to go in what i can only assume would be a cheesy Halloween store satin outfit maybe with like a deep deep v please no please no i'd say i would say i'm sorry but i'm not because i'm just so tickled by this visual it is truly nightmare fuel of the highest order And if you've ever ingested poison and you need to very quickly and expediently projectile vomit it all back up again, please return to this image. It should be helpful.

Yeah. We are saving lives, Whitney. It's an Ipecac. You're welcome. Well, I digress. So the headlines were very tasty. And speculation around town was that the Bradfield gang was being investigated. Maybe they all killed Susan for the insurance money.

It had come out, of course, that Susan was way over-insured for a school teacher. And it had also come out that Bill was her beneficiary. Meanwhile, poor Steffie Smith, who had stayed loyal to her creepy husband, Jay, until the end, passed away, August 12th. Jay was allowed to attend the funeral, Underguard. soon after one of the searches of Susan's house investigators found something that would prove incredibly significant it was the fake document

Billy used to scam Susan out of that 25K with the phony investment deal now listeners campers it looked legit it said Susan would get 12% return for God's sakes she'd get paid in six months as well, et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah, blah.

But the police quickly confirmed that it was bogus with a call to the investment firm that was supposedly transacting the deal. They'd never heard of Bill or Susan. Yeah. Imagine that. Camper's, if it is too good to be true, it is. Yep. Always.

Well, almost always anyway. 99% of the time seems too good to be true. It is. Yeah. And then there was this also. very revealing letter sent to her USAA insurance rep. It said, For clarification, please tell me what is covered under accidental death.

For example, if I fall off the back of a sailboat or if I am shot, are those considered accidents? Not that I am planning either one of those situations. Ugh. I can actually hear Bill instructing her to talk about every scenario there. You know he did. He was like, make sure you find out. if murder is covered. Well, we're going to very dangerous places.

Yeah, exactly. Who knows what might happen? Just want to make sure we're all protected. Oh, poor Susan. Poor Susan. Now, the police had pretty much given up on finding the Reinhardt children alive. In response to a newspaper article titled, Are Reinhardt children with Smith's daughter?

Most cops agreed that they probably were. As in, they're probably dead. Yeah. Now, not long after that article was released and they found all those sweet, sweet documents at Susan's house, the toxicology results finally came out. That stuff took a while in the 70s. It takes a while today. It's not like CSI, y'all. It takes some time.

So the results showed that Susan had died from a massive overdose of morphine, which had stopped her breathing. She also had a barbiturate sedative in her system, most likely. to keep her quiet and compliant during the torture. Meanwhile... Oh, God, so awful. Yeah, I don't mean to gloss over it, but it makes me so sad to think about what she went through. So horrible.

And, you know, as you might imagine, our pal Vince, the Trekkied choir boy, was starting to feel guilty. Mm-hmm. He'd bend to Susan's funeral, and he was the only member of the Bradfield gang who went. And much to his surprise, his fellow teachers had avoided him, even seemed scared of him.

And on a drive one night, Vince got himself worked into a lather. A thunderstorm was brewing, and the clouds looked ominous as grim death. And Catholic Vince took it all as a sign that God was coming for his ass if he didn't get all this stuff off his chest right now. So he sped right on to the nearest Catholic church, and in a scene right out of a movie, he ran up to the door, the pouring rain and banged on it. And when the priest came to the...

It's so cinematic. I know. I know. I love the story. Just imagine the sky opening up, you know, the rain slanting down. Right. The protagonist starts seeing images of the devil and the clouds. Yeah.

And that meant something to Vince. He was heavily religious. Yeah. So he was really starting to, you know, obviously just starting to, the stress was starting to get to him. And, you know, the priest came to the door and Vince yelled, Father, I know who killed Susan Reiner. Wow. Poor Padre.

No kidding, right? I can only imagine the spectacle of a drowned rat, Vince, on the doorstep, terrified that demons were after him and screaming about murder. Yeah, that must have been really intense evening for the priest. Totally. And to his credit, the father brought him to the sanctuary, and Vince laid the whole damn thing out. Bill and Jay and hit men and Susan and sex and all the... the gory details. And in response, the priest was the first person to finally, finally, tell Vince to go to the goddamn cops. Finally, right? Somebody is finally talking sense.

And, you know, a little too late. Yeah. A lot too late, unfortunately. But yeah. Vince found himself in an interrogation room with Holtz and a man named Carlin Chick Sabinson. an FBI special agent, an absolute artist in an interrogation. He had a knack for, like, painting pictures for his targets, as Joseph Wambaw put it in the book about the case. He sure painted a picture for poor Vince. He basically told him, he'd better be the first one in this little entourage to start talking, or he was going to miss the bus to freedom. And it really didn't take much more than that.

Yeah, he was ready to go. Oh, yeah. Vince broke down and started singing like a little Clark Kent-looking Catholic Canary. And from that point on, Vince belonged to the investigators. And he was a-okay with that. Yeah, his loyalty shifted so quickly. Like, as soon as he was in sort of the loving bosom of the police and the FBI, he was going to Bill and saying, they're nice guys.

They're nice guys, Bill. They want to help us. And I'm sure Bill was just like, you little shit. Anyway, so in addition to laying out the whole sordid tail, the parts of it that he knew about anyway, because remember, Bill told different things to different people, Vince gave the cops the phone system that Bill had left in his possession. So a written copy of that ridiculous phone pay phone relay nonsense that he and Jay had come up with. Because again, Bill is the dumbest criminal of all time. Just in case, Vince, here's a copy of how we committed this crime.

Hold on to this for me. I'm not just going to burn it in the fireplace or anything. Just, what are you doing, man? So Bill was suspicious of Vince early on because Vince kept trying to talk him into going to the cops. And every time he did, Bill just flew off the handle and started ranting about fascists. And eventually he just straight up asked Vince

if he had talked to the investigators. And Vince said he had. And he said, you know, you should too. They're nice. And Bill, as you can imagine, Bill took it big. He said, who else have you told? And Vince is like, well, I mean, I told a priest, and I told my parents,

well, you've killed the Padre. You've killed your parents. You've betrayed me. You've broken your solemn oath. You've killed me. And so on. Much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, campers. It was killing him that his little buddy had turned to the dark side.

And Bill dropped Vince like a bag of bricks. started ranting to Chris and Sue about how he'd be sent to the electric chair all because of that, quote, sniveling little son of a bitch Vince Valadis. Wow. Yeah, and Chris and Sue were just kind of baffled by this. Like, why was he so upset? Like, what was the problem with Vince talking to the cops exactly? Why did they need to worry about protecting Jay Smith anymore?

Especially when the papers are making it sound like they were the killers. And Chris said, look, Bill, they won't electrocute an innocent man. But that somehow didn't seem to make Bill feel any better. For some reason, he was just pretty much in a full-blown panic. Huh, right? So Vince was all they had so far. So the cops decided to take a crack at Little Wendy. They'd spoken to her briefly once before,

and she'd given them, you know, a bogus timeline to account for Bill's time on Friday the 22nd of June. Now, that was the day, if you recall, that Susan and the kids had driven off in that hailstorm and never come back alive. And she and Bill had, of course, rehearsed this ahead of time and all that. Now, this time, she changed her story on a few points. Well, we may have gone here.

I don't recall for sure. Actually, it was 845, not 7 when he dropped me off that evening, et cetera, et cetera. Now, this interview really showed her unshakable belief in Bill. She refused to admit that he purposely lied during the Sears robbery trial. She refused to believe he was actually, you know, bumping butts all over Upper Marion with other women. And he really was, by the way, like. Like the feds had dredged up another, yet another Bradfield girlfriend that he had met for sex that summer while he had Ice Queen Joanne put up in a cheap hotel for him to visit whenever he wanted. And while he had Sue and Susan and God only knows who else.

And he had told this woman that this is hysterical, that he had been celibate for so long and he needed her to, I'm so sorry, reawaken the man in him. dry heave dry heave dry heave and she said that he was crap in the sack so there's that it's so satisfying i love it so much can't say as i'm surprised right yeah i love that she told that to the fbii agents oh yeah like yeah sorry elliot emu or no elliott emu he was not a very good he was a good cuddler though she said that good at the cuddling but not not when it came down to it you take the wins where you can so anyway wendy wasn't having any of that So he and Joanne are just friends. For Pete's sake, it's 1979.

Men and women can be friends that sleep over in each other's hotel rooms. What kind of ridiculous old-fashioned tripe are you talking, officers? Bill is pure as the driven snow. This was Wendy's take. Bless her little heart. So she just had this unshakable belief in him. And the federal grand jury was in session in Philadelphia, which just happens every now and again,

where the grand jury will be in session and the, you know, investigators can take advantage and bring something before them. So the investigators use that opportunity to subpoena phone records, bank information, etc. for Bill and his entourage. And poor Vince had to testify. And when a grand juror asked him,

why didn't you warn Mrs. Reinhert? His response was, I just did not deal with it. Oh, my God. And that was about the best he could come up with to answer that incredibly obvious and I'm sure for him devastating question. But he, yeah, I think, I think that question he has said has haunted him his whole life and will continue to haunt him for the rest of his life.

How could it not? I'm sure it does to this day. So, yeah. But he did defend Bill. His take was that Bill was a good man who'd been dragged into a bad situation by a bad person, Dr. Smith, and insisted, you know, Bill had just been trying to protect. Susan. He called him a brilliant man. He said he's not concerned with money and things of this world. He's religious. He wants to convert to Catholicism and, you know, he just trusted the wrong person. Yeah, sure, but, but that, you know, Vince, he just couldn't yet wrap his head around the fact that Bill was not who he appeared to be. It was a slow process, I think, for all of the minions to get to that point. So when school started in the fall, the Bradfield gang got pulled

out of their classrooms and put on basically desk duty, just doing busy work, which, of course, right? Oh, yeah. Appearants would have been storming the place with pitchforks otherwise. And Bill and Vince had to share a table in the same office, which must have been awkward. Because obviously, you know, Vince is now the enemy. And Bill's control over Vince was for sure slipping by now. He would dare to ask questions sometimes, which unsurprisingly upset Bill. and finally Bill was pushed over the tipping point one day

and said, fine, I'll show you how I did it. I took the children and I gave them to and right then Vince, for some inexplicable reason, cut him off and said, oh, stop, don't make things up. Because again, at this point Vince is still holding on to his belief that Bill's motives were pure and that Jay was the bad guy and he just felt like Bill was for some reason out of fear of Jay or out of some misguided desire to protect him.

was obstructing the investigation, and that was what was frustrating him. He still couldn't wrap his head around the possibility that Bill was actually involved. So he cut him off at, I took the children and gave them two. But later, he would swear that Bill had actually said Smith. Now, it's hard to say if that really happened, or if Vince's memory had just kind of filled in the blanks later on once he finally lost the last of his illusions about his former idol. But that's what he says anyway later on.

Now, Bill started calling Vince at all hours of the night, like a creepy stalker, and he just kind of sweep wildly from betrayed to scare to furious to claiming that the FBI was tapping their phones. I mean, he was really starting to lose it. And Sue was fraying at the edges by now, too. She had her car taken in and worked on, and then the transmission kept giving out, and she was convinced that the feds had somehow sabotaged her car for some reason. I mean, why they would do that, I can't imagine. But basically what I'm saying is the investigation was not doing any of these people any favors mentally.

So all that's going on with the Bradfield folks. Now, meanwhile, the FBI was really starting to zero in on Jay Smith. And they searched his house. Now, Jay had sold his house and closed on June 22nd, which was, again, the day of the hailstorm, the day that all of this ugliness began. And he had sold it to a woman named Grace Gilmore. Now, the two of them had agreed that he could stay in his day. his basement man cave apartment until Monday, which was the day that he was going to be

sentenced for the Sears robbery, and of course the day that Susan's body ended up being discovered. So Grace had left on that Friday evening the 22nd, and she didn't come back until Sunday evening. And when she was allowed into the basement, the carpet down there, which was a beige carpet, had been soaking wet, like sodden wet. So she had cut out the carpet and had it hauled off, which sucks, by the way. Now, remember, the red fibers found in Susan's hair during the forensic exam, investigators discovered that there was red carpet in the upstairs of J. Smith's house. And, in addition to that, there was a big, giant, like, rug-sized remnant of the same red carpet

that had been rolled up in a corner of the basement when the police had searched his house during the Sears robbery investigation. So they had pictures of the basement and they could see this big remnant of that same red carpet. Remember, they found all those red fibers in her hair. So they took samples of that upstairs red carpet and guess what?

It matched the fibers in Susan's hair. Now, it is often fairly easy for a defense attorney to shut down fiber evidence because even when fibers match, there's not necessarily any way to be 100% sure that somebody else didn't have that same. carpet or whatever. But this was pretty major, even so, to the FBI and the police. They

theorized that Smith could have put Susan on that big red carpet remnant in the basement while he did whatever he did to her. And of course, they still strongly suspected that Smith had something to do with his daughter and son-in-law's disappearance. So they interviewed one of young Stephanie Smith's friends. And this interview yielded some very interesting information, namely that Jay Smith once told Stephanie and Eddie that he was going to shoot them both, chop them up, and dissolve their bodies in nitric acid. Oh, my God. Yeah. Remember those big giant jugs of nitric acid that they found in his basement during

this year's investigation? Now, why would he do such a thing? Because she and Eddie knew too much about his sex life. Along with everyone in the main line? Now, absolutely. But yeah, apparently back then, now this is interesting because this is perhaps a motive for Stephanie and Eddie's disappearance beyond cashing those welfare checks. Yeah. So what do we think here? What was he trying to hide? I mean, he would tell everyone he knew about the dog thing.

Like, that was not a secret. Not that he did it himself, though. He would act like he had like an academic interest in it, right? I guess, yeah. Yeah. I guess he had a real big chip on his shoulder about homosexuals. He definitely did. Yeah. So there could have been something like that. He could have been bisexual. I almost wonder if Stephanie could have known something like maybe he was a pedophile or maybe he had abused children. I definitely hope not.

But I really wonder what could have been a big enough secret for him? I mean, remember at this point, he is still, you know, involved with the Army Reserve, right? Had aspirations to be a general. you know, he's a prominent member of the community. So, yeah, I mean, obviously there was something that... Right. And I thought for a while that maybe they, like, knew something about previous murders that he possibly committed. Sure, absolutely. But then what would stop him from just murdering them on the spot? If this wasn't the impetus of him saying that to them? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Obviously, I think that is what he ultimately did, though.

Right. And I just... Yeah. I'm baffled. I think it could be anyone or all. of those things. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Because I wonder if maybe they stayed in the man cave and came across some pictures. Oh, yeah, exactly. That's what I'm wondering, too, if they found some kind of, or walked in on something. God only knows. I mean, it's a terrifying thought. It really is. And we're going to, we're thinking about doing an extra episode where we theorize about some of this stuff. So we'll keep you posted about that. But the investigators continue

to dig into the movements of Dr. Smith leading up to Susan's murder and the disappearance of the kids, and they discovered through Grace's statement about when she saw him at home that weekend and phone records and the time that Susan's car was seen in that hotel parking lot in Harrisburg that Smith had been unaccounted for for a swath of time that weekend, enough time to commit three murders and dispose of the bodies. So he does not have an alibi, guys. So the cops paid him a visit. And he contradicted Grace's story, saying that she'd been there on both Saturday and Sunday, which was absolutely untrue according to Grace. Now, which of these two has a reason to lie in this situation? Not Grace, I'd venture to say, right? Definitely. Most likely not her. Yeah. I'm also

baffled that she would let him stay in the house right before he's about to be convicted of a pretty violent crime. That struck me as well. I'm like, Grace, girl, really? But she wasn't there. I mean, No. But still you. Get it together, Grace. But I digress. And the picture is starting to come together for the investigators. And it was disturbing.

And it was incredibly painful to think of how badly Susan Reiner had been duped and betrayed. Some of the cops even felt like she deserved what she got because, as one of them put it, she'd walked into danger with her eyes open, holding a child. by each hand. Oh, God. It was a horrible victim-blaming sentiment, and the main investigator shut it down anytime they heard anybody say it. Which I got to give them credit for that.

Yes. You know, yeah. You and I have gotten frustrated with Susan at times during the story. Oh, absolutely, yeah. You know, it's that she wouldn't listen to her bank manager, her brother, about the investment deal. Well, we have to remember how incredibly charismatic and manipulative Bill was. Definitely.

And why would she have anything to fear from Jay Smith? Yeah, I mean, she just knew him as her former boss. And even if she did use some bad judgment and allow her heart to make the decisions instead of her head, I mean, how many of us have been guilty of that at some point in our lives? Most of us, right? Mm-hmm. Did we deserve to die for it? Did we deserve to possibly watch our children die? Hell no.

Of course. So take that. She deserved what she got sentiment and shove it right up your ass. ass, whoever said that during that investigation. That's a disgusting, disgusting statement. Yeah, she absolutely, nobody deserves that. It's one of the worst murders I've ever heard about in my life. It's horrible.

It's just, yeah, it's a nightmare. It's a living nightmare. Anyway. Anyway, I know. Anyway, you don't really transition from that. But I'll try continuing on to more forensic evidence, which is one of my favorite parts of any investigation. Always. Because it really shows how hard the cops work to paint a picture to convict these people.

Now, the cops were able to get to measure the links of the chain marks on her body by using the print on the Time magazine that was photographed in the trunk next to her body. That is so cool. It's incredible. Yeah. And from there, they could determine the size of the links and the size of the links that changed Susan were the exact same size as to. the chains that were once found in J. Smith's basement. Dang. Equally intriguing, investigators swept up the carpet pad of the basement and found a

hair matching Susan's length and color. And if I remember, it actually went a little further than just matching the length and color. Like, if I remember rightly from Wambaw's book, there were 25 comparison points, and this hair matched, I believe it was 21 out of the 25. Oh, yeah. So that's pretty significant. And obviously this is 1979, and if I remember rightly, there was no bulb on the hair.

So even if there was DNA, they couldn't have tested for DNA because you need that little bulb of skin at the end of a hair. But still consistent, most definitely, forensically with Susan's hair. Yeah, and this is when the brakes really started coming in the case. A tow truck driver was called in to pull an abandoned car and found that it belonged to one's Sherry Smith, Jay's youngest daughter. The guy called it in, recognizing Jay's name. And in the car, they found a very, very interesting letter from Jay to his dying wife. Despite how sick she was, the letter was little more than a series of instructions that looked an awful lot like evidence disposal. For example, and I quote, Capri, first clean it up, all caps, thoroughly.

Steph, we must throw away most of the stuff. Don't keep things because they seem too good to throw away. I can't stress the importance of this. Clean out, then clean up. Rugg. Rugg. Downstairs rug is full of matchsticks, cigarettes, old strands of marijuana, etc. From Eddie and Steph and their friends.

It must go. And it continues But Wow I'm just trying to picture Poor Steffy Smith Yeah Who is riddled with cancer

On her deathbed Hauling up a rug Yep From the basement This poor woman I know Loyal to the end Yeah I guess

It just makes me sad And he had like He made some cursory little Comment at the beginning of the letter about I hope they got that cluster near your spine knocked out, you know, obviously cluster of tumors. Anyway, I'm going to need you to dispose of a bunch of evidence for me. God, just cold as ice.

Oh, man. Hey, how are you? By the way, I need you to do all these favors for me. Thanks, bye. Love you, bye. So they found the letter, and they went to see Smith in prison to get a handwriting sample who knew what was happening and then proceeded to so obviously fake his handwriting sample, it was almost hilarious. They knew watching him

right that it wasn't going to be real. Yeah, he was trying to write in this like shaky old man handwriting. It was just really, really transparent what he was trying to do. He's writing with his left hand instead of subtle. Yeah, real subtle, Jay. They, on top of the letter, they found a little green pin with a white letter P. It seemed kind of out of place in Jay's car. And, At first, they couldn't place it, but eventually they found someone who recognized it. It was a pin given to visitors at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The museum, interestingly enough, that Karen Reiner had visited on a field trip with her class in the spring before she disappeared. One year after Susan's murder, Jay Smith was sentenced to another three and a half to seven years in prison for the attempted Sears robbery.

It was a lot more than he was expecting to get, and it seemed to shake him up a fair. bit, which was rare for Jay. He wasn't the type to be shaken up by anything. I bet he'd be shaken up if he knew they found that pin. Oh, oh boy. Yeah. So after that, after long last, came the turning of the Sioux. Nice. I see what you did there. The turn of the Sue. Yes. It fits so well because it is Gothic, definitely. Yeah, it's a great Gothic literature book. It's really short. if you're into that, read it. Yeah, it's a ghost story. It's turning of the screw, not turning of the sue. Yeah, it's a great ghost story.

But after 15 years, as Bill's living, sounding board, and confidant, workhorse, cook, and made, one afternoon, Sue Myers went to Bill's lawyer's office with him for a meeting. At one point, in a nasty, sniggering locker room sort of tone, Bill told his attorney that Susan Reiner was the closest thing to a nymphomaniac he'd ever seen. Gross. And for some reason, the light bulb finally went off for Sue Myers. Bill hated women. Yep.

Did he despise her as much as he did Susan Reiner? Yeah. While she may not have been quite ready to consider that he'd be capable of murdering two children, she could certainly start to see that he had reason to want Susan dead. So, she did what she should have done years ago. Thank God. She called up a locksmith. And changed the locks.

Nice. Yes, ma'am. Finally. Bill hit the roof. Well, not really because he didn't have a roof anymore. But regardless, he was pissed. And he ran off to go live with his parents. You know, the mean toy truck people.

Ouch. Poor Bill. Poor, poor Bill. Back to the scene of the crime with toy truck. And this is my mom. my favorite part of the story. She didn't let him take anything but his clothes. Nice. Which meant she had a mountain of evidence, mostly paperwork. And when the task force showed up to search the house, Sue was chattier than ever. She told them about the

will she had once found belonging to Susan Reiner. She showed them letters from Wendy, Joanne, and Susan. She told them about the journal in which he had mentioned that he'd like to kill Susan. And she directed them to a bunch of papers in which they found what would be referred to ever after as the My Danger conspiracy letter. This letter was written in a cipher code because a fucking course it was. Of course it was. Except it was the easiest code in the world to crack because Bill had written the translation just above the letters. Okay, Bill, honey, what's the point then? I'm wondering if he wanted to, like, write it, like, perfectly on a separate paper.

Yeah, it was a draft. And, again, we can't possibly dispose of anything. No. God Almighty. But it read, Does FBI know V has it? Has V removed ball and destroyed or better claim whole thing stolen? Then get rid of it?

Did I sell it to you? FBI must not get it. Does FBI know you miss it? nailed it? Can you think up substitution or substitute saying wait and tell V or have her say it's stolen? Immunity improbable. My danger conspiracy. Now, they believed that V was a nickname for Ice Queen Joanne. Yeah, because it didn't fit with Vince. So, yeah, they came to believe that Joanne was V. I don't know what it stood for. I'd love to know, wouldn't you? Oh, God, I would pay so much money. Maybe Vixen.

Maybe. I don't know. Based on what we know about Joanne. Because they eventually did know that V, that Joanne V removed the ball and destroyed the old one. Exactly. So immunity improbable, my danger, conspiracy. I take that to me, and you tell me if you agree, that he is saying to himself there that I'm not going to get immunity. They're not going to let me, you know, like testify against Smith and go free. My danger is a conspiracy charge.

I would totally agree. with you. I had never considered what that meant. I just thought he was a terrible writer, but no, that makes total sense. That's the name of my next album, Whitney. But, you know, I do think by Bill and the Bradfields, my danger conspiracy. But no, I think that, and interestingly, to me, that suggests, because obviously these are his private notes to himself in code. Why would he lie to himself? So I kind of think this most likely means that he wasn't involved in the actual murders themselves, that his role was as a conspirator. Of course, I mean, I think he was certainly very directly involved, but maybe didn't necessarily get his hands dirty. And Whitney and I have had this discussion back and

forth multiple times about how we think this whole thing went down. And we're going to discuss that in a separate episode later. But I don't think Bill is the type to do. get his hands dirty like that. To handle the wet work, as the, as assassins put it. Right. Yeah. I would agree with that. I know that's gross, but that's what, that's what spies call it. I like, I like that. Yeah. I think it fits. But yeah, it's, it's an idea, man.

And it's also, this also shows how stupid Bill Bradfield is. Because he thinks that, oh, my, my dangerous conspiracy, which is clearly the lesser charge. Yeah, it's a very serious charge, actually. You're a moron. You're just as culpable if you're a conspirator as you are, if you do the murder yourself, but he might not have realized that. Oh, probably not. He probably just knew a fancy word and wanted to use it. But, and

you know, on the back of the letter because he doesn't know how to not leave evidence everywhere. Yeah. Bill had written Smith, but then scratched it out and replaced it with P of D, which of course probably means Prince of Darkness. Yep,

Prince of P of D. Good Lord. And then, Or a really bad early 2000s, uh, rap rock band. Yeah. And then Bill did something toweringly stupid. He tried to file for the estate of Susan Reinhard. To which Ken Reinhard, her ex-husband and her brother Pat Gallagher responded with, uh, nope, and moved to block him, of course. And so what happened was there are provisions in place to protect children in cases like this.

And the court's job is to assess the entire value of the estate, which I'm sure Bradfield was not expecting to happen. But see, by now, the investigators had uncovered this phony investment deal for the 25K. And they'd become aware also that Susan was missing an expensive diamond ring that her mother had left her. Now, I won't go into detail about how, but there was evidence to suggest that Bill had either stolen it or scammed her out of it. Now, Radfield could have calmed the whole situation down if he had just agreed to reimburse the estate. himself, but is he smart campers? No. No, he is not. So instead, this dumbass took the stand and lied his ass off about everything. He said Susan was a woman with no sense of self-preservation despite his best efforts to steer her away from risky behavior. All his same old BS about how she

was running out and having rough sex and stuff. He denied ever staying overnight with her. He denied ever discussing an investment with her, he denied knowing about the insurance policies, he denied knowing about the will. All of this was provably, easily provably false. They had ample evidence to contradict every one of those lies. The cops had evidence of the credit memo for the fake investment deal. The bank manager remembered Susan coming in and insisting on taking out $25,000 in cash. You guys remember that from a previous episode. Neighbors remembered seeing Bill's car at Susan's house overnight. They remembered seeing him leaving her house in the morning, straightening his tie. I mean, there was plenty to contradict. And this was just a gift from heaven to the investigators.

Bill lied so much, and he was under oath. So now they had him on the record. So now they realized they could charge him for theft by deception for that fraudulent investment deal. So they got the wheels turning on that. And when Chris Poppus saw the testimony on the news, he was floored. His His hero, Bill, had lied about everything. And shortly afterwards, Bill summoned Chris and Wendy to take a little stroll with him so they could kind of get their stories straight for when the police wanted to talk to him again. And Bill was so paranoid by this point that he could barely function. He was just wild-eyed and his beard was all over the place.

And he literally wanted to script out Chris's grand jury testimony, like, anticipate every possible question he could anticipate if he was called. and it was at that point that Chris finally decided that maybe, maybe it's time to talk to the police. Thank goodness. Thank God, right? Another one bites the dust. So once Chris finally called the Reiner Task Force, they were so happy they practically threw a ticker tape parade. Because if they thought Vince had good info, Chris had way more information than Vince had. Chris had actually gotten his hands dirty and a bunch of money clean, if you recall.

He implicated Wendy, too, because she'd been in. involved in the safety deposit box and in holding on to some of that 25K in cash, and also because she just heard so much of Bill's Jay Smith hitman apprentice talk. And Chris gave the police the evidence that Bill had left at his house. This included a list in Bill's handwriting about his worries about the grand jury. Now, this is a direct quote from Bill's list borrowed of course from Wambaw's book. Letter stolen, mail fraud, fingerprints on money. I was there during insurance man's call. Visits to New York. Calls to New York and from. Visits to Annapolis. Calls to and from Annapolis. Overnight depositions. Sharon Lee, Pat Schnur, Girls, Pamela, Susan, Joanne, Wendy, Kathy.

We don't even know who Pamela and Kathy are, right? Maybe one of those ones was the one that said he was bad in bed. Unorthodox life. Cuba. Killing. Bank deposit slips. Names. Handwriting. No partial finger prints on car. Wendy and Motel, Joanne and Room, calls from Annapolis and to Annapolis, sailing course, in Reinhard's room constantly, Reinhard's books in my bookcase, car missing, depositions, Smith, FBI, Reinhard's people, Vince, gun, St. David's, lured and killed kids and taped her. So let that last line sink in Lured and killed kids and taped her Frickin yikes

So much yikes I can't I get chills every time Yeah So creepy So Chris also gave them a note From J to Bill discussing the alibi for the Sears robbery And how Bill might help people remember that they'd seen the two of them there that day. And it was shady as hell. I mean,

it was very obvious that the wording of the letter that they were both well aware that this was bullshit and that Bill hadn't seen Jay there that day and everything. And they dusted this letter for fingerprints and found three. One from Chris, of course, because he was the one who handed it to them. One from Bill. And one, hallelujah, from Jay Smith. They'd been hoping so hard for a concrete connection, something other than hearsay from Bill's entourage between Bradfield and Smith, and now, between this and the phone tag system notes that Vince had given them, they felt like they had it. And their theory of the crime was starting to come together. They knew that very likely it would take both Bradfield and Smith to corral a terrified woman in her two children.

They figured Bill probably lured Susan and the kids out of the house with a phone call. And when they arrived at the location where he told her to go, wherever that was, Bill and Jay had worked together, to subdue them, and Jay had taken them back to his place, back to his basement of horrors and that red rug. And they figured the killers couldn't let Susan die until Bill could establish his alibi at the shore. So it was at least a day and maybe as much as 36 hours before she was murdered. And they knew from her body that she'd fought back, that she'd been chained, that she'd suffered. And the inevitable question that I'm sure they asked themselves and that I know we've asked

ourselves is, did she watch her children die? Did they watch her? It's just staggering to think about. And in almost 20 years of true crime obsession, one of the worst things I've ever had to consider. Mm-hmm. It's, it's, I, every time, I have tears in my eyes right now just thinking about it. It's absolutely staggering. And the betrayal of it is probably the worst part when that moment that she realized how badly she'd been betrayed. Yeah. And that's just a thumbnail sketch. As Katie said, we are going to get into this in a little more detail and kind of map it out a little bit more, most likely in a later episode. But I wanted to share just that with you here because,

that was the theory that was starting to take place in the minds of the investigators. Now, even through all of this, now that he's working with the police, Chris couldn't believe that Bill was capable of murder. He spent much of his time in questioning, chatting about how any man that admired Thomas Aquinas could never hurt anyone. I mean, just the naivete of these people is astonishing. Bill had a sixth sense for when one of his posse was betraying him. always seem to figure it out right away, which is not surprising given how good manipulators have

to be at reading people. And he would alternate between threats and begging and guilt-tripping. And after Chris turned on him, he called him up one night and said, in this faint little voice like a dying duck, is that you, Chris? Is that my friend? I don't understand while you're doing this to me, Chris. Why does my friend turn against me? They'll trick you, Chris. Chris, they'll get you. Thank you. Thank you. That was my performance as dying Duck Bill Bradfield on the phone. On core, encore. Thank you. To which Chris said, somebody's already gotten to me, Bill. That's somebody, is you. Click. And thus ended the friendship of Bill and Chris Pappas. Snap. Snap. So Van Nort around this time decided that he was going to not only arrest Bill for theft by deception for the phony.

investment deal, but he was going to bring in little Wendy as well, because her little fingerprints were all over it. She was the one, she'd been involved in that safety deposit box, and she'd stored some of that cash. So she was in it up to her neck as far as he was concerned. Now, one of the FBI guys really got into it with Van Nord over this, objected to arresting Wendy because she was just a kid, and she was a sweet kid and everything. And Van Nort basically told him, well, I'm so sorry, you disapprove, but she was a conspirator. So we're going to go ahead and bring her in. And this was one of the best possible moves he could have made, because of course what he was hoping for is that as soon as she got a taste of getting fingerprinted and

mugshot it, she'd say, uh, what do you need to know? Right? So in May of 1981, Bill Bradfield was arrested on the theft charges. And when they showed up on his parents' doorstep, he asked if he was being charged with murder. And when they told him, no, that they were arresting him for fraud and theft by deception. The color just came rushing back into his face. He was so relieved that it was for theft and not murder, which I think right there is pretty telling. Wendy turned herself in and they did the whole dog and pony show of getting her mugshot, fingerprinting her everything. And after a few days, unsurprisingly, she agreed to testify against Bill in exchange for immunity. And of course, Van Nort did his little victory dance and Niner, Neener, Neenert at the FBI. See?

I told you what would happen And they had to admit like, yeah, okay, you were right, shut up Wendy's testimony, of course, would shoot down all of Bradfield's lies About saving that money up for years This was my life savings that had nothing to do with Susan, blah, blah, blah Because she could show that the bills that she was in possession of That she'd been, you know, stashing at her parents' house Were not in print

Until well after Bill would have saved that money So there was your proof right there and there was an FBI accountant that said that Bill had no cash potential of that magnitude in any of his accounts. There's no way that he could have saved that much money in the time that he said he saved it. And yeah, and Chris came in and testified about, you know, seeing that money in the trunk of his car and everything. And it did not take the jury long. It was like 90 minutes of deliberation. He was found guilty on the fraud and theft by deception charges. And I love this. The courtroom broke into applause when he

was convicted. People were just like, here, here, because he's such an asshole. And everybody just hated this man. Because, of course, he went and got up on the stand and made an ass of himself and, you know, threw his weight around. And so everybody broke out into applause.

Unfortunately, Bill was let out on bail pending sentencing. So he didn't get hauled off immediately. He went back to Mommy's house to wait. And we'll cut it off there for tonight, campers, with Jay Smith's safely tucked away, in prison, Bill headed there soon for the theft of Susan's money, and next time we're going to see what happens when both these guys make friends in prison. And we know at least one of them

has a big mouth. What might these prison pals have to tell investigators? Well, we'll tell you next time. Meanwhile, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. So we want to end this episode by giving a special shout out to some of our favorite people, our patrons from Patreon. We'll be doing this over the course of the next few episodes, giving some shout-outs to some people. We'll start with our first two patrons, Mia and Jennifer. You can follow us on Twitter at TC Campfire,

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