Echoes in the Darkness (47 page)

"Whoever did this, whoever helped in the commission of this crime, was savvy enough to make sure that those children's bodies would never be found, but he took the awful chance of driving a dead body all the way to Harrisburg and parking it in a public parking lot, and walked around behind that car and opened the hatch for the world to see the exposed body of Susan Reinert, and then pirouetted and walked away.

"Does Jay C. Smith benefit from that according to the way Bradfield has explained the situation? Of course not. If he'd killed Susan Reinert because she was his mistress or interfering with his alibi, her body would be in the same hole with the children. What if Alex had done it? Would he transport her to the Host Inn and expose her body to the world?

"Do you know why the body was exposed? Because this body is worth to one person in the world seven thousand dollars a pound, and it had to be found during the alibi weekend so that he can say to the world, 'I couldn't possibly have done it.'

"No one else benefits from this scenario. No one would have taken this chance unless they did it for Bill Bradfield, because nobody collects on insurance unless they have a body. Perhaps that's the final irony. The big mistake was when he killed the children, because I couldn't make this argument to you if it was Susan Reinert alone.

"But they panicked. The children weren't worth anything. A real measure of irony, a real measure of justice is that the children's lives were perhaps not sacrificed in vain because their absence at this scene speaks so loudly of the defendants guilt that I submit to you it is impossible to ignore. No one else benefits in this terrible chance of exposing the body except the defendant.

"Today is October twenty-eighth, 1983. Five years ago today Susan Reinerts mother died and the plan to kill her began. And today the conspiracy ends and we are going to leave this

to you."

Joshua Lock had married late, but had made up for it. He and his wife had one baby after another, beautiful enchanting children. He believed so completely that Bill Bradfield was not a child murderer that he hoped one day to sail with him in the Chesapeake. And he wanted his daughters to meet this teacher who had such a captivating way about him.

Lock thought that the jury would be out for days even though he had great admiration for the methodical way that Rick Guida had presented the complex case. He was told by many reporters in the courtroom that they were not impressed by Guida. He was later told by some of the jurors that they were not impressed. But he was impressed. This was a brilliant organization, he said, and as a professional he recognized it even if they didn't.

Throughout the trial, Josh Lock had a constant urge to throw up.

The jury retired to deliberate at 8:22 p.m. Jack Holtz and Lou DeSantis walked across the street to the Holiday Inn in downtown Harrisburg and figured to have a bite before going home. They imagined that the jurors might get started tonight, but they'd probably get sleepy and turn in before ten.

They hadn't even finished a beer when the phone rang. It was the "tipstaff," or court crier, since Pennsylvania is one of the places quaint enough to retain one. Everyone joked that it was a verdict when Jack went to the phone.

The tipstaff said, "Jack, you're not gonna believe it. The jury has a verdict."

They'd been out seventy-five minutes. They said they had the verdict within forty-five, but thought they should wait to make it look more professional.

A verdict that fast in a case that complex meant only one thing and Jack Holtz could hardly keep from yelling when they ran back over to the courthouse.

He was ecstatic to see jurors glaring at the defendant.

They polled the jury. William Bradfield got to hear "Guilty, first degree" thirty-six times. Each juror uttered it in the murders of Susan Reinert and Karen Reinert and Michael Reinert.

The defendant showed all the emotion of serpentine stone.

Jack Holtz found it hard, but waited until everyone was off the elevator on the first floor. Then he and Lou DeSantis and Rick Guida let out a whoop and raced across the river to Catalano's Restaurant. They closed the bar.

Early the next morning Jack Holtz called Betty VanNort.

The swift and effective manner in which the trial had been run by Judge Garb impressed the reporters, the defense and the prosecution.

The judge wasn't known to be a proponent of capital punishment. He said that it hadn't been proved that William Bradfield did any of the actual killing, and there was insufficient evidence to show that he had "contracted" with a crime partner to have it done. The judge therefore decided that as a matter of law aggravating circumstances did not apply. He took a possible death verdict away from the jury.

It was only left to determine whether Bill Bradfield would receive concurrent sentences for the three murders as the defense wished, or consecutive sentences as the prosecution was now demanding.

At the sentencing of William Bradfield, one witness after another came forward to say that his teaching had made all the difference in decisions toward higher education.

A former student said, "I can't say that I've ever met anyone who is so seriously devoted to the truth as Mister Bradfield, and so serious in acting morally according to that truth. I would not be the same person I am today had I not met Mister Bradfield."

Another former student said, "Beyond all things, he was an example to me. He taught me what was important in my intellectual life. That it was important to consider things and truths and that one should run his life or fulfill his actions according to what truth could be found in his own investigations. He was a great teacher in that way."

Josh Lock said in his plea for concurrent sentences, "If I may presume to anticipate some of Mister Cuidas comments, I suppose we would probably hear about the heinous nature of this crime. And we would probably also be reminded that Mister Bradfield remains unrepentant and has demonstrated no remorse either by public confession or cooperation with the authorities. I would suggest that that reposes a level of infallibility in jury verdicts that practice demonstrates may not exist.

"I think the fundamental point for sentencing purposes is something else. As has been suggested by Dante there are qualitative differences in evil. There are evil people who commit evil acts. There are people who are not otherwise evil who commit equally evil acts. However, it is not fair to judge those two groups of people in the same way."

Lock produced letters from students who had unmistakably Ijeen inspired by William Bradfield.

One young woman in her third year at Harvard wrote: "Mr. Bradfield taught me ancient Greek when I was in tenth grade. After three years of study at Harvard I still think of that class as the most inspiring I have ever had, and of Mr. Bradfield as the most inspiring teacher."

There was one letter after another. In each of them, young people who had gone on to academic success wrote of Bill Bradfield's inspirational talents, and told of how he'd brought out qualities they didn't know they had.

His attorney said, "There is a qualitative difference in the type of life this man has led and the type of life so many others have led. The parallels in this case and the book Crime and Punishment are striking.

"Your Honor may recall that the protagonist, Raskolnikov, by recourse to his own system of moral and intellectual values, rationalized the murder of an elderly woman of some means so he could promote his education, propagate his ideas to the world, and demonstrate to himself that he was some sort of superhuman individual. Having killed her, however, he came to the realization of the effect that one act had on what had otherwise been an intellectually and morally superior life.

"At one point in his agony, he said, 'Did I murder the old woman? I killed myself, not that old creature. There and then I murdered myself at one blow forever.'

"And indeed that is exactly what has happened in this case, and its questionable, the death penalty having been resolved, whether any penalty imposed can exceed the type of penalty that Raskolnikov felt, and that Bill Bradfield Jeels now.

"Crime and Punishment is a story of redemption as well. Sonya the prostitute says to him, 'God will send you life again.'

"In the final paragraph of the book, Dostoevsky said, 'He did not even know that the new life would not be his for nothing, that it must be dearly bought and paid for with great and heroic struggles yet to come.'

"Bill Bradfield has demonstrated that he can live a worthwhile life even in prison, that he can renew himself. He can redeem himself. That suggestion is confirmed by everything about his life up to 1979, and is indicated in these letters and in the testimony we have today.

"The Hebrew word, the biblical word for justic is tzedeh. That same word in Hebrew means mercy. Your Honor, any lawyer would be proud if somebody who clerked in his office said, 'I am a lawyer today because of you.' His life is replete with examples of just such testaments. Your Honor has the opportunity to distinguish, as Dante distinguished in the In} remo, qualities of evil. That can be accomplished in this case by imposing concurrent rather than consecutive sentences upon Mister Bradfield."

For the fifteen hundred hours of work he'd done on behalf of his client, Dauphin County paid Joshua Lock about two dollars an hour. He'd thought of telling them to keep it. He finally took the money to buy an antique writing table for his office.

The first words out of Rick Guida's mouth were "It's interesting that Mister Lock quoted Crime and Punishment. The passage indicated that the main character felt remorse. We don't have that in this case. Mister Bradfield has consistently told this court and jury one of the most ridiculous stories I've ever heard, and it's very interesting that the people who came here today were very much like the people who testified in our case. People who were convinced by Mister Bradfields words and ignored his actions."

For the first time in this case, Guida began to toy with an idea that so far he'd avoided, not wanting to make the twisted case anymore complex, the idea being that the death of the children had been plotted all along.

He said, "We saw a plan that began October twenty-eighth, 1978, and carried forward to the death of three individuals. Its true when we were dealing strictly with the commonwealth's case it was our theory that the children were a mistake, that they had to be killed because they were witnesses to their mothers murder.

"Even if they were an afterthought, at the final moment when Mrs. Reinert showed up with those two children, there was a choice. The defendant had the choice and the choice was to give up the money, the seven hundred and thirty thousand, and to walk away from it and let the children live.

"We have witnesses here today who said Mister Bradfield strove for perfection. He strove for the highest level. Well, he's finally made it: the highest level that he could achieve in the world of evil, he has achieved. And I can't think of a crime that calls out more for consecutive terms of life imprisonment."

Judge Garb said, "Do you have anything you wish to say, Mister Bradfield?"

Bill Bradfield stood, and said, "I know that you are constrained to act on the verdict of the jury, but I am compelled to say some simple truths. One, I did not kill Mrs. Reinert. I did not kill her children. I was not an accomplice to killing Mrs. Reinert, and was not an accomplice to killing her children. I cannot show remorse for something I didn't do.

"All the courts and all the juries and all the judges in the world can't change those facts that are true, and I can but pray that the children someday will be found alive. That is all I have."

During his sentencing Judge Garb said, "It doesn't matter which theory you may adopt regarding the killing of the children. Whether they happened to be there and therefore were witnesses to the actual act, or whether it was part of the grand design in the first place. But it's somewhat diabolical that the children's bodies have never been found.

"I heard you, Mister Bradfield, express the prayer that they be found alive somewhere. I think we would have to be naive to assume that this is likely to happen. There are good reasons why the bodies of the children are not to be found. It is somewhat an ariticle of faith by investigators that the best clues actually come from the victims. So of course it makes perfectly good sense to deny the investigator advantage of those sources of evidence.

"Of course with respect to the body of Susan Reinert there were other considerations, because the motivation for murder was the acquisition of her estate. And so as I view it, a word which hasn't been used in describing these events does apply: 'diabolical.' A triple homicide, regardless of where you draw that subtle line regarding the motivation for killing the youngsters.

"Now, what do we have on the other side? Well, we have a great deal of evidence as to what you are. I don't care to deal in caricatures. It doesn't advance the cause to talk in terms of whether you are a charismatic Rasputin or a noncharismatic Rasputin. Perhaps that is a redundancy anyway.

"I also don't know how Dante defined evil. Yes, I suppose there's a difference between an evil person committing an evil act and a nonevil person committing an evil act. I'm not sure which is more egregious. I don't care to characterize you as evil or not evil.

"I guess it must be said that you are some kind of an anomaly to us. You have heard and I have heard what has been said today about you. It is said that your interests were such that they were in other than material things, yet it has been decided that you were willing to take three lives for something in excess of seven hundred thousand dollars and not for any other reason.