A friend and associate from Parents Without Partners told the state police that Susan Reinert and Bill Bradfield had planned to go to her mothers former home in Ridgway, Pennsylvania, to “attend to some legal matter,” and that they were taking the children. The cops wondered if the reference to “lawyer” in the June diary entry may have referred to this.
One week before her death, Susan called that friend and told the woman that she was never going to marry Bill Bradfield because he kept canceling appointments with attorneys about “certain legal questions.”
But then she called back five days before her death and said that everything had been “smoothed out.”
Then Susan Reinert said something puzzling. She said that she and her friend could have no more contact. The reason given was that it was “getting too close to the time that Sue Myers might do something.”
Susan would not explain further. She was very secretive toward the end.
The state cops had talked to every neighbor and friend of Susan Reinert who had come to their attention and the feds were duplicating the effort. Just after they came into the case the FBI interviewed sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Ann Brook, the granddaughter of Susan Reinerts next-door neighbor, Mary Gove. Beth Ann described the eerie hailstorm and the clothing that they’d all been wearing when she last saw them. It didn’t seem like a significant interview at the time.
Before going back to college in California, Shelly returned Bill Bradfields money and accompanied him to a storage locker on Route 202 near West Chester.
He told Shelly that he had to store the red IBM typewriter as well as some other dangerous things. The typewriter, he said, had been used by Dr. Smith and Mrs. Reinert to type some things that could get him in trouble. Shelly learned that the assignment to rent the storage was given to Chris Pappas.
Before returning to college, Shelly told the FBI and state cops that she’d been with Bill Bradfield on Friday, June 22nd, taking a stroll around Haverford College, his old alma mater.
During a later interview she amended the time she’d been with Bill Bradfield to cover the period when they were withdrawing money from the safety deposit box, and perhaps saying farewell to an ostrich.
Shelly’s girlfriend talked to the cops and then flew to Austria to visit relatives, but the FBI had INTERPOL chase her down to ask her a few more questions.
Sue Myers, Chris Pappas and Bill Bradfield took private polygraph exams for $125 each and were found to be absolutely truthful. Chris took another for the FBI and was found to be deceptive.
He later admitted that during the “truthful” exam he’d been lying worse than Stalin at Yalta.
Living in a Philadelphia motel and going home to Harrisburg only on weekends was probably hardest on Jack Holtz because of his son. Jason was the same age as Karen Reinert and he knew that a boy that age needed his old man. Jack Holtz called his parents almost every night to reassure his son that the case couldn’t last much longer.
When he and Joe VanNort were sitting in their rooms at night watching TV, it was obvious that VanNort worried about Holtz being away from his son. Joe VanNort frequently needed reassurance from his young partner that working for him hadn’t been the primary cause of Jack’s marriage rupture.
Jack Holtz never forgot how shaken Joe had been when he first admitted that Chaz had left home for good. They were on a flight to Alabama during a tough investigation. You’d think Jack Holtz had just announced he was going to Morocco for a sex change.
“It’s workin’ crime, ain’t it?” Joe VanNort had said. “Did that wreck your marriage, workin’ crime with me?”
Holtz tried to reassure the old cop by saying, “It’s for the best. She’s gone and it’s over.”
But Joe was stricken with Catholic guilt and he actually hushed Jack Holtz and said, “Don’t tell nobody!”
Holtz looked around and said, “Joe, who can I tell? I don’t know anybody on this airplane!”
It was during the long nights in those motel rooms in Philadelphia, drinking and watching the frequent flame of Joe’s cigarettes flowering in the gloom, that Jack Holtz wished hard for a break in the case, while Joe VanNort prayed for one.
Wishes and prayers were about to be answered by a Clark Kent-ish young English teacher who’d been carrying twice his weight in guilt and fear for two months. The heavy load was dumped on him at the memorial service for Susan Reinert.
It was a Unitarian service and was held in the evening in a chapel in Malvern. Ken Reinert was there, and Pat Gallagher, and all of Susan Reinerts friends, and her psychologist, and most of her colleagues.
Pat Schnure was crying her eyes out and saying to everyone within earshot, “Make a note of who’s not here!”
She was of course referring to the Bradfield retinue, but one of them was there. Vince Valaitis was praying harder in that Unitarian chapel than he’d ever prayed in a Catholic cathedral. With the stories in the news about the Bradfield Bunch he figured that everyone thought they were a pack of killers. He felt that therapist Roslyn Weinberger was glaring at him.
It was a sad little ceremony with various people saying a few things about Susan Reinert as a teacher and mother and friend. When it was over, Vince tried to tough it out by holding his head up and saying hello to everybody, but he felt his colleagues trying to avoid him. For the very first time in his life he saw people staring at him with fear in their eyes.
Vince had been the only one giving press releases. To one reporter he said, “We’re not part of any sort of cult. Bill Bradfield doesn’t want anyone’s money. He doesn’t care about things of this world. He cares about a better world. And as for me, I’m not some kind of killer! Why, I’m a God-fearing person. How many twenty-eight-year-olds do you know who carry rosary beads?”
Vince had informed his colleague Bill Scutta that he wished he could join a seminary and become a priest. Preferably a Trappist monastery in Tibet.
One night, Vince went for a drive to sort things out. He drove through Valley Forge Park and admired the flora, and tried to think good things about Susan Reinert, and said some prayers for her and her children. Somehow he just couldn’t go home. All he could do was drive and think and pray.
Then a funny thing happened. The sky was no longer where it was supposed to be. Something else was up there in its place: a bunch of titanic inkblots. It was only a storm taking shape, but not to Vince. And what did the inkblots contain? Nothing much. Only hairnets full of trapped leering demons.
The next time Vince looked at the swirling inkblots he saw cowled shrouded figures chanting in Latin as they made ready for a black mass. And Vince took a leap into full-scale panic.
When Vince later told the story of that night, he used the word “Gothic.” The National Weather Service verified that it had not been a Vince Valaitis Gothic hallucination. The sky did go black. The Rorschach test in heaven was split by shards of lightning. The thunder rattled the trees in Valley Forge and the rain cascaded down.
To Vince Valaitis there was absolutely no question. God Himself was speaking.
His message was something like “Okay, you little putz, you want Gothic? I’ll give you Gothic.”
Vince found himself skidding, sliding, careening, through the rain, hell-bent, as it were, for destruction. Then in the midst of it all, between the jagged flashes and the torrent of black water, he saw before him a miracle: Vince had driven on automatic pilot to God’s house.