Always and all ways yours,
Shelly’s letters also reflect her concerns about his holy war, namely to protect his colleague Susan Reinert from the evil Dr. Smith.
Sweetheart,
Your letter came yesterday. I was so happy to get it that I almost kissed it right there in the dining hall.
I’m so sorry that school is troublesome and that Dr. Smith is such a worry to you. As for that teacher, my claws start unsheathing when I think of her. Please be careful, William. We have a long time still to go and if you should get hurt before you are mine in everyone’s eyes I don’t know what I would do. It’s hard enough to be circumspect as it is. Won’t it be nice when I can be at your back as you fight your battles?
In May, Susan Reinert had to see her friend Pat Schnure on a matter of urgency. She was agitated to the point of tears.
“I’ve heard that Sue Myers is also going to England this summer!” Susan confided.
“What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know! But that’s not the worst part. I can hardly believe Bill did it!”
“What?”
“The testimony at the Jay Smith trial. He lied. You see, I was with him at the shore when he says he saw Jay Smith. He never mentioned seeing Jay Smith at that time. He would’ve mentioned it to me. We were together almost constantly.”
“What do you make of it? Why would he lie for Jay Smith?”
“I don’t know, but he did.”
“It doesn’t make sense. Did you accuse him of it?”
“Of course. He’s outraged. He says that I don’t remember. He says I’m confused. He’s furious that I don’t believe him.”
“Are you going to overlook it or what?”
“Overlook it? I don’t know. I could live with a certain amount of dishonesty from Bill, I suppose. I know about all the romantic entanglements and so forth. But lying under oath? Perjury? I don’t know if I can live with it.”
The only person ever to see William Bradfield with Jay Smith outside of school was a teacher at Upper Merion, a friend of Susan Reinert, who spotted them at a diner on The Main Line.
“I was going in and they were coming out together,” the teacher told Susan. “They stood in the parking lot and talked for a little while before getting into their cars and leaving.”
“That explains why Bill was late for our date,” Susan told her friend.
Susan Reinert was troubled by that incident and saw fit to discuss it again with her friend, in that Bill Bradfield had adamantly denied meeting Jay Smith at a diner or anywhere else.
“Why?” Susan wondered. “He says he was with Jay Smith at the shore when he wasn’t. And he says he wasn’t with him at the diner when he was!”
Susan Reinert was troubled. And she obviously had a serious talk with Bill Bradfield about his involvement with Jay Smith, because later, when a friend of hers was speculating about the Bradfield testimony and whether or not Jay Smith really had murdered and disposed of his daughter and her husband, Susan Reinert’s friend asked her point-blank if Bill Bradfield knew anything about the missing couple.
Susan smiled cryptically and said, “Officially or unofficially? I can say this: Stephanie Hunsberger’s alive. I’m not at liberty to say more than that.”
And she didn’t say more than that, and her friend didn’t learn what little secrets Bill Bradfield was sharing with her. Clearly, it wasn’t the other secret. The secret that she might be murdered by Jay C. Smith.
* * *
There were bits and pieces of Bill Bradfield’s biggest secret, that Jay Smith was going to kill Susan Reinert, that one friend would get and another wouldn’t. There was one little detail that was shared only with Chris Pappas.
Bill Bradfield said that Jay Smith was extremely angry with Susan Reinert for having jilted him. According to Bill Bradfield, Jay Smith called her a “social climber,” and he was going to deal with the social climber in his own way. He was going to beat her severely before he murdered her.
All the insurance coverage that Susan Reinert had purchased in the last few months, along with a small policy she’d already had, along with the accidental death rider meant that if she was to die accidently or be murdered within a year, her “future husband” stood to inherit $730,000.
The last policy came just in time. She’d asked for two copies because her “executor” wanted one, but the company refused. The agent delivered one copy of the policy to the Ardmore home of Susan Reinert on June 20, 1979. She said that she expected to be leaving the country in a matter of days.
13
For a few weeks Susan Reinert had been concerned about a lump in her breast, but by May 25th she received the good news in writing: “Ultrasonic breast exam showed only some shadowing behind nipple of left breast. No evidence of any lump or mass in either breast. The single calcification is of no consequence except that it might represent the area of shadowing seen on the ultrasound exam.”
Bill Bradfield told Vince Valaitis that Susan Reinert might die from cancer if Jay Smith didn’t get her first.
On May 31st she called to tell her therapist, Roslyn Weinberger, about Bill Bradfields testimony in the Jay Smith trial. She called again a week later to say that she believed he’d perjured himself because he was sure that Jay Smith was an innocent man, and that he rationalized his perjury because he was seeking a “higher justice.”
She said, “I’m not finished with this. I must know the truth. We’ve made a date to talk about it and I’ll have to be satisfied.”
When asked if she still intended to go to England with Bill Bradfield, Susan Reinert said, “If I do, I may live with him for a while to be sure I can trust him before we marry.”
Susan Reinert told Roslyn Weinberger that despite her repeated requests he refused to talk to the psychologist and resented Susan’s need to do so.
“There’s still an open invitation,” her therapist told Susan Reinert.
Susan made some notes about the coming trip to Europe. Her jumble of thoughts included worries about notifications to his ex-wives and to his children, as well as her own notifications:
What and when to tell about leaving? David and Muriel, parents, brother, Ken, Fran, Sue, friends. How long expect to stay in Europe. Leave together or separately? Jobs? What to do about medical coverage, bank accounts, safe deposit, charge account, mailing address, change of support-Ken, resigning, storage, clothes, books, records, furniture, bicycles. Marriage: When? Where? By whom? Technicalities? Divorce decree, blood tests, license, witnesses, ring(s). Announcements: Karen and Michael, Ken and Reinerts, friends.
Pathetically, at the bottom of her notations she wrote: “When can I meet family?”
Throughout the late spring, at least three of the neighbors of Susan Reinert began seeing a faded blue VW Beetle parked on their street. By early summer the car was being seen there late at night and was still there in the morning when they went out for their newspapers.
None of the neighbors had ever talked to Bill Bradfield, but all had seen the man with a beard coming and going. Only one had learned his name. The neighbors had often said that Susan Reinert was an ideal mother and a fine quiet neighbor. They were a bit surprised that her gentleman friend was apparently being allowed to sleep over.
In early June, something unusual happened at Susan Reinerts home. Her neighbor Donna Formwalt was standing on her front porch on a very warm afternoon and saw Susan Reinerts friend leaving her house in a hurry.
“He wasn’t running,” she later said. “But you could tell he was determined to leave.”