“How many games did you play over the time that you knew him?”
“Approximately twelve times.”
“How did he do?”
“He beat me eight out of twelve. I started playin’ when I was, like twelve years old, and it was, you know, not easy to get beat like that. I took for granted that he already knew how to play.”
“Did you have the opportunity to help Mister Bradfield with regard to another inmate?”
“Yes. Me and Bradfield was comin’ from upstairs. Another inmate asked him somethin’. He says somethin’ about doin’ somethin’ to him. I said, ‘No, man, you ain’t gonna do nothin’ to him because that’s my friend.’ He walked on about his business.”
“Did you have an occasion to get a letter from your wife and make a comment to him?”
“Well, I received a letter from my wife that day and I read the letter and I got upset, you know, and she’s tellin’ me, like ‘I’m tired, baby,’ you know? ‘I don’t think I’m gonna wait this time.’ I got angry. I told Bradfield, I said, ‘Good a provider as I have been.’ I said, ‘You know, I’m goddamn gonna kill that … that … I don’t wanna say what I said. ‘I’m gonna kill that hussy,’ or whatever.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘No, no, no. You don’t ever wanna kill anyone. They never get off your ass.’ ”
“Did you have the occasion to speak with Mister Bradfield when he got back from a court proceeding?”
“Well, I was lookin’ for him because I had some coffee for him. I walked outta my room and he was standin’ on the tier. He was standin’ there lookin’ up to the ceilin’ with his finger pointed in his head, you know, like real angry and disgusted. And I called him, I said, ‘Bradfield, come here.’ He came in the room. And I said, ‘What’s wrong, man?’ ”
“What did he look like when he was standing out there and what did he look like when he came in your cell in terms of his facial expression?”
“Like, the veins was up in his head, poppin’ up. Like, he really had a major problem, like real frustrated and real angry. He came on in the cell.”
“What did he do when he was in the cell?”
“He was walkin’ around in the cell lookin’ up, lookin’ out the window and stuff. And he said, ‘They’re fuckin’ over me, man. They’re fuckin’ over me. They denied my bail reduction.’ Then after he said that, he said, ‘You know, if I wasn’t in a financial bind I wouldn’t be here nor would this have had to happen to Susan.’
“I didn’t really know what he was talkin’ about. He said, ‘I was there when they were killed but I didn’t kill them.’ And I said, ‘Damn, Bradfield! The children too?’ And he said, ‘None of this was meant for the kids, only for Susan. But there couldn’t be a stone left unturned. You have to tie up all the loose ends.’ ”
And that, Guida and Holtz noted, was a Jay Smith expression from way back. Bill Bradfield had used the same words to Vince and Chris describing what Dr. Jay had told him. And Raymond Martray had used the same words as well when he described conversations with Jay Smith.
“After he made that statement did you speak with him very much anymore?”
“No, I limited my association with him.”
“Did any law enforcement officer or deputy attorney general make any promises with regard to testifying in this matter?”
“No, the only thing I was told was, you know, that my judge would be made aware of my cooperation. That’s it.”
“When the police first came to you and talked to you, did you tell them about this situation?”
“No, I didn’t. I told them I didn’t know nothin’ because I really didn’t want to get involved in it. You know, the name the people start callin’ you while you’re incarcerated. And man, I was just scared, really.”
“Why did you come forward with your story, Mister Nowell?”
“Because they told me to sit down and think about it. They said, ‘Okay, we’re not gonna pressure you, but think about it. It was two innocent children involved.’ I went back to my room and I was just layin’ there thinkin’ about it, you know? I finally started thinkin’, like, damn, what would happen, you know, if this was my kids? Would I want somebody to do this for mine? That’s when I got up and I went in my box and got the number and called them.”
“Are you telling us the truth today?”
“Yes.”
“So help you God?”
“So help me God.”
On cross-examination, Josh Lock attacked Nowell’s credibility by trying to show that he was seeking favors from the authorities. He dissected the statement “I was there when they were killed,” because he’d already shown and the prosecution stipulated that Bill Bradfield could not have been there when Susan Reinert actually stopped breathing.
But Jack Holtz was never prouder of his idea to look for a Bill Bradfield “protector” in the Delaware County prison. He thought that Proctor Nowell had done just fine.
His moment came. Bill Bradfield wore black frame glasses for the trial, and the day he testifed he had on his most dignified three-piece blue suit and a subdued striped necktie. His testimony was flat, as unemotional as before. But this time his voice kept fading and the judge had to continually remind him to speak up.
“State your full name, please,” Josh Lock said when the direct examination began.
“William S. Bradfield, Jr.”
“How old are you?”
“Fifty.”
“And can you tell us your educational background, please.”
“I graduated from Haverford College in 1955, and have a masters in liberal education from St. Johns. I’ve done other graduate work at various institutions.”
When Lock asked him to describe his relationship with Sue Myers, he said, “We had not been living as a real romantic pair for many many years.”
“Do you remember when your relationship with Miss Myers ceased to be intimate?”
“Nineteen seventy-three or seventy-four,” he said.
Poor old Sue. That was when they’d first started living together. She always claimed that the sex hadn’t stopped until 1978. No wonder she needed facials and chiropractors.
Of his early relationship with Jay Smith, he said, “He was a very very intelligent man, very intelligent. And he liked to indulge in a kind of intellectual combat. During teachers’ meetings he’d come up to you in the hall and begin talking tongue-in-cheek about some item of education. And he’d use very big words and if I’d ask him what the word meant, Doctor Smith would say, ‘Mister Bradfield, I don’t get paid to teach you vocabulary.’ And I would go look it up and there wasn’t any such word. He’d say it was Hindustani or Old English.
“The most characteristic thing he did in the cafeteria or in the halls was to interlude very elaborately embroidered conceits. A conceit is a kind of extended metaphor in literature. He would, for example, begin by saying to me that the essence of civilization is the foot, and that it’s the most important organ of the human body, and massage of the foot is the most important thing that one person can do for another.
“Another time he talked about the central importance of boots, and it turned out that he’d sold cowboy boots at one time. He wasn’t serious, but it was a kind of practice of his skill in rhetoric without reference to the substance of the idea.
“And sometimes if I went down to him with a grievance from a student, Doctor Smith would say, ‘Mister Bradfield it’s really not incumbent on me to speak. Let’s go back and discuss it in my office.’ We’d go back and close the door and his language changed into a basic kind of street language. And never have I heard obscenities come together in quite the way that he would do it.”
Bill Bradfield testified that he had never taken Susan Reinert to a movie, show, dance, party, play, concert, or on a boat. He said that he’d done all these things with other women friends such as Rachel, and he admitted to being romantically involved with Shelly.