Echoes in the Darkness (40 page)

"How do you do," she answered.

"What is your relationship to the defendant?"

"William is my son," she said.

And the jurors' eyes went from his mother to William Bradfield. Questioning eyes asked: How?

She testified to living in a two-hundred-year-old fieldstone home and said that they'd formerly lived on a one-hundredacre farm in Chester County. She said that she and her husband had built a home for William and one for their daughter.

Curran was trying to show that the money that everyone had been stashing and wiping could have come from Bill Bradfield's mother. She testified that over the years she had written him three checks that totaled $17,000.

The old woman said that her son had been raised in a

Christian home, and so she did not approve of his living arrangements. "But I accepted it," she said, "and in no way did it change my love for my son."

Mrs. Bradfield wasn't fond of Sue Myers and said, "I considered her a very extravagant young woman. She set a very lavish table. Her clothing was quite expensive and I considered her a woman who spent a great deal of money."

The prosecutor had a go at Mrs. Bradfield and brought out that the larger amounts that she'd given to her son over the years were loans which had been repaid, and not gifts that he could have socked away.

Toward the end of the trial there was a conversation held in the judge's chambers among Judge Wright, John Curran, Bill Bradfield and Ed Weiss. It had to do with the judge charging the jury and explaining the defendant's failure to take the stand.

Bill Bradfield was upset that he wasn't going to get a chance to talk.

The judge said to him, "You don't have to take the stand."

"I would like to, if I may," Bill Bradfield said.

Curran said, "Bill, are you willing to accept that this is something we recommended under the circumstances?"

The defendant said to the judge, "I feel compelled to accept the advice of my attorney. For two years I've wanted to tell my story. I wanted very much to in this case."

"Of course we are past that now, Mister Bradfield," the judge informed him. "The evidence is closed and I can't permit you to tell your story now."

"I have to go with my attorney's advice," Bill Bradfield said glumly.

Weiss was a feisty prosecutor and he was getting irritated by Bill Bradfields claiming that no one had ever given him a chance to speak. He piped up with an observation that got Bill Bradfield steamed.

Weiss said, "Your Honor, I'd like to make a comment in response to Mister Bradfields remark. I've repeatedly offered to withdraw these charges if he'dcome forward and tell his story, and he's declined to do so."

"That's not correct!" Bill Bradfield cried.

"Bill, do not participate," John Curran warned. He was always having to tell Bill Bradfield not to participate.

"We are not going to get into an argument here, the judge told them all.

Bill Bradfield kept trying to interrupt and John Curran kept shutting him up and finally Bill Bradfield started to cry. He was pretty weepy those days.

When John Curran got to address the jury he talked about Runnymede and the Magna Carta because he was a lawyer who liked big pictures. Then he said that it all came down to guilt by innuendo, guilt by suspicion, guilt by association.

Of Bill Bradfield he said, "You heard about Mister Bradfield. In many ways you may not like him. In many ways you may think he's spoiled. In many ways you may think he lives in that academic area where people do not deal with day-to-day problems that people in the working world have to deal with. Maybe his mother spoiled him by giving him a house and giving him seventeen thousand dollars in checks and a thousand dollars a year in cash gifts over a period of fifteen years."

About Susan Reinert he said, "Where is the evidence that some theft by deception took place? If Susan Reinert loved Mister Bradfield as the evidence indicated, she would've given him the money. She would've given him twenty-five thousand dollars if he'd wanted it. If she loved him. It seems to me that if she were here today, she'd be mortified to see the man she loved."

Pat Schnure and Susan Reinerts friends were groaning like a herd of Herefords after that one. Bill Bradfield was starting to sound like Edward VIII when he abdicated.

Then it was Weiss's turn and he waxed poetic from Sir Walter Scott: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!"

He talked of Bill Bradfield's dreams of sailing around the world, and of his opening a business that bled him dry, and of how his dreams were gone. And of how he'd succumbed to greed.

When the judge at last charged the jury, he said, "You may have heard evidence which may be construed to show that the defendant took part in what you may consider immoral conduct for which he's not on trial. This evidence must not be construed by you as evidence of his guilt in this case. I call your attention to the fact that this case has nothing whatsoever to do with the death of Susan Reinert or the disappearance of her children. If you in any way let those things enter your minds or your consideration, you will be violating your oaths that you took as jurors, and will tend to make a mockery of our criminal justice system."

The jury was out less than an hour and when they're that fast, it's bad news for the defendant. When he was found guilty on^both theft charges, the courtroom broke into applause.

"All right! Let's have none of that!" the judge warned the cheering gallery.

The prosecutor felt that now Bill Bradfield might have cause to flee the jurisdiction and so asked that the bail be revoked, but the judge compromised and increased it to $75,000. It was guaranteed by his mother.

The best part of the trial for Jack Holtz had occurred right after Chris Pappas testified. Bill Bradfield had gone out to vomit. He said it must have been something he ate.

At a bar in Media that night there was a celebration involving Joe VanNort, Jack Holtz, Lou DeSantis, prosecutor Ed Weiss and Ken Reinerts attorney from Orphans Court. They saw Bill Bradfield on the news, and all the celebrants drank a toast to his next trial. Which they hoped would be for murder.

When Vince was eased back into his teaching post he was warned that his job would depend on how people responded to him.

On the first day that he was allowed to teach, he walked up to every teacher in the department and said, "Okay, ask me any question you want. Anything!"

When Sue Myers was finally allowed to teach again she developed a posture of answering questions with such a look of exhaustion that people thought she might expire. It discouraged them.

Chris Pappas went to work on another construction job, which may have been what he was always meant to do.

Chris was never really able to believe in his heart and head that Bill Bradfield could have murdered Susan Reinert. As to the children, such a thought was out of the question.

Vince Valaitis could intellectually accept that Bill Bradfield had committed certain misdeeds, but could never accommodate the notion that a loving friend could have committed murder.

Sue Myers would only shrug or nod when she was asked. It was impossible to know if she believed that he'd conspired to kill Susan Reinert. Like the others, she couldn't begin to think that the children would have been in murder plans.

Sue Myers received at least one telephone call a week from Bill Bradfield while he lived quietly in his mother's house. The calls would be about his belongings. Sometimes he'd demand and other times he'd beg her to return them.

"You're holding my books hostage!" he roared during a memorable call.

In one of the strangest calls, he did something he'd never done. He talked about the children. He theorized to Sue Myers that perhaps they'd been "sold." He said that he feared Karen had been bartered into "white slavery."

On still another occasion he demanded that she return some of his books. When she refused, he said he'd settle for the return of his old football pictures, but she said nix on the pix.

One night she received four calls between the hours of 2:30 and 3:00 a.m. He demanded his marriage certificate to Muriel. She refused. He called again and asked for the divorce papers. Ditto response. He called another time and said he had to have the cowboy suit he'd worn as a tiny tyke, but Sue said, sorry, little wrangler.

The last time he called he sounded like he'd sucked helium. In a quivering grandma voice he said, "You've betrayed me! You've abandoned me! You've wronged me! Why won't you meet me for a soda?"

Some might wonder why Sue Myers didn't have her telephone number changed and unlisted. But after seventeen years of lost hopes and shattered dreams, and now povertyafter being unmarried and childless and only now being allowed back in a classroom-would she give up the last pleasure left to her? Bill Bradfield had saved everything but old toenail clippings and she was keeping it all.

In the fall, when she got back to Upper Merion, she was able to cut down on the Librium. She started feeling a little better. She began going to a chiropractor. She began getting facials. Sue Myers needed touching.

Someone told her that if they ever made a movie about the Reinert murder case maybe Jane Fonda would play her part. That lifted her spirits.

Chapter
22

Blood Crimson

One of thousands of contacts made by the Reinert task force came by way of a registered letter to Joe VanNort. The writer of the letter was Raymond Martray, an inmate of the state correctional institution at Dallas, who claimed to be a friend of inmate Jay C. Smith.

The writer said that he could not talk at Dallas but if a short transfer could be arranged he'd tell them what was on his mind. He'd sent a similar letter to the FBI, but had gotten no response.

He was transferred for two weeks to the state prison at Pittsburgh and was taken by VanNort and Holtz to the Holiday Inn in Uniontown where they held a short meeting.

Martray was a thirty-seven-year-old ex-cop from Connellsville, Pennsylvania, who was serving a prison sentence for perjury and burglaries, stemming from an arrest by state police while he was still a policeman in Connellsville. He'd been in Dallas prison since 1979 and didn't go around bragging that he'd been a cop, because former lawmen are only a little more popular in the prison yard than child murderers, or "baby killers" as the cons refer to them.

Ex-cops and baby killers pick their friends carefully. Raymond Martray was one of the first inmates that Jay Smith met on the day of his arrival at Dallas. The property room officer asked Martray to show Jay Smith around because he was being put in F Block where Martray also lived.

Martray and Jay Smith had only a nodding acquaintance for about six months because the former educator seemed wary of everyone. Martray was about as tall as Jay Smith, but huskier and much younger. Yet Martray told the cops that he was afraid of the former educator.

Martray said that he'd been asked by Jay Smith to alter a property record to read that his clothes had not been sent to his brother, but were still at Dallas. This, according to Martray, was because Dr. Jay feared that the clothing might contain "forensic evidence" of an unspecified kind, if the oops should search his brothers house and find it.

VanNort and Holtz weren't all that impressed with his information. After all, the Reinert murder had gotten lots of publicity and through his friendship with Jay Smith, Martray would know quite a bit about the investigation. Besides, Martray was serving three and a half to seven years on his peijury conviction and in Pennsylvania a person convicted of peijury can't be a commonwealth witness in another criminal case, so anything he might give them would be tainted.

Before they left him, Martray said that both his peijury and burglary convictions stood a good chance of being reversed on appeal, and if his peijury conviction was overturned, he could then give testimony against the former educator. And the legal counsel who had framed the appeal for Raymond Martray was none other than Jay Smith, jailhouse lawyer.

That had such a nice touch of irony that Joe VanNort gave him their phone number and said to call collect if he got anything good from Dr. Jay. And Martray was transferred back to Dallas.

The second visit with Raymond Martray took place in September after he was transferred to Fayette County Prison where he was housed during his appeal. VanNort and Holtz took Martray to a hotel in Uniontown for a long private conversation. This time it was much more interesting. Martray told the cops that while he was being brought back to Dallas after their meeting in April, he had seized the occasion to be of tremendous service to Jay Smith.

It seems that Dr. Jay had told Martray to watch for an inmate named David Rucker who might shuffle into his life during his prison travels. Jay Smith said Rucker had been an armored-car robber with an M.O. similar to the one he'd been convicted of using, and Jay Smith had not given up hope for a successful appeal on at least one of the Sears convictions.

He described David Rucker to Martray, but he needn't have gone into detail. When Martray got on the prison van that day he was certain that the con sitting behind him was either Wayne Gretzky or David Rucker. The inmate was wearing a hockey helmet.