True Crime Campfire - Episode 9: The Puppet Master and the Prince of Darkness, Part 9: Reckoning

Episode Date: October 25, 2019

Bill Bradfield is in prison at last, convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of Susan, Karen and Michael Reinert. Now the investigators turn their attention to "Prince of Darkness" Jay C. Smith, who is still sitting in prison for the Sears robberies. Enter two unlikely allies--the P of D's prison buddies. He's been having some VERY interesting conversations with these guys, and they have a lot to tell investigators. Follow us through the final days of the investigation into the Main Line Murders, and the arrest and trial of Jay C. Smith.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, in the last episode, we finally saw puppet master Bill Bradfield arrested, tried, and convicted for conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of Susan, Karen, and. and Michael Reinhard. Bill's arrest was one of the top ten greatest ever arrest stories, complete with friendly dog and petulant face planting. And as we probably all expected, Bill took the stand at his trial and folded under cross-examination like a centerfold in one of Jay Smith's penthouse magazines. At long last, Elliot Emu was off to prison where he belonged. And while investigators and prosecutors were working on that, they were also working behind the scenes to gather evidence on Prince of Darkness Dr. J. C. Smith.

The Puppet Master and the Prince of Darkness, Part 9. Reckoning. So, campers, today we're going to go back in time a little bit. We told you about the events leading up to Bill Bradfield's arrest and conviction. What was going on with Dr. J. Smith while Bill was being nabbed, tried, and convicted. We're going to start by telling you about a guy called Raymond Martre. In 1981, when grizzled old grump detective Joe Van Nort was still alive and working the case, God rest his soul, right, Katie?

God rest his soul, RIP. RIP. R-I-P. Martre had written Van Nort a letter. He said he was in jail with J. Smith, and he had some info for them about the Reinhert murders if they were interested. Now, Ray Martre was 37 at the time. He was a former cop doing time for burglary and perjury. You always love to hear that, don't you? You know, it's a... Just nice. Seems like he was in the wrong profession. Yes. Not a lot of other inmates knew he used to be a cop for obvious reasons. And Joe Van Nort, of course, responded, and they arranged to bring Ray Martre to a hotel for a chat. Now, that first

meeting was less than spectacular in the investigators' minds. First of all, even if Martre had some truly explosive information, the fact that he was in jail on a perjury, charge would prevent him from ever testifying against Smith under Pennsylvania law. So that was a problem right out of the gate. And secondly, what he had to say really wasn't that useful. He said he'd been the one to show Smith around when Smith first got to prison. He said Smith had been really wary of everyone and pretty much kept himself for the first six months, which I can completely believe, by the way. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. But then he had started to talk to Martre. And he said Smith had asked him to alter a property record to say that his clothes weren't sent to his brother upon his arrest,

but were instead still at the prison. Smith was afraid his clothes might contain what he called forensic evidence. As we've discussed in previous episodes, Smith always had this weird interest in forensics, which is really unusual given the time period. I mean, true crime was not a thing then, like it is now, so it's not like there was a TV show CSI. That kind of stuff was not even on most people's radar as a thing that existed. So it's just really interesting that he was aware of that, and to me, incriminating, because most people wouldn't even know that that was, yeah, like most people wouldn't even know the word forensic, right? Yeah, and why would he care? Yeah, and why would he care if he wasn't guilty? So Smith had asked Martre to alter this property

record and express concern about his clothes having evidence on them. Now, in return, Smith was helping Ray Martre with his case, something Smith apparently did for whoever asked in prison. He was sort of a jailhouse lawyer, which I think was because what we'll see as the story starts to unfold here, but I think he was trying to store up favors, basically, from other inmates. And he was trying to get Martre's perjury and burglary convictions overturned for him. Ray Martre, for his part, said he was scared of Smith, and he definitely wanted to make sure Smith did not find out that he was talking to the cops.

Now, this is interesting because Martre was. A, 20 years younger than Jay Smith, and plus he was a big, strong guy, and he was scared to death of Smith. And, I mean, he really was. Like, you could tell. It was true. So, fucking goat eyes, man. Yeah.

Totally. It's those terrifying. I know we've harped on it so much, but you guys have seen the pictures of him by now. We're not lying, aren't we? And if you haven't, if you haven't, go to our Facebook page and look them up. Just full-body, yeah. So the investigators were intrigued, but, you know, not overly impressed with this first meeting with Ray Martre. Now, the second meeting, on the other hand, that got their

attention. Apparently, Jay Smith had asked Ray Martre to look out for one David Rucker. Now, Rucker was serving time for an armored car robbery with a really similar M.O. to Smith's own Sears robbery. Now, Rucker had suffered a traumatic brain injury on his last capture when he made a suicide attempt to try to avoid prison. He'd been before. He did not want to go back. And now he had a tendency to fall down a lot and had to wear like a hockey helmet around everywhere and he was in Ray Martre's words quote a very

mellow individual meaning this was a guy who had brain damage who was very agreeable and very suggestible and because he is a scumbag of epic proportions Jay Smith saw an opportunity there

and Smith and Martre's little master plan was for Martre to sidle up to Rucker, make sure one or more prison guards saw him talking to the guy, and then later, once Smith got his perjury conviction overturned, you know, quid pro quo, Clarice, Martre would testify that Rucker had confessed to the Sears robbery that Smith was convicted of. So that was their plan. They were going to get this guy who had a traumatic brain injury and who would pretty much smile and nod to whatever you suggested to him to either confess or Martray was just going to say he confessed to the Sears robbery. And sadly, Rucker died shortly after that conversation that he had with Martre, which meant that he wasn't around to contradict anything that Martre and Smith might say about him anymore. So this suited Smith's just fine. Yeah. Obviously, Rucker was not an angel by any means.

We are not going to suggest that he was. He committed an armed robbery and it wasn't his first crime. But this, I think, really shows what a viper Smith was, that he saw a disabled person as nothing more than a tool to try to spring his own guilty as hell. asked from prison and had no compunction whatsoever about using this other person in this way. It's absolutely infuriating. It makes me physically angry. Yeah. So, anywho, Martre and Smith bonded over this gross little plan, and my favorite detail from this story is that to help prepare Martre for a deposition he was scheduled to give about Rucker's supposed confession, Smith, I shit you not, guys, gave him a pretend lie detector test in the prison yard. with paper clips and extension cords standing in place of the leads

that they put on you in a polygraph. Katie, I cannot with this. Can you just get a mental image of these two dipshit sitting out in the prison yard? If it wasn't true, it would be a perfect scene from like a comedy prison movie. Right, exactly. God. Oh, God.

So the reason that this perked up the investigator's ears when Martre told them about it at that second meeting was that Smith had made up a pretend polygraph chart with the what he called stress questions that they were worried that Martre might flunk if he actually had to take a polygraph. And interestingly, two of those questions mentioned the Reinhardt case. One was, did Jay Smith ever tell you he was a friend of Bradfield? And the other was, did Jay Smith ever tell you he killed Reinhardt? Now, according to

Martray, Smith had told him Bill Bradfield had asked him to kill Susan because she was going to tell the police about Bill's perjury at Smith Sears trial. And when he'd asked Smith about the kids, Smith had just said, I took care of it. Wow. Another time, Martre said they were talking about the Reiner case, and Smith got all

flustered and upset and just said, I killed a fucking bitch. Yikes. Yikes. So, this was what Martre was alleging at the second meeting with the investigators. Now, these pretend-polygraph questions were type, so they didn't prove anything, but the envelope that the questions came in had the phrases Sears St. David's Aug 1977 and Sears Nishaminy Mall December 1977 on it, and they were

most definitely in J. Smith's handwriting, which at least seemed to corroborate some of Ray's claims. Shortly after this meeting was when Detective Van Nort died and Jack Holtz took over, and when Smith's jailhouse lawyering paid off and Martre's perjury conviction got overturned this put Martre back in the game as a potential witness against Smith. So Holtz decided

it'd be worth a try to see what Martre could get out of Smith. And Ray Martre agreed and for the next three years the cops listened in on his conversations with Jay both by phone and then later in person when Martre visited Smith in prison and it became quickly clear that

A, Martre was almost as big of a suckass and disciple as the Bradfield gang had been for Bill. And B, he was, let's say, not great at being a prison snitch, especially when they were one-on-one in person. He did a little better on the phone. But the investigators were just always tearing their hair out at his overacting, like he thought he was in a stupid movie or something. Oh, yeah. But they got some interesting stuff. So, Katie, give us some highlights of these three years of recorded conversations, if you will, please. No problem. So first, Smith was trying to get Ray to kill his guards and help him escape at the

hearing. So no big deal. That's just something. No big deal. That was the first thing. NBD. Good God Almighty. That's so on brand for Smith, though, isn't it? Like something just bananas like that. Just come in and kill the guards. Yeah, no problem. And as for talk about the Reiner murders, these calls were full of almost incriminating remarks. But right before they'd have him, he'd pull away. He was blue-balling the investigators, basically. That is exactly what he was doing. I love that turn of phrase. So, yeah, they'd be sitting in the hot-ass FBI van with their 1980s recording equipment with the headphones on.

And he'd just about say something. Like, he brought up a bunch of nonsense about having an alibi for the weekend of the murder. He was with his daughter on her birthday. He was seen during the time of the murder by the lady who just bought his. house, blah, blah, blah. Sure. This was good stuff because the cops knew this was demonstrably false. They knew they could disprove it. And even better, another conversation had Smith saying, I think if they were to arrest me for Reiner, the best thing for you to do is to go kill Bradfield and make him disappear. Yeah. And he didn't stop there. He gave step by step

instructions. Of course. Get him back in your car, kill him, and take his body into some woods, up in Fayetteville or somewhere. But nobody, see, nobody should know where the body is but you. When you deal with a body, only you should know. You should never let anyone else know. Do you see the advantage of that? Yeah, I do indeed, Dr. Smith, you creepy motherfucker. I do too. That's actually good advice. It's, yeah, if you've got to do it, that's good advice. But like, as many times as he repeated, nobody should know, nobody should know, nobody should know. Ooh. Yeah, it's creepy as hell. And I think he probably said it more like you, too. Nobody should know. Bradfield, seriously, that man got off easy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's seriously lucky that this

didn't happen. I'm actually surprised it didn't. I think if Smith hadn't gone to prison, the very next day, it would have. Yeah, no question. But then, after all this incredibly incriminating sounding stuff, he'd say something like, there's nothing Bradfield could do to hurt me other than lie, and that's it. And so you'd hear like some screaming in an FBI ice cream van just like outside the prison. They were, yeah. They're wearing their, they're wearing their leg warmers and their headbands and yelling. It's a C-80s, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Listening to Olivia Newton, John. watching punky booster sorry i'm done i'm a child of the 80s i'm getting nostalgic now i wasn't alive yet i'm sorry god you're such a fetus always have to remind me how much older i am than you

i'm so pretty what can i say um so these were all phone conversations and then there were the prison visits which uh martre wore a wire or two and these were pretty much disaster from the start. The first time, Martre was too excitable and didn't let Jay say a goddamn thing during the first conversation. They did talk about the robberies they were going to pull together once Smith got out, but there was nothing the cops could use. And Martre made sure, like, he bumped Jay with his hip to kind of like show off, like, oh, I'm wearing a wire and you don't know. Oh, my God, man. What is wrong with you? I just, it. It's, they could not have picked a worse snitch.

And he reminds me, and we talked about this before, actually, he reminds me, or they remind me Smith and Martre of the old, was it Warner Brothers cartoon with the big bulldog named Spike. And then that little dog that would bounce around next to him, hey, Spike, what are we going to do today, Spike? And Spike's like, yeah. Yeah, and that's exactly what Smith did, basically. and every other time Ray was just the worst actor and like super anxious. He'd try to guide

Jay to an admission, but Jay was just too wily for that. He'd deny that he had anything to do with the murder and Martre would register obvious frustration. Good job, Ray, Ray, Ray. Way to play it cool. But on the plus side, the investigators were treated to a

tutorial session where Smith gave a play-by-play on how to perform oral sex on a lady so it wasn't all a loss oh god no so we'll give you a moment to go throw up literally everything you've ever eaten in your life oh god that's so upsetting yeah it's it's it's just i i i and here's the thing is we i don't think smith knew he was being like recorded but if he knew he was being recorded. I'm sure he just loved every second of that. I don't think he knew for sure anyway. He's

suspected, maybe. All right, moving on. Thank God. Moving on. Next subject. Now, this was all before Bill was convicted for conspiracy to commit murder. After the Bradfield conviction, the cops began to suspect that Jay

was sure they were listening in on his conversations. Either that or Marre had lied to them from the start. Smith was starting to say stuff like the only thing Bradfield could say is I called Susan out, drove her up to the house where Smith was and

he gave her a shot of morphine and he killed the kids and then I left. Now, what the fuck do you do with three bodies? How did I get rid of them? And how did I get her to Harrisburg by myself and then get myself back with only her car? See what I mean? Oh, and

by the way, campers, if you've been asking yourself these same questions, don't worry. We're going to get into the theory of exactly how these murders took place in the next episode. He also tried to point to Joanne, Bill's ice queen girlfriend, as a possible means of disposing the kids' bodies. Remember how she drove Bill's car to New Mexico on the Monday after the murders? Smith said she could have dumped the kids.

Coincidentally, this is the same conversation that convinced the investigators that Smith was guilty, because why would he lay out the case like this to someone who already knew everything? Yeah, exactly. To whom was he really directing this theory? It didn't make sense for him to lay this all out from our tray, whether he was innocent or guilty. But it did make sense if he thought the police were listening. It was a gift-wrapped alternative theory of the crime.

Clever, Jay, but not clever enough. Yeah, yet another example of a sucker playing himself. I'm trying to get artsy. You're trying to be clever, and all you're doing is raising suspicion. Yeah, so I do want to take a second. Whitney and stop and talk about something that the investigators were going back and forth about during this whole investigation, whether the kids were part of the murder plot from the beginning or whether they were an unexpected development. Yeah, I definitely think they were part of the plan from the

start because here's the thing. And Womba points this out in Echoes in the Darkness as well. If the kids had lived, they very likely would have complicated Bill's ability to collect on Susan's estate and her life insurance. And this is especially since her will didn't even specifically exclude them. Because I think by her understanding, Bill was getting the money to take care of the kids. So Smith had two motives here. He'd get someone to perjure himself for his trial, but also he'd get a share of that sweet, sweet estate money. Yeah, and keep in mind that they still hadn't found Susan's copy of the life insurance policy.

They never found it, in fact. Susan had asked for a copy for her, quote, executor to keep, but the company had refused because they don't allow that. So where was that document? It wasn't in Susan's house. It wasn't in her car. Did she bring it with her the night that she and the kids drove off in that hailstorm? Did Smith tell Bill that he wanted to see proof of that policy and the potential for that enormous amount of money before he would commit the murders? Those are all very valid questions.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, switching gears here, let's talk about a guy named Charles Montione. He met Smith when he was in prison for armed robbery. He was a friend of Martre's, and Smith helped him out with some legal work. His name popped up during the investigators' meetings with Martre, and in 1983, they met with Charlie Montione in a halfway house where he was living after getting out of prison. The guy was 24 years old, and he dressed like a gangster. Like silk shirts, he wore alligator shoes. Yeah, totally.

This is a total of walking cliche. Absolutely. So Charlie, it turned out, had some good stuff on Jay Smith. For example, Smith wanted him in Martray to participate in a DIC during a visitor day. DIC stood for disarm, immobilized cover. God, almighty. So this was, yeah, he got to disarm the guards, immobilize him, and then. then cover Smith as he escapes.

Yeah. DIC. That was plan A. We do have to talk about how it stands for Dick. That's true. That's appropriate. Yeah. So this was plan A. So it's very simple, Whitney.

Just DIC. I think we could probably execute that, no problem. Just you and I. Plan B was to break Smith out during his court appearance. He wanted Martre and Charlie to burst in guns blazing to the courthouse. They'd take the transport officers hostage and kill them later. Jesus. Holy shit.

That is harsh. Yeah. So Jay also gave Charles a lecture one day on how to murder someone. I'm sure Charlie was taking good notes. I'm taking good notes, too. What did he say? Grab your pens, campers. Okay.

Ready? Yes. He said, you overdose your victims by injection. then you let the body lie around so the blood coagulates because you see this makes it less messy to cut up rose okay i never heard that but ew yeah then you dispose of the bodies the pieces i guess in different places and use chains to dump them into rivers and lakes oh you remember they found all those chains in his basement too oh yeah the interesting thing here aside from the overdose your victim thing which is, of course, exactly how Susan Reiner died, is that it sounds a lot like the murder lesson Smith had given Bill Bradfield the year before,

or years earlier, I suppose. Yeah. When Charles asks Smith directly if he killed Susan and the kids, Smith just smirked. Wow. And this is one of the creepiest details from the whole case, in my opinion. So buckle up for this. When Charlie Montione got out of prison,

Smith had a request for him. He asked Charlie to keep an eye out, look through nudie magazines, to find him a picture of a woman. A campers, I apologize in advance for this. It's a direct quote, lying on her side with her knees pulled up and her cunt closed. Sorry. That was fuck. Yeah, fuck. That's really gross.

I'm sorry. So Charlie, ever obliging, kept bringing him porn mags with likely looking pictures that he felt met those. specs, but Smith was picky as hell about this picture, and he rejected shot after shot, after shot. And I mean, a guy like Smith, you wouldn't think he'd be turning down porn, but he was like, no, that's not it. No, that's not it.

Until finally, one day, Charlie brought him a penthouse magazine that featured a model lying in almost exactly the same position that Susan Reinhert was in when her body was found, and Smith was thrilled. That's it, and that's the one he kept.

Ugh. just allow that to wash over you and the hebes and the jeeps and the wiggins to take you over for a second because how creepy is that? I don't want it to wash all, Whitney. I'm upset. I kind of enjoy the wiggins. So for me, it's just like, it's like watching a horror movie. But then you remember that it's real and then you kind of want to throw up. So yeah, almost exactly the same position that Susan was in when her body was found. That's what he wanted. Now, the investigators found this picture in Smith's cell later on and Holtz thought back to a behavioral. profile that they had gotten years earlier

that said the killer in this case might retain a trophy to relive the murders. Something like, you know, a photograph? Ooh, boy. Now, after Bill Bradfield's trial started and Smith was in the news again, left and right as Bill implicated him,

Smith took to standing naked in his cell, staring at the wall, and screaming. I... You know, there's not a lot to smile about in this case. But thinking of what was going on in his head while he was staring at the wall screaming. Yeah.

Just kind of brightens my day a little bit. And also it just brings home. This man was an unusual bird, right? Oh, totally. And that's just not a thing most people would do. I think he was just like one step away from being completely unhand. He was losing it big time. Or he was blossoming.

into the person he had always been. Just buck naked, standing in a cell, screaming at the wall. And people would just walk by, and there's Jay again, with this wang out screaming at the wall. What that actual fuck. Anyway, so they had their two jailhouse informants, but it wasn't a slam dunk,

and they were very much aware of that. So Rick Guida, who was, you remember the prosecutor from Bill's trial, was gun-shy about going to the grand jury for an indictment. But he finally just realized, look, it's not getting any better. For one thing, he knew he really needed the testimony of Susan's neighbor, Mary Gove, and of Grace Gilmore, who was the woman who bought Jay's house. And they were both elderly ladies, and they weren't getting any younger. So finally, Guida just said, screw it. We're going to the grand jury. That's it. And they got their indictment. And on June 25, 1985, six years to the day, since Susan's body was discovered in that hotel parking lot, Jack Holtz went to the prison to arrest Jay. And when he walked, into Smith's cell, he told him, this is an anniversary.

Oh, I just get chills. Oh, snap. Yeah, me too. So after the arraignment, a reporter asked Jay if he'd heard of Ray and Charlie, the two prison snitches, and Jay said he didn't, which is just bizarre. Like, why would you lie about that? You know that is, again, provably false.

So author Joseph Wambos' take on it was, and I quote, it was just awfully hard for Jay Smith and Bill Bradfield to be truthful, even when it was foolish to lie. And this is so true of pathological chronic liars, they will lie when the truth would work better sometimes just because it's their nature's like breathing to them.

It's just astonishing. It was a stupid thing to do, but there you go. And they gathered a few little pieces of additional evidence against Jay after his indictment. It was nothing super spectacular, but here's a list. They found a letter to a private investigator where he provably lied about his alibi again, which is great because a written lie is so much worse

for a defendant than a spoken one because, you know, eyewitness testimony, ear witness testimony can be pretty unreliable and you can always argue, oh, no, you're lying or you misunderstood, but now they've got it in his own writing, that's bad. The penthouse magazine with the woman in the same position as Susan was

when she was found. And this was inadmissible at trial, but they also found a book about Ted Bundy in his cell in which Smith had underlined a section about a woman who'd been hit in the right eye, just like Susan had been. Now, I mean, this is creepy, granted, no doubt, but it's also kind of me for me, because I mean, I've got like three books

about Ted Bundy myself, despite the fact that he's really kind of boring and like the basic bitch of serial killers, right? Oh, yeah, he's the live, laugh, love of serial killers. He's like, he's the serial killer starter kit. He's basically like the murderous equivalent of a pair of yoga pants or like a pumpkin spice latte, right? Oh, yes. But avocado toast, any of that. Avocado toast, yeah. We all start with Bundy, though, you know. Yeah, but to be fair, I am sitting in yoga pants right now, and I had avocado toast for breakfast. I had a pumpkin spice latte, so what are we going to? We really shouldn't be making fun. So, but point is, we've all got books about Ted Bundy, so whatever, but he did underline that passage with, I mean, I don't typically underline passages in mine.

Not that I'm going to judge you if you do. So anyway, both Martre and Montioni were going to be Poor witnesses, obviously. Everybody knew that. Their prison snitches. So the prosecutor and police were not what you would call confident in their ability to convict Smith. They were talking 50-50 odds. And they started re-interviewing witnesses. A hunter reported finding two depressions in the ground. And this was right behind Jay Smith's house right around the time of the murders. So obviously the thinking was maybe this is where the children were disposed of. But when they went back to dig up the spot and, I mean, they dug up, they dug the crap out of this area and they didn't find anything. Like, think swimming pool size guys. Yeah, like they got a backhoe in there and a whole big thing. One of the last pieces of the puzzle was putting Susan and the kids with Jay Smith. And right now they had a decently sized pile of circumstantial and physical evidence, but they really needed just one more piece. And Holtz remembered that in Smith's car, they had found this little green pin with a white letter P. They confirmed that this.

pin was something handed out at field trips to the museum in Philadelphia. Now, he also remembered that the day that they disappeared, Karen and Michael were playing with a girl named Elizabeth Ann Brooke, who was Mary Gove's granddaughter that Susan's neighbor, and she had seen what Karen was wearing that day, but nobody had ever asked her about that pin. So they called her up, and allegedly without any prompting whatsoever, she brought up this pin and the fact that Karen wore it every day and specifically that she remembered

she was wearing it on the day of the murder. Now, this was enormous. Nobody had ever established this before, so this was sort of like an 11th hour home run, you know, to call back an image that prosecutor Guida used in Bill's trial, they had their final pebble

in their pile of evidence. So, okay, trial time. Just like he had at his Sears trial, Smith had lost weight again, and he actually looked younger than he did years ago. This guy was such a chameleon. You know, people even said that his height would seem to change from encounter to encounter, which I think is kind of creepy.

There's this whole vibe around Jay Smith, like there's something supernatural about him. And I think that really kind of brings that home. It's just, ugh, it's creepy. And he was a chameleon, and so was, by the way, Ted Bundy to bring it back to Bundy again. He changed his appearance a lot from encounter to encounter. Absolutely. And, like, Lyndon M. Johnson, for example, would totally. use his heights, because Lyndon B. was a tall-ass guy, and he was known to put the pressure on

other diplomats and stuff by just looming over them. And I can see Smith doing that of just being like quiet, mild-mannered school teacher to looming Prince of Darkness. Yeah, definitely. So at his murder trial, though, he looked the part of a very harmless, bespectacled educator, except for those eyes. I mean, you can't hide those eyes. And as with Bill's trial, the Hunsburgers, who are the parents of Smith's still missing son-in-law Eddie were there every day, which just kills me. Smith's lawyer was a public defender named Bill Costopoulos. He was similar to Guida in that he was sarcastic as hell, but he was also a bit of a showboater.

He really liked the publicity a lot, and so much, in fact, that he handed out flipping headshots to reporters of himself, like glossy, black and white pictures. Who the hell does that? That's insane to me. God. One of his investigators said he dressed like a pimp, so you're getting a mental image, I suspect, of Kostopoulos here. And because of all the escape plans, security was heavy, obviously. Kastopoulos came in hot with his opening statement.

You know, these charges should never have been filed, blah, blah, blah. Of ex-cop and prison snitch Raymond Martre, he said, I will deal with Martre when he gets up here, and it will be easy. Well, all righty then, Kostoplas, glad to see you're confident. In his narrative, of course, Bill Bradfield and possibly some of his entourage, although he admitted probably not Vince, because even defense attorneys have limits on what they're willing to ask you to believe, and Vince was just such a sweet-faced little choir boy that he wasn't going to go that far. But, you know, Sue and Chris were under suspicion in his mind, were solely responsible for these murders, and Smith wasn't involved at all. Now, obviously, we cannot cover the trial gabital gavel because we would be here for three more episodes. on that alone, but we'll give you some highlights. So we're going to have to skip some stuff.

Again, you can read Joseph Wambaw's book if you want all of the details. So for one thing, there was a note found in Susan Reinhert's car with Cape May written on it. So the defense leapt on that as evidence against Bill and the Bradfields. Bill and the Bradfield gang, who, of course, we know we're in Cape May from Friday night through Monday morning the weekend of the murder. Bill's little alibi trip. The prosecution presented the red fiber. from Susan's hair that matched fibers from the red rug found in Smith's basement. Not good for him, right?

But, of course, as any good defense attorney would, Costopoulos challenged that. And he did actually get the FBI hair and fiber expert to admit that, you know, he didn't know all the different types of polyester. So, you know, like theoretically, I guess it's possible that I might not have correctly identified this or whatever. And when he got back to the defense table after that cross-examination, he asked Smith, how'd I do teach? To which Smith replied, you get a B plus in science.

Heh, bleh. Anyway. I hate him so much. Science was on Costopoulos mind, though. While he was cross-examining the fingerprint expert in the case, he asked the guy, so hey, did you buy any chance find anything on the victim's toes? And as a matter of fact, yes, the fingerprint guy had. He'd found a couple little grains of a crystalline substance that looked to him like

sand. And Costopoulos said beach sand? And the guy said, yeah, beach sand. Now, this may have seemed like a small detail at the time. But of course, the point was to suggest that Bill and the gang, who had definitely been at the shore that weekend, may have killed Susan there, and some sand got transferred to her feet in the process, which, you know, is not a bad theory. Of course, you find sand in a lot of places. It might have been at Michael's Ballfield or in Susan's car from a previous visit to the beach or who the hell knows. But anyway, it was a fair point, right? Right. And Costopoulos had this way about him. He was really calm. He never objected to testimony, but he would go hard at witnesses. Meanwhile, Guida was losing his goddamn

mind. He'd roll his eyes and suck down water and lose his patience with the judge. He was stressed A.F. this time around. He was a lot less confident than he'd been at Bill's trial. And part of this may have been because the judge seemed annoyed with him for objecting too much. Yeah, this judge, he seemed to favor Costopoulos for sure. Yeah, absolutely true. Again, Guida reenacted the Sears alibi testimony from Bill again, just as he had at Bill's trial, to establish the connection between Bill and Jay and to get the potential quid pro quo, you scratch my back, I perjure myself, into the juror's head. When Ray Mar Troy took the stand, nobody on either side was entirely sure how it would go. He had this tendency to act like an impatient cop on the stand, and, you know, the guy wasn't squeaky clean, obviously.

But three women on the jury had a visible reaction when he talked about Smith saying, I killed that fucking bitch. So that at least hit home. Charles Montione, in the words of Joseph Womba, came in like an extra from Miami Vice. Pinky Ring and all. He gave his testimony, including that awful story about the penthouse magazine. And while the prosecution had been worried about how he'd come across, it seemed like the courtroom believed him.

Between those jurors' reactions to Martre and now this, the defense was getting worried. Then, Grace Gilmore, the woman who had bought Jay Smith's house, took the stand to contradict his bullshit about her having seen him the weekend of the murder. Nope. Try again, Dr. Creep. another blow to the defense. Now, this is my favorite because Jack Holtz was a confident witness. Kastopoulos had a reputation for rattling cops on the stand, but not Holtz.

He stayed calm and polite. And then, Kostopoulos made a mistake. Holtz had seized a nine-page letter from Smith's cell when he arrested him in 85. It was a letter to Smith's former attorney dated 1981. In this letter, Smith had gone over where he was and what he was supposedly doing on the murder weekend. Costopouls was outraged that Holtz had taken his private correspondence. And he asked Holtz, is there anything in this nine-page letter that would be significant to your investigation? What see.

Yeah, yeah. Holtz, the ever-serious witness, came as close as he ever did to smiling and replied, It was all significant. And this opened the door for Holtz to list all the good stuff he found in this thing. Here were the juiciest tidbits from the letter. All the stuff that contradicted claims Smith had made in conversations with the investigators with Martre and Montione and in writing. Grace Gilmore wasn't even home from Friday until Sunday. Jay Smith's daughter had never even been at the house.

No one at the hospice saw Jay visiting his sick wife, Steffie. He hadn't seen his attorney. his brother hadn't been at his house. No one saw Jay until Grace had heard his car pull out on Sunday afternoon. Bam. Ouch. Bill went back to the defense table saying, Ah, shit.

Yo, whoopsie doodle. Now, Dorothy Hunsburger, Eddie's mom, testified that Jay came to court late on the day of his sentencing with his hair all jacked up. Very wisely, his lawyer declined to cross-examine her. There was no testimony at all about Eddie and Stephanie. Then our girl, Joanne, ice queen, Charlotte Bronte, ever loyal to Bill Bradfield, she looked just like that Bronte sister on the stand. She testified about her last weekend in Philly and then her drive alone to New Mexico. Now, she still saw Bill twice a month and she had lawyered up.

And her testimony insinuated that she didn't believe that Bill was with Susan at all romantically. And she lied on the stand about speaking to Bill and Code. Dear God, woman, what are you doing? Because Billy B is definitely worth perjuring yourself for, right, ladies? Sure, because he's got such great prospects now rotting in prison for triple murder. Good gravy. Yep. On consecutive life terms, let's bask for a second in the glory.

A fire of angels Gwita also introduced Jay's letter to Steffie You know remember campers We read part of this to you in an earlier episode Steffie was dying of cancer at that point in the story And here he was writing to her from prison And asking her to dispose of the rug from the basement And to clean out his car

Now he was supposedly worried Because there might be marijuana seeds And the rug left over from their kids Yeah right Yeah I'm sure a few weed seeds were weighing really heavily on his mind as he was being investigated for a triple murder. Come on. This, you know, this letter was not good for Smith. No. Of course, Guida brought up the blue comb from Smith's Army Reserve Unit, found underneath Susan's naked body. Court

watchers weren't impressed with it, though. Everybody agreed with Smith's side that Bill Bradfield could have easily planted it. Yeah, which is true. I mean, he easily could have. And that seems like the kind of thing he would do, quite frankly. So they also brought in some of Karen's former classmates to testify about this little pin. And they were all seniors now, getting ready for college, you know, which I think was really emotionally resonant for the jury. And it's so funny, all of them remembered this pin.

I mean, multiple witnesses took the stand, testified over and over about this pin. Yeah. And they remembered Karen vividly, which I think really says something about what special, what a special little girl she was, that all of these former classmates, even though they were seniors in high school, now they remembered her. One said,

she was very cute. Lots of people at school had a crush on her. I was one of them. And at this, the jurors reacted visibly again. There were smiles and sniffles and Kostopoulos, very wisely, yet again,

didn't dare cross-examine these kids. They were all so apple-cheeked and, you know, wholesome and clearly telling the truth. And the last classmate was Elizabeth. this was the girl that Karen and Michael were playing with, collecting hailstones and everything, the granddaughter of Susan's neighbor Mary Gove. And she, of course, looked all-American as all get out.

She worked at Chubb Insurance, and she was 23 by now, and she remembered babysitting the Reiner kids and recalled that Karen was always, always wearing that little green pin, including the last time she saw her, which was right before the murder. So on cross, Kostopoulos pointed out that she didn't mention the pen at the first interview. But she got him, though, because she testified that although she was asked about the pen recently, she wasn't specifically asked about the pin. She was just asked to recall the clothes that Karen was wearing, and she remembered about that pin on her own. So it's not like it was fed to her by the detective.

She remembered it spontaneously. And at this point, the jury's crying again. I mean, they're having an obvious reaction to this. I think little details like that really make things real. Yeah. You know, like she was wearing that little pin that she was so proud of from her field trip. Because that's just such a kid thing to do is where a little green field trip pin every day. Yes, and it punches you in the gut.

And then to have that show up in Jay Smith's car, what possible reason could there be for that? She was in that car. Her body was in that car, at least. She's just horrifying. I'm so sorry. So Costopoulos closing argument. was all about reasonable doubt. And these are quotes from the closing.

Even if you would decide that Jay Smith was probably responsible in some way or directly, the law says not guilty. Because in this country, we would rather acquit nine guilty persons than convict one innocent man for something he didn't do. He also insinuated that the puzzle pieces laid out by the prosecution just didn't fit. So again, he asked Smith at the end, when he finished his closing, got back to the defense table. How'd I do, Teach? By the way, he wasn't a teacher.

Okay, Costopoulos, he was a principal. There's a difference. It just irritates me for some reason. How to do, teach? And Smith replied, Semester's not over yet. Ugh, barf. So, then it was Guida's turn.

He recapped the case and went back to his old faithful argument. Common sense, just like he did in Bill's trial. While Costopoulos tried to establish the rest of the Bradfield gang as alternative suspects, Guida explained why each wasn't on trial. Except for Joanne, who didn't have an alibi for the weekend, but also didn't have any evidence against her whatsoever, not one scintilla. And he pointed out that the pin wasn't something that would be planted as evidence, because how could the planter know that anybody would remember that pin?

It just doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be good enough evidence to plant, right? Certainly not a comb. Yeah, it's not like that comb, which had the name of Smith's Army Reserve Unit on it. I mean, that's a really obvious thing to plant. And this is a direct quote from Guida's closing. This case involves a conspiracy within a conspiracy, a conspiracy with two separate motives. He pointed out that innocent men don't plan an escape that involves killing police officers, which I think is a pretty darn good point, actually. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because you can't say that an innocent man doesn't plan an escape, but an innocent man doesn't plan to murder people.

Yeah. And by the way, back when you were talking about how, you know, Plan B was that they would take the transporting on. officers as hostages and then kill them later, why would they need to kill them? No. Why couldn't they just drop them off by the side of the road or something? Yeah. There's no need whatsoever to kill them. It's completely gratuitous and horrifying. So he also used the pebble analogy again, you know, just like he did in Bill's trial,

that it's a pile, the circumstantial and physical evidence are each a little pebble, and at the end you have a mountain. And another quote from Guedis closing, Karen wore a green pin, nothing special to an adult. Karen was an 11-year-old girl. It was more like an emerald to her. It wasn't something insignificant. It was something she prized. And on that night, Karen Reinhert got into the car of her mother and drove away into oblivion. There's an old children's story about children walking through the woods. They leave things behind on the ground so they can find their way back home. Karen Reinhert, on the night of June 22nd, 1979, knew she wasn't coming back. Either that or that, or the force that looks after little children left something for us. Not so Karen could find her way back home, but to tell us where she went and who sent her there. When I stopped talking, the criminal investigation into the murders of Susan Reiner and her two children will have ended. I'm asking you now

to do the right thing, and I think you know what that is. Thank you. God. Oh, man, did you get goosebumps? I have, I have tears on my house. That's, I can't. Yeah, I barely made it through that without crying, by the way. Like, I'm totally like stingy-eyed right now and goose bumpy. Damn, Guilla. The thought that Karen even conceivably could have left that pin, I don't know that that's the case. She was a smart kid, though. Remember how she figured Bill Bradfield out when her mother didn't. Oh, God. And I don't think it's impossible at all that she took that pin off and stuck it in the car because she wanted somebody to know what had happened to her. And that's, I think, the crux of this case is that these two adult men, thought these two children were expendable.

They thought they were worthless. And that is what eventually put them away. The fact that these two kids were not worthless. So the most evil element in the case is what brought them down. It's almost like the entire universe said, oh, no, that's a step too far. That's what's going to bury you both. God, I'm... Oh, Lord.

All right. Damn. So that concluded the trial. And while Guida and the prosecution team went to the bar because they needed it by then. Yeah. And Guida was convincing himself there was going to be a not guilty verdict. He'd never been confident. And Holtz went home to his son. And the next morning, April 30th, 1986, after five hours of deliberation, the jury returned with a verdict. And man, I'm telling you, the deliberation times in this entire case are just crazy short. It's amazing. Yeah. The Hunsburgers, Eddie's parents, said, in the second row. They'd spent money they didn't have to stay the night in a hotel. And yet again, direct quote, the judge said, In the case of the Commonwealth v. J.C. Smith, number 1677 on the charge of murder, how do you find the defendant? And the jury four persons said, guilty, murder in the first degree. Pete and Dorothy Hunsberger heard two additional counts of murder that nobody else heard. At sentencing, Jay Smith took the state.

And charmingly, he called one of the witnesses against him gay. I can't remember if it was Martre or Charlie Montcioni. It doesn't matter. He's so stupid. I hate him. And said he tried to talk him out of it, which is just bizarre. What is his obsession with homosexuality and trying to talk people out of it? Remember he said earlier in the case he was writing a book about how to prevent it in your children or whatever?

You need to chill. You got bigger problems, sir, than that. Can you imagine? God, I hate him. Bill Bradfield's a fucking dumbass for taking the stand. We know this. But can you imagine if Jay Smith had taken... I wish to God he had.

It would have been fascinating to read his testimony. But God only knows what he would have said because he's a total wild card, you know. And I'm sure that's why, I mean, Costopoulos wouldn't have put him on the stand for any amount of money. Yeah. So that was his contribution to his sentencing was just to call one of the witnesses against him gay. Because I guess he felt like, well, case closed. Right? What a bigoted asshole.

Anyway, so the jury took six hours to deliberate his sentence, and for each of the three counts, he was sentenced to death by electric chair. And here, Camper's, is where we're going to pretend that this case ends. For now, anyway. Next time, we'll get into some theories about how the murders occurred and tell you about an additional development and what we think about it. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights. and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. We also want to give a few shoutouts to a few more of our Patreon angels. We appreciate you so much.

I want to say thank you so much to Sylvia, Leila, and Nanette. You can follow us on Twitter at T.C. 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.