True Crime Campfire - Episode 8: The Puppet Master and the Prince of Darkness, Part 8: Changing of the Guard

Episode Date: October 18, 2019

In this episode, the investigators close in on Bill Bradfield, and he is finally arrested for conspiracy to commit murder. His arrest is one of the top 10 best-ever arrest stories, complete with night vision goggles and a cute dog. Bill goes to trial, and of COURSE insists on testifying on his own behalf. Sources available on social media.Follow us, campers!Patreon: https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. So, campers, last time we saw Bill Bradfield supporters begin to peel off one by one as they slowly realized they needed to protect their own butts. First vents, then Chris, Chris, then Sue, broke Bill's Spengali-like hold over them and started getting chummy with the investigators. Bill was getting more and more wild-eyed and paranoid, and clinging to his few remaining supporters. Meanwhile, the FBI was poking around in Jay Smith's old life, his old house, and his old car, and finding some very compelling forensic and circumstantial evidence. More blue combs, like the one found under Susan's body, red fibers matching the ones in her hair, and a letter to his dying wife, Steffie, that looked suspiciously like a request

to dispose of evidence. And they'd finally found a couple of letters that cemented the connection between Smith and Bill Bradfield, something they had thus far been unable to prove. The investigation was revving into high gear. The Puppet Master and the Prince of Darkness part eight, The Changing of the Guard. So today we have to open on a bit of a bummer, folks. On October 1st, 1981, our curmudgeonly lead detective, Joe Van Nort, who we love, right? Yes, totally. Who had been kind of slipping lately, getting kind of scatterbrained and missing things that he ordinarily would never miss,

failed to qualify on his test at the shooting range for the first time in his whole career. And he was, of course, grumpy about it, as he was about everything. And when he went back to retake the test, he had a massive heart attack right there at the range and died. Ugh. Which is really sad. I mean, he was young. He was only in his 50s, and he was the love of his wife's life and one of the best detectives in the state. And a hell of a character.

So we're going to pour one out for Joe Van Nort. Rest easy, you old grouch. RIP. And, you know, it's tragic. but I also can't imagine him dying any other way. Yeah, absolutely, with his boots on, right? Yeah, exactly. Or, you know, I do wish Snookers would have been there with them.

Oh, the cat, yes, his beloved, his beloved cat. Oh, my goodness. And his death hit his partner, Jack Holtz, hard, as you can imagine. I mean, Van Nort had been Holtz's mentor. And Holtz was determined not to let the FBI or anybody else take over Van Nort's investigation. he knew how much his old mentor would have hated that so right after van nort's death he went to the feds and told him look i'm in charge now and i mean broke no resistance and van nort would have been proud of him i'm sure and when holt started going through van nort's files he realized how much his partner had been deteriorating before his death so van nort had missed some stuff that he never in a million years would have missed before and one of the biggest examples of that is there was a note in there that he must have misplaced in 1979. And it was about the two businessmen who saw Susan Reinhard's body in the open hatchback

of her car in that hotel parking lot around 7 p.m. on Sunday evening the night before her body was discovered. Now, you guys will probably remember that from our little intro in episode one. The guys had called the police after they saw Susan's murder on the news and told them about seeing the car. And this was huge because it established an important piece of the time. timeline, which is that Susan's body had been in that parking lot as early as seven on that Sunday, June 24th. And it clarified for Holtz why Jay Smith had been calling his lawyer's office and his lawyer's home that night. He was obviously trying to establish an alibi. Now, based on the time it took to drive from that hotel parking lot to Smith's house, Holtz realized that Smith must have

just missed being seen by those two businessmen who saw Susan's car that evening, which I think is super creepy, don't you? Oh, God. It's like a horror movie visual of like the killer watching people from the bushes. I know, it's super creepy. So Jack Holtz had always been committed to this case, but I think Van Nort's death really galvanized him in a way and made him even more determined to get Bill and Jay. Now, as we know, Jay Smith was cool in his heels in prison for the Sears robbery, of course, and Bill was out on bail pending his sentencing on that theft by deception charge that he had just been convicted of for scamming that $25,000

out of Susan Reiner before her murder. And Bill was just beside himself about his loyal band of Lemmings turning traitor on him. Now this is so gross. One night he was at a dinner party. For some reason, people were still inviting him to do stuff.

And he said, The key to my dilemma is Ezra Pound, two cantos in particular. It's that I've loved my friends imperfectly. Oh, God. Hmm. You've loved your friends imperfectly.

Well, you know, I'd have to say I agree with that, Bill, in that you led them unknowingly into a murder conspiracy and put them all in a position where they could have been charged with all sorts of crimes if the police hadn't realized what a manipulative lying shitbag you are. I hate this guy so much. He's literally the worst. And the best part about this dinner party is it was at an exclusive. exclusive, like, clubhouse for lawyers.

Gross. So he was, like, not only being invited places, but he was invited to exclusive places. Oh, what the hell, people? What the hell? Upper Marion. Why was he not immediately tart and feathered and run out of town on a rail? That's what should have happened. Okay, but be honest.

If somebody in your, you know, orbit committed a murder and then was out on bail and going to trial. Would you not want to have them out to dinner? You know what? Not that you mention it, yeah, probably, because I'm an odd person. And I'd want to pick their brain. Yeah, no, you're right. You're absolutely right. You'd be able to quote him saying stuff like, I loved my friends imperfectly. But I still hate him. No one can ever take that hatred away from me. I hold it dear. And this should come as no surprise to anyone. The investigators were starting to realize what they were dealing with in Bill Bradfield. And they knew that a guy like

Kim could not keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it. So they knew he was about to go to jail, probably not for very long, unfortunately, but they hoped it wouldn't take long. And Holtz made what would turn out to be a startlingly accurate prediction. He said that Bill would find himself a friend in prison. He'd be a big, street-smart, African-American guy, and eventually Bill would spill his guts to him about the case. And then hopefully they'd be able to talk the guy into telling them what he said. and damned if he didn't turn out to be precisely correct. I mean, like, he had a crystal ball because in November of 81, Bill began serving a, this is pathetic, four-month sentence for scamming Susan.

Four months. That's all he got. For scamming her out of 25 grand. So enter Proctor Noel. Now, Proctor Noel was 24 years old. He had a history of petty crimes, and he was serving a sentence for robbery. And just as Holtz had predicted, Noel was a big guy, an amateur boxer who once boxed golden gloves, and one day Bill passed by and saw Noel playing chess with another guy in the recreation room at the prison,

and Bill sidled up and asked if Noel would mind teaching him how to play. Now, at Cambers, Bill already knew how to play chess. He was actually pretty good at chess. So this was just his way of worm in his way in with Proctor Noel, because he is an oily prick from hell, who we were. hate. So they became chess buddies and Bill started working his icky little manipulative magic on Proctor Noel. So the first thing he did was he led him to believe that he had money. And he promised Noel that when he got out, he'd buy an apartment building and let Noel manage it. Now that's a

pretty sweet little carrot to dangle, right? Totally. And Bill could no more afford that than he could a damn private island, but of course Proctor Noel didn't know that. And before long, Noel was stepping in to protect Bill from any other inmates that tried to give him trouble. So we got a bromance of Bruin. Bill's got a bodyguard, which I'm sure he needed because I suspect people despised him in prison. Oh, God, I would have beat his ass. Yes, ma'am. So sadly, Bill got out of prison after a month or so, again, pathetic punishment for robbing a woman of the better part of her inheritance for her dead mother.

and as soon as he was out the investigators wasted no time making contact with proctor noel now at first he didn't want anything to do with them he just wanted to keep his head down service time but the thing was noel was a dad he had two kids of his own and the investigators worked on him from that angle they sat him down they showed him pictures of karen and michael reynert and they said look man we've got two kids missing what if they were yours and two days later proctor Noel called them. He said, and this is according to the Joseph Wambaw book, Echoes in the darkness, I know stuff, but it scares me. He don't want to get a reputation as a snitch, because you know, snitches get stitches and all that. Sure, sure. And that's a real thing in prison. I mean,

you get a reputation as a snitch. You could seriously be in some trouble. So the investigators arranged to bring him in for a quote-unquote court date with other inmates so that they could sit him down somewhere privately without other inmates knowing and hear what he had to say. And he had quite a bit to say. And we'll find out what in a few minutes. We're going to put a pin in that for a minute. But in exchange for a good word to the judge in his case, which ended up eventually resulting in a recommendation for an alcohol rehab program instead of more prison time because Noel was an alcoholic, Proctor Noel agreed to testify against Bill Bradfield. So now we're cooking, campers. So Katie, what happened next? All right. So Bill was back out of jail,

living in a guest house on his parents' property with Ice Queen Joanne, loyal to the end. Ugh. Blech. Ugh. And on April 6th, the investigators finally got their warrant to arrest bill for the murders of Susan, Karen, and Michael Reiner. Now, keep in mind, the fact that the kids, Karen and Michael, were part of the indictment, was a little unusual. No body homicide prosecutions were really, really rare until fairly recently. Yeah.

But it was clear to the investigators, the prosecutor, and the grand jury that those kids had met the same fate as their mom had, even if their poor little bodies hadn't been found yet. I digress. So they planned the arrest really carefully because they'd heard Bill had a huge guard dog that might attack them. And Chris Poppus gave them a tip that said that Bill had guns at the house. So, you know, they wanted to stay frosty just in case. Oh, sure.

They posted up in the wee hours of the morning and watched the guest house with night vision goggles for a while, which is a bit hilarious to me. It does seem a bit much. But I love the image of that, like them posted up on the hillside with the night vision goggles, watching the guest house. Right. You'd think they were like taken down a political figure, not a school teacher. Or my boss or something.

Shortly before sunrise, they went to Bill's neighbor's house and woke everybody up. to use their phone. They told the neighbors that they were working on a burglary case and the neighbor said, you shouldn't waste your time with burglaries. You know there are murderers around here? So clearly, Bill's reputation had already preceded him. And this is the best kind of little clever piece of police work. They had one of the female troopers call Bill's guest house from the neighbor's phone. And Joanne answered. And apparently was used to women calling. for Bill, which... Oh, I'm sure.

Joanne, get your shit together. Right. But whatever. She was used to women calling and told the trooper, oh, yeah, no, he's not here. He's staying at a friend's house a few towns over, working on a business venture, selling diet products. Can we take a moment to digest that, campers? I love this so much.

Bill, motherfucking Bradfield, was selling diet crap for a little. a pyramid scheme. It's just so sad. It's sad, but so delicious. It's wonderful. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Well, more accurately, how the never mighty have fallen even further than they already had. Yeah.

Ha, ha, Bill, you massive loser. God. Oh, my God. So this big, you know, project selling diet stuff wasn't. going to be back until the next day. So they kind of decided, screw it. Let's just pack up and go grab them at the friend's place right now. So they did. And all their Kevlar vested, heat packing, ready for anything, Elliot Emu might throw at them glory. It was still dark. They pulled up and saw Bill's VW bug out front, parked badly, by the way, because of course it was.

Because of course Bill Bradfield was a bad driver too. Of course, right. On top of everything. So Bill's buddy answered the door and said, oh, Bill's, you know, still sleeping. So they crept down the hall with their guns drawn, ready to rumble if necessary. And as they swung the bedroom door open, they caught a glimpse of shiny dog eyes and shiny dog teeth. One of the cops said, if it moves, shoot it. And Bill, who'd woken up when the door flew open, thought they were talking about him. and he was lying there with huge eyes, trying not to breathe.

I love that he thought that the cops had referred to him as it. Yes. Meanwhile, the dog started wagging his tail and trying to lick the officer's faces. His name was Traveler. He was a good boy. I bet he was a good boy. This was the attack dog they'd been warned about. And like Bill, Traveler's reputation as a hard ass was.

grossly exaggerated. And let's be honest, it's not Traveler's fault that his daddy is an asshole. No, Traveler didn't deserve it. I suspect Traveler wasn't even Bill's dog. I think it was probably his parents' dog. Yeah, I suspect so too. Hopefully Traveler went on to have a long and happy life. Yeah, we can only hope. Good boy. As you can imagine, Detective Holtz practically reached Nirvana grading the arrest warrant to Bill. Oh, I bet. Conspiracy to commit murder with persons or persons unknown. Oh, yes. Just like a hug from the universe. Oh, my God.

While Holtz was reading the warrant, Bill turned his infamous glare on him. The prosecutor in this case, Rick Guida, young, inexperienced, but passionate and determined to nail Bill to the wall, had told Holtz to beware of this deadly glare. And when Bill had turned the stare on Guida, Guida, like, practically fell over. and so he claimed right yeah yeah yeah you gotta love that prosecutorial sarcasm be careful be careful he's got a death stare it's like he's a schoolteacher for god's sake so bill glared at holz probably hoping he burst into flames and holz tried not to laugh while he finished reading the arrest warrant meanwhile the other officers were down on the floor playing with the dog let me tell you campers there is literally

Nothing I do not love about this image. I know. It's the best arrest story ever. It totally is because they went in thinking it was going to be like... Yeah. They were going to throw down. Yeah. Going after the Godfather and it was like, oh, we get dog cuddles and Bill Bradfield

looks like a fucking dumbass. It's like he's so scared he's about to piss himself and then they're just down on the floor and the dog's licking their faces and just one of the bill trying to glare. Oh, Lord. So I know it seems impossible, but it does get better. It sure does. Because when they got Bill to the jail in Harrisburg and took the cuffs off him, Bill, like the giant man, baby, we all know he is, decided to lay face down on the floor. And I guess I have to assume knowing Bill that it was intended as some form of martyr-like nonviolent protest or something.

But he probably thought it was what Ezra Pound would do. He probably had a he probably had a bracelet that said WWEP. You know he did, or he would have it if they had existed back then. What would Ezra do? Face plant on the floor, apparently, is what he thought Ezra would do. Well, Holtz knelt down next to him, grabbed a hold of his beard, and pulled his dumb ass back up to his feet. He said, if you're going to act like a baby, I'm going to treat you like one. And Bill tried to stare on him again.

And Holtz told him not to waste the energy. He said, that bullshit only works on intelligent people. Now, okay, okay, obviously we don't endorse any form of police brutality. Officers really should not be pulling people's spirits. But am I going to admit that I'd love to give it a good yank myself? Yeah, yeah, I'm going to do that. What about you, Whitney? Yeah, me too.

I would love to give Bill Bradfield a swirly. Remember swirlies? Yes. I'd like to give him an atomic wedgy. and shove them into a locker. God, that's like, yeah. That's like bucket list level stuff. Almost definitely.

I would build a time machine just to achieve that. Yes, absolutely. So pulling him up by his beard, I mean, is it ideal conduct for an officer, no. But is it also hilarious? Yes. But that night, Holtz got to call Jovan North's widow, Betty, and tell her that they finally got Bradfield. And that night, Billy B fell asleep to the sound. of other inmates chanting.

Bradfield, you killed my school teacher. Bradfield, you killed those little babies. Oh, it's creepy. So it was on. Time to go to trial. Yes, ma'am. The judge was a guy called Isaac S. Garb. He was pretty well respected, his reputation as a fair judge who liked to keep things running

smoothly and efficiently. As we told you already, the prosecutor was Rick Guida. Kind of green but passionate, and, you know, he wanted to shove Bill into a locker as much as we do. He also had kind of the ego on him, and that's something that'll cause some pretty significant problems later in the story. Bill's defense attorney was a guy named Joshua Locke. He was a public defender, and like the prosecutor, he was young and not super experienced. Locke made the mistake early on of getting personally involved with the case. For some baffling reason, he really liked and admired Bill and thought he was brilliant.

Oh, boy. Sure. Boy. Side note, Locke thought Joanne, still loyal to a fall and sticking by our man, was a frickin' weirdo, which it's really funny. I find that really hilarious. I suspect she was most definitely a freaking weirdo. Yeah. You've got to be.

The one remaining disciple. Yeah. Locke was one of those defense attorneys who really had to believe in his clients in a sense to defend him. And wow, did he work hard for Bill Bradfield. According to Wambaw, Locke spent 1,500 hours on Bill's case. Dang. Wow. Dang.

That's amazing. That's a lot. For a public defender, especially. And didn't he get like $2 an hour? I mean, that's 70s money. Yeah. That's pathetic. And he ended up, like, buying like a writing desk with it or something, right?

Correct. Yeah. He ended up buying, like, an antique desk because he, you know, he ended up buying, like, an antique desk. because he, yeah, he was getting paid $2 an hour. That's how little he paid from that 1,500 hours of work on Bill's case. It was a passion job for him. Yeah, I mean, he really seemed to believe the guy was, which is astonishing to me, believed he was innocent. Yeah, well, I suspect Bill worked some of his magic on this guy, but...

You know, I honestly, I wish we had footage of Bill talking so that we could get a taste of this, like, supposed magic that he had. I mean, certainly not everybody fell for it, but plenty of people seem to. They sure did. But I think it's about time we get into the trial. Ooh, baby. How did that go? Okay, well, prosecutor Guida lined up his witnesses from weakest to strongest. So his strategy was to finish on a high note right before sending that jury to deliberate,

which is actually pretty smart. I think last impression is probably better than first impression in a trial. Yes. Now, he knew this would be a circumstantial case, but there were some forensics, too. They were a little bit, you know, less than ideal, but there were some forensics, and he put them first. Now, unfortunately for the state, defense attorney Locke was really strong on forensics. He had a strong background and had a good understanding of it. And early on, he got one of Guida's witnesses to tell the jury that Susan Reinhardt's time of death could have been his late as Sunday afternoon.

Now, that was a time when we know for sure that Bill was at Cape May with Vince, Chris, and Sue Myers on their little weekend vacation. So, you know, that was obviously a point in Bill's favor. Locke also established that the blue comb that they found under Susan's body was pretty common that there were 20,000 of the dang things floating around and it could have come from anywhere. And this was important for Locke because that comb was a clear association with Dr. Smith, with whom we know Bill had a strong connection and who was the obvious other conspirator in this conspiracy to commit murder charge. Now, he wasn't necessarily named, but obviously this is who was being implied was the other conspirator. Locke also pointed out that there were fingerprints on Susan's car that didn't belong to any of the major players in the case.

So this is important because obviously he wanted to leave the possibility out there that they could have belonged to Kinky Alex, the guy that Susan had supposedly been meeting for rough sex, the completely fictional guy, let's be honest, whom Bill made up out of whole cloth, to dirty Susan up and make her seem like a likely murder victim, or to anyone else. Right. Now, my guess is most of our cars probably have some unknown fingerprints on them, you know, from the Kroger parking lot or wherever, but it was a fair point for Bill's defense. There's unknown fingerprints on the car. And they wanted to create reasonable doubt by suggesting other possible suspects besides Jay Smith. And there was also some talk that Jay might have just done this on his own, without any input from Bill Bradfield, of course. Then there was a hair that the investigators had found in Jay Smith's basement consistent with Susan Reinhard's hair. Locke didn't try to refute the science on this. He just argued that because the bulb on the end of the hair was intact, that that meant it had most likely fallen out rather than been pulled out. Um, okay. So first of all, no. That's not even true. And even if that were the case, which it is not, that doesn't even begin to disprove that Jay Smith killed Susan.

I mean, Locke's implication was clearly, well, Bradfield says Susan and Smith were dating, so who knows what they might have done on that basement rug. Ew. But of course, that applies just as easily to a scenario where Smith chained Susan up on that rug and assaults her there. So I don't think he, for me, for me, certainly wouldn't have scored a lot of points with that, but okay, whatever. And quick reminder, by the way, that DNA was not a thing back then.

Right. So you probably heard bulb and you thought, oh, well, couldn't they test? Well, no, not then they couldn't. Now, as forensic cases go, this one was pretty weak sauce for the prosecution, but fortunately for them, they had a approximately a metric assload of sweet, sweet circumstantial evidence to fall back on.

And Katie, you and I have talked about this many times that some people kind of poo-poo circumstantial evidence, but honestly, I will take a strong circumstantial case any day over a battle of the forensic experts where the jury has no way of knowing who's right and who's wrong

about whether this piece of pollen really came from this field or whether this DNA sample's been compromised or whatever, right? I mean, it's not that that evidence isn't valuable, it is, but so often it ends up as a battle of the experts. Right. And yeah, there's the CSI effect where people expect all this forensic evidence. And you can find an expert to say pretty much anything. And I'm not saying that their opinions are less valid, but you see this in cases like the Scott Peterson trial or the Casey Anthony trial where the defense puts up these, you know, valid witnesses for the

forensics and it adds some confusion to the jury. And I think that a circumstantial case where it is most likely that the person sitting trial committed the murder is the strongest kind of case. I agree. I mean, and honestly, what you're talking about where, you know, the defense has their expert, the prosecution is their expert, what jurors will often tell you after the fact is that those things will just cancel each other out. Because how do you know you're not a scientist? So you hear what sounds like, you know, reasonable evidence from two experts, and it just becomes irrelevant. Whereas when you have a whole tapestry of circumstances, someone lying about stuff, they shouldn't be lying about, behavioral evidence, the actions and movements of the defendant at certain times,

if you have enough of that, a very clear picture can start to emerge. And when there's enough circumstantial evidence, it just becomes, as you said a minute ago, a matter of common sense. It's Occam's razor. It's the most likely explanation is probably the right one. And remember, a guilty verdict is not based on no doubt. It's beyond a reasonable doubt. So that brings us back to common sense, right? Yeah. And you can, like, you can go to trial and your lawyer can say, it was aliens that did it. But that's not, that's not reasonable doubt. That is a doubt. Right. Right. You know, it was Santa Claus. Well, that's not a reasonable doubt of who did it. Just because something is possible doesn't make it likely. Exactly. Exactly.

So I think Gwiedin knew he had a strong circumstantial case, a common sense case. and he ran with that. So Susan's neighbors came in. They testified about how often they saw Bill's car park there all night at her house. And all the defense attorney Locke could do with this was so a little bit of confusion about days of the week and times, which is to be expected, but didn't really accomplish much. Next, Susan's friends testified, and I imagine this was pretty devastating to Bill, because he had denied being romantically involved with Susan left and right,

and although Locke made them acknowledge that Bill had never said anything to them about being romantically involved with Susan, there was ample evidence to the contrary. And these friends, especially Pat Schnur, had heard the stories about how we're going to go to England and get married, and, you know, Pat knew that Susan had applied for a fellowship teaching over there. I mean, she was there for the whole thing. So this was not good for Billy B. Next came testimony about the insurance scam that Bill worked on Susan, the missing $25,000, the argument with the bank manager, that whole thing. And the jury heard, of course, all about the massive amount of life insurance that Susan had taken out with Bill as the beneficiary. Way more life insurance than a school teacher needed.

They heard about her making him the beneficiary of her will. Again, not looking good for Bill. Not at all. No. next came the parade of Bill's former inner circle. So we've got Vince and Chris and Sue Myers and they all wove the whole epic tale in all its banana pants glory. We got the hitman lessons. We got supposedly Smith and Susan dating and Smith wanting are dead. Bill pretending to go along with Smith's desire to train him as a hitman just to kind of keep an eye on him and

protect Susan, gather enough evidence to prove, you know, whatever. Bill's sitting. outside Susan's house to protect her from Smith, the homemade silencers, the phone system, wiping off the money. And the jury were just sitting there with their mouths hanging open. I mean, these were ordinary people. They could not believe what they were hearing. And this is a fun little detail. Okay. Y'all remember how Bill was always droning on about his chastity? You know, like, okay, maybe I slip now and then, but I always strive to stay pure. I have no need of a sexual relationship, right? Well, Sue Meyer, told the jury that when she was clearing out all of Bill's crap from her house after she

threw him out, she found an enormous stash of, quote, meticulously cataloged packages of hardcore pornography, end quote, plus Swingers' magazines and couples' phone numbers, which Bill must have spent countless hours cutting out and carefully organizing. Oh my God. Yeah. Now, we're not making any judgments about porn. here we're just saying apparently billy was not as pure as he made himself out to be which actually doesn't surprise me at all not at all and it seems like he and j smith maybe had more in common than

me see i actually wondered if maybe smith gave him some of that stuff but it's one more example of the real bill bradfield not bearing any resemblance whatsoever to the mask that he wore in public right all right so katy next up was bill's jailhouse buddy proctor no or right? Right. And this is where we have to say that despite doing the right thing in this case, Proctor wasn't necessarily the most admirable of characters. No, he was not. I mean, okay, he was obviously in jail for the robbery, which isn't great. He'd been in trouble in the past for assault and gun charges. But also, one day in jail, Proctor had gotten a letter from his wife where she told him she wasn't going to wait for him to get out of prison again. She was going to move on with her

life. Proctor was furious and he said something to Bill like, quote, I'm going to goddamn kill that hussy. Yikes on bikes, right? Yeah. Yikes. But here's the thing. Is Bill's response to that? No, no, no, no, no. You don't ever want to kill anyone. They never get off your ass. Wow. Wow. Excellent advice, Bill. Thank you. Wow. And he also stated that one day Bill came back from a court date. And Proctor noticed that Bill was apoplectic, veins popping out, pacing around, the whole nine yards. Proctor asked what was wrong, and Bill said, they're fucking me over, man. They're fucking me over. They denied the bail reduction. You know, if I wasn't such a financial bind, I wouldn't be here, nor would this have had to happen to Susan. Wow. The wording is

interesting here, because this had to happen to Susan, not I had to kill Susan. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and you and I have discussed the way he, removes himself from responsibility. And you see this language a lot with killers. You do. And I remember when I was in undergrad in college, I was in, I forget which class it was, but we talked a lot about language in that class. I think it was just one of my like advanced, like poetry classes or maybe linguistics class or something like that. And we watched this documentary where all these different serial killers were getting interviewed. And it was so interesting because every single one of them used passive voice, which means you would say, well, what happened with this

victim? Well, she died by strangulation. She was stabbed. Instead of, I strangled her, I stabbed her. And these were guys who actually did acknowledge committing the crimes. They had confessed, but they didn't use active voice. They didn't say, I strangled her. I stabbed her. It was she was strangled. She was stabbed. So it's distancing language, right? It's really interesting. It's like the killing is something that just happened, not something that they had. any ownership in? It's just like an act of God. Of course, Bill thinks he's God. Definitely. Yeah. So it's the same thing for Bill.

Right. And, oh, God. And, yeah, he, that's, that's really interesting. Thank you for bringing that up because that's, that's crazy to me. But Bill also told Proctor, I was there when they were killed, but I didn't kill them. And Proctor said, damn, Bradfield, the children too? And Bill said, none of this was meant for the kids, only for Susan, but there could be a stone left unturned. You have to tie up all the loose ends. Oh, my God. Now, this is very fascinating phrasing because you have to tie up all your loose ends was a favorite expression of Jay Smith's.

Mm-hmm. We're going to see this more in the next episode when we get to the jailhouse conversations between Smith and his prison buddy. But after this conversation about the murder, Proctor Norris. had limited his interactions with Bill. And I do not blame him. Yeah, he didn't want anything to do with him after that. And, I mean, this is astonishing testimony. I was there when they were killed, but I didn't kill them.

Yeah. And then note he said they. Yes. They. Not her. They. And I think it's odd that Bill would own up to it even to this level in prison conversations.

I guess he just wasn't that careful. No, I don't think he was careful at all. I think Bill had diarrhea of the mouth. He just, I mean, Holtz was right. He couldn't keep his mouth shut. He had a pathological need to unburden and to, you know, to share, I think. And a lot of what he said was lies, but I believe this was a rare moment of candid, rare candid moment for Bill.

So when Proctor decided to testify, he said that it was the kids that got to him. Yeah. He'd gone back to his cell after meeting with the investigators and seeing those pictures of Karen and Michael, and he thought, what if this was my kids? Would I want somebody to do this for mine? And I think this is important because you always have to take prison snitch's testimony with a grain of salt because the snitch is getting something out of the deal. Sure. But in Proctor Knoll's case, it seems very clear that he was reluctant to get involved and keep in mind that he didn't actually get anything aside from an acknowledgement that, yes, this prisoner helped us. He didn't

He didn't get a promise. I mean, he actually did get consideration, but when he agreed to do it, all they said was, we'll put in a good word for you with the judge. Which, I mean, obviously probably helped him. But this was not the kind of case where, oh, he struck a deal. He's going to get out of prison no-holds bar. No, he was still going to have to serve his time. He just was going to get alcohol rehabilitation because part of his issues with crime was he only committed crimes when he was under the influence. Right. So Proctor only did it because for all his faults, he was a dad. And he knew that the other dad, Ken Reiner, must be feeling horrible. Yeah. Must be lost.

And Bill's defense attorney, Locke, tried to make the case that Noel was lying, get out of more jail time. But based on the jury's facial expressions, it seemed more likely that his testimony had hit home. His words had a ring of truth. Now, Guida had also subpoenaed Bill's now infamous alibi testimony from Jay Smith's Sears robbery trial to brilliant effect. He and Jackson Stewart, who had been the prosecutor in the Sears trial, read out the testimony like a script. Guida played Jay Smith's lawyer and Stewart played Bill. That must have been a fun little bit of courtroom drama. So this is a little fun fact about me, but I never ever want to serve on a jury.

but I would love to serve on this jury. Oh, no kidding, right? This would be very entertaining. And so as it turns out, no matter who is saying Bill Bradfield's lines, they don't sound like the truth. It was patently obvious to this jury, as it had been to the jury in the Sears trial, that Bill had dropped a giant pile of horse hockey in the middle of the room. Now, why would Bill perjure himself or Smith if there wasn't some kind of sinister quid-roquo-go, going on. It did not look good. It did not. And next came a really emotional part of the trial. When Ken Reiner and his mom, Karen and Michael's grandma, testified. They talked about

coming to terms with the children being declared dead by the state of Pennsylvania. They testified that they saw the kids everywhere. Once the grandmother Florence was on vacation and she could have sworn she saw Michael getting on a school bus. And so, of course, she called the FBI. They looked into it, and of course it wasn't him. And that must have been heartbreaking. I can't even imagine. And, you know, missing, the families of missing people go through this all the time. You know, you see them everywhere. And they said that they still hadn't celebrated Christmas. It just didn't feel right. I mean, this is years later. So it was really sad. And their testimony was a crucial reminder that for all the sensational details in this case and all the screaming

headlines about hit men lessons and dildos and everything that, you know, there were real people, by all this, hurt terribly, hurt irrevocably. And there were three lives that were snuffed out forever. And it was just all in the service of greed. Yeah. At least on Bill's part, it was just pure greed. So we said Guita's strategy was to start with the weakest witnesses and lead up to the strongest. And this leads me to the part of the trial we like to call, never take the stand in your own defense, especially if you are a ridiculous narcissist blowhard, the Bill Bradfield story. It's the latest lifetime movie. Yeah, uh-huh.

Now, you'd think Bill would have learned this lesson by now after he crashed and burned, not only in Smith's Sears robbery trial, but in his own trial for theft by deception a couple years earlier, but Bill's a slow learner, bless him. Actually, most likely what he is is a narcissist, and people with narcissistic tendencies often think that they're the smartest person in the room and can talk their way out of anything. And I guess, you know, in his defense in this, to some degree, he had managed to convince a whole bunch of people of his big bag of bullshit throughout this whole thing. I mean, Vince

and Chris and Sue, you know, Wendy and Joanne, they all bought it for a while anyway. So I guess he figured he'd be able to get the jury to buy it, too. So I'm just going to tell you some of the highlights of Bill's testimony. We don't have time to go into the entire thing.

On direct examination, he mostly told the same story that his inner circle had. He denied any relationship with Susan Reiner, the frickin dumbass. I think that was such a stupid move. He should have cop to that because there was so much evidence that there was a relationship, but whatever. He said, no, we never had a romantic relationship. I was just a friend and advisor. Blah, that nonsense, nonsense. He denied killing Susan and the kids or having any part

whatsoever in their murders. And the defense didn't really gain anything much from putting Bill up there, which really begs the question of why the hell they did in the first place, but he probably just insisted. I think he did. But it did open him up to cross-examination. examination, and I am not going to lie, Rick, my fucking Guido, went after him like he was made out of cheesecake. Oh, yes. It was a bloodbath, man. And Guida had this, like, sarcastic, incredulous tone throughout the whole thing, which Joseph Wambaw

described as, as much sarcasm as the judge would let him get away with, and if you could bottle it, it would be about 80 proof, which I think is hysterical. So he was just, you know, sarcastic and incredulous. And Bill was noncommittal about who he did think. had killed Susan. May have been Smith, may have been kinky Alex, or another one of Susan's many alleged rough sex buddies. And he made sure to continue to dirty her up for the jury by pointing out that these guys were into BDSM and liked to pee on her. Again, there is zero evidence that any of this ever happened. Susan was in love with Bill and thought she was going to marry him

and was not having rough sex with Alex or anybody else. This was made up out of whole cloth. bullshit. But anyway, he reiterated all that utter shite on the stand. Guida also poked at Bill's BS story about the $25,000 that he and Chris had wiped the fingerprints off of, you know, the money that he had been convicted of scamming from Susan a couple of years earlier. And Bill reiterated that, no, this was his own money that he'd saved for years, his boat fund. And Guida wanted to know why, if you had this money the whole time, did you never use it for the failing arts and craft store that was like spiraling down the drain at the time all this was going on and of course bill did not have a satisfactory answer for this other than basically well i just wanted to keep it for

myself uh-huh so your arts and craft store is is floundering so badly that y'all are looking at going bankrupt and you're not going to take this 25,000 dollars that you supposedly saved for years and use it to help bullshit so anyway there was that and then finally guida asked the question that we would all want to ask, if we were there, why didn't you call the police and tell them about Jay Smith's threats against Susan Reinhert and his claims of killing for the mob and all of that stuff? Duh. So Bill blah-blot about how Smith had connections in the police and he was afraid that if he'd told he'd be in danger because the police were all corrupt and in Smith's pocket and all this. So Gwita's like, okay, well, have you heard of the Pennsylvania State Police? He

didn't have connections there, right? No. he didn't have connections with the FBI right no well why didn't you call them and of course bill yet again did not have a good answer he said quote looking back I wish I had done that I think we all wish that yes Bill we do all wish that you massive asshole and he kept weying again we we we we remember force teaming that we talked about a few episodes ago from the um the gift of fear by Gavin to Becker where you kind of as a minim You draw people in without their permission or consent into a we dynamic force teaming. This kind of reminds me of that. It's not exactly that. But again, he's lumping himself in with every. Well, we could have all done it. And none of us did it.

None of us called. Couldn't you have called the FBI? Couldn't you have warned Susan? Well, we could have all done that. None of us did that, et cetera. So kind of absolving himself of responsibility. And Guida immediately called him out on that and said, okay, but you could have done it, right? and Bill said, I was not making decisions solely.

I sought their advice in everything I did, which must have been news to the entourage because Bill never took anybody's advice on anything. This man was always in charge, always. Yes, yes. I mean, you guys know that from what we've told you already about the dynamics among, you know, the group of lemmings, as we call them sometimes.

So Guida also hammered Bill about why the hell he needed a silencer that summer. You know, Chris had made him that. oil can silencer, and Bill spun a bunch of nonsense just like he had for Chris about possibly needing to defend himself from Smith if the shit ever hit the fan, but he couldn't come up with a sensible answer as to why he would need to do that with a silencer on the gun. Like if it's self-defense, why would you need a silencer? It just didn't make a damn bit of sense. So Guida scored major points, as you can imagine with this cross-examination, because it made it just so clear that for all his talk of protecting Susan that spring and summer, Bill had never lifted a finger to do the one

thing that would have actually protected her if what he was saying was true about Smith wanting revenge on her for rejecting him or Smith wanting to kill her for knowing too much about his crimes or whatever, which was, of course, call the authorities or warn Susan. And it brought home just how absolutely absurd his story was. Oh, and by the way, you might be wondering why Smith wasn't called as a witness. Well, the defense had actually thought about calling him, but Smith refused to proffer, meaning he wasn't willing to tell Locke what the hell he might say on the stand. And Locke figured, given that, it was just too big of a risk. Absolutely. Because God only knows what that man would have said, right? God only knows. He might have just sat up there and made up words. We don't know.

So closing arguments came next. Bill's attorney Locke hit the jury with the forensic stuff again. and this is so infuriating he portrayed Susan as quote schizoid a little bit schizoid living in a fantasy world where Bill was in love with her and wanted to marry her and he

presented this as nothing more than a fantasy oh screw you screw you oh my god so implying that you know she was just this just what Bill had always implied to everybody that she's just pathetic and she's just obsessed with me and none of it's true

oh no and he called proctor noel's testimony into question of course reminding the jury that you know he's a criminal you can't trust him etc gawita on the other hand told the jury to rely on their common sense and then establish one of the best metaphors for circumstantial evidence that i've ever seen in any case he said each bit of circumstantial evidence was like pebbles in a pile the comb the fibers the hair the reinert estate bills bizarre lies all of it was building the hill pebble by pebble that the jury would have to climb to get to Bill's innocence. And there were a lot of pebbles on that hill. Yeah. And the most damning evidence of all he said was that Susan's body was found at all. Who would so carefully ensure that the children's

bodies would go missing, but also make sure that Susan's was found? I think about that, campers. Who benefits from that? Jay Smith wouldn't. If he had killed Susan out of rage at her for rejecting him or worry that she knew too much about his criminal activities, why would he even need to kill the kids first of all? And if he did, why wouldn't he just dump them all in the same hole? Right, but why I put her on display like that? Right. Now, same goes for Kinky Alex. If he killed Susan as part of some perverted fantasy or whatever, or if he'd killed Susan and the kids, they'd have all ended up in the same place together. Right. The only scenario in which Susan's body would be intentionally left out to be found.

Remember, they said that the killer practically put runway lights in the parking lot. I mean, she was left right out in the open. And the only scenario in which that happens and the kids would be disposed of in parts unknown and never found is the one where Susan's death is worth money. And the children, as Gwita put it, weren't worth anything. And who benefited financially from Susan's death? one person and one person only. And that was Bill Bradfield. Yes. Now that is some ironclad logic. Absolutely. That's probably one of the best closing arguments I've ever seen.

Absolutely. Solid. So the jury went to deliberate at 8.22 p.m. And Detective Holtz and his buddy Detective DeSantis went for a drink across the street. They figured the jury would break for the night soon and starting in the next morning. Pchall, the jury was back 75 minutes later. I love this. The boys had barely finished their beers when they got the call, and they went racing back across the street to hear the guilty verdict. And Locke, the defense attorney, asked to poll the jury.

You know, they can do that because I guess they think maybe somebody was waffling and will change their mind at the last minute or something. So Bill had to sit there while each juror said guilty three times, one for each count, 36 separate and individual guilties. And I bet everyone was like a little dagger in his heart. Even though he sat there stone face, he didn't have any reaction at all, but it still must have sucked. And later, everybody found out that the jury had actually reached the verdict in 45 minutes, but kept at it a little longer just to seem more professional, which I think is hysterical.

45 minutes. So, yeah. a resounding guilty verdict. Now, Judge Garb ruled that the case didn't qualify for a possible death sentence because there were no aggravating factors. There was no indication that Bill himself had committed the murders. It was a conspiracy case. So the big question was, would Bill be sentenced to three concurrent life terms or three

consecutive ones? Now, if you don't know what that means, concurrent sentences are like, okay, so I'm sentenced to three life terms, but they're concurrent, meaning I'm only going to serve one. They're all being served at the same time. like overlaid over each other, whereas consecutive terms are served one after the other after the other. So the defense attorney Locke argued really hard for concurrent terms. He trotted in a whole bunch of Bill's former worshipful students to wax on about how much he taught them and how much integrity he had and how memorable his classes were. Just, ew. And there were a lot of them.

I mean, I'm not going to lie. Like there was letter after letter, testimony after testimony. He made a major impression. Like we said in an earlier episode, he was an inspiring teacher, and he had a lot of former students who still loved and respected him. And, man, they all trotted out for this sentencing hearing. Guida, on the other hand, reminded the judge that Bill had expressed no remorse whatsoever, nor had he offered any information as to the location of the children's bodies. And the judge described Bill's crime as diabolical. And he sentenced him to the maximum he could, which is three consecutive life sentences. Billy B. William Sidney Bradfield would die in prison and all was right with the world y'all yes oh god can we all just bask for a moment in that oh it's so nice eliot emu is headed for the clink forever for ever and i will leave you with this little nugget of joy the day the verdict hit the paper a fellow inmate of j c smith saw the Prince of Darkness lying on the ground in the prison yard with the newspaper over his face. Just lying there, totally motionless,

with his face covered by the newspaper, with the front page headline about William Sidney Bradfield's guilty verdict. And the guy walked over and pulled the paper off of Jay's face and said, you can't hide under that paper, Jay. Storms a Bruin Smith. So we will leave it there for now, campers. Next time, we'll zero in on the other conspirator in the case, Prince of Darkness, Dr. J.C. Smith. What's Smith saying to his jailhouse buddy? Oh, we're going to find out. And this guy is a character, you guys. I cannot wait to tell you about this, dude.

Will Dr. Smith be brought to justice for his role in the murders? We're going to find out. For now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And we also want to give a shout out to Alexa and Sky. Thank you so much. We appreciate you so much. Your angels. You can follow us on Twitter at TC Campfire, Instagram at True Crime Campfire, and be sure to like our Facebook page. If you want to support the show and get access to extras, please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash true crime campfire.