He almost suffered a blown eardrum when Bill Bradfield screamed, “Don’t mention names! It’s phone-tapping time! The house is bugged! Everything’s dangerous! You don’t know it was Doctor Smith! None of us knows for sure!”
Bill Bradfield wasn’t the only one showing a little paranoia. Sue Myers sat weeping in her apartment one day because of her portrayal in the media. She told Vince that she’d had $1,500 worth of work done on her car but the transmission went out immediately. She was frightened.
Vince said, “That’s terrible, but it’s nothing to be frightened about.”
“Don’t you see!” Sue whispered. “The transmission could’ve been sabotaged by the FBI!”
It was inevitable. A reporter found out about the Mary Hume tombstone in Vince’s apartment and speculated that the “cult” might have lit candles on it as they uttered incantations about Susan Reinert.
During those awful days Vince’s parents stood by him. His father invited him to move back home, so Vince slipped out of his digs faster than the Shah of Iran.
Even after he’d deserted Bill Bradfield, Vince Valaitis still did not believe that his friend was guilty of anything except foolishness in not revealing what he knew about Jay Smith to the authorities. As far as he was concerned, a good man had become involved with a bad man for a good reason, and was refusing to save himself.
Vince had a theory that Jay Smith himself had placed the comb under Susan Reinert’s body, knowing it would implicate him.
“He always loved to shock and torment,” Vince told the FBI. “He’d tantalize you by drawing a circle within a circle within a circle.”
During one of his many meetings with Vince Valaitis, Chick Sabinson alluded to Jack Holtz offering Vince a drink and said, “I have to apologize. I didn’t know he’d try to ply you with liquor. By the way, I’d like to put a radio transmitter on you in case Bradfield says something incriminating. Would you do it?”
“Can’t!” Vince said fearfully. “He’d detect it. He’s a hugger.”
“Mugger,” Joe VanNort added when he heard about that one. “Hugger-mugger, just like I said.”
19
After the FBI started pressing its agents toward the Jay Smith connection, the red fibers found on the body of Susan Reinert took on significance. Particularly after what Vince Valaitis said about the prince of darkness.
Jack Holtz wanted to pursue the Jay Smith connection along with the FBI, but Joe VanNort still wasn’t convinced and ordered him to stick with Bill Bradfield and his cronies.
He said Bill Bradfield and Jay Smith were only connected in the same way that pus and phlegm are connected.
The FBI called on Grace Gilmore, the woman who’d bought the house on Valley Forge Road just before Jay Smith was sent to prison. She said yes, there was red carpet in the upstairs portion of the house.
Grace Gilmore told them that she’d closed escrow on the property prior to the weekend of June 22nd, but Jay Smith was allowed to stay in his basement apartment until Monday in that he correctly assumed that he might get sentenced to prison that day.
Grace Gilmore told Special Agent Hess that she’d gone to the shore with her sister on Friday, June 22nd, and didn’t return to the house on Valley Forge Road until Sunday afternoon. She didn’t get access to the basement until Monday, after Jay Smith was gone for good.
She’d never really seen him the day she returned. While putting away some things in the upstairs part of the house, she heard a noise from the basement apartment. Then she heard his car drive away. He always entered and left the basement by way of the garage entrance, which could not be seen from the street. His basement was off-limits to anyone.
The FBI also learned that when she’d bought the house there’d been a beige carpet in the basement. It was long gone now. She said it had been sopping wet on Monday, June 25th, and she’d cut it in four places and had it hauled away.
When the feds asked if it looked as though the carpet had been washed that weekend, she said that’s what she’d figured. Naturally, the feds crawled around the trash dump like rubbish rats, but to no avail.
Next, the FBI contacted the local cops who’d made the original arrest on Jay Smith back in 1978 when his secret life was revealed. The cops said they’d noticed at the time that there was a large remnant of the upstairs red carpet stored in that basement. Yet Grace Gilmore had found no red remnant when she moved in.
The agents started speculating that Susan Reinert may have been placed on that carpet remnant to await her fate, but they hadn’t any idea where she would’ve picked up the two blue fibers found on her body.
Interviews with Jay Smith’s younger daughter were not helpful. Sheri was a sad and lonely young woman, whose immediate family was dead, imprisoned or missing. She was forced to live with various friends and relatives.
Jay Smith’s brothers had known nothing of his secret life, but were generally supportive and loyal to him. They seemed to feel that he might be involved in the earlier crimes but certainly was not a killer.
But a friend of his missing older daughter came forward with a tidbit. She told the FBI that young Stephanie had said that Jay Smith once warned her and a boyfriend that they knew too much about his business and that he was going to shoot them both and chop them up and pour nitric acid over their bodies. This because they’d discovered some information about his unusual sex practices. He just didn’t like people bad-mouthing his sex life.
The owner of a massage parlor told the FBI that she’d been solicited by Dr. Jay to go into business. He’d given her $800 seed money to get started and find a location, but he had one caveat: whenever she called him she was to let the phone ring one time and hang up. Then she was to call back immediately and he’d answer.
She told the agents that she felt intimidated by Jay Smith. He seemed too sure of himself. She thought that if she went into business with that guy she might end up like his timid librarian friend over whom he seemed to have abnormal control. He made her so uncomfortable that she gave him back his money.
The FBI also learned that when Jay Smith arrived late for his sentencing on Monday, June 25th, he told the judge he was late because he’d made arrangements for a friend to deliver him to Harrisburg, but the friend had been unable to make it.
The FBI contacted the friend and learned that Jay Smith had placed a call to him earlier in the weekend, not on Monday. And he did not ask for a ride to Harrisburg. He said that Jay Smith had sounded distressed-his voice was unusually high.
The state cops found out that the 79th USARCOM comb was one of thousands given away as a recruiting gimmick. A tiny bit of ridge detail was lifted from the comb. The ridges were similar to two of Jay Smiths fingerprints, but there wasn’t enough for a comparison.
Jay Smith’s telephone bill showed calls to his attorney’s office that weekend: one at 3:50 P.M. on Friday, and another on Sunday at 8:37 P.M. One more call was made to O’Brien’s home telephone, also at 8:37 P.M.
At that time, the FBI and state cops knew nothing of the two men from South Carolina working at Three Mile Island who had reported seeing Susan Reinert’s car at about 7:00 P.M. Sunday evening. As far as the lawmen knew, the car could have been driven to Harrisburg anytime before late Sunday night when it was first seen by the patrol cop. The times of the telephone calls to Jay Smith’s lawyer had no particular significance yet.
It was time to see the prince of darkness face to face.
Joe VanNort and Jack Holtz paid him a visit at the state prison in Dallas, Pennsylvania. But a more significant visit was made by Special Agent Hess of the FBI. Jay Smith told Hess he was willing to cooperate because he had nothing whatever to hide, and he didn’t need all this publicity about the Reinert murder when he was busy trying to appeal his conviction.