Main Line Murders /// Part 2 /// 792

Summary

True Crime Garage – "Main Line Murders /// Part 2 /// 792" Release Date: October 9, 2024
Hosts: Nic and Captain Kenneth

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Episode Overview

This riveting part two dives deeper into the infamous Main Line Murders, focusing on the chilling case of Susan Reinert and her missing children, Karen and Michael. Hosts Nic and the Captain meticulously unravel the intertwining lives and suspicious actions of key suspects: Susan’s lover/fiancé Bill Bradfield and former high school principal Dr. J. Smith. The episode explores a web of deceit, fraud, criminal conspiracies, and the enduring mystery of the missing children—a case that still haunts Pennsylvania law enforcement and true crime enthusiasts.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Recap and New Developments in the Investigation

• The investigation into Susan Reinert’s murder hit serious roadblocks, despite interviews with her ex-husband, friends, and colleagues.
• Key suspects’ backgrounds are explored, introducing Dr. J. Smith (former principal) and Bill Bradfield (teacher/lover).

Financial Motives and Relationships (Timestamps: 03:33–13:25)

• Susan’s Inheritance & Financial Decisions
  • Susan inherited ~$200,000 in real estate and $30,000 cash after her mother’s passing, equivalent to nearly $1 million today.
  • She purchased multiple life insurance policies totaling up to $1 million (1979 value), naming Bill Bradfield as the primary beneficiary—he was described as her “fiancé, soon to be husband” on paperwork.
• Bradfield’s Role and Suspicions
  • Susan’s brother and ex-husband raised the alarm with insurers, contesting payouts due to the suspicious circumstances and ongoing investigation.
  • Susan made large cash withdrawals ($25,000), telling family Bradfield was investing the money for her—but many “stock certificates” found were fraudulent. Bradfield denied ever receiving money.
  • Detective frustration: “He becomes obvious suspect, prime suspect number one. The problem with him being a suspect though is the time of death.” (Nick, 13:43)

Timeline and Alibis (17:33–23:09)

• Bradfield’s Alibi
  • Bradfield was in Cape May, NJ, with teacher friends during the murder weekend; this complicated police efforts to implicate him directly.
  • Police determined a 3-hour unaccounted window Friday night—leaving possibility for Bradfield’s involvement.
• Rumors and Dr. J. Smith
  • A rumor circulated among teachers that Dr. J. Smith was planning to kill Susan—origin allegedly traces back to Bradfield himself, suggesting possible manipulation.
    • “Maybe that rumor started with Bill Bradfield, that he started saying it, and somehow this became regular conversation...” (Nick, 18:24)

Dr. J. Smith’s Criminal Downfall (24:00–41:00)

• Smith’s Eccentric, Suspicious Behavior
  • Once a respected Army colonel and principal, Smith spiraled after his wife’s death and was arrested for breaking into a car—caught with guns (one with a homemade silencer), a syringe with prescription drugs, security guard uniforms, and fake badges.
  • Police linked Smith’s uniform ruse to major area department store thefts—he’d impersonate Brinks guards to steal deposits.
    • “It’s actually... a rather brilliant plan when you think about it.” (Nick, 35:29)
• Smith’s Family Tragedy
  • Smith’s daughter and son-in-law, both heroin addicts, disappeared in February 1978 after living with him—foul play by Smith suspected but unproven.
  • “Not only that, if Jay Smith made two people disappear before never to be found, it’s reasonable that he could do it again.” (Nick, 39:52)
• Bradfield provided Smith with an alibi for prior criminal charges—suggesting a deeper (and possibly transactional) relationship.

Complex Network of Relationships and Motives (44:03–47:29)

• Bradfield juggled multiple women, convincing at least four that he’d marry them—including former students and women who later provided him with money and bail after his arrest.
• “Somehow he seemed to convince four smart women that he was going to marry all four of them.” (Nick, 44:47)
• Susan reportedly gave Bradfield her grandmother’s diamond ring to have reset for their engagement—showing her trust and belief in their commitment.

Law Enforcement Theories and Difficulties (47:30–54:58)

• The time gap on Friday night leaves just enough uncertainty for possible Bradfield involvement, but the logistics strain credulity.
• Theory emerges: Bradfield orchestrated murder for financial gain, possibly enlisting Smith (who "owed him one" after the alibi).
  • “He gets convicted of three counts of conspiracy to murder... The prosecution says, ‘We don’t think that you actually... murdered these people, but you arranged for it to happen.’” (Nick, 63:59)
• The children were likely unintended victims—original plan was to kill Susan, but the kids’ presence complicated matters.

Aftermath: Trials, Conspiracies, and Continuing Mystery (54:58–79:23)

• Fraud and Murder Charges
  • Bradfield was convicted of fraud (financial crimes against Susan), served time, and was then charged and convicted (three concurrent life sentences) for conspiracy to murder Susan and her children.
• Dr. J. Smith’s Prosecution
  • Convicted largely on circumstantial evidence: jailhouse snitch testimony, “blue comb” and fiber evidence, and rumors sourced from Bradfield.
  • Defense uncovered judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, including undisclosed deals for the jailhouse informant and financial manipulation from author Joseph Wambaugh (allegedly paid officers to secure an arrest for his book).
  • Smith’s death sentences were vacated; he was released after years on death row, but suspicion lingered until his death in 2009.

Legacy and Lingering Mystery (79:23–Episode end)

• Unresolved Fates
  • Susan’s children, Michael and Karen, were never found; their uncle placed their inheritance into a trust “for when they come home.”
  • A photo in Bradfield’s cell (possibly of a grave marker) was found after his death, but its significance remains unknown.
• The case remains Pennsylvania’s largest and longest state police investigation, emblematic of enduring tragedy and unanswered questions.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Susan thought it was one thing and it wasn't it, you know, Bill had a whole different opinion...” (Nick, 04:05)
• On Dr. J. Smith: “He’s a weird dude. There’s no way to put it. So being a weird dude when you fall into a suspect pool is not helpful to you if you’re innocent. If you’re an investigator, you’re looking for the weird dude in the suspect pool.” (Nick, 23:09)
• “Put on your raincoat... because there's going to be some shit. You cannot make this stuff up.” (Nick, 19:01)
• “I think he [Bradfield] is good for it. I just think he had help.” (Nick, 54:54)
• “A wise person once said that the perfect murder isn’t just getting away with it. Getting away with the perfect murder is getting somebody else to take the fall for it.” (Nick, 58:48)
• “But what I like about this story with the photograph... is that it does show a level of effort by law enforcement to never give up on finding those kids.” (Nick, 77:04)

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Important Timestamps & Segments

• 03:33 – Investigation shifts to Bradfield; life insurance & financial red flags
• 07:45–10:18 – Details on inheritance, insurance beneficiaries, and cash withdrawals
• 13:25–17:33 – Bradfield’s alibi and timeline scrutiny
• 18:16–20:23 – Rumors about Dr. J. Smith; origins and implications
• 24:00–26:49 – Smith’s criminal arrest and bizarre findings
• 35:29 – “Point Break” style impersonation heists by Smith
• 44:03–45:03 – Bradfield’s manipulation of multiple women
• 47:30–54:58 – Detailed analysis of Bradfield’s possible involvement and law enforcement theories
• 63:59–65:46 – Bradfield’s conspiracy conviction and the prosecution’s narrative
• 68:57–72:59 – Prosecutorial misconduct and author interference revealed
• 75:18–77:04 – The mysterious photo and police efforts to find the children
• 79:28 – Police believe a third, uncharged individual may hold the secret to the children's fate

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Recommended Reading Mentioned

• "Principal Suspect: The True Story of Dr. J. Smith and the Mainline Murders" by William Costopoulos (Nick’s top recommendation)
• "Echoes in the Darkness" by Joseph Wambaugh

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Final Thoughts

True Crime Garage delivers a compelling and thorough deep dive into the Main Line Murders, leaving listeners with a sense of the case's complexity and the enduring devastation wrought by these crimes. The episode balances investigative rigor, dark humor, and empathy—true to the show's signature style. Despite decades passed, this haunting mystery remains unsolved, with law enforcement still open to new leads, especially regarding the long-missing children.

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If you have any information about the disappearance of Karen and Michael Reinert, contact the Pennsylvania State Police at 717-671-7537.

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[End of summary. For a full account, listen to True Crime Garage episode 792.]

Transcript

[Narrator/Ad Host]

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[Nick]

Picture this it's the end of a long week.

[Co-host/Advertiser]

You're unwinding in the tub, listening to your favorite true crime podcast and then

[Nick]

chronic hives come back again in the middle of the episode.

[Co-host/Advertiser]

What a wet blanket looks like another spell of itchy, swollen, red or skin colored hives.

[Nick]

If you have chronic spontaneous urticaria or

[Co-host/Advertiser]

csu, there may be a different treatment option. Worried about your chronic hives interrupting our next episode? Learn [e-mail] Garage Sam.

[Captain Kenneth]

Foreign.

[Nick]

Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host, Nick and with me, as always, is A man who 30 years later would still like to know what's the frequency? Kenneth here is the Captain.

[Captain Kenneth]

I thought at one point I knew,

[Co-host/Commentator]

but I. I now know I have no clue.

[Captain Kenneth]

It's good to be seen. Good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling friend.

[Nick]

I just fact checked it Captain and nobody knows. Still nobody knows. All right, cheers to the great folks over at Highland Brewing for producing some of the very best beers available today. We are sipping Wishing Star Cold IPA from Highland. Wishing Star features four varieties of hops, Apollo, Centennial, Strat and Mosaic Hops. This cold IPA is clean and crisp with a bright hoppy flavor that you're going to love. Garage Grade four and a half bottle caps out of five. And here's some cheers to our friends near and far that helped us out with this week's show. First up, a shout out to Adrian from Matawan, Michigan and a big we

[Captain Kenneth]

like you jibs to Morgan and Opie in Portland, Oregon.

[Nick]

Next up, here's a cheers to Rebecca Ruth from Thompson, Maine. And last but certainly not least, we have a shout out to a great dude, Larry Collins, who made a beer fund donation in honor of Tim Watkins. Tim was killed in Colorado seven years ago by some unknown park predator. We covered his case on True Crime Garage and I talked about it in my book the Delphi Murders as well. That case is still unsolved, so we pour a little out for Tim. And thank you to everyone who contributed to the beer fun.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, bwr you in Beer Run. If you need more True Crime Garage

[Captain Kenneth]

for your earballs, you can go over

[Co-host/Commentator]

to YouTube because I've been releasing old episodes of off the Record and they're fun to listen to Col. That's enough of the bee is nest.

[Nick]

All right everybody gather round, grab a chair, grab a beer. Lets talk some true crime. The investigation into Susan Reinhardt's murder was unraveling for detectives. They weren't having much luck here, Captain. They talked to the ex husband, interviewed him, interviewed everybody that they could find that would be willing to tell them anything. We talked a little bit about a potential relationship. Remember there were some people that said no, Susan was not in a relationship that I was aware of, others saying she was very deep into a relationship. And that was with a one Bill Bradfield. The two were teachers together at the high school. We also mentioned a principal. Now we, we should be clear here. The principal that we mentioned yesterday, Dr. J. Smith, he was a principal at that school for 12 years, but he was not a principal at the time of the disappearance of the kids and Susan's murder. In fact, he had left the school about a year prior. He got into some trouble. His life really went off of the rails about a year or two before he lost his job as a principal. Part of that likely had to do with the death of his wife who was suffering for several years with a very tough bout of leukemia. The way that it's described is horrific. And what he and she went through during, from the time of diagnosis to the time that she passed sounds incredibly tragic and stressful and horrible to have to deal with the heartache with him had to be palpable. But we'll get into Dr. J. Smith here in a bit. What we need to focus on right now though is this Bill Bradfield. He is as complicated of an individual as they come. He was a man who had been married twice before. He had been a bachelor for quite some time. And he's in this relationship. Yeah, he's in this relationship with Suzanne. Many people that they talked to that were aware of this relationship said that they were going to be getting married. And there was further detail on that. Some people were even telling police, well they were going to get married and they were going to move to Europe at some point or move to England. The other version that they're getting is Bill Bradfield who's saying, yeah, we were kind of seeing each other. Not really. I was more of a friend. There were some people that backed up those statements by saying, well, Susan thought it was one thing and it wasn't it. You know, Bill had a whole different opinion of it. It wasn't really a relationship. But then it's when they dive into Susan's financial records Detectives are starting to see some things that they're concerned with. So unfortunately, Susan's mother had passed away about a year or so before Susan was murdered. She's left with a pretty handsome inheritance from her mother. The reports that I've seen are $200,000 in real estate and about $30,000 in cash. Now we're going back to 1978 and 1979 with these figures. $25,000 back then would be equal to about $100,000 today.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, it's a life changing situation. She's not going to be able to not work or anything, but this is going to give her a huge boost. Like you said, not with just the real estate, but also the money aspect.

[Nick]

Just the cash alone would be over a hundred thousand dollars in today's money. And then the $200,000 in real estate would be about $800,000 in today's money. So a good amount of money here. And what they are seeing is that for some strange reason, shortly before her murder, she opens up several life insurance policies on herself and she already had at least one pre existing life insurance policy where her kids, her two children were to be the beneficiaries of that. However, she changed the beneficiary to her boyfriend who when she sits down to make this change to the life insurance, she doesn't describe him as boyfriend, William Bradfield. She describes him as fiance, soon to be husband and in fact that those words make it onto the paperwork. So she switches one from kids to future husband, as she put it, and then two other life insurance policies that she takes out on herself. Again, beneficiary is Bill Bradfield, future husband. I've seen some varying descriptions of how much money this was, but some say as little as half a million dollars when you total up all of the life insurance policies. Others saying that was closer to $1 million back then. Again, to give a little bit of background here we're talking, I mean this would be equal to millions of dollars today. And that doesn't include the inheritance that she had of the $30,000 cash and the real estate that she had inherited from her mother.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Well, and if you're law enforcement, this is fishy, right? You have people saying, well, their boyfriend, girlfriend. Some people say no, Bill was her friend. Bill's saying, hey, it wasn't that serious. Well, if it wasn't that serious, then why is she calling you her fiance on these legal documents and why is she giving you. Or you'd be the beneficiary to three insurance policies and you'd be the beneficiary to real estate. And like you said, what does that total? In today's money, it could be up to 3, 4 million dollars.

[Nick]

And one person that was aware of this prior to Susan's death was her brother and her ex husband. So what takes place here, in fact, they are the reason why this ends up on the detectives radar in the first place. So the ex husband and brother come forward and they say, they file what I believe is called a caveat. And what that is is they're challenging the insurance companies saying, wait a second, yeah, we know she, she's been killed and you're probably going to pay this out. Now keep in mind, a lot of these life insurance policies are not going to pay out with a pending investigation. Right? It would pay out. Once the investigation runs its course and everything, if everything's on the up and up, then it will pay out. But prior to that, while this investigation is ongoing, brother and ex husband come forward and they say, wait a second, you guys might want to not pay this guy because he's one of many suspects. I mean, as said, even the brother and ex husband were at some point on the suspect list because until you're ruled out, you're ruled out, you're still a suspect. This goes on to police radar. Now, police through this, they start figuring out, well, wait a second. Leading up to her murder. Now we're going back a couple months before she was killed. Remember that $30,000 cash she inherited? Well, that was in savings. She was making large withdrawals from that $30,000 multiple times leading up to her death and taking out money multiple occasions, mainly because of daily limits. But they figured that it was about $25,000 that she had taken out of savings.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Jesus.

[Nick]

They're looking through her financials, they're looking through her home, they're going through her life and they're going, well, there's nothing obvious that she spent that money on. So where did it go? Once again, bring in Bill Bradfield. Bill Bradfield was, according to him, her friend, her very close friend that was helping her. And he even said that she seemed troubled and seemed to make decisions that didn't make any sense. He, he didn't know why she would name him as the beneficiary of these life insurance policies, but maybe it was because she was looking at him as some kind of financial advisor, as he puts it. He was telling her. And this is going from her brother's statements and other people that tell police, well, we know where the $25,000 went. She was giving it to Bill and he was investing it for her, or at least that's what she told us. And of course, Bill's telling police. I don't know what you're talking about. $25,000. I'd never seen $25,000.

[Co-host/Commentator]

This guy seems a little bit like a Scott Pearson.

[Nick]

Well, nowadays things are all done online. But back then when you buy stocks or bonds, you would typically get a decorated paper receipt, let's call it for a lack of better term. Right. A certificate.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Right.

[Nick]

And so when police go to her home, they are finding things that are, that are certificates of stocks that were purchased or bonds that were purchased. But what they quickly realize is a lot of these companies that she seemed to own stock or thought she owns stock for didn't exist. And now they're starting to say, well, she's telling people that he's investing this money for her. She must have believed it. But we think he's doing something else with this money because these stocks are for companies that don't exist. So now. Right. He becomes obvious suspect, prime suspect number one. The problem with him being a suspect though is the time of death. And that's why I said earlier, Captain, I don't love when you, when you tell me cause of death is this, we've narrowed it down to three things. I'm not so confident when you tell me that you've narrowed down the, the time of death because it's her time of death, that takes him off of the radar, that removes him and seems like makes it so the likelihood of him being a good suspect is not so likely. So he was with three other people at a place called Cape May, New Jersey, and he is there. The original reports that police get is he's there the entire weekend. Now to complicate things, he lives in the greater Philadelphia area. Remember, he works at the same school. Is Susan to complicate things when he comes back from this Cape May, New Jersey, he's returning home on the same Monday that she is found dead in the hatchback. He goes home and then he immediately leaves. So within a few hours of getting back to his house, he's now on an airplane heading out to New Mexico. All of these travels of his were pre arranged. Okay, so that's one thing. That's. It doesn't look like he's on the run from anything. It's suspicious, but it's not highly suspicious because these are all pre arranged travels that he has set up. So the, the travel to Cape May, New Jersey he's traveling with three friends. These are three people that he worked with that worked at the high school. So all three of these people know him, and they know Susan. Of course, the plane trip out to New Mexico is because he is taking a course. He's going to be attending classes there that he signed up for. Remember, these people were all teachers, and it's now summertime. So it's the summer, and they have the summer to go work other jobs to further their education. Well, that's what he's doing. He's on a plane with one of these other teachers out to New Mexico to take classes for the summer. Well, this is quite convenient because every time the police want to talk to him about Susan's murder, he's busy. He can't take the phone call. It's easy for him to duck them because he's on the other side of the country. This is what leads police to Bill Bradfield as a possible or very good suspect in this case. The problem, though, is, once again, the timeline. If he is in Cape May the entire weekend with three other people, that makes it very difficult for him to have committed the murder, especially when the coroner saying that she had only died about 24 hours or so before being found, 27 hours approximately after leaving her home on that Friday night.

[Co-host/Commentator]

I agree with you on the sense of he's not a good suspect if their. If their timeline of death is correct.

[Nick]

Exactly. And what will move. What will help to move police off of Bill Bradfield is this. They start talking to the three people that he's at Cape May with. And these people, they're all teachers. All three of them are teachers at the same high school. They start telling detectives that, oh, well, we were hearing from through the grapevine that Dr. J. Smith was going to murder Susan.

[Co-host/Commentator]

And who are they hearing this from?

[Nick]

Well, that's. That's interesting.

[Co-host/Commentator]

It's very raising, guys.

[Nick]

Well, this. This case is very incestuous. So they're hearing some of this and they're saying, well, okay, well, who's telling you that? Or where did you hear this? Well, they're hearing it from each other. You know, again, a game of telephone. One of them said something to somebody, and then it's kind of getting regurgitated around and around in a circle. But what it looks like here, Captain, is that maybe that rumor started with Bill Bradfield, that he started saying it, and somehow this became regular conversation over the course of weeks, maybe even months, leading up to her murder.

[Co-host/Commentator]

I don't like this Bill guy.

[Nick]

Well, and police want to know like, well, why, what would be. Why would Dr. J. Smith, who was her one time principal, her one time boss, why would he have any motive at all to kill this person? He's. She's not worked for him for a year, approximately. Well, this dude, they start looking at him and he's, he's already been in trouble with the law quite a bit and that's why he lost his job as a principal. I'm telling you guys, if you don't know this case, there's this case. Put on your raincoat. Yeah, put on your raincoat because there's going to be some shit. You cannot make this stuff up.

[Captain Kenneth]

Okay, not too much, but quite a bit of shit.

[Nick]

All right, so let's take a look at this Dr. J. Smith. Yeah, he grew up during the Great Depression. He enlisted in the US army, he became a colonel, a lieutenant colonel in the army, and then he transferred.

[Co-host/Commentator]

We know he's full of shit.

[Nick]

The United States Army Reserves. Okay, well, remember the comb that was found underneath our victim in the hatchback?

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yes.

[Nick]

Well, that was part of his, that, that was his unit. That was inscribed on the comb. That was his unit that he was enlisted for with the Army Reserves.

[Co-host/Commentator]

So most likely his call.

[Nick]

Yes. Now I. Let's before we go too far, because I know I'll forget to say it later, Captain, they made a whole bunch of these combs. At one point we're talking thousand. They made thousands of them. And it was not just to give to the people that, that served or that were in that unit, but they were also handed out as a potential recruiting tool. So it stands to reason that he would have that combined in his possession. But it also stands to reason that maybe dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of other people would have had a comb like that at one time in their life.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Well, it's also possible that maybe he gave them out to his teachers when he was a principal.

[Nick]

This part of it though is interesting because here we have a comb that he would have had in a unit that he served in. And he has a direct connection, dot A to dot B to our victim.

[Co-host/Commentator]

And then it also makes you wonder, was there some type of relationship between Susan, our victim, and Dr. J. Smith?

[Nick]

Well, and depending on who you talk to there, there either was or there wasn't. So there are some people that say that there was no, never any relationship. When Dr. J. Smith is asked about it, he says, I've never met her children. I never spoke to her once outside of the workplace. I didn't really know her other than she. Her and I worked at the same school. There are people out there that say they had a one time affair. There are other people that say he tried, he made advances toward her and she rejected him. And then there are other people that say what he was saying. They had no relationship outside of work at all. Again, very difficult for detectives to piece through this information when you're getting conflicting information from really the same pool of people.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Well, it's also tough because look at our victim, Susan. She doesn't seem to be an individual that she's telling every detail of her life to multiple people. So it's not like we have a bunch of people in her life. Like you said, there's some people going, well, this, this relationship with Bill was nothing. And other people say it was everything. And then you have people in, in her life saying, well, there was no relationship with Dr. J. Smith. And some people saying there was a relationship. I mean, and we don't have an individual that we feel like she's giving every detail of her life to.

[Nick]

Well, in Dr. J. Smith, depending on how you want to cut it, it's either good for your investigation or bad luck for him. He's. He's a weird dude. There's no way to put it. So being a weird dude when you fall into a suspect pool is not helpful to you if you're innocent. If you're an investigator, you're looking for the weird dude in the suspect pool. And this weird dude has a police record. This is where I said you can't make this stuff up. He, this dude is a respected army reserve commander, like a ranking officer. And he's a principal of good upstanding for 12 years at this one school in particular.

[Captain Kenneth]

Right.

[Nick]

That's until August of 1978. So this is 13, sorry, this is a little short of one year before Susan's murder. This is when police go and they arrest a man. So they all right, there's this guy wearing a hood and carrying two pistols, and he's trying to break into a car in a shopping mall parking lot. They, the police get on the scene and they arrest this dude without incident. And the guy in the hood with the two pistols turns out to be Principal Smith. He's in the parking lot of the Gateway shopping center trying to break into a vehicle. Now, police search his vehicle. After they arrest him, they find four handguns, one that is fitted with a homemade silencer. They don't know if he purchased this thing or if he made the silencer himself. And in a suit coat that is in a pocket of a suit coat that's found in his car, they find a syringe that is loaded with prescription medicine of some sort. Now this is going to inspire the police to get a search warrant to search his home. When they get to his home, they find some things of interest. They find a large stash of marijuana. And the, the thing that's of the greatest interest to them is they find security guard uniforms and fake badges. Okay, so the reports are here, Captain, that they found like three pounds of marijuana. So he think about the charges already that this guy's facing, right? Like this homemade silencer is illegal as they come. That's a charge. The three pounds of marijuana, that's drug possession charge. And when you have that quantity, that's with the intent to sell to or intent to distribute. And then he's trying to break into a vehicle. One thing that I've, I've searched high and I've searched low, my friends. For two weeks I've been trying to figure out whose vehicle was he trying to break into and why. And that information ceased to exist as far as I'm aware. So if anybody knows that information, that's what we, that's one of the things that we want to hear. In this case, amongst some others, police are very interested in the security guard uniforms and the fake badges that they find in the basement of J. Smith.

[Captain Kenneth]

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[Nick]

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[Nick]

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[Nick]

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[Co-host/Commentator]

All right, we are back. Cheers mates. We, we found that three bags of marijuana. So rest of the episode is going to be very interesting.

[Nick]

We're gonna be high on old marriage confiscated. And now we will confiscate pursue what is often referred to as a controlled burn.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, like when you said I've searched high. Well, how, how high were you? All right, cheers.

[Nick]

Let's talk about these security guard uniforms, Captain, because this, this is one part of the story that I find to be very intriguing. This is a very point break ish to me. Okay, so this area had experienced some pretty big thefts recently. Okay, so In August of 77 there was a theft of $53,000 from a Sears department store in a neighboring community. And then there was the theft or attempted theft of $158,000 at another Sears department store and another neighboring community. What they figured out was Dr. J. Smith with these security guard uniforms and the fake badges had fashioned himself a Brinks armed car. Security guard uniforms. He made these things, even giving himself an ID like a lanyard with an ID identification badge and a and a silver badge. What they believe he was doing is watching these stores, these large box stores. And he would figure out the routines and know what day and at approximately what time Brinks was showing up to collect cash and checks from these stores. What he would do is he would dress up like the Brinks security guard and go into the store shortly before the scheduled pickup. It show him identification, chat with them, and no one's the wiser. And they would fill up the bag and he would walk out the bag. And then what would happen is the actual Brink security guard would show up minutes later. And now the manager's wondering, well, if you're the real guard, who the hell did I just hand thousands of dollars to?

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, officer, your cash.

[Nick]

It's actually hashtag don't try this at home. I'm not, I'm not saying go out and do this, but it's actually a rather brilliant plan when you think about it.

[Captain Kenneth]

Okay.

[Co-host/Commentator]

And not to diverge from the story completely, but when I was reading this, to me, it almost reminded me a little bit of Breaking Bad in a sense, because we do have this criminal history of Jay Smith, but it doesn't seem like the criminal history goes back to like, that far. And so I wonder, like you, you were saying his, his wife was suffering from leukemia and he was under all this pressure and he's a principal, and you just wonder if he was just one of these guys. I was like, hey, life didn't work out for me the way I planned, and I've been doing good things. I mean, he had a lot of.

[Nick]

He had accomplishments as far as career, and I mean, he had a doctorate and he had a life in the, in the Army Reserve. So he was working toward a good retirement. And here's the thing. I, I don't. Somebody out there is going to get mad at me. I don't want anybody to think that I'm rushing to defend Dr. J. Smith. But I was reading something the other night that was absolutely heartbreaking. And this is stuff that is not unknown to others out there. But I had never seen the actual number. Numbers they were talking about. So this month is Breast Cancer awareness month. And the article I was reading, reading was how much does it cost for a year of care for somebody who is diagnosed with breast cancer? They did a cost breakdown between stage one, two, three, four. Stage one. Look, nobody wants to get any kind of cancer or any stage of cancer, but stage one, not very expensive. Stage two, 17 times the cost of stage one. And then you can imagine where it goes from there. Stage four, you. You're lucky to live, but if you live, you're you're, you're bankrupt. So I'm not rushing to, to defend Smith. I'm just examining what's going on in his life. In his timeline. His wife has not died of leukemia yet and was diagnosed with leukemia and it was not ever considered to be a situation that she was going to beat. So I don't know if he just lost his mind or if he was trying to collect funds to try to save his wife's life. I don't know.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Well, and this. And yeah, and that's, it's like, like I said, breaking bad situation. Like you said, this guy had accomplishments not just in military, but as a civilian also. And so then these crimes took place. But I couldn't find anything that he was charged with. And that doesn't mean he wasn't committing crimes before this that he just wasn't caught for. But I couldn't find any.

[Nick]

One thing that's always been of heightened suspicion for Dr. J. Smith is his daughter and son in law have been missing for a very long time. They've. They've been missing and they've never been found. Now did they run off? Because Jay Smith would tell everyone that they ran off. Others based off of these events that we just discussed and later events that he suspected of, people think that he is the reason that they vanished. His statements have always been, and some of these statements are absolute fact, his daughter, he had two daughters. Okay, so let's be clear here. Nothing ever happened to his other daughter. But the one daughter that disappeared, his name, her name is Stephanie and I believe she was named after her mother. She fell into drugs pretty bad. She was a heroin addict. And her husband who was a couple years older than her, he was a heroin addict as well. Their last name was Hunsberger. They go missing and this is early 1978, like February of 1978, which again

[Co-host/Commentator]

you got this criminal activity plus the, the family members going missing. This is setting him up to be equally as good of a suspect, if not better than Bradfield because Bradfield has what seems to be a pretty solid alibi.

[Nick]

Not only that, if Jay Smith made two people disappear before never to be found, it's reasonable that he could do it again.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah.

[Nick]

And so Smith's daughter and her husband to this day, Captain, have never been found. They're reported missing early 78. As the story goes. She had been arrested on a couple of occasions for prostitution. Son in law was up to no good. I think he had got picked up for theft or something on occasion. They were living in his home at this time. The last time that they're seen, they're seen by his parents, the son in law's parents, when they went to visit them for a get together evening, get together for dinner one night. Everyone's suspicious of Jay Smith because they were living at his home with his wife at the time. Right. He says they were in trouble with some drug dealers, some local drug dealers, and they hit the road and the best they told him was they were heading out to the west coast to start all over and to hide from these people that they owed a bunch of money to. I don't, I've reviewed it, Captain. I don't have a strong opinion either way as to what happened to these two individuals if they took off on their own, if those drug dealers caught up to them, or if Jay Smith is responsible for their disappearance. What I will say is this, what we do know. The way that this all plays out is Jay Smith is now facing a whole hell of a lot of charges. And Jay Smith wasn't known to be the most social guy. He didn't have a whole bunch of friends. Well, when he's in trouble and he's facing all these criminal charges, the only person that comes to his defense is a one Bill Bradfield, who many people say they weren't aware that the two were close. And Bradfield even tells police that they weren't close. He says. But he went to police and says, I know on of a couple of these charges that he absolutely could not have committed these crimes because he was with me. And not only that, he was hundreds of miles away at this. And I think he referenced Cape May one more time. So this is the only person that comes to his defense and testifies in court as an alibi for Dr. J. Smith that he couldn't have committed some of these offenses because he was with me the whole time and we were out of town. He was nowhere near. I know you found those security guard uniforms in his basement, but he, he couldn't have done it.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, but then it makes you wonder if they are close and Bill Bradford was able to establish. If Bill Bradford was able to establish a solid alibi for when Susan and her kids go missing and then her body is found and somebody that Bill Bradford is close to. Jay Smith needs money for some reason and you're set to inherit. Again, let's go over this again. Three life insurance policies, real estate, plus this money that she was giving you that was obviously some kind of scam more than his.

[Nick]

The cash that she gave him to air quotes, invest for her, as she told other people. Remember, that's what she told her brother. That's what she told several people. And she also told people that she gave him her grandmother's diamond ring, her grandmother's wedding ring that she inherited, so that he. He would go and get it reset to give her an engagement ring so they could make it official and then go and get married soon. She, according to everybody that knew her intimately, and this includes a therapist that she spoke to on a couple of occasions, they all said the same thing. She was telling them she's getting married to this guy. Now you go digging a little bit deeper and here's what you find out. There are three other women that thought they were getting married to this elementary. This English teacher as well.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Con artist.

[Nick]

Three other women that thought they were getting married. He. One woman was 20 years younger than him. Used to be one of his students. They. They started hooking up after she turned 18 and graduated.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Play out, play. I'll play out, play.

[Nick]

And he was living on and off again with another woman that went by the name Sue.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Jesus.

[Nick]

One woman was so infatuated with him that even though she knew about the other relationships, and when he ends up getting arrested, and we'll get into that in a minute, she pays thousands of dollars to bail him out. There's. I can't place it, Captain. There's an old rock song where one of the lines is the world's greatest lover. This dude must have been that they must have been singing about him or something, because.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Hold on, I'm. I'm looking.

[Nick]

Somehow he seemed to convince four smart women that he was going to marry all four of them.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Well, I'm looking this up on Wikipedia and, you know, we keep calling him Bill Brad Bradfield, but his real name was William Golden Cock Bradford.

[Nick]

So what we end up here with, Captain, is this is what the way that this starts to play out. Police were under huge pressure to solve this thing. And I'll tell you what. I think they got close to getting it right. Bill Bradfield is not a great suspect because of the timeline. They can't put him and Susan together at the same time when they believe that she was murdered. In fact, he's miles away in another city, another town, Cape May, with three different people that are. That swear up and down he was with us the whole weekend when in fact, we stayed together. They had. They had two rooms for four people. He and one person stayed in one room and the other two people stayed in the room next to it they had lunch and dinner and breakfast together. They went to church together on two occasions during that weekend. But here's the problem. He made prior arrangements for this group to stay at Cape May, New Jersey. He did this about a week or two before the weekend in question. When he made these arrangements he told the proprietor of the business, hey, we are going to arrive late Friday night. So just leave the doors unlocked with the keys inside. We'll let ourselves in. So he, they pay for Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Well Cape May, it's not close to where they live so it stands a reason that they would arrive there late. You do a little bit of checking here. The longest drive that it would have taken them even back then. And I'm figuring this up conservatively, giving them the benefit of the doubt, adding additional time here conservatively Captain, we're talking two and a half hours. They according to the three people that he traveled with, they arrived there at three in the morning. Well that means that they didn't leave till midnight or a little after midnight on that Friday. And what do we know is happening that Friday? At some point Susan and her kids are rushing around to go where we don't know. But that was at 9:20pm that leaves about a three hour window on Friday night where Bradfield is unaccounted for. Let's go through his day real quick. Remember we said he's the world's greatest lover. Well, he spent half the day with one of those other three women that we talked about briefly. And he spent part of that day too with a gentleman by the last name of. I shouldn't say gentleman because I don't know exactly his involvement in this. He seems to have some involved.

[Co-host/Commentator]

He might be a piece of shit.

[Nick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. His last name is Pappas. He was one of the people that went out to Cape May with Bradfield. They spent a part of the day together too. So when these two people talk to detectives, basically their story is Bill Bradfield is accounted for up till about 8pm that night. Susan and the kids take off at 9:20 and they, him and friends don't arrive in cape May till 3am Again there's, there's enough window of time there. If she was in fact killed or abducted and bound, he could have had some direct involvement in what happened to her and still made it out there to Cape May. Now how does Dr. J. Smith fall into all this? Well remember there were some of those rumors but police and detectives needed a little more of a motive. Well, the motive at some point became well, Bill Bradfield came forward and testified and likely perjured himself, providing an alibi for Jay Smith for some of his more serious offenses. So Dr. J. Smith owed him one. The thing that even points out more that Jay Smith was involved is, oh, by the way, her body's found in Harrisburg. Where was Jay Smith supposed to be the same morning that Monday morning when her body was found in that parking lot in the hatchback. He was supposed to be in Harrisburg checking in with police because he's going to have to start serving his sentence on all of those crimes that he was convicted of that we just discussed. And it's noted that he shows up an hour later than scheduled. So now detectives are saying, well, he was probably late because he's busy tidying up the crime scene. The other thing we should point out, too, and I know a lot of the listeners are circling around this detail like vultures. Remember one of the details about him breaking into that car? Remember they found a syringe in his pocket. And we know that our victim was doped 10 times level on morphine at some point. So that's a little. That's connective tissue there.

[Co-host/Commentator]

And even if she would recognize Jay Smith as he got closer, he could have used some kind of disguise, like a security guard or law enforcement or something to get close to her.

[Nick]

Well, they weren't going to let Bill off the hook either. They think that Bill needed to get rid of Susan. One, two, to collect the life insurance money. Two, that some of the investments he claimed he made for her, it's believed that they were coming due to pay. So she was going to get her money back plus a return. And in one case, it was like 12% interest that he was claiming. So at some point she would be notified. You know, she would likely become aware that he's scamming her. And at some point, she become aware, like, he's not really going to marry me, and we're not really moving off to England.

[Co-host/Commentator]

So this guy's a con artist, right? And. And so he's conning her, and the only way out of it is to kill her. But why the children?

[Nick]

So the way that the theory goes is that the children were not supposed to be there. This whole murder of. Of Susan was very premeditated, very planned out. But the, the wrench that got thrown into the whole situation was wherever she showed up to, wherever the trap was that had been set, she showed up there with two kids that, that no one had expected that it was going to go that way. I don't know why. Maybe they thought that the kids were going to be with their father that weekend or. Or whatever. But she shows up.

[Co-host/Commentator]

We know she. Well, and for all we know that she changed plans and said, okay, well, yeah, you're supposed to go with your dad, but come with me anyways. It's going to be fun.

[Nick]

One theory is that Jay Smith calls in a. An emergency to her, saying, oh, your fiance Bill's been in a horrible accident. I'm driving off to the hospital. Come and meet me at this location, and I'll take you with me to go see him. That was one of the theories that was out there. The. The problem with a lot of these theories is the way that some theories work out that we've not even discussed is that Jay could be responsible for killing Susan without Bill having any information, no involvement at all. And you could also work it out that Bill did this or had other people involved with him, and Jay had no involvement. Okay, so we do have a lot to get through here because what ends up happening is Bill, who will not talk to police about Susan and what's going on. He's able. He's able to dodge them because he's in New Mexico and he's conveniently busy every time that they want to talk about it. Well, what they end up doing is they end up charging him with fraud for all of his involvement in the financial affairs of Susan's.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Well, that's smart by law enforcement because that's going to give them time to build cases against him. But that's no. Just whatever he gets charged with that there's no justification for him to get away with murder.

[Nick]

And then his story gets even stranger. His story starts to become, well, I knew that Jay was going to kill Susan, and I tried to protect her when we were at Cape May. I was so worried that something was going to happen to her that I insisted that the group go to the church and let's light a candle for Susan and say a prayer. Can you imagine? You're a detective and you're talking to three people that provide an alibi for Bill Brad Field, and they're saying that they spent a portion of their weekend getaway lighting a candle and saying a prayer for someone who this guy said, I think she's going to be murdered soon. And then Monday morning, she turns up dead in a vehicle in Harrisburg.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Who are these bags of trash that aren't just turning on him? But again, we don't know who these individuals are. Like, everything about him, obviously. And then it's like if he's scamming people, is he teaching other people to scam or are these friends of his that are in on the scams?

[Nick]

And it seems far fetched to say that a lot of people would be involved in this. But here's the thing. Police have a hard time nailing down Bill because of the timeline. There's just not enough time for him to have murdered her place or where she was found and the vehicle place where it was found and then make two kids disappear. There's just, I don't care how you shake it, there's not really enough time for him to do that. And I really want him to be good for this because he looks damn good for it. The thing is, I think he is good for it. I just think he had help.

[Captain Kenneth]

I think he did a good job

[Co-host/Commentator]

of pointing out that there is a gap in his timeline, but there's a lot of things he would have had to accomplish within that timeline. But if this is true, that these bags of shit on their vacation are going down to the church to light a candle and pray for this lady and then she ends up she's found nude and dead in the trunk of her car, you'd think one of these shitbags would come forward and say, you know, Bill is an awful human and. Or maybe that's not even true. Maybe that's just what he's telling law enforcement. And then law enforcement talks to these guys and they go, we never said a prayer for her. We don't know what you're talking about, you know.

[Nick]

Yeah, well, I mean there were, there's more than one person that confirms the, the prayer and can can lighting story. One of the people on the trip with them that weekend was the woman who he had lived with on and off again, who was also under the belief at one time that they were going to get married or they had some serious, very serious relationship to the point that they lived together.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Old golden strikes again.

[Nick]

Well, here's. There's a few problems with this theory. Remember, the theory is that Bradfield needs her to go away so the life insurance pays and he could absorb the inheritance.

[Co-host/Advertiser]

Right.

[Nick]

That she came into recently and that he got his old buddy who's already crooked as they come and a hardcore criminal. And maybe he's, he doesn't have murder in his past. We don't know. His, his daughter disappeared, but he certainly was caught with a lot of guns and implements of murder. And so he looks like. And Bill comes to his defense, right, that that's something that can't be argued. We know that he sat and testified in court on behalf of Dr. J. Smith. That's a fact. But let me. Let's examine it this way. Some people say Dr. J. Smith has got to be guilty because, oh, it's obvious. He was in Harrisburg, the same place where her body's found, and he shows up late, an hour late. Okay, but doesn't that also mean that even though Bill came and testified on his behalf, that he was still found guilty on all of those charges? So it really doesn't mean a damn thing. I don't owe you anything, Bill. You may have come and testified for me, but what I'm. What am I going to do? Go kill a woman and her two kids hours before I'm supposed to go and. And start serving my sentence? That just doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I mean, I know there's a lot of dumb people out there, but this guy was a colonel at one time, and, yeah, maybe his life went completely off the rails and he totally lost his mind. I can't say whether or not that happened, but he was a colonel at one point, and he was a doctor. He was an educated man.

[Co-host/Commentator]

What we do know is it seems that Jay Smith took a turn, and it didn't seem like it was a murderous turn. Seems like it was a financial turn. I need money quick and gobs of money quick. Like I said, it's like a Breaking Bad situation. Maybe Jay Smith doesn't owe Bill anything, but maybe Bill said, hey, if you do this for me, there'll be a payday and there'll be a large one.

[Nick]

But when's he going to get it? He's going to prison. So you're. I think you're barking. I think you're barking up the right tree here, so to speak. Yeah, I think you're onto it. You found the scent. Maybe it's the wrong tree, because this is where I go. We talked about the equivalent of what that money compared to yesteryear was to today. Well, that means there's a lot of money to go around. You could pay somebody to help you commit these murders. It doesn't have to be Dr. J. Smith. And a wise person once said that getting away with the perfect murder. The perfect murder isn't just getting away with it. Getting away with the perfect murder is getting somebody else to take the fall for it. Dr. J. Smith was somebody that these, the victim and this other suspect worked for for years. It was no secret that Dr. J. Smith was facing all these charges in Fact, it was big time news and headlines in the area because all these parents are going, what the hell? This guy was the principal of our high school.

[Co-host/Commentator]

So you're thinking Bill Bradfield was like, hey, he's going to prison anyways, pin it on him and. And none the wiser.

[Nick]

Well, I think that if you wanted to look for somebody and find somebody that might look like they're capable of such an act, he seems like an easy scapegoat. I'm not saying that Dr. J. Smith had nothing to do with this. I'm just saying that if there's hundreds of those combs or if somebody had been to Jay Smith's home or in his car or in his office dozens of times as it's been reported that Bill had, how difficult would it be to snatch one of those combs and place it underneath the body of this victim? And again, he flies to New Mexico that same day. He just happens to be coming and going. And if he's staying in regular contact with Jay Smith, he's going to know that Jay Smith is going to be starting his sentence in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania that morning. Because here's the thing, Captain, I don't think for a second had Jay Smith showed up on time. Remember, everybody makes a big deal that he was an hour late. You mean to tell me that if he showed up on time that everybody's going to go, well, he's innocent, he couldn't have done it. Bullshit. It's one hour's difference. Everybody would still think he's guilty. I just think when you got, he's got three different women. One who, oh by the way, was staying in a CD motel in Philadelphia for at least three weeks prior to Susan's murder. And she drives his car on that Monday from Philadelphia to New Mexico where Bill is flying. Why wouldn't he take his own damn car? He's going to fly, she takes a car and they meet up at the same place. And, and now you have some woman that was staying in a motel in Philadelphia leading up to the murder who won't talk to police. She by the way, is the one that ends up bailing him out when he gets charged with this fraud count. So we kind of got to investigate this because the way that this whole story plays out is now we have Dr. J. Smith who's serving his time in prison. And it's not going to be a short sentence at all. We're talking years. Bill is facing fraud charges which should land him in prison for about two years, I believe. Two or so Years. And he's going to have to repay a whole bunch of money. He ends up being found guilty on the fraud charges. So the life insurance never gets paid out. In fact, I think what they ended up doing was it that it got paid out, but it went to next of kin, which ended up being her older brother. Older brother is a standup guy. You know what he does? He puts it in a trust for the two missing kids and says that when they come home, they'll get the money. It wasn't until he's charged with fraud and on the stand for those charges that he has to start answering some actual questions about Susan's murder. He can't duck and dodge it anymore. Yeah, and once he gets out of prison, he gets convicted on the fraud charges. Once he gets out of prison for that, that is when they charge him with murder. But it's not your standard murder charges. He gets charged with three counts of conspiracy to murder. And it's with the, with the assistance of a person who is known or unknown, but the person's never named in those charges. And to try to make a long story short here, through a lengthy trial, he gets convicted of three counts of conspiracy to murder. Now, according to, according to the state, if you read it the way that those charges are laid out, he, they are saying, look, we don't think that you actually, that you were the one that actually murdered these people, but you arranged for it to happen. You made efforts to get away with it. You conspired to murder at least Susan and then maybe had to premeditate the other two once you've, you know, they show up, right? He gets convicted of three counts of conspiracy to murder. He gets three life sentences, consecutive life sentences, which means, homeboy, you never want to get out. Unless you live to be about 600 years old. I don't think you're ever going to get out.

[Co-host/Commentator]

You're not, you're, you're not a ladies man no more. You, you're a prison man. And that's nasty.

[Nick]

But think about that charge. They've convicted this guy on that. Now we gotta go find who, who, who did he conspire with to commit these murders, right? They do the same thing. They wait till Dr. J. Smith gets out of prison for his lengthy sentence, and now they're coming after him. And remember that narrative is that favors for favors. He helped you, now you helped him. That is what they bring to court. The problem is Dr. J. Smith had a good defense team who said that the only evidence that they had against Jay Smith was these. Police had all these rumors that Dr. J. Smith was going to kill Susan, but they admitted in court that all those rumors were stemming from Bill. So that's not really evidence at all now.

[Co-host/Commentator]

But you got the blue comb, and then you got the blue comb.

[Nick]

You have the fibers.

[Co-host/Commentator]

You have the, the fibers, but you also have, like you said, the syringe, and you have the location of the death scene, which would have been in Harrisburg.

[Nick]

Well, the fibers, what was determined was that they were, they were believed they were presented as fibers that were found on her that came from J. Smith's home. The defense rightfully so points out, well, that could have come from any number of like, thousands and thousands of different sources would have matched those fibers. So it's not unique to our defendant. They also proved that how many hundreds or thousands of those combs that were made. And again, it makes it so it's not unique to our defendant. The prosecution then presents a jailhouse snitch who at no time they, they, they set him up with a wire. They tried their damnedest to get Smith to confess to this jailhouse snitch. He never says that he murdered Susan. He never says that he murdered the kids. The only thing that he, that they can get him talking about is, is an attempt to escape from jail or from prison. Now, remember, they started setting this up while he was in prison for these other charges. This was, this was what led them to even charging him with this to begin with was this jailhouse snitch. So the jailhouse snitch testifies at, at trial saying that, that he, not only did Jay Smith want to escape from prison, but he, he had said on recording that he would be willing to if at some point the escape, if they had gone so far in the escape, at some point, he would be willing to kill if they got far enough in their escape. So the jury's going to look at that as, okay, well, this guy has the. Possesses the ability to dream up premeditated murder. They never have him on record saying that he killed any of the three victims or even abducted the two kids and made them disappear. But they have the word of the jailhouse snitch saying, well, he did tell me that he did say that he killed her. He told me that multiple times. But, but anytime that you wire me up, I can't seem to get him to say it. He gets convicted of three deaths, he gets sentenced to three death sentences because by this point, the two kids have been presumed to be dead. But that's not the End of the story, my friend. Because what we're going to get is a few years is going to go by, this man is sitting on death row and his defense team starts uncovering evidence, prosecutorial and judicial misconduct in his trial and in the investigation against Dr. J. Smith.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Right.

[Nick]

And it's kind of sad too because he's on death row and they prove their point several times over and yet they allowed him to remain on death row while they dragged their feet on getting a new trial or getting this one tossed out.

[Co-host/Commentator]

But you know, there's like shady going on when once they start going a jailhouse snitch and once the jailhouse snitch can't really provide anything, it really kind of shows how much they're grasping at straws. And so what other areas of the investigation or during the prosecution did, did they grasp at straws and, and work outside the lines of legal, legal actions?

[Nick]

Well, one part of it that was, that would help to their cause is you have to disclose, the prosecution has to disclose to the defense team. If you are offering a deal to the jailhouse niche, right? Like we're going to give him leniency, we're going to take some time off of his sentence if you come forward and help us with this.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Right.

[Nick]

That didn't happen in this case. In fact, the, the, the snitch is on the stand saying that he wasn't offered any kind of deal, that he's not getting any kind of leniency or getting any type of reward for coming forward. That's testimony at a state trial, right. That becomes fact as far as the state's concerned. His word, what turns out is he perjured himself because later it's easily determined that he, he got out. Like they, they pushed him to parole because they needed, they knew that the defense, the defense could tear apart some of their evidence that they had. And so they needed to build a better case against Smith and that snitch was going to be part of that and he got a lenient deal, he got out, he didn't have to pull any more time as they say. And once that was revealed, well, that's misconduct. And then there's another angle to this. We've talked about this a little bit on, off the record where the, a lot of the publishers, especially the big ones, they. True crime is, isn't, isn't the best selling genre out there as far as books go. So publishers are taking a risk on true crime to start with. But when they do the overwhelming majority of the time they want a Case that is, that is solved, that is done. It is an open and closed case. And as we said, there were three books written about, at least three books that were written about this case. One was turned into a TV movie and Joseph Wambaugh was one of the authors. He wrote a book called Echoes in the Darkness, which is a fantastic read. Unfortunately, when he showed up on the scene, he was interviewing police and interviewing detectives. And he said his next book, he was already a best selling authority. He was. I mean he's written a whole bunch, a whole catalog of fantastic books. And he's a retired cop too. So these cops and detectives like talking to him. He's one of their own. But when he showed up on the scene, he said, this is my next book. But it's got to be solved first. It's got to be solved. Well, it was later one of the officers came forward years later, after Jay Smith had been in prison on death row for quite a bit of time, saying, you know, I was paid $50,000 to make sure that there was an arrest on Dr. J. Smith.

[Co-host/Commentator]

By who was he paid by?

[Nick]

By the author.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Jesus Christ.

[Nick]

And so that doesn't look good for your case either. So eventually what happens is Dr. J. Smith gets released after years on death row. Eventually he would pass away in 2009 and under of course, a cloud of suspicion that he was still involved in this case and involved in the disappearance of his daughter and son in law. So nobody really knows the truth all of these years later. Unfortunately, the, the kids have never been found. Now the other person who we, we the state still deemed to be guilty is Bill Bradfield, who remained in prison serving three life sentences until the day he died.

[Co-host/Commentator]

After he's convicted, do we get any acknowledgement of Smith's involvement with Bill, or does Bill just continue to claim he's innocent?

[Nick]

Bill maintained he was innocent until the day that he passed away. But look, police have never forgotten about this case. And anybody from Pennsylvania, specifically the Philadelphia, Harrisburg area, will, will back me up on this. Nobody's ever forgotten about this case and nobody's forgotten about those missing kids. And I wanted to make sure that we include this here in our coverage. After he passes away, police, they honed in on a photograph that they found in his cell. So William Bradfield passed away in 1998. Yeah, he died of a heart attack while serving the life sentences. They found a photograph which they think may have been developed in 1986. We'll get into that in a minute. They find this in his cell, but they Find it among dozens of. Of other photographs and letters and writings and things of that nature. And a couple boxes that he had in his cell with him. Now, this photograph, it's a Polaroid photo that depicts a stone marker that some say resembles a hooded figure. Rather than trying to describe it, the

[Co-host/Commentator]

scenario, put it on our social media.

[Nick]

Well, let me read this. This is from the Philadelphia Daily News, and the headline is, is photo an Eerie Clue to Reiner Graves. And it says, it is a photograph of what looks like a monument, possibly a grave marker. Dead brown leaves clutter the foreground, but the growth above the stone is fresh and green. Nothing very remarkable about the Polaroid, except it was found among the possessions of the late William Bradfield, the man convicted of killing two children whose bodies have never been found. Could this crude stone mark their final resting place? The discovery of the photo has added another puzzling ingredient to a case that already abounds in mystery. And then it goes on to describe the crimes a little bit, which we've, we've done at length here, so we don't need to. To go into that. But the. What's interesting is we know that the kids disappear in 1979 on the back of the. This, this marker, this on the back of the Polaroid. Somebody wrote a date on there, which was 1986. And we know that Polar Polaroid film, especially ones that old, do not automatically date themselves. So nobody really knows what this December 1986 date means, which in fact sheds little light on the mystery at all because that has. That date seems to have no relevance to the missing kids.

[Narrator/Ad Host]

Right.

[Co-host/Commentator]

And it could just be simply this picture. This item in the picture has nothing to do with the murders. And it's just simply. That's the date that the person took the picture.

[Nick]

Correct.

[Narrator/Ad Host]

And.

[Nick]

But what, what I like about this story with the photograph and finding it in the cell, even though it's damn near 20 years after the homicides, is that it does show a level of effort by law enforcement to never give up on finding those kids. Just like that passionate call to action rally the troops that we talked about in part one, where he just said, just find them. You know, search everything. Who cares about the citizens rights? We're looking for two kids here. In the end, Captain, this case came to be known as the Mainline murders. It ended up being the largest and longest running investigation ever conducted by the Pennsylvania State Police. As said, it's been the subject of at least three books, including Echoes in the Darkness by Joseph Wambaugh and a TV movie which I did watch the TV movie again. Parts of it are likely fictional. Yeah, because I think Wamba was filling in some of the blanks. And while he's a great author, we do have the accusation that he paid somebody $50,000 to speed up the case, if you will, or steer it in a certain direction so he could write the book. So I don't put a whole lot of weight into his version of the events, but it was, it was a good movie. Robert Loggia is in the book or in the movie. I'm sorry. He's a great actor. You might know him from Big. But as we know, there are no signs of Michael and Karen, and there haven't been. And in fact, all of these massive and extensive searches have turned up nothing as far as the kids go, and never turned up any sign of their mother's clothing and some of her missing belongings as well. So this mystery is far from over. Now, we do have one law enforcement officer amongst many who has been active and vocal to the media talking about this case decades later who said that he considers the investigation open but quite inactive. But he did say that at least one person who has never been charged in the case may have intimate knowledge about these slayings. That person may know what happened to

[Co-host/Commentator]

the children, and that's possibly the the female that helped Bill out.

[Nick]

He said that, that he would certainly say that there's a possibility of a third person out there, a high probability, he said. And with a reminder to everybody out there with if anybody has any information about what may have happened to Karen and Michael Reinert to call the State Police at 717-671-7537.

[Co-host/Advertiser]

Foreign.

[Captain Kenneth]

Thank everybody for joining us here in

[Co-host/Commentator]

the garage, sharing these cases on social

[Captain Kenneth]

media and telling your mother and your father about the show.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Colonel, do we have any recommended reading?

[Nick]

Yes, we do, and this one is a great read. I would recommend this this week, next week, and the following. This one's called Principal the true story of Dr. J. Smith and the Mainline Murders by William Constopoulos. Joseph Wambaugh's Echoes in the Darkness and its subsequent TV dramatization have made household words of both of the names Susan Reinhardt and Dr. J. Smith, who was the high school principal where Susan worked. The naked body of Susan Reinert was discovered jammed into a hatchback of a car. Her two young children were missing and never found. This is one of three. There's at least three books about this case, but this was the one that I chose to read, and it's a fantastic read. And I say that because this is a very complicated and difficult story to tell. And William Costopoulos told it as well as anyone. In fact, he's an attorney who worked very close on this case for many, many years. So check out Principal Suspect. You'll find that recommendation and many more on our recommended page on our website, truecrimegarage.com and until next week, be good,

[Captain Kenneth]

be kind and don't let.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Sa.