“You make them disappear,” Jay Smith had supposedly said, “and you get a public reaction. You have a social impact.”
Bill Bradfield said that Jay Smith carried two guns. One was the “menace” gun and the other a.22 caliber pistol equipped with a silencer.
“The menace gun has to look like a gun,” Bill Bradfield told his enthralled young friend. “You scare them into obedience with the big gun.” And then Bill Bradfield showed Chris his Jay Smith impression pointing an imaginary big gun.
“You talk, you die!” Bill Bradfield said, pointing his finger. “You move, you die!”
And after he was through with the imaginary big gun he brought out his imaginary.22 caliber pistol with a silencer and said, “This gun of course doesn’t even look like a gun. While the victim’s watching the menace gun you pop him with the little silenced twenty-two.”
And then things got pretty technical because Bill Bradfield pointed out that Jay Smith divided the sound of a gun into three parts: the mechanism of the gun, the explosion of the powder, and the sound of the bullet’s flight.
Bill Bradfield knew that Chris Pappas was very clever with his hands and enjoyed tinkering perhaps more than he enjoyed academics, and he said, “You can use an oil filter with an internal diameter of one inch to make a silencer. You never know when we might need a silencer against him. It could come to that, Chris. Let’s not kid ourselves.”
Supercharged though he was, Chris Pappas hadn’t bargained on shooting somebody, even somebody as thoroughly shootable as Jay Smith.
He said, “Are you sure we can’t go to the authorities with all this? I mean, even if he’s connected with the Upper Merion police, we might try …”
“It’s no use,” Bill Bradfield said. “It’s hopeless. I didn’t want to alarm you, and I don’t dare tell Vince what I’m going to tell you because he’d go to pieces on me. You see, Jay Smith is connected with the State Department and with several police agencies. He’s paid some police officials to protect him. I didn’t believe it at first, but he proved it to me.”
“Proved it?”
“His contacts told him all about my trip to Cuba, all of it. He knows that I posed as a journalist and that I was working through the CIA and that I got shot at and shot back.”
“I thought you stabbed a guard there. I didn’t know you shot anybody.”
“That too. He knows all of it. I was shocked to learn what the man’s found out in the short time since I agreed to be his alibi witness. He knows the number of my post office box. He knows where my parents live. And for all I know he may know where my friends live and where their parents live! He has fantastic access to public agencies. I can’t go to the police until he can be locked up for good. And even then I’ll be uncertain which agency to contact.”
“It’s a nightmare,” Chris Pappas agreed.
Then Bill Bradfield took a pamphlet out of his pocket and said, “Jay Smith gave me this monograph on silencers. He trusts me as much as he’s capable of trusting anyone. Do you think you could use it and build a silencer for us?”
This was the kind of challenge that Chris, the handyman, got stoked about: to use his mechanical skill and ingenuity on such a strange and valuable mission. “I’ll play with it,” he said.
Bill Bradfield lavished praise on his young protege. “I believe you could make anything with those good hands,” he said.
Bill Bradfield was not clever with his hands and not mechanical, as his last act of the night demonstrated. The strapping tape was very sticky and when he tried to show his disciple how Jay Smith could whip out his tape and wrap up a victim’s mouth, Bill Bradfield got the tape all stuck to itself, and pretty soon the performer was dancing around in his ski mask getting grouchy because he was wrapped up in his own tape and the stuff was even getting stuck to his beard and Chris thought he was going to have to take him to a barber.
The final thing he said to Chris that night was that Jay Smith wore a hairnet during his killings so as not to leave hair and fiber evidence. That was a Bill Bradfield touch. The little details: alligator shoes, hairnets.
On the drive home Chris Pappas was humming like a tuning fork. He didn’t realize something that Vince Valaitis, the horror buff, would have noticed right away. The last male killer to wear a hairnet was Anthony Perkins in Psycho, and look what happened to him.
In January, 1979, Susan Reinert phoned her brother Pat Gallagher who lived near Pittsburgh. She wanted to let him in on a terrific business deal. It appeared that her friend Bill Bradfield knew of an “agent” who had found a reputable party willing to offer 12 percent interest for a substantial short-term investment. She informed her older brother that she was going to invest $25,000 and Bill Bradfield was coming up with $12,000 and asked if Pat cared to kick in $13,000 because a tidy $50,000 would guarantee the favorable rate.
Pat Gallagher had never met Bill Bradfield face to face, but during visits with Susan he’d heard enough from his sisters friends that he didn’t want to meet him. He believed Bill Bradfield to be a “womanizer” and wished his sister would end the long relationship. He declined the investment opportunity.
About the same time, Susan Reinert decided that she needed a far larger insurance policy on her life. She made another inquiry into “term” insurance, the cheapest kind of life insurance. There was no cash value, no dividends. It just paid a beneficiary in the event of death.
She wanted her children to be beneficiaries of a term policy, but an insurance agent discouraged her by saying it would be better to name an adult who would be an administrator or trustee for the children. She named William S. Bradfield, Jr., as beneficiary. She asked the agent to inquire if New York Life would insure her life for $250,000. The home office was queried, but agreed to issue only a $100,000 policy.
Susan Reinert was disappointed and explained to her insurance agent that she was marrying her beneficiary William Bradfield, and that he was quite well off, owning a farm in Downingtown and a retail business in Montgomery Mall. She told the insurance agent that she hoped to get a teaching position in England and felt she needed a lot of insurance before leaving the country.
There were some negotiations with the home office about the $100,000 policy, and it was agreed that she could purchase an additional $150,000 of life insurance. The children were listed as contingent beneficiaries in the event the original beneficiary also died. Susan Reinert then said she was satisfied that she could go to England with peace of mind.
But in February, Susan Reinert made another attempt to purchase a policy with the USAA insurance company. This time she reduced the amount of requested coverage to $250,000, but with a $200,000 accidental-death rider. This time in her application she listed beneficiary William S. Bradfield, Jr., as “intended husband.”
It was a one-year term life policy with no residual cash value, and would pay only if Susan Reinert died within a year. The $200,000 accidental-death clause did cover murder.
Things were speeding up. Sue Myers was surprised in February to be handed a written cohabitation agreement. It was all typed up and ready for her signature, and seemed designed to prevent either of them from suing the other for palimony. It specifically cited the Lee Marvin lawsuit in California.
As part of the cohabitation agreement Bill Bradfield listed his assets, current and future, as required by law. Without full disclosure the agreement could be nullified. On the disclosure list was “beneficiary on mother’s policy, $250,000.” As well as an undescribed “insurance policy, $500,000.”