“Puts you right in the middle, doesn’t it?” Ray Martray said, and they both had a chuckle over that one.
“With three bodies? Now what the fuck do you do with three bodies? How did I get rid of them? And how did I get her up to Harrisburg by myself and then get myself back with only her car? See what I mean?”
There was some credence to Martray’s explanation that Jay Smith injected self-serving statements for the benefit of eavesdroppers because Jay Smith again repeated the alibi for the weekend in question. He again said that he’d taken his daughter Sheri out for a birthday dinner, and been with the new owner of his house on Saturday.
He couldn’t have cared if Martray believed that he had an alibi, so for whom was he speaking? And then, interestingly enough, the name of the ice maiden surfaced.
He said to Martray, “In the newspapers the one thing in the whole case that baffles me is this: here’s a name to keep in mind, Rachel.”
“Yeah, I heard her mentioned many times.”
“Yeah. Now, he was shacking up with this woman for the month of May, right before Reinert died. Okay?”
“Uh huh.”
“Now, she drove Bradfields car to New Mexico.”
“Right.”
“And shacked up with him out there. Now, I think that event of her driving Bradfields car to New Mexico is significant. Another thing the paper said is somewhere on the way out there she called Bradfield, and that’s when she learned that Reinert was dead. What if she had those two kids’ bodies in that car and dumped them off somewhere? See what I mean?”
“That would be an excellent, you know, summation.”
“She sponsored his bail. See, the critical thing is if Reinert leaves her home at nine-thirty Friday night and goes with Bradfield. He shows up two hours later. So he has two hours. He killed her, gave her to Rachel and Rachel than takes her body to Harrisburg and comes back. Bradfield goes down to the shore, okay?”
“Um hum.”
“And then Rachel had the two kids and then she takes them to New Mexico when he flies out there.” Then Jay Smith added, “See, Ray, the thing is, here’s another thing you have to keep in mind. I have a theory that the attorney general must have something else on Bradfield. I have a feeling he must have something else up his sleeve that would link Bradfield to the actual night of the murder. The only reason he would have picked on me to blame is that I was an obvious target out of all the bad publicity. So he dreams up the secret love affair with Reinert and the hit man stuff.”
“They got the hair and the comb,” Ray Martray said.
“But they still got a problem with why did Smith do it,” said Dr. Jay. “The only thing they can say is, Bradfield was an alibi for him, and then to pay him back, Smith killed the three people.”
It was probably that conversation which convinced Jack Holtz and Rick Guida that Raymond Martray was telling more truth than not. Jay Smith had laid out an entire case for any eavesdropper, a case against William Bradfield. But he’d included too much by repeating his own false alibi for that weekend, an alibi that the police could demolish. It was included for somebody’s benefit, and it couldn’t have been Martray’s. They started to think that he’d never make any real admissions over the telephone and they were right.
The most interesting thing of all in that particular conversation was to hear Jay Smith ask Martray and any potential eavesdropper to supply a viable motive. Why did Jay Smith do it? he’d asked.
Bill Bradfields claim that Susan Reinert and Jay Smith had been secret lovers was not believed by anyone. The further claim that Jay Smith had somehow feared that Susan Reinert might refute Bill Bradfields alibi testimony was sometimes acceptable to the task force and sometimes not.
After all, Susan Reinert had told friends that she was with Bill Bradfield “most of the time” during the weekend in question. She’d said that she thought he would’ve told her had he seen Jay Smith. If Jay Smith had any success with an appeal, as he always seemed to think he would, Bill Bradfield could still have done the alibi testimony which had never been much good in the first place.
The motive that Guida did not want to introduce in the William Bradfield trial might have placed a big burden on that jury. It was easier all around to proceed with the idea that the children had been a “mistake,” as inmate Proctor Nowell had testified. Yet even the judge in his sentencing had implied more than once that the children might not have been a mistake.
Given all they had learned about Jay Smith, Guida had other thoughts, not shared by Jack Holtz, that the children had not been a mistake at all. By virtue of practicing law, he knew how difficult it would’ve been for Bill Bradfield to probate that will if the children had been alive.
Two minor children-excluded by their mother in favor of a friend, and this within days of her murder after she’d overloaded on insurance-would have put a very great burden on Bill Bradfields probate attempt. There was every chance that such a will would be set aside in favor of the children, especially since there wasn’t even specific language in the will to exclude them.
William Bradfield, and certainly Jay Smith, must have known what a difficult probate that would have been. But then, why not leave the bodies of the children with their mother’s? Guida believed that one would have to consider everything they knew so far about Jay Smith and his penchant for making people disappear, and his obsession with forensic clues. It must’ve been difficult enough to get him to leave one body for the lab technicians, let alone three.
Given the way Jay Smiths mind worked, the disappearance of the children was not inconsistent with the planning of their deaths from the beginning. The motive was the same as for Bill Bradfield: his share of the insurance upon release from prison.
That probability was advanced by the fact that her copy of the policy had disappeared. Guida was reminded that Susan Reinert had asked her insurance agent for an extra copy for her “executor” to keep, but was refused as a matter of company routine. Guida suggested that Jay Smith may have demanded to see that policy with his own eyes before fulfilling his part of the bargain. The “executor” may have actually been the executioner.
Moverover, Bill Bradfield, a world-class grandstand player, could then offer huge rewards from his “inheritance” for information leading to the missing children.
Though Jack Holtz stayed with the simplicity of the panic killing of the children, Guida thought that the conspirators may have ordained the murder of Karen and Michael Reinert right along with their mother from the day the insurance policies were obtained. But this was intricate and very diabolical, and it was far easier for the prosecutor to conclude for the sake of a jury that the children were an afterthought, that they’d been witnesses killed in panic. There was less to prove.
The irony is that it was better for everyone concerned if there was always a shadow of a doubt as to what happened to the children. The absence of little corpses made it more difficult for other inmates to hang the jacket: baby killer.
When Holtz and DeSantis met Charles Montione in December, 1983, he was twenty-four years old. He wore Cuban heels and silk shirts and looked like he could’ve been an extra in Al Pacino’s version of Scarface. The task force found his name in a letter from Jay Smith to Ray Martray, care of the P.O. box they controlled.