26
Owing to pretrial maneuvering there was certain information the jury would never know. They would never hear tapes in which Jay Smith and Raymond Martray discussed future armed robberies. Nor would they learn about the defendants alleged scheme to pin the blame for one of the Sears crimes on David Rucker.
They wouldn’t know about things that the police had found in his basement back in 1978. Things like silencers and chains.
Most frustrating to Jack Holtz, they wouldn’t know about the things in Jay Smith’s possession when he was arrested in 1978. Such as tape and a syringe containing a sedative, things that would dovetail right into the murder of Susan Reinert. They would never know about any of these things because they were deemed to be prejudicial.
The private investigator working for William Costopoulos referred to him as a “magician,” and he certainly looked the part. The newspaper artists found him easy to sketch. Costopoulos had the muscular good looks of the Greek islanders, tailored to fit his courtroom image. A leonine head and a rugged jaw decorated with a salt-and-pepper Venetian goatee made you think he’d make a great Iago if he could act.
And he could. Costopoulos was a flamboyant trial lawyer who kept his working-class background in his speech. His suits and shoes were unmistakably Italian, and his high-waisted pants were fastened to striped suspenders.
Whenever he’d come into court looking particularly dapper, his private investigator Skip Gochenour would say, “Goddamnit, I wish he didn’t always have to dress like a pimp.”
But it worked. A guy like Jack Holtz was larger than he looked. Bill Costopoulos looked larger than he was. It was a matter of theater. He handed out black-and-white glossies to the reporters and everyone seemed to like him.
Courtroom number one in the Dauphin County Courthouse suited the style of Bill Costopoulos. It was a great legal theater of Italian marble and walnut paneling. Art deco sconces lined the walls, and it had a high ceiling with a skylight. A huge gold crest behind the judges bench bore the coat of arms of the commonwealth.
The judges bench was massive and could accommodate a tribunal of judges. Beneath the bench of Judge William W. Lipsitt was carved: NO MAN CAN BE DEPRIVED OF HIS LIFE, LIBERTY OR PROPERTY UNLESS BY JUDGMENT OF HIS PEERS OR THE LAW OF THE LAND.
The security, due to all the escape talk, was very heavy. There were always two deputy sheriffs in plainclothes sitting behind Jay Smith, and other officers from the state police or attorney generals office scanned the courtroom.
Across the courtroom from the jury seats was yet another jury box of equal size. In this trial it was used to accommodate the press.
Seeing the 1986 version of Jay C. Smith was a shock. It made one recall what had been said years earlier by the wife of his first attorney: “He seemed to change each time I saw him. He could even change his size.”
This time the change of size was explainable. He’d lost fifty pounds or more from the time back in 1978 when his secret life was exposed. And this Jay Smith looked ten years younger than that one!
He was tall, gaunt, balding, middle aged. He wore black frame glasses and a blue-gray business suit. Other than the blanched prison pallor, he looked to be in excellent physical health for a prison inmate fifty-seven years old.
This didn’t look like the sinister prince of darkness with layers of jowls falling into terraced slabs. This wasn’t an acid rocker dancing alone to a tune played on an electric bass with a hatchet. This Jay Smith was a mild, middle-aged schoolteacher.
He usually sat motionless, moving only to cross his legs or occasionally to write a note, or whisper to his lawyer.
The most notable Jay Smith mannerism was observable when he was touched. If a member of the four-man defense team approached to whisper in his ear, he would jerk his face away. If he’d been wearing a hat it would’ve gone sailing every time.
Jay Smith did not like having the faces of other human beings close to his. He was obsessive about it, and his reaction never varied. It was as though Jay Smith couldn’t bear intimacy.
Bill Costopoulos had the same problem that John O’Brien had had back in the Jay Smith theft trial of 1979. Do you put him on the stand? It’s hard to win a murder trial when the defendant doesn’t testify. Juries want to hear the accused answer for himself. But Jay Smith had relentlessly denied every bit of wrongdoing with which he’d ever been charged. The only infraction he’d ever admitted was that he owned guns that were not properly registered.
As far as Dr. Jay was concerned, he’d been slandered and prejudged from the first because of his research into doggie sex. He might even say that on the stand. So the strategy of the defense was to admit to the earlier theft convictions and get on with it. Later the jury could be told that he’d not taken the stand at his theft trial on bad advice and been wrongly convicted as a result.
Guida countered that strategy by bringing in the Sears witnesses and once again reenacting Bill Bradfield’s alibi testimony. And since Jay Smith would unquestionably get up there and still deny the Sears crimes, Bill Costopoulos didn’t dare let his client testify.
The opening remarks of Rick Guida were brief. He told the jury that the case involved the “heinous, brutal murder of a woman and two children.” Then he repeated, “Two children.”
He said, “This case involves the most massive criminal investigation in the history of Pennsylvania. Though there is only one defendant present, we will actually try two. For the first two or three weeks you will hardly hear Mister Smith’s name mentioned.
“But we’re going to ask you to find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree, and, if you should do that, to sentence him to death.
“Much of the case is circumstantial evidence. The witnesses will take you where you are going. I’m only a guide. At the end, I’ll tell you where the witnesses took you. And where you should take him.”
The opening of Bill Costopoulos informed the jury that there was a deceptive man involved in this case and his name was “William Sidney Bradfield.” Costopoulos often used Bill Bradfield’s middle name, and always referred to him with scorn.
He said, “Jay Smith was targeted by a man who was very good at deception. He was made a target of exploitation by a man who was a master of exploitation. I refer to none other than William Sidney Bradfield.”
He told the jury that they were going to hear from a man named Raymond Martray, whom the prosecution “pulled from the bowels of the prison system.”
He said ominously, “I will deal with Raymond Martray when he gets up here and it will be easy.”
Speaking quietly, but appearing to subdue great emotion, Costopoulos said, “The evidence will indicate that these charges should not have been brought. The prosecution in October, 1983, had insufficient evidence to try Jay Smith with William Bradfield, and since then have only added Raymond Martray.”
Then he allowed a little sarcasm when he said very neatly, “And with that I will ask Mister Guida to call his first witness … for the second time.”
Costopoulos was the performer, and private investigator Skip Gochenour fed him the lines. They worked as a team at the council table, whereas Guida seldom referred to his legal assistant, or even to Jack Holtz.
Gochenour was a red-bearded ex-cop, built like a Coke machine. He was a savvy investigator who’d worked for Costopoulos on dozens of cases. The private investigator was not reluctant to tell anyone that he believed the Reinert children had been doomed from the moment their mother took out the insurance policies in favor of Bill Bradfield.