A Philadelphia paper ran a picture of a furious mother brandishing a microphone at a school-board meeting. The headline said: SEX, DRUGS, TROUBLE, UPPER MERION HIGH.
Angry parents were asking politicians to probe the entire school district, according to an article with a headline that said, LIFE IN THE SUBURBS IS SUDDENLY SCANDALOUS.
And while tabloids were calling Upper Merion THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL, the new administration was trying to assure everyone that a breakdown in discipline under Dr. Jay C. Smith was being greatly exaggerated.
“It’s a real bitch!” one administrator was quoted as saying. “They don’t teach you how to handle these things in graduate school.”
The yearbook of Upper Merion Senior High School had been dedicated to the new principal and was printed just before the term ended. The dedication said:
In becoming principal, you took on a school that was certainly in need of direction. You turned it around and sent it on the right course.
The billboard at the city limit said: UPPER MERION TOWNSHIP IS A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE, WORK AND WORSHIP.
But one night a vandal painted a huge scarlet notice on the side of the school.
It said: THE DEVIL’S WORKSHOP.
“All because a one little rubber dick!” Joe VanNort griped.
He figured that the dildo found in the car, and Stephanie’s diary detailing Jay Smith’s exotic sex practices, were having a squirrel cage effect on his task force. The FBI agents were diving into the Satanism gossip on the theory that the children were being held by a devil cult. Joe VanNort figured they weren’t going to stop till they found Rosemary’s baby.
And every time he turned around there was an indication that one of his own men was blabbing to a certain woman reporter. He was being diverted from the Reinert case by one of his guys with a big mouth and an erection. He despised all reporters and they felt the same about him.
Joe VanNort said, “I don’t give a shit if Jay Smith wore the skin of a bare-ass oh-rang-itang, we ain’t chasin’ no devils except that bearded son of a bitch with my birthday.”
To his great chagrin, Joe VanNort had discovered that he and Bill Bradfield were born on the same month and day. He was hoping to send Bill Bradfield a card next year, care of state prison.
Despite what he said, Joe VanNort got dragged into one cult raid out in the country. Acting on a tip that Satanists were holding two young kids in a vacant house, the cops broke in, but there were no demons. There was a semidevilish pentagram painted on the floor.
Stephanie Smith finally succumbed to her cancer and was buried on August 12th at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Cemetery in Linwood. Jay Smith was permitted to attend the funeral while escorted by a state prison guard.
Though William Bradfield was mentioned more frequently, Jay Smith was more intriguing to the journalists. There were many feature articles.
AN EDUCATOR NAMED JAY C. SMITH WAS A MYSTERY TO HIS WIFE TOO.
JAY C. SMITH, EDUCATOR AND MAN OF SECRETS.
EVEN WIFE COULD NOT BE SURE.
The FBI was fascinated by the sexual flavor of the case. They used the Stephanie Smith diary like a Michelin guidebook to perdition. Special agents were all over the sex shops in Times Square following tips that Susan Reinert had been murdered by a snuff-film killer.
They went after a lead that Jay Smith had killed a pair of Dobermans that were found months earlier with their sex organs mutilated. They checked out the story that a black hooker found dead in Valley Forge was a Jay Smith victim. They persued a story that Jay Smith wanted to open his own massage parlor, and at least that one was true.
The FBI followed up rumors that he frequented Plato’s Retreat in New York. They worked on a letter Stephanie had filched, a letter from a man who had sent Dr. Jay a nude pinup of himself. They even looked into the alleged Jay Smith mail order scheme for penis enlargers.
Then the FBI got a call from a federal inmate in Kentucky who said that when he was in prison in Trenton, New Jersey, William Bradfield had come to him looking for a hit man. The FBI pursued the lead extensively all across the country until they found the reported hit man. It came to nothing more than the butchered dogs, the snuff films, the dead hooker and all the rest.
Joe VanNort just showed the frustrated agents his lopsided grin and said, “Welcome to homicide, boys!”
The FBI also worked hard on the car of Susan Reinert. Debris jammed under the bumper was analyzed and found to be slag. They explored the possibility that the Reinert children had been taken to a place where the car was backed into a slag heap. But the car still contained half a tank of gas, and since Susan Reinert had filled it Friday afternoon, it wasn’t likely that it had gone anywhere but straight to Harrisburg. Unless the killer was willing to stop at a filling station with one body or three in the luggage compartment.
It was a time-consuming exercise. There’s a lot of slag in Pennsylvania and the FBI saw more that year than U.S. Steel.
The fourth estate was losing confidence. A news headline said: A PERFECT CRIME? TRAIL RUNNING COLD IN REINERT MURDER CASE.
A U.S. attorney for Pennsylvania’s eastern district was quoted as saying, “There’s a rule of thumb among homicide detectives that if no significant clues to the murder are uncovered within the first forty-eight hours of the slaying, the investigation proceeds proportionately downhill.”
When he could no longer avoid them, Joe VanNort told reporters that he’d worked homicides that were solved in three days and others that took eighteen months.
When he was asked by a reporter about the fate of the Reinert children he characteristically got his syntax tangled and said, “My guess is as good as yours.”
That brought the seers into the news. One described a seance where she’d “seen” the shallow grave of the children.
Ken Reinert saved all the stories.
“I cried a lot during those times,” Ken Reinert later said, “but the only time I cried from happiness was when the FBI entered the case. It was the first time I felt involved and not powerless. I’d done as much as I could through my congressman and the U.S. attorney to make it happen.”
He tried to talk to Joe VanNort on the Monday that the FBI arrived. Ken Reinert wanted to tell the old cop that he’d helped bring in the feds, thinking VanNort would be glad. But he couldn’t say what he wanted to say because he began weeping.
Ken Reinert believed that Joe VanNort was hardened to murder. He eventually directed all inquiries to Special Agent Matt Mullin who was working his first murder case and seemed to care about what Ken Reinert was feeling.
“For the first time I understand what the families of MIA’s experience,” Ken Reinert told him. “Not knowing is the most terrible thing you can imagine.”
Lawmen were disturbing the peace of the residents of Woodcrest Avenue in Ardmore. The neighborhood went gray with guys in cheap suits.
“It’s like an invasion,” one complained. “They use up all the parking on the street and they swoop in at all hours.”
The task force found a statement of Susan Reinerts savings from Continental Bank that showed deposits of $30,000 in December, 1978. Some of her later withdrawals and notations caught their interest:
2/15/79
1500 B cash
2/20/79
1500 B cash
2/21/79
10,000 T. check Am
3/2/79
5000 B cash
There were several cash withdrawals, adding up to $25,500.
A bank statement from American Bank showed total deposits of $15,000 in late February and early March, followed by checks for cash in amounts of $10,000 and $5,000.