Saturday night is still the best time to take a girl to the movies in a place like Tredyffrin Township. And really, there isn’t a whole lot else to do on steamy August nights except to catch a movie or have a few slices of pizza. And what with the cinema in the Gateway Shopping Center being so crowded on the evening of August 19, 1978, a young couple decided on the pizzeria.
The moon was low and the young people were sitting on the curb near the Central Penn Bank munching when their attention was diverted by a brown Ford Granada that pulled slowly into the parking lot and stopped next to a Chevrolet van, probably belonging to somebody in the cinema. A man got out of the Ford and walked toward the van and peered inside.
The young couple suddenly forgot all about pizzas and movies. In the available light they could see that the tall man was wearing a cowl-like hood over his entire face and head. And it looked like he was carrying something in each hand-guns.
The couple didn’t run away or even walk away. As the young man later put it, they “sort of crawled away.”
By the time the couple got to a phone and the Tredyffrin Township police had arrived at the shopping center, the hooded gunman had gone. The young man told the police that he didn’t think the gunman had spotted them, and the police concluded that perhaps he’d been planning to break into the van but changed his mind.
While the young people were still giving their report to the cop, a car pulled into the far end of the parking lot and began cruising slowly in their direction.
“I think that’s the car!” the young man yelled and the driver turned abruptly and drove away.
A few minutes later, a sergeant and lieutenant from the township police were the first to spot a brown Ford Granada that resembled the one described on the radio broadcast.
The Ford was driving erratically, heading south in a northbound traffic lane. The cops went after it and pulled the car over at the Route 202 on-ramp at Valley Forge Road.
The driver was a tall middle-aged man. He got out and waited as the policemen approached with flashlights, one on each side of the car.
The cops weren’t yet certain they had the right suspect and the sergeant asked for a drivers license.
“It’s in the car,” the driver answered calmly. He turned toward the open door and reached down toward the front seat.
Then, every cops recurring nightmare. The sergeant heard the lieutenant yell something at him. The lieutenant from his side of the car saw it in the flashlight beam: a.22 Ruger.
“Drop it!” the lieutenant screamed.
A memory in fragments. A finger slid inside the trigger guard. The gun began rising up. The lieutenant could not shoot.
“Drop it now!” he screamed.
A microsecond. Finger pads turned white against blue steel. Then the man said something out of character for a gunman.
He said, “Oh, my goodness!”
He dropped the Ruger and was not shot to death.
The lieutenant later said, “I couldn’t fire even after the first command. I was carrying a hot load in my gun and my sergeant was right behind the guy. I was scared I’d blast through him and blow away my partner. That guy was very lucky.”
The township police found some unusual items in the car of the lucky guy. There was a black leather pouch on the front seat containing four loaded handguns. There was a sleeve of a football jersey fashioned into a hood mask. There was a bolt cutter and other tools that the police assumed were to be used to break into the car in the parking lot.
There was, strangely enough, an oil filter with two bullet holes in the top. Then the cops noticed that the Ruger’s front sight had been filed off and on the barrel of the pistol was a cylinder of rubber, the kind used to insulate a screwdriver against electrical shock. With the front sight gone and the rubber cylinder acting as a gasket sleeve, the barrel of the weapon fit perfectly into the oil filter. The gunman had devised an effective silencer.
There were things in the car that at a later time would be of great interest to other police during the investigation of a crime of far greater importance. There was a syringe in that car, and another syringe in the gunman’s pocket. A lab report showed the syringe was loaded with ethchlorvynol, also called Placidyl, a tranquilizing drug that, taken orally, can induce sleep. A bloodstream injection can produce unconsciousness within a minute.
The gunman told the cops that he was merely carrying guns to “scare some kids” who’d been bothering him. He said that the drug-loaded syringe belonged to his son-in-law who was an addict. What the son-in-law was doing with such a massive dose was not clear. It was one of the most bizarre aspects of this incident that was not explained.
There was an ordinary plastic trash bag in the backseat of the car and more bags in the trunk. There was a blue plaid jacket in the car with rolls of strapping tape in the pockets. There was a pair of gloves.
The Tredyffrin Township police were the first to receive a piece of news that would occupy the local newspapers for months to come. Their hooded gunman was Dr. Jay C. Smith, the fifty-year-old principal of Upper Merion Senior High School in nearby King of Prussia.
Of course, the police station was humming that night. Yet the cops weren’t even beginning to sense the imminent revelations in the secret life of the local educator.
It was near midnight when the arresting officer was walking past Dr. Jay Smith in the booking office. He overheard a remark that the prisoner whispered into the telephone.
Jay Smith said to his listener, “… even before the bailbondsman. Get over to the house and take everything out. Including the files!”
The blue metal sign at the township limit reads: NAMED FOR FREDERICK THE GREAT, KING OF PRUSSIA. Jay Smith lived in King of Prussia, only a few minutes from Upper Merion Senior High School. It was well past midnight when township police started acting upon information received from the arresting officers.
At 1:00 A.M. a detective was staked out at the residence of Jay Smith on Valley Forge Road. The cops couldn’t imagine who would arrive at the house of the principal to “get everything out.” And what would “everything” consist of?
At 2:00 A.M. a car entered the Smith driveway. The driver of the car held four university degrees. He was short and slight and looked as threatening as Woody Allen. In fact, he looked very much like the school librarian, which is what he’d been until the recent Philadelphia layoffs. The librarian had been a close friend of Jay Smiths for many years.
The cops hid by a line of trees and watched the librarian carrying boxes from the basement of the Smith house. Among the items he carried to his Plymouth were some file boxes containing two packets of marijuana weighing a total of 818 grams. The cops pounced on the unsuspecting librarian who said that he was only doing what his friend Jay Smith had asked, and the authorities later decided not to charge him with any crime. But the marijuana in the box allowed them to get the local magistrate out of bed and swear out a search warrant.
At seven o’clock that morning the secret basement apartment of Jay Smith was full of cops. They found an additional 580 grams of marijuana and some vials of contraband pills and capsules, but the drugs were eventually of minimal interest to the police. Far more intriguing were other things that caused many excited calls to other police stations around The Main Line.
Another search warrant was served the next day, a warrant that covered a search more far-reaching than anticipated. The superintendent of schools was asked to come to the Jay Smith home where he identified office machines and other equipment stolen from the Upper Merion school district, as well as reproductions of famous paintings snatched off the walls in the district office. And also something that made absolutely no sense to the cops: Dr. Jay Smith had apparently stolen four gallons of nitric acid from the school. For what?