The defense attorney for Bill Bradfield was a nice-looking young fellow, Guidas age. Joshua Lock was a second-generation Harrisburg lawyer, his father having been a county district attorney.
By his own admission he became “personally involved” almost from his first meetings with Bill Bradfield. It isn’t the best idea in the world to become personally involved with clients, and he knew that, but he truly admired Bill Bradfield. Once during a strategy session, apropos of something they were discussing, Bill Bradfield gave him a thumbnail sketch of the study of grammar and linguistics, as well as literary criticism that the lawyer wished he could’ve put before the jury.
Unlike Guida, Lock believed that Bill Bradfield was highly intelligent, as was the one remaining disciple, Rachel. But Lock found Rachel to be “very very very very very very strange.” And that’s all he’d say for the record.
There may have been trial lawyers who worked harder for their clients in 1983, but if so, they probably didn’t live to tell of it. Lock personally, and without assistance, compiled notebooks bigger than the Philadelphia telephone directory on virtually every important witness for the prosecution. With the most elaborate and precise cross-references to each FBI report, state police report, and every bit of testimony given before state or federal grand juries or during any other proceedings thus far. His idea was to present a dozen different possibilities for the jury as to where to look for killers.
Naturally, one possibility was Dr. Jay C. Smith. Lock viewed him as a depraved maniac, street-smart and complicated, who’d battled his way up in ways that Bill Bradfield never had. As far as Lock was concerned, Jay Smith had proved himself a liar a hundred times over. He hoped to provide other suspects for the jury to consider, and to point out that a circumstantial case could be viewed many ways. His approach was to be intellectual and scholarly.
He’d spent twenty-eight days in the prison visiting room with William Bradfield. He would spend a total of fifteen hundred hours on the defense of his client.
Lock respected Rick Guida, because when other prosecutors were backing away from the notorious circumstantial case, he’d seized the opportunity. He saw Guida as an egocentric, ambitious, aggressive prosecutor, and he was probably right on all counts.
In fact, Guida was too egocentric to analyze the opposition. Josh Lock was obviously a competent lawyer and that was that. Guida didn’t spend much time thinking about the other guy’s strengths and weaknesses. As far as he and Jack Holtz were concerned, their case could almost rest on the credibility of only one witness. Jack Holtz said that he would be Guidas best witness: that was William Bradfield.
Rick Guidas strategy was to put on the weakest first, and that would encompass all of the forensics. Josh Lock was very strong on forensics. By the time Lock got through with the pathologist, it sounded as though Lock could have done the autopsy.
Through his cross-examination the jury learned that lividity becomes irreversible after four to six hours and that one way to determine if the lividity is fixed is to press the flesh and see if it blanches. Josh Lock knew all the terminology and could refer to “hemolysized portions of red blood cells.” Lock extracted an admission that the time of death could have been Sunday afternoon or evening when Bill Bradfield had been at the beach for a longer time.
Lock got it into the record that there were as many as twenty thousand blue combs disseminated by the army reserve in eastern Pennsylvania, and that there was a fingerprint or two on the outside of the car that didn’t belong to anybody else in the case. So whether they belonged to “kinky Alex” or somebody else, no one would ever know. He was extending the possibilities from a killing by Jay Smith to persons unknown, not necessarily having anything to do with Jay Smith.
As far as the hair that the prosecution believed came from Susan Reinert’s head, he didn’t spend time refuting that, but rather he used it by pointing out that the entire root was intact and therefore it had fallen out naturally rather than being pulled out. He had a theory saved for his closing argument.
If the case had been based solely on forensics, the prosecution would never have filed it. The troubles for the defense started when the neighbors of Susan Reinert started taking the stand and talking about Bill Bradfields car being there at night and in the morning. Lock did a good job of spreading a little confusion as to the days of the week and the times they’d seen the cars.
Susan Reinerts friends testified, and Lock got everyone to say that Bill Bradfield had never admitted that he was romantically involved with Susan Reinert and had certainly never hinted that he intended to marry her.
All of Susan Reinerts financial transactions were described by witnesses, as well as the alibi testimony for Jay Smith, and the missing $25,000, and the huge insurance policies, and the will.
And then came the disciples. The jury started giving those “Are you kidding me?” looks as Vince Valaitis and Chris Pappas and Shelly and Sue Myers started talking about silencers and acid and money wiping and all the rest of it. Everybody on the jury at sometime or other kept hearing one word and that word was “bizarre.”
Sue Myers said, in private, that two years after she’d locked out Bill Bradfield, she happened to be cleaning out the bookshelves when she found a large cache of meticulously catalogued packages of hardcore pornography. She said he must have spent days cutting out pictures and subdividing photos, and swinger ads and telephone numbers. It was as detailed and methodical as his lesson plans and seating charts. She was shocked by the discovery.
Jack Holtz believed what Proctor Nowell had told him and thought that the jury would too.
When the witness was called, the prosecutor got the criminal record over with in a hurry.
“What particular institution are you in at the present time?” Rick Guida asked.
“The ABRAX program, an alcohol drug program.”
“Are you sentenced there as a condition of a criminal charge?”
“Yes, I am.”
“What sentence are you currently serving?”
“Eighteen months to five years.”
“Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have children?”
“Two.”
“Tell us what trouble you’ve been in.”
“When I was sixteen I was incarcerated for aggravated assault. I served four to twenty-three months. I did, like seven months, and I got out. I was arrested for burglary twice but I wasn’t convicted. I was charged with receivin’ stolen goods, possession with intent to deliver, and two gun charges.”
“What was the disposition of all your cases? Did you have a trial or plead guilty?”
“I pled guilty.”
“Are you an alcoholic?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any outside hobbies?”
“Yes. Amateur boxin’. I boxed Golden Gloves. Ten wins and one loss.”
“Mister Nowell, can you associate your criminal problems with your drinking problem?”
“That’s the only time I would get in trouble was when I had got intoxicated.”
“When did you first meet Mister Bradfield?”
“I was sittin’ in the dayroom on B block and I was playin’ chess with another inmate. Mister Bradfield walked up to me and asked me when I got time would I teach him how to play the game.”
“Did you eventually play chess with him?”
“Yes. It was about one or two days later. I was in my room, me and this guy Stanley. We were sittin’ on the bed playin’ chess and William Bradfield walked past the cell. I hollered. I told him, I said, ‘Bradfield, I got time to show you how to move the pieces, but, you know, the rest got to come from you mentally.’ ”