“A yellow peasant top is what I described. The scoop neck would be made out of cotton almost like T-shirts are made of. A peasant’s shirt is made out of a gauze. But it does have a scooped neck.”
Costopoulos said, “Well, you admit there’s no mention in here about any pin?”
“No, sir.”
“When was the first time you were asked to recall if you saw a pin?”
“About four weeks ago.”
“About four weeks ago?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who asked you?”
“Mister Holtz.”
“Did he show you the pin?”
“No, sir. As a matter of fact, when he called he didn’t say anything about the pin, He just asked me to think about what she had on again.”
“Okay,” Bill Costopoulos said. “I have no further questions.”
It was only getting worse for Costopoulos. He could’ve pointed out that she couldn’t know if it was that particular pin, but he wisely let her go.
A couple of jurors were dabbing at tears, and a couple of others were staring at Jay Smith. He was as impassive as if he were attending a meeting of the Parent-Teachers Association.
Essentially, the commonwealth’s case was over, and Guida had demonstrated that he too had a sense of theater. The jurors kept glancing at the spectators, toward the classmates of Karen Reinert. The jurors kept looking for should-have-beens. Looking for ghosts.
On the 29th of April, William Costopoulos made his closing argument to the jury.
He said, “May it please the court, Mister Guida, Mister Smith. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, very soon you will retire to deliberate the fate of Jay Smith, and in your hands lies the power of rendering the only appropriate verdict in this case based on the evidence. Which is not guilty. In your hands lies the power of life and death. It is the gravest responsibility our country imposes on its citizenry.
“During the course of the trial, you’ve been patient, and you’ve seen a lot of interaction between the attorneys, and often intentionally or unintentionally we interject our egos into these proceedings. No matter what your verdict is our egos will heal, but your verdict is forever.
“Judge Lipsitt will explain to you that a reasonable doubt means the kind of doubt that you would only entertain in acting in a matter of importance to yourself. Beyond a reasonable doubt means that we don’t convict in this country on suspicion, on conjecture, on theory. We don’t convict in this country on probabilities.
“Even if you would decide that Jay Smith was probably responsible in some way, or directly, the law says not guilty. Because in this country we would rather acquit nine guilty persons than convict one innocent man for something he didn’t do. Let alone ask that he be put to death.”
Bill Costopoulos described to the jury how the pieces of the prosecution’s puzzle didn’t fit, and how they’d tried to force them to make them fit.
He began at the beginning when a prosecution witness had testified that Susan Reinert had granules of sand between her toes, and that Susan Reinert had written “Cape May” on a note in her car.
He proceeded to Mary Gove, the next-door neighbor of Susan Reinert, who had belatedly testified that she saw Susan Reinert wearing blue slacks the night she disappeared, to account for the two blue fibers stuck to her body.
As to her granddaughter belatedly testifying to the pin, he said that it must run in the family. He implied that the prosecution was “responsible” for that belated testimony.
He claimed that the defense hair and fiber experts had demolished the entire hair and fiber evidence of the prosecution, reiterating that his witness said the brown hair could belong to any brunette in the world, and the red fibers could have come from any red rug.
He dealt as quickly as possible with Jay Smith’s letter to his dying wife about getting rid of the downstairs carpet, saying that Jay Smith had been trying to fulfill an obligation to his realtor.
He turned his attention to William Bradfield and pointed out that he was a hundred different kinds of liar, and had seven hundred and thirty thousand good reasons to kill Susan Reinert.
As to his client, he said, “Motive? What motive did Jay Smith have to kill the woman and hurt her children? According to the commonwealth’s theory, Bradfield committed perjury for him. Well, that’s Bradfield’s problem, not Jay Smiths. Jay Smith didn’t even testify at the St. Davids trial. Motive. What motive? Are the two links going to hold together that Bradfield did in fact commit perjury, and in payment Jay Smith savagely and brutally assassinates a woman and two children on the weekend he’s suppose to report for sentencing?
“Use your common sense. Why in Gods name would Jay Smith want the body to be left outside the Host Inn? In the very city within a mile or so of where he was to appear for sentencing? If there was any reason, you come up with it, I can’t.
“And that woman wasn’t just murdered for the purpose of collecting insurance proceeds. She was disgraced. She was left nude in the fetal position in the back of her car, and the hatchback was left up, three rows from the front door. Who, psychologically, had this character of disgracing and demeaning women? William Sidney Bradfield.
“And where was Rachel for thirty days prior to the murder? And Chris Pappas, ladies and gentlemen. I don’t know where that guys coming from. They practiced shooting silencers. They practiced tying each other up. Make no mistake about it, ladies and gentlemen, he knows more. Rachel knows more. Sue Myers knows more, and if the prosecution would quit defending them they might find out what happened on that weekend because they know more.
“Does Smith have an airtight alibi for that weekend? Not even close. But neither do I. And neither do you. And I can guarantee you that each and every one of you has a brown hair in your house on the floor that matches Susan Reinert’s. And the chances are good that every one of you has red fibers in your house.
“But you see, ladies and gentlemen, Jay Smith didn’t know he was going to need an alibi, and when he first gave his recollection of that weekend to a federal agent he wasn’t real clear where he’d been three months earlier. Make no mistake about it, Grace Gilmore was there that weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
“ ‘I went to see my wife every day that weekend,’ he told them. But they said no, he was too busy murdering Susan Reinert and chopping up her kids and throwing them in the ocean or burying them in the woods or throwing them in graves. That’s hogwash!
“The alibi of William Sidney Bradfield going down to the shore with Chris Pappas, Sue Myers and Vince Valaitis is only a good one if you believe them all. But if you don’t believe one of them, the alibi is done.
“And Sue Myers at one point in time turned over every scrap of paper to them, and by God, they came up with a receipt from the A and P in Phoenixville dated Saturday, June twenty-third, at six-eighteen P.M. And instead of grabbing all those people and starting all over, they lost the receipt.
“Then there’s the letter to his brother. You’ve got to remember this guy’s been in jail at that time for sixteen months. He’s a self-proclaimed jailhouse lawyer. So he wrote his brother and told him to invoke the Fifth Amendment. He said to say as little as possible. And in his letter of October thirtieth he tells him that on Sunday, June twenty-fourth, 1979, ‘You came sometime in the late morning and left in the early afternoon. I believe you had your granddaughter with you.’ His brother said, ‘Well, that’s not true. I wasn’t there. And I’m not testifying.’
“And if you want to believe that was Jay’s recollection in 1980, fine. I’d like to believe that. I don’t. It appears as though Jay was trying to tell his brother to say something for him about that Sunday morning. That’s what they came up with, ladies and gentlemen, out of fifty-three files they took from that man when they arrested him on June twenty-fifth, 1985.