As he got to the yard, Susan Reinert came out the front door, crying.
“Bill!” she called, but then she saw Donna Formwalt and went back inside.
The event approximately coincided with Susan Reinerts call to her therapist claiming that she was going to demand satisfaction regarding his perjury on behalf of Dr. Jay C. Smith.
On the 15th of June, a more unusual event occurred at the quiet and peaceful Reinert home in Ardmore. It was just days after Michaels tenth birthday, and he had a baseball game to play that afternoon. His grandparents John and Florence Reinert drove twenty miles from Phoenixville to watch their grandson play, but they had only remembered the game at the last moment and didn’t call before coming. When they arrived, the house looked empty. The windows were closed even though it was a warm evening.
They spotted Michael and Karen playing in the yard next door, but instead of running to the car for hugs and kisses, both children looked apprehensive. They ran straight home across their neighbor’s yard.
Florence Reinert called to Michael and asked if he had a baseball game and he only said yes and went inside.
The elder Reinerts walked to the porch and waited. After a minute or two, Michael came out with his baseball uniform on and Susan Reinert followed, but quickly shut the door behind her.
She didn’t invite them in and didn’t make small talk and the Reinerts didn’t know what to think.
“We’ll walk to the game,” Florence Reinert said to her former daughter-in-law. “Aren’t you coming with us?”
“I’ll be over later,” Susan said, and went back in the house.
Florence and John Reinert took Karen and Karen’s friend Lee Ann, and went to watch Michael play. Halfway through the game Karen and Lee Ann got bored and decided to buy some water ice and go home for a few minutes.
“We’ll be right back,” Karen told her grandparents, but when they didn’t return John Reinert decided to check on them.
Donna Formwalt was at home when the girls came back from the game that evening. They were carrying cups of water ice, and Lee Ann asked her mother if she could have the water ice before dinner. She was told to put it in the freezer until later.
Karen decided to run next door and put hers in the freezer too, but she found the front door locked. Donna Formwalt saw Karen climbing in the window by the back porch.
A minute later she heard Karen scream and then start to cry.
When John Reinert got to the house, he didn’t see the girls so he drove his car back to the ball park. About ten minutes before the game ended Susan and Karen Reinert finally arrived. Karen was visibly upset and so was her mother.
When the game was over the grandparents wanted to take everyone for ice cream but Susan declined and said she and Karen wanted to walk home.
Michael decided to ride with his grandparents so they waited and drove him home. When they got to the corner of his street they saw a seedy-looking VW Beetle with a bearded man behind the wheel driving away from the house. Then they saw Susan and Karen running toward the car. Susan began talking to the man after he stopped.
The Reinerts dropped off their grandson and drove home to Phoenixville confused and disturbed. They’d never seen Bill Bradfield prior to that day and knew nothing about him. It got them thinking. Earlier in the spring when the Reinerts had their grandchildren over for a weekend, Michael had spotted a van in the parking lot of a shopping center and said, “We’re going to get a van like that when we go to Europe with Bill.”
And when his grandmother said, “Who’s Bill?” her grandson would only say, “My mothers friend.”
Susan Reinerts secrets were obviously taking a toll on her children. She’d started telling her therapist that she was fretting over having let her relationship with Bill Bradfield get to the stage where they were sleeping together under the same roof with the kids, and turning them into secret sharers.
Some say that the land around Downingtown is so lovely it can break your heart, and that it’s impossible to drive through the rolling countryside near the frontier of Amish country without at least a minor attack of nostalgia. It’s what a city dweller longs for when urban life gets unbearable, this postcard-pretty landscape.
Fields of corn and alfalfa envelop those twisted country roads, and past each winding turn is a travelers delight: an eighteenth-century inn turned restaurant, restored with reverence for history, or a cedar and stone farmhouse snugged within a cleavage of hills patched by wild lavender, or one of Chester County’s historic covered bridges. Haystacks are scattered about the farmland, eccentric-looking haystacks molded like enormous loaves of bread.
Pat Schnure, the best friend and colleague of Susan Reinert, lived with her husband Biv and daughter Molly near Downingtown. They were tenants on a large piece of land just off Pennypacker Road. A grand white barn on the property had been turned into a meetinghouse, and the Pennypackers had developed part of the parcel into a tennis and swim club.
The Schnures occupied a “springhouse,” so called because a century ago there had been water below the house that sustained the people who worked this land. A fine elm still stood beside the house, as well as an ancient hollow maple that fascinated children but had to be watched because of the tendency of old maples to shudder and die without warning.
Susan Reinert loved the old springhouse with the rounded Chester County curve to the walls, and the inimitable patina on wood dating from the American Revolution. The doorways were so low that Biv had to duck through them. It was a warm, cozy, enduring retreat.
In June of 1979, Karen Reinert was eleven years old and Michael was just ten. Visiting the Schnures on Pennypacker Road was always a fun event, especially for Michael.
“A real boy” is how Biv described Michael. “I’ll never forget how thrilled he got when he hooked a small trout in the pond. A real boy.”
The Schnures had one child, brown-eyed Molly, not yet two. When Molly was born, Biv Schnure had received a telephone call from Bill Bradfield.
“He recited poetry by way of congratulations,” Biv recalled. “I think it was from Ezra Pound. I didn’t know what the devil he was talking about.”
When Molly was a baby, Susan Reinert had given Pat a white youth blanket that used to belong to Karen. Molly wouldn’t part with it even when it went gray with age.
Karen later gave Molly a baby doll in a blue dress. It was a very old doll made of real rubber and Molly called the doll Karen. The doll’s eyes were blue, but the real Karen had the kind of eyes that went from dove-gray to olive-green depending upon the light and the color of her clothes.
Michael’s hair was dark blond, but Karen’s was changing color. It was chestnut now, with streaks of butterscotch. She was an especially photogenic child with an instinct for the camera. Her poses could range from tomboy to coquette depending on the photographic moment.
Karen was a moody little girl, squeamish about insects and field mice and other critters she might encounter around the springhouse, but she enjoyed playing with Molly and loved to mother the tot. She said she couldn’t wait for Molly to get old enough to play school. Karen, of course, wanted to be the teacher like her own mother whom she obviously idolized.
Pat Schnure recalled how Susan sometimes brought Karen and Michael to faculty meetings where they’d sit in the back of the room and quietly draw pictures. They actually enjoyed the company of adults, and Susan probably brought them to show off a bit. She was extremely proud of those children.
In that they spent so much time with their mother they were accustomed to adult games. When they stayed with Pat and Biv as houseguests, Karen and Pat would challenge Michael and Biv to a game of bridge. The losers washed dishes and the winners went to Downingtown to buy ice cream.
Usually they came for day visits but sometimes the children and their mother stayed at the springhouse when the Schnures were out of town. Twice during the preceding weeks they’d stayed overnight with Pat and Biv while their mother was occupied.