There was a danger to the defense in all this, because the prosecution might run with it by showing that, yes indeed, he’d treated Susan Reinert differently from all his others. The prosecution’s inference could be that there was a “five-year plan” for this one, and that the five years had ended abruptly in 1979.
Bill Bradfield gave his own version of the business of trying to protect Susan Reinert from Jay Smith, but it didn’t differ considerably with the Chris Pappas version, though he glossed over the wiping of the money, things like that. He said that he was so distraught that he’d begun to look haggard from all that protecting.
Once, he said, he baby-sat for Susan Reinert in his capacity as adviser, and she came home at 4:00 A.M., and he warned her then and there that she was dating some bad folks.
He said that she’d never admitted dating Jay Smith, but that she’d admitted dating a man named Jay, and he’d put two and two together and got goat vibes. He did not mention the Tweetie Bird term of endearment.
He admitted to taking Shelly to motels, and claimed never to have had sex with her, and by then the prosecution believed that much, at least.
The direct testimony ended like this:
“Did you kill Mrs. Reinert?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you plan to kill Susan Reinert?”
“No.”
“Did you kill either of her children?”
“No.”
“Did you plan to do either of those things?”
“No, I did not.”
“Are you responsible for the deaths?”
“Absolutely not. I never hurt Mrs. Reinert or her children in any way.”
“Are you guilty of these crimes?”
“I am not.”
Rick Guida was one of those prosecutors who live for cross-examination, and possibly in his entire career he’d never looked forward more to one.
Since Josh Lock’s last question had solicited denials of murder and conspiracy, he began with the next logical question:
“Who did kill Mrs. Reinert, Mister Bradfield?”
“I don’t know,” Bill Bradfield said.
“Now, in 1979 you told a number of people that Jay C. Smith was going to kill her, and you were so afraid that you went to the shore just to have an alibi. Don’t you think Jay C. Smith killed Susan Reinert?”
“I don’t know who killed Susan Reinert.”
“Do you believe that he did, Mister Bradfield?”
“Do you want me to speculate?”
“Sure, just tell us what you think.”
“Objection,” Josh Lock said.
“Overruled,” said the judge.
“He may have,” Bill Bradfield answered.
“He may have,” Guida said, with a double dollop of sarcasm. “Now what about this other person that you identified in the summer of 1979, do you think he may have killed Mrs. Reinert?”
“I think he may have.”
“What was his name? If you think he killed her I’d like to know how you know that.”
“Mrs. Reinert mentioned the name in the winter of 1979, the name Alex. The only details I knew were that Alex was tall, very well spoken, from the Harrisburg area. And one of the others mentioned was Ted or Jay, I don’t remember which, but one was extremely well educated. The other three, she said, were into group sex. They were advocates of bondage and discipline, and deviate sexual practices such as urination during the sex act, and oral sex, and such as that.”
“Do you think somebody else did it, other than Jay C. Smith?”
“I think somebody else may have, yes.”
“Even in spite of all these threats that Jay C. Smith made, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think that Jay Smith didn’t do it?”
“Because I found out from the newspapers that her body was found in Harrisburg. That’s where she said Alex was from. Secondly, it seemed to involve some kind of sexual misuse. There was a dildo found in the automobile. And thirdly, the thing that made me really wonder about Doctor Smith doing it is that nothing he ever told me indicated that he would kill in this way. There were chain marks on her as it was reported to the press, and in addition to this, under the body was found a comb from his same outfit. That certainly didn’t make any sense to me.”
“Does it make any sense that Alex, an unnamed person, would come all the way from Harrisburg to get Jay C. Smith’s comb to plant in Susan Reinert’s car? If Alex killed her and Jay C. Smith wasn’t involved, how did Jay C. Smith’s comb get in the car unless it was planted there by Alex from Harrisburg?”
“My wonder about it is that if it was in her car it means that Mrs. Reinert and Doctor Smith had been in the car and perhaps he’d lost his comb. Why the comb was where it was, I’m not sure.”
“It was in the wheelwell storage area. Would it make sense that he might have been in the hidden luggage area where his comb was found?”
“I didn’t know where the comb was found.”
On the subject of untouchable Sue Myers, Guida asked, “Why did you move in with Sue Myers for six or seven years if you were no longer lovers and not intimate?”
“Sue Myers offered me the first real comfortable home base that I’ve had since leaving home for college. We had what I thought was a close, warm and comfortable relationship. That was the place where I felt the most at home, in that apartment.”
“You were not in love with her?”
“I loved her.”
“You were not intimate with her?”
“Correct.”
As to the money he’d put into the Terra Art store, he said that Sue Myers didn’t like teaching very much and it was a “privilege” to put up $45,000 to help her ease out of the profession and begin as an entrepreneur. As to where he’d gotten the money he said that he’d mortgaged a house for $25,000 and took out a second mortgage for an additional $25,000.
It was all getting down to the stash of $25,000 that everyone was hiding and wiping. He called that his “boat fund” and said that he’d been saving it secretly for years.
“Why didn’t you use the boat fund for the art store?” Rick Guida wanted to know.
“Because I wanted to retain it.”
“Why didn’t you put that money into Terra Art? Because you weren’t getting any interest on it anyway, and you could’ve used that instead of paying interest on these loans. Why didn’t you do that?”
“Because Sue Myers, for all her good points, was impossible when it came to money.”
“Mister Bradfield,” Guida interrupted, “money is money, whether it comes from selling land, or borrowing it, or if it comes from your boat fund. It’s the same thing. Now, again my question is, why didn’t you use the boat fund instead of borrowing at ten or twelve percent?”
“Because the ten or twelve percent interest that I would pay back on the loan would be paid through monies that were controlled by Sue Myers and me. If, on the other hand, I used the boat fund for the business, I never would have seen that money again for my own use.”
Guida didn’t bother to ask why he didn’t put the secret money in an interest-bearing account, but moved along to the alibi testimony. Bill Bradfield said that the court reporter in that case had misquoted him in his testimony.
And then they moved along to the chains and acid that Jay Smith showed Bill Bradfield during the lazy crazy days of summer.
Guida’s tone during the cross-examination of Bill Bradfield never varied. His incredulity was blended with only as much sarcasm as he figured the judge would permit. If you could bottle it, it would’ve been about 80 proof.
“That brings up something interesting,” he said. “You saw tape and you saw chains and yet you said you didn’t believe Jay C. Smith had anything to do with the death of Susan Reinert. Did you hear the testimony that there was tape residue around her face and chain marks on her back?”