Karen and Michael Reinert

[Tracian]

This case is so tragic on so many levels. So many lives destroyed, many victims were not physically harmed but were mentally tortured.
Joseph Wambaugh published a book about the Reinert family's murders, titled Echoes in the Darkness, in 1987.




http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g165/Tracian/MichaelReinert.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g165/Tracian/KarenReinert.jpg


Details of Disappearance

Michael and his sister Karen were last seen at approximately 9:20 p.m. on June 22, 1979, leaving their home in Ardmore, Pennsylvania with their mother, Susan Gallagher Reinert, and getting into her hatchback car. They were never heard from again. A photograph of Susan is posted below this case summary. She was employed as a teacher at Upper Merion High School at the time of her and her children's disappearances.
Susan, Michael, and Karen were planning on meeting Susan's boyfriend, William Sidney "Bill" Bradfield, on the day of their disappearances. A photograph of Bradfield is posted below this case summary. He was the chair of the English department at Upper Merion High School. They had begun their relationship in 1974, while Susan was still married to Michael and Karen's father. In March 1979, three months before she and her children disappeared, she told friends that Bradfield was going to marry her. She had $730,000 in insurance on her life, all of it with Bradfield as the beneficiary, and she gave him large sums of money to invest for her. She had changed her will to make Bradfield the sole beneficiary of her estate, to the exclusion of her children. Susan did not know that Bradfield was also dating at least three other women.

At 5:20 a.m. June 25, Susan's nude body was found in the trunk of her own car, which was parked in the parking lot of the Host Inn in Swatara Township, Pennsylvania. A man telephoned in a report about a sick woman in the trunk of a car in the inn's parking lot, which lead to the discovery of Susan's remains. She had been beaten and bound with a chain, then killed with an injection of morphine 24 to 36 hours after the beating. There was no sign of Michael or Karen at the scene and an extensive search turned up no signs of either of them.

In 1981, Bradfield was charged with misappropriating Susan's money. She had given him $25,000 to invest in a six-month certificate at twelve percent interest, and was murdered shortly before the certificate was due to mature. He was convicted of theft by deception and sentenced to two years in prison. Shortly after his release in 1983, Bradfield was rearrested and charged with conspiring to murder Susan, Karen, and Michael.

Prosecutors said Bradfield had murdered Susan and the children for Susan's insurance money, and to keep her from finding out he had stolen her money. He was convicted of murder and given three life sentences in prison, but investigators did not believe he had acted alone. Dr. Jay Charles Smith, who was the principal of Upper Merion High School at the time of Susan's death, was charged with murdering her and the children in 1985. By then he was already in prison, serving a five-year sentence for an unrelated robbery conviction. A photograph of Smith is posted below this case summary. Authorities believed he had committed the actual killings, but Bradfield had orchestrated them. Smith's lawyer argued that Bradfield had deliberately framed him, but Smith was convicted of three counts of murder and sentenced to death.

In 1998, Bradfield died while in custody. He never admitted to involvement in Susan's murder and Karen and Michael's disappearances. Smith's conviction was overturned in 1989 after evidence was uncovered which cast doubt on his guilt; the evidence was allegedly unethically concealed by the prosecution during his trial. A retrial was ordered, but never conducted. Smith was freed from prison in 1992. He subsequently filed a civil rights lawsuit against his prosecutors, but the suit was rejected in 1998.

Michael and Karen are presumed deceased, but their remains have never been found. They were declared legally dead in 1987, and their father died in 2002. After Bradfield's death, authorities discovered a photograph among his belongings which shows a stone in a wooded setting, standing upright as if marking something. An image of this photograph is posted below this case summary. Police are seeking to identify the place where it was taken; they believe the children's remains may be buried there.


http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g165/Tracian/SusanRienert.jpg


http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/r/reinert_karen.html

[Tracian]

Evidence surfaces in Reinert case

Junkman's find could raise questions about murders that riveted nation
03/29/92
By Laird Leask and Pete Shellem
The Patriot News



A box removed from the attic of the lead investigator in the famed Susan Reinert murder case has yielded evidence that seems to raise serious questions about the case and could clear convicted killer Jay C. Smith.

A duplicate of the comb that connected Smith to the crime scene, investigative notes that contradict prosecution testimony and a letter from an author offering an investigator $50,000 before arrests were even made were found in a box that Trooper Jack Holtz was apparently discarding.

All evidence from Smith 's trial is supposedly sealed by court order and stored by the state attorney general's office.

William C. Costopoulos, the Lemoyne lawyer representing Smith, a former Upper Merion High School principal who was sentenced to death for Reinert's murder, filed papers in Dauphin County Court late Friday asking Senior Judge Robert L. Walker to put all evidence from the case in the care of a court-appointed custodian.

Costopoulos also asked that the judge order the prosecution to explain why the evidence was not turned over to the defense, and to allow him to analyze some evidence.

Smith and William S. Bradfield Jr., Reinert 's fellow English teacher at Upper Merion, were convicted of killing Reinert and her two children in 1979 to collect $750,000 in insurance in a case that evolved into a national best seller and a highly rated CBS miniseries. The bodies of the two children, ages 11 and 10, were never found.

Wellsville flea marketer Mark A. Hughes said he stumbled across the box in material he collected after being hired by Holtz to clean out the attic and basement of the trooper's Lower Paxton Twp. home.

Hughes turned the evidence over to Costopoulos on March 17, believing it showed a police cover-up in the case. Hughes was the subject of a brief theft investigation initiated by Holtz after the trooper learned of the box.

Hughes was questioned for more than two hours by state troopers Thursday, but Dauphin County District Attorney Richard A. Lewis said he will not be charged.

Chief Deputy Attorney General M.L. "Skip" Ebert Jr., who is handling the Smith case, said he was waiting to see what evidence Costopoulos has before assessing its impact on the case.

However, he said all the evidence was ordered sealed by the court at the close of the 1986 trial and is supposedly in sealed boxes in the possession of the attorney general's office.

"The evidence that was presented in the trial in Dauphin County was sealed by the court and those containers are with me," Ebert said. "Once the materials are turned in, then, in the presence of the court, maybe some of these boxes will be opened and we'll find out what's in them."

State police officials would not return repeated phone calls from The Patriot-News. Holtz was unavailable for comment.

Smith received three death sentences in the 1979 murders, but was granted a new trial in December 1989 by the state Supreme Court. Costopoulos is now arguing that a second trial would constitute double jeopardy because of misconduct by prosecutors.

Hughes' discovery will further strengthen that argument, Costopoulos said.

He said the most critical piece of evidence found in the box is a comb marked 79th USARCOM Smith 's reserve unit. During the trial, an identical comb was introduced by prosecutors and alleged to have been found under Reinert 's body when it was discovered in the trunk of her car at a Swatara Twp. motel.

Sealed in an evidence bag with fingerprint lifters and marked with FBI lab identification numbers, the comb is not the same one that was presented at trial, according to Costopoulos' petition.

The comb police used to link Smith to the crime scene at the 1986 trial was labeled as a trial exhibit and the comb in the evidence bag is not, Costopoulos said.

Furthermore, based on Ebert's comments, the comb presented at the trial should be sealed with other evidence in the attorney general's office.

In addition to the comb, a Jan. 29, 1981, letter from author Joseph Wambaugh - who wrote "Echoes in the Darkness," a best-selling book about the case - shows he offered Holtz's late partner, Sgt. Joseph Van Nort, $50,000 for information before there were any arrests, according to the petition.

"P.S. Since I would start the leg work immediately we should be very careful about being seen together for the sake of your job," Wambaugh wrote. "As far as witnesses would know, I received all my information from news stories and anonymous tips."

Efforts to contact Wambaugh for comment were unsuccessful.

The box also contained 23 numbered and dated notebooks prepared by Holtz, with the exception of number 13. Costopoulos claims the 13th
notebook covers a time period when Holtz was dealing with jailhouse informant Raymond Martray, who testified Smith admitted killing the three.

Costopoulos has long challenged whether there was a deal with Martray to testify. He alleges in the petition that Holtz wrote in another notebook that Martray quoted Smith as saying he "did not" kill Reinert .

In an interview with another jailhouse informant, Holtz's notes state that alleged co-conspirator Bradfield admitted that he acted alone in the slayings, according to the petition.

Further, Holtz's notes show that witnesses told him Reinert's daughter, Karen, wore a blue pin with the letter "P" on it, like one that was found in Reinert 's car, the petition states. One witness testified at Smith 's trial that she wore a green pin like one that was allegedly discovered in Smith 's car a year after the murder while the former principal was incarcerated.

Costopoulos had little comment about the new twist in the case, saying the petition "speaks for itself."

"Normally exculpatory evidence comes from the commonwealth," he said. "This is the first time I got it from a junkman on the way to the incinerator."

Costopoulos' petition blasts what he calls the error-laden prosecution of the case, which has taken new turns nearly every year since Smith 's conviction.

Costopoulos initially attacked the conviction after it was discovered that rubber evidence lifters containing sand reportedly taken from Reinert 's feet were found in an evidence locker during the final days of the trial. They were not revealed to the defense until more than a year later.

The lifters support Costopoulos' allegations that Reinert was killed at the New Jersey shore by Bradfield.

He also notes in the petition that hair and fiber evidence that the prosecution used to link Smith to the slaying was lost from 1983 until the middle of the trial in 1986, receipts that refuted Bradfield's alibi are missing, the 911 tape alerting authorities to the discovery of Reinert 's body was mistakenly destroyed, Reinert 's body was accidentally cremated, and the autopsy audio tape was lost until after the trial.

"In this case, the commonwealth has consistently concealed or `lost' material," Costopoulos charges in the petition.

"Until a judge tells me what to do with it, I intend to keep the box I got from the junkman," Costopoulos said.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=2012

[Tracian]

Smiths daughter and son in law are also missing, here is the link to the complete investigation with updates:

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/classics/mainline_murders/1.html

[annalyzer]

Ex-death row inmate maintains innocence

Published: Monday, November 24, 2008
By Keith Phucas, Special to the Times

UPPER MERION — Former Upper Merion Area High School Principal Jay C. Smith, whose infamy grew when he was implicated in a sensational 1979 murder conspiracy, maintains he didn’t kill English teacher Susan Reinert or her two children.

In a new self-published book, Smith claims the woman’s fellow English teacher and lover, William Bradfield Jr., framed him.

In “Joseph Wambaugh and the Jay Smith Case,” Smith blames best-selling crime writer Wambaugh, whose 1987 book, “Echoes in the Darkness,” details the case, for getting him convicted. A TV movie was also made about the murders.

The former death row inmate, a Chester native, said Wambaugh poisoned the judicial process by paying investigators and witnesses during the time the author was researching the book. In a lawsuit Smith filed in 1994, he alleged the crime writer conspired with police to withhold and fabricate evidence that incriminated Smith to score a lucrative book deal.

Both Smith and Bradfield were convicted of killing Reinert, her 11-year-old daughter, Karen, and 10-year-old son, Michael, and sentenced to prison.

Bradfield was given a life sentence; Smith was sentenced to death.

While sitting on death row in 1992, Smith’s conviction was reversed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which asked for a retrial. Before a retrial, however, the court ordered the dismissal of all charges against the former King of Prussia man based on newly discovered evidence of misconduct by Dauphin County prosecutors, according to court papers. After six years behind bars, Smith was freed.

Bradfield died in 1998 while incarcerated at Graterford state prison.

When Smith, now 80, was recently interviewed in King of Prussia, he was asked how he would overcome the public’s skepticism about his innocence. He was blunt.

“I’m not guilty of murder,” he said. “The (state) Supreme Court exonerated me.”

The decision was historic. Smith’s case is the only double-jeopardy decision in a capital case in Pennsylvania history. Even if he admitted to the murders now, he cannot be retried for the crimes.

The murders

Reinert was discovered dead on June 25, 1979, near Harrisburg. Her children have never been found.

The petite woman’s nude body, which had been beaten black and blue, was found curled up in the luggage compartment of her car in a Host Hotel parking lot. A toxicology report indicated that she had been drugged with morphine.

Suspicion promptly fell on 46-year-old Bradfield, who chaired the English Department at the high school. The bearded, charismatic teacher, who had an affinity for poet Ezra Pound and classical literature, had been romantically involved with Reinert, and she believed he would marry her.

The weekend the Ardmore woman was killed, Bradfield and three other Upper Merion Senior High School teachers drove to Cape May, N.J. Years later, Smith’s defense attorney, William Costopoulos, argued that Reinert had been killed at the Jersey Shore that weekend.

Bradfield, who was involved with at least three other women, was named beneficiary on Reinert’s insurance policies totaling $730,000, according to investigators. Even though he was a prime suspect, it took a task force of state police and FBI agents nearly four years to pin the crimes on him.

Eventually, Smith, who was serving time for two Sears’ robberies and drug possession, was implicated in the murder plot.

Principal packing heat

On Aug. 19, 1978, a couple at Gateway Shopping Center in Tredyffrin Township saw an armed man, whose face was concealed, peering into a van in the parking lot.

Minutes later, the 50-year-old Smith, who earned a doctorate at Temple University, was stopped by Tredyffrin police in his car, as he was exiting the shopping center, near routes 202 and 252. He had four loaded guns in the vehicle, and was nearly shot by police when he picked up one of the weapons, reports state.

Police also found what looked like a homemade silencer fashioned from an oil filter, a hypodermic needle containing a tranquilizer drug and what looked like a hood. He was arrested on firearm violations and drug possession.

In his book, Smith states his house was robbed of money and jewelry Aug. 19, and he suspected his daughter Stephanie and her husband, Eddie Hunsberger, both of whom were heroin addicts, and he was out looking for them. He claims the couple used Placidyl, the drug Smith had in the syringe that night, to help them kick their heroin habit.

Smith’s wife, Steffie, who worked at a dry cleaning store at Gateway Shopping Center, told her husband she had seen her daughter buying drugs out of a van in the parking lot, according to “Joseph Wambaugh and the Jay Smith Case.”

When police searched Smith’s brick house on West Valley Forge Road, near PennDOT’s current District 6 headquarters, they discovered stolen property from the high school, including office machines, paintings and bottles of nitric acid.

Smith’s basement contained swinger publications, books on bestiality and chains and locks, according to Wambaugh.

Another basement find was a bogus security badge, which later tied the principal to the $34,000 theft at Sears in St. Davids, Radnor Township, where he posed as a armored car driver coming to make a cash pickup. Wambaugh’s book claims the thief signed the name “Carl S. Williams” at the store when he got the money, the same name police found on identification in Smith’s home.

Smith was tried and found guilty of the Sears robberies and eventually sentenced to three and a half to five years in prison for the St. Davids’ Sears heist and an attempted robbery at Neshaminy Mall’s Sears. For the firearms and drug violations, he was sentenced to two to five years, according to Smith’s book.

As to the Sears thefts, Smith maintains he is “totally innocent.”

“It means (the authorities) had it wrong, and they don’t want to admit it,” he said.

At some point, Stephanie and Eddie Hunsberger vanished, and after Smith’s arrest, Bradfield seemed obsessed with him, according to “Echoes in the Darkness,” telling English teachers in his circle of friends that “Dr. Jay” had probably killed the couple and dissolved their remains in acid.

Morbid speculation suggested Karen and Michael Reinert met a similar fate at Smith’s hands.

In recent years, Smith has pored over court transcripts of his trials, as well as two dozen police detectives’ notebooks used during the homicide investigation.

The junkman’s find

In 1992, antique dealer Mark Hughes was hired to clean out state police Detective Jack Holtz’s attic. Holtz had investigated the Reinert murders along with lead state police investigator Joe Van Nort.

In the attic, Hughes found a box containing a duplicate blue comb used to implicate Smith, investigative notes contradicting prosecution testimony, adhesive “lifters” containing grains of sand and quartz taken from Reinert’s toes, and a letter from Wambaugh offering Van Nort $50,000 for information about the case.

“What people didn’t know is that Joseph Wambaugh met secretly with investigators,” Smith said. The former Upper Merion resident charges that the author tainted the case by paying the state police detectives and even witnesses.

Though Holtz had received money from Wambaugh, according to the Associated Press, in 1993, he was cleared of any wrongdoing in the case.

But during his trial, Smith’s defense had not been given the lifters a police officer used to remove the sand from Reinert’s toes. While appealing the murder conviction, Smith’s lawyer argued that the sand particles stuck to the adhesive suggested the victim had gone to Cape May and been murdered there.

Another key piece of evidence used against the former principal was a green Philadelphia Museum of Art pin identified as Karen Reinert’s allegedly found in Smith’s car.

But state Supreme Court Justice John P. Flaherty, who called the prosecution’s case “despicable,” accused them of making this up. “I got a list of items from Dr. Smith’s car. That pin, they lied to the jury, saying it was found in Smith’s car,” Flaherty said in court. “Nothing was ever told to me that the pin was actually found in Susan Reinert’s car.”

“It’s in Chapter 26 (of my book); I was never in the victim’s car,” Smith said Monday night.

He said Reinert and her children went to Cape May the weekend she was killed to meet with Bradfield and an attorney to settle legal matters prior to a planned to trip to England. She stayed at Stockholm Motor Inn.

“That’s where she was killed,” he said.

Bradfield had been to Cape May many times. “He buried the two children in the sand,” Smith alleged.

In 1987, Karen and Michael Reinert were officially declared dead.

http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2008/11/24/news/doc492a3546117c6449814899.txt

[packy]

Some interesting reviews about the two newer books at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Wambaugh-Jay-Smith-Case/dp/1436348463/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230943305&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Principal-Suspect-Story-Smith-Murders/dp/0940159368/ref=pd_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230943305&sr=8-3

[Nut44x4]

Photograph could be clue in 30-year-old missing kids mystery
Thursday, July 2nd 2009, 10:15 AM

Polaroid photo released by the Pennsylvania State Police may lead to the whereabouts of two children who went missing 30 years ago.

http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2009/07/03/amd_grave_picture.jpg

Police are hopeful a photograph of an unmarked grave found in a prison cell years ago lead to the bodies of two children reported missing in 1979.

Karen Reinert, 11, and her brother Michael, 10, who lived with their divorced mother, Susan Reinert, in Ardhmore, Pa., disappeared in June 1979. Susan Reinert was murdered and her body was found on June 25, 1979. Her children were never found.

The photgraph was found in the cell of William Bradfield Jr. was convicted for the murders and was sentenced to three life sentences. He died in prison in 1998.

Susan Reinert and Bradfield were both teachers at Upper Merion High School in King of Prussia, Pa. A principal at the school, Jay Smith, was accused of the crime and convicted, but his conviction was later overturned on appeal.

Prosecutors have accused Smith and Bradfield of plotting the crime. Bradfield had a relationship with Reinert and was named the beneficiary of her estate and a $730,000 life insurance policy.

Both men denied involvement in her murder, and Pennsylvania State Trooper Paul Krause told CNN that he believes a third person may have knowledge of the kids' whereabouts.

"I would certainly say that there is a possibility of a third person out there - a probability," said Krause, speaking to the media about the case as the 30th anniversary of the crime approaches. Authorities received several tips after the photo was released in 1998, but never found the grave.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/07/02/2009-07-02_photograph_could_be_clue_in_30yearold_missing_c hildren_mystery.html#ixzz0K8Np9uQn&C
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/07/02/2009-07-02_photograph_could_be_clue_in_30yearold_missing_c hildren_mystery.html

[Nut44x4]

I am not sure what is so 'new' about this news, other than the date of the article 7/2/09
Looks like we already have this info here, no??