Echoes in the Darkness (44 page)

Jack Holtz believed what Proctor Nowell had told him and thought that the jury would too.

When the witness was called, the prosecutor got the criminal record over with in a hurry.

"What particular institution are you in at the present time?" Rick Guida asked.

"The ABRAX program, an alcohol drug program."

"Are you sentenced there as a condition of a criminal charge?"

"Yes, I am."

"What sentence are you currently serving?"

"Eighteen months to five years."

"Are you married?"

IYes-"

"Do you have children?"

"Two."

"Tell us what trouble you've been in."

"When I was sixteen I was incarcerated for aggravated assault. I served four to twenty-three months. I did, like seven months, and I got out. I was arrested for burglary twice but I wasn't convicted. I was charged with receivin' stolen goods, possession with intent to deliver, and two gun charges."

"What was the disposition of all your cases? Did you have a trial or plead guilty?"

"I pled guilty."

"Are you an alcoholic?"

"Yes."

"Do you have any outside hobbies?"

"Yes. Amateur boxin'. I boxed Golden Gloves. Ten wins and one loss."

"Mister Nowell, can you associate your criminal problems with your drinking problem?"

"That's the only time I would get in trouble was when I had got intoxicated."

"When did you first meet Mister Bradfield?"

"I was sittin' in the dayroom on B block and I was playin' chess with another inmate. Mister Bradfield walked up to me and asked me when I got time would I teach him how to play the game."

"Did you eventually play chess with him?"

"Yes. It was about one or two days later. I was in my room, me and this guy Stanley. We were sittin' on the bed playin' chess and William Bradfield walked past the cell. I hollered. I told him, I said, 'Bradfield, I got time to show you how to move the pieces, but, you know, the rest got to come from you mentally.'"

"How many games did you play over the time that you knew him?"

"Approximately twelve times."

"How did he do?"

"He beat me eight out of twelve. I started playin' when I was, like twelve years old, and it was, you know, not easy to get beat like that. I took for granted that he already knew how to play."

"Did you have the opportunity to help Mister Bradfield with regard to another inmate?"

"Yes. Me and Bradfield was comin' from upstairs. Another inmate asked him somethin'. He says somethin' about doin' somethin' to him. I said, 'No, man, you ain't gonna do nothin' to him because that's my friend.' He walked on about his business."

"Did you have an occasion to get a letter from your wife and make a comment to him?"

"Well, I received a letter from my wife that day and I read the letter and I got upset, you know, and she's tellin' me, like 'I'm tired, baby,' you know? 'I don't think I'm gonna wait this time.' I got angry. I told Bradfield, I said, 'Good a provider as I have been.' I said, 'You know, I'm goddamn gonna kill that . . . that ... I don't wanna say what I said. 'I'm gonna kill that hussy,' or whatever."

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'No, no, no. You don't ever wanna kill anyone. They never get off your ass.'"

"Did you have the occasion to speak with Mister Bradfield when he got back from a court proceeding?"

"Well, I was lookin' for him because I had some coffee for him. I walked outta my room and he was standin' on the tier. He was standin' there lookin' up to the ceilin' with his finger pointed in his head, you know, like real angry and disgusted. And I called him, I said, ^Bradfield, come here.' He came in the room. And I said, 'What's wrong, man?'"

"What did he look like when he was standing out there and what did he look like when he came in your cell in terms of his facial expression?"

"Like, the veins was up in his head, poppin' up. Like, he really had a major problem, like real frustrated and real angry. He came on in the cell."

"What did he do when he was in the cell?"

"He was walkin' around in the cell lookin' up, lookin' out the window and stuff. And he said, They're fuckin' over me, man. They're fuckin' over me. They denied my bail reduction.' Then after he said that, he said, 'You know, if I wasn't in a financial bind I wouldn't be here nor would this have had to happen to Susan.'

"I didn't really know what he was talkin' about. He said, 'I was there when they were killed but I didn't kill them.' And I said, 'Damn, Bradfield! The children too?' And he said, 'None of this was meant for the lads, only for Susan. But there couldn't be a stone left unturned. You have to tie up all the loose ends.'"

And that, Guida and Holtz noted, was a Jay Smith expression from way back. Bill Bradfield had used the same words to Vince and Chris describing what Dr. Jay had told him. And Raymond Martray had used the same words as well when he described conversations with Jay Smith.

"After he made that statement did you speak with him very much anymore?"

"No, I limited my association with him."

"Did any law enforcement officer or deputy attorney general make any promises with regard to testifying in this matter?"

"No, the only thing I was told was, you know, that my judge would be made aware of my cooperation. That's it."

"When the police first came to you and talked to you, did you tell them about this situation?"

"No, I didn't. I told them I didn't know nothin' because I really didn't want to get involved in it. You know, the name the people start callin' you while you're incarcerated. And man, I was just scared, really."

"Why did you come forward with your story, Mister Nowell?"

"Because they told me to sit down and think about it. They said, 'Okay, we're not gonna pressure you, but think about it. It was two innocent children involved.' I went back to my room and I was just layin' there thinkin' about it, you know? I finally started thinkin', like, damn, what would happen, you

know, if this was my kids? Would I want somebody to do this for mine? That's when I got up and I went in my box and got the number and called them."

"Are you telling us the truth today?"

"Yes."

"So help you God?"

"So help me God."

On cross-examination, Josh Lock attacked Nowell's credibility by trying to show that he was seeking favors from the authorities. He dissected the statement "I was there when they were killed," because he'd already shown and the prosecution stipulated that Bill Bradfield could not have been there when Susan Reinert actually stopped breathing.

But Jack Holtz was never prouder of his idea to look for a Bill Bradfield "protector" in the Delaware County prison. He thought that Proctor Nowell had done just fine.

His moment came. Bill Bradfield wore black frame glasses for the trial, and the day he testifed he had on his most dignified three-piece blue suit and a subdued striped necktie. His testimony was flat, as unemotional as before. But this time his voice kept fading and the judge had to continually remind him to speak up.

"State your full name, please," Josh Lock said when the direct examination began.

"William S. Bradfield, Jr."

"How old are you?"

"Fifty."

"And can you tell us your educational background, please."

"I graduated from Haverford College in 1955, and have a master's in liberal education from St. John's. I've done other graduate work at various institutions."

When Lock asked him to describe his relationship with Sue Myers, he said, "We had not been living as a real romantic pair for many many years."

"Do you remember when your relationship with Miss Myers ceased to be intimate?"

"Nineteen seventy-three or seventy-four," he said.

Poor old Sue. That was when they'd first started living together. She always claimed that the sex hadn't stopped until 1978. No wonder she needed facials and chiropractors.

Of his early relationship with Jay Smith, he said, "He was a

very very intelligent man, very intelligent. And he liked to indulge in a kind of intellectual combat. During teachers' meetings he'd come up to you in the hall and begin talking tongue-in-cheek about some item of education. And he'd use very big words and if I'd ask him what the word meant, Doctor Smith would say, 'Mister Bradfield, I don't get paid to teach you vocabulary.' And I would go look it up and there wasn't any such word. He'd say it was Hindustani or Old English.

The most characteristic thing he did in the cafeteria or in the halls was to interlude very elaborately embroidered conceits. A conceit is a kind of extended metaphor in literature. He would, for example, begin by saying to me that the essence of civilization is the foot, and that it's the most important organ of the human body, and massage of the foot is the most important thing that one person can do for another.

"Another time he talked about the central importance of boots, and it turned out that he'd sold cowboy boots at one time. He wasn't serious, but it was a kind of practice of his skill in rhetoric without reference to the substance of the idea.

"And sometimes if I went down to him with a grievance from a student, Doctor Smith would say, 'Mister Bradfield it's really not incumbent on me to speak. Lets go back and discuss it in my office.' We'd go back and close the door and his language changed into a basic kind of street language. And never have I heard obscenities come together in quite the way that he would do it."

Bill Bradfield testified that he had never taken Susan Reinert to a movie, show, dance, party, play, concert, or on a boat. He said that he'd done all these things with other women friends such as Rachel, and he admitted to being romantically involved with Shelly.

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?"

INo"

"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 Cuida was one of those prosecutors who live for crossexamination, and possibly in his entire career he'd never looked forward more to one.

Since Josh Locks 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," Cuida 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."