Jack Holtz was relieved to get a few days off over the Christmas holidays. He spent them back in Harrisburg with his son, and saw his brother and parents. It was impossible to be with his boy and not think about Karen and Michael Reinert. He’d never thought he’d still be working this case after the New Year, but he assured his family that they’d have to get a break soon.
When they asked if there was any hope that the children were alive, he shrugged.
Ken Reinert had a Christmas of sorts for the sake of his wife and stepdaughter, and the new baby. His parents, John and Florence Reinert, could not bring themselves to celebrate anything.
They all refused to think that the children were not alive. Ken Reinert had recurring nightmares and sleeping disorders. These people were in torment.
About Susan Jane Gallagher Reinert, it could be said that there were mixed feelings that Christmas. The lawmen said that she’d walked into danger with her eyes open, holding a child by each hand. The more that was learned about the $25,000 investment, and especially the $73,000 worth of insurance policies, the angrier the task force became. It would’ve been hard to find a cop or special agent who spent much time pitying the woman who ended up in the trunk of her car in a Harrisburg parking lot. You would often hear a lawman say, “She got what she deserved.”
But every one of them was working hard in the hopes of finding the children dead or alive. The bulletins showing those handsome young faces were heartbreaking.
What they could deduce about Susan Reinert’s death was this: she’d been called away from her house suddenly. When she and her children arrived at their rendezvous, they were met by more than one executioner. It took more than one to control a desperate mother and two hysterical children.
The one-hundred-pound woman fought back but was beaten severely, possibly with fists. Her mouth was taped and she was lashed in chain and cinched so tight that the links gouged a trail around her body.
As she lay helpless she may well have seen and heard her children being murdered. She may have seen and heard more than that.
She could not die until such time as a killer could establish an unshakable alibi. It was at least twenty-four hours, perhaps thirty-six, before Susan Reinert was murdered, in order to fix an acceptable time of death.
One could speculate about the night and day and night of unimaginable agony this mother suffered as she came to understand the folly that brought her and Karen and Michael to this. When the lethal injection came, she probably welcomed it.
Task force members in frustration would often say, “That woman’s stupidity was a crime.”
To call Susan Reinerts pathetic love for a man a “crime” was acceptable cop hyperbole, but no crime deserved this punishment. To devise a death as cruel as Susan Reinerts required a supremely Gothic imagination.
20
The New Year was a time for diving and digging. They dove when lakes were not frozen. They dug when the ground thawed.
Desperation was driving the task force to follow leads from tipsters, seers and lunatics in Maryland and New Jersey as well as Pennsylvania. They once went down twenty-five feet in a landfill. There were theories that the children had been put into fresh graves in cemeteries. So even the hallowed ground was searched by the task force.
Acting on tips from a former boyfriend of young Stephanie, the state police divers searched a water-filled limestone quarry in Valley Forge Park. This, because a tipster told them of seeing Jay Smith kill cats by dousing them with nitric acid and driving their bodies toward the park.
They even spent several man-days on a lead from a seer who described in detail where the children had been buried by “two men.”
Joe VanNort said, “Well, after thirty years, police work’s come down to throwing your hands up in the air to catch vibrations.”
Bill Bradfield, Chris Pappas and Sue Myers still weren’t talking, and what Vince had given the task force was hearsay on top of hearsay. They hadn’t any way of really linking Jay Smith to Bill Bradfield, let alone to the murder of Susan Reinert.
Agent Matt Mullin had secured photos of all the evidence seized in the basement of Jay Smith in August 1978 as well as photos of several things from his secret life that at that time had no evidentiary value to the local cops: the 79th USARCOM combs and the loops of chain and locks that had been draped over a hall tree and coiled on a chair. The FBI was able to determine the lock brand from the photos.
Luckily, it was possible to size the link marks on Susan Reinert’s body because the way she’d been photographed in the luggage compartment of her car, the marks could be compared to the print size on a Time magazine lying beside her.
Matt Mullin sent blow-up photos of the chains along with the photos of Susan Reinerts wounds to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Four forensic pathologists were able to determine the link size by comparing them to the known size of the locks.
They couldn’t prove anything in a court of law, but those chains that were once in Jay Smith’s basement were exactly the size of the chains that had bound Susan Reinert. The FBI said thank you to the local cops, thank you to Walter Reed, and a silent thank you to Henry Luce.
Though he always referred to Matt Mullin as a “social worker” or “schoolteacher,” Joe VanNort was impressed with the super-prep on this one.
He took his state cops aside privately and said, “Okay, we’re gonna start takin’ a close look at Jay C. Smith.”
In the spring, a tow truck driver named Kramer received a routine call to tow an abandoned car that had been parked too long at the rear of an apartment building near Valley Forge.
The driver found the car, hooked it up and took it to the tow garage where he opened up the trunk and searched for valuables. What he found was very valuable to a squad of lawmen at Belmont Barracks. The car belonged to Sheri, the youngest daughter of Jay C. Smith, and the truck driver recognized her father’s name from the publicity.
They got very excited at Belmont Barracks after the truck driver handed over a letter from Jay Smith to his wife, Stephanie. It was written from Dallas prison one day following his incarceration, one day after Susan Reinerts body was found.
It was a letter within a letter. He’d prefaced the long message by informing his wife that his mail was probably read by prison officials.
Steph,
I hope they are knocking off that cluster near your spine and you are feeling better. I didn’t want to burden you with a lot of tasks so don’t worry if you can’t get to them. When you get well enough, then give these things some attention.
Among things to take care of:
Capri. First, clean it up thoroughly. We will try to sell but not give away. I might use it to store books so don’t sell it too fast.
Steph, we must throw away most of the stuff. Don’t keep things because they just seem too good to throw away. We will replace at an auction or other place cheaply. I can’t stress the importance of this: Clean out and then clean up.
Rug. Downstairs rug is full of matchsticks, cigarettes, old strands of marijuana, etc. from Eddie and Steph and their friends. Every time I walk on that rug something new pops out. It MUST go. I’ll write more later about disposal.
I love you,
Jay
The letter within a letter to his dying wife wasn’t much by itself, but the task force was even more interested in chains than Jay Smith was. They were trying to forge a chain of circumstantial evidence and when it was long enough they wanted to see how Bill Bradfield and Jay Smith liked being hog-tied by links of steel.