During December, Susan Reinert contacted the USAA insurance company and tried very hard to secure a life insurance policy for half a million dollars, naming a “friend” as beneficiary. The name of the friend was William S. Bradfield, Jr.
The insurance company denied her application on the grounds that such a large policy would overinsure her life.
During the same week Susan Reinert wrote a letter to the man that Bill Bradfield claimed was trying to murder her for walking out on a clandestine affair. It was a straightforward business letter:
Dear Dr. Smith:
I am applying for an exchange teaching position in England under the Fulbright-Hays program for 1979-80 and could use a letter of reference from you.
I hope you are doing all right, especially considering your present circumstances. If I can be of any aid, please let me know.
Jay Smith responded immediately:
Susan,
I have some familiarity with the Fulbright programs and would be happy to fill out a reference for you. While teaching at Rider College in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, last year, I was on a review committee re Fulbrights.
Send whatever data you have and I will write a reference geared toward the requirements.
Hope you and your children are in good health.
Jay Smith
And that was all. It was a letter from one colleague to another. He didn’t even call her Tweetie Bird.
Bill Bradfield held a critical meeting with Vince Valaitis at school. It was so intense it was subdued. Bill Bradfields soft husky voice could hardly be heard at times.
“I need to tell you something. I need advice,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
Bill Bradfield took a date book from his pocket and thumbed through the pages. “I’m troubled,” he said. “I don’t know what to do. You see, I was with Doctor Smith at the shore on Saturday, August twenty-seventh, of last year.”
“I don’t see what …”
“That’s when the Sears store in St. Davids got robbed. So Doctor Smith’s been truthful all along. It was a case of mistaken identity. So it was probably the lookalike, whoever he is, who did the other one too!”
And Vince started pondering because in the newspaper they said that the police found all kinds of evidence like security guards’ uniforms and badges and I.D. cards and guns.
“But maybe he did do the other robbery. After all there was other evidence.”
“I’m only concerned with the St. Davids case,” Bill Bradfield said. “Whatever else he did or didn’t do isn’t my business. All I know is he didn’t do that one.”
“What about the stuff the police found in the house? What about all that?”
“It’s very possible he’s telling the truth that Edward and Stephanie Hunsberger are not only responsible for all the contraband, but the robberies too. They may’ve had a partner who resembled Doctor Smith.”
It didn’t take a lawyer to conclude that if Jay Smith could show he didn’t do the first one, he’d have a very good chance of beating the second case, and if the evidence in the basement could be suppressed due to search and seizure laws, Jay Smith might get his life back to abnormal, free once more to save children from homosexuality and prove to the American Kennel Club that it owed a debt to America’s women.
Vince Valaitis got confused thinking about it. All he could say was “I don’t know, Bill. I’ve never encountered anything like this.”
“Of course not,” Bill Bradfield said. “Nor have I. But damn it, I have an obligation as a citizen to come forward when I can save an innocent man who’s being harassed by the police. They’re twisting the evidence and forcing witnesses to identify the wrong man!”
“Jay C. Smith is …”
“Innocent of this. Whatever else he is. He’s innocent of this crime, Vince. And I fear it’s my duty to help him no matter what I feel about the man personally.”
Chris Pappas hardly knew Susan Reinert other than to say hello when he was substituting for regular teachers at Upper Merion. Of course, there had been those telephone calls from her last summer when she’d called Bill Bradfield at St. John’s. And he’d guessed that Bill Bradfield had gone to Baltimore to see Susan after one of those telephone calls, but Chris accepted Bill Bradfield’s explanation that she was simply a pitiful friend and that he wanted out of his advisory role.
In that he hardly knew her, Chris wasn’t as shocked as Vince Valaitis to hear from Bill Bradfield that she was the secret lover of Jay Smith, and that Jay Smith was very angry that she’d jilted him and wanted revenge.
It was a lot more shocking to hear that Jay Smith was a “screened hit man” for the Mafia-which meant that he was screened off from knowing who the contractor really was and vice versa. Bill Bradfield told Chris that ads were taken in the classified section to let a killer know all he needed to know, and that was how Jay Smith did business. Jay Smith had told Bill Bradfield about a vendetta against several of the people involved in his legal problems, and against school officials as well.
Now Chris Pappas was warned that he must not go to the police or Bill Bradfield was a dead man. And besides there wasn’t a shred of evidence.
While Chris spent a few days digesting the news that Jay Smith was a Mafia hit man and wondered why his friend had ever offered to be Jay Smiths character witness, Bill Bradfield came to him with an even more bewildering secret. He’d had a dream and worked out a date in 1977 and now he wasn’t just a potential character witness, he was an alibi witness. Jay Smith had been with him in Ocean City on the very day that the Sears store was victimized.
It was put to the introspective, insecure, worrisome, thoughtful young fellow almost like a philosophical proposition. What would he do if he knew that a truly wicked man was innocent in a specific instance of a wicked crime even though he was by his own admission guilty of scores of more wicked crimes? Did Bill Bradfield have a duty to the rule of law, or would society be served better by letting Jay Smith get wrongly convicted?
Chris worked on it for a while, but it was clear to him that Bill Bradfield had the distasteful duty of stepping forward and protecting the integrity of the system. He had no choice but to be an alibi witness for Jay Smith.
Bill Bradfield reluctantly agreed.
English teacher Fred Wattenmaker thought a lot of his colleague Susan Reinert. He once described her as “sensitive, sincere and caring.” He thought she was a wonderful mother.
He got to know her children when she chaperoned some students on a Puerto Rican field trip supervised by Fed Wattenmaker. He told people that Karen and Michael were the type of children he would want if he ever had his own. During the past spring, Susan and her children had visited Fred Wattenmaker at his vacation home in Ocean City. A few weeks later, Bill Bradfield and Sue Myers also accepted an invitation and stayed for a few days. It was the only time that Bill Bradfield had been there except for a day in August, 1977, when Fred Wattenmaker found a note on his door saying, “Tell McKinley I won the bet. I was here but you weren’t.”
Fred Wattenmaker forgot all about that incident until the fall of 1978, after the entire school was overwhelmed by the arrest of Jay Smith and the scandal surrounding his secret life.
Fred Wattenmaker was surprised when Bill Bradfield approached him at school and said, “Believe me, Fred, I’ve questioned Doctor Smith for hours and hours and there’s no way he did any of the things he’s been accused of doing.”
And Fred Wattenmaker didn’t think too much about that odd little aside except that Bill Bradfield approached him again a month later and said, “I’ve covered everything with Jay Smith and he’s innocent. I’m sure of it except that we can’t cover the theft at the Sears store in St. Davids.”