Echoes in the Darkness (33 page)

He drew a square with a little line. He said, "I took the children and I gave them to . . ."

But Vince snatched the paper and crumpled it and threw it on the floor saying, "Don't do that! Don't make things up!"

Vince stormed out of the basement office and was allowed to have desk space in another room.

Over the years he was asked many times to think back on that incident, especially as to Bill Bradfield saying, "I gave them to ..."

At a later time he would swear that Bill Bradfield said "Smith." He would remember that it was "I gave them to Smith."

Years and memories are tricky. Bill Bradfield may or may not have said "Smith." The implication seemed clear, but Vince learned that lawyers worry a great deal about such things.

Later calls from William Bradfield to Vince Valaitis came at all hours of the night.

The phone would ring and Vince would pick it up sleepily and Bill Bradfield would say, "Why are you deserting me? I need you."

Once he cried, "Don't betray me to the Fascists! Look what they did to Jean Seberg! Look what they did to Ezra Pound!"

Another time he called and said, "Vince, it's all a mistake. We didn't do anything. None of us."

But Vince responded, "How about Jay Smith? How about all the things you told me about you and Jay Smith?"

He almost suffered a blown eardrum when Bill Bradfield screamed, "Don't mention names! It's phone-tapping time! The house is bugged! Everything's dangerous! You don't know it was Doctor Smith! None of us knows for sure!"

Bill Bradfield wasn't the only one showing a little paranoia. Sue Myers sat weeping in her apartment one day because of her portrayal in the media. She told Vince that she'd had

$1,500 worth of work done on her car but the transmission went out immediately. She was frightened.

Vince said, "That's terrible, but its nothing to be frightened about."

"Don't you see!" Sue whispered. "The transmission could've been sabotaged by the FBI!"

It was inevitable. A reporter found out about the Mary Hume tombstone in Vince's apartment and speculated that the "cult" might have lit candles on it as they uttered incantations about Susan Reinert.

During those awful days Vince's parents stood by him. His father invited him to move back home, so Vince slipped out of his digs faster than the Shah of Iran.

Even after he'd deserted Bill Bradfield, Vince Valaitis still did not believe that his friend was guilty of anything except foolishness in not revealing what he knew about Jay Smith to the authorities. As far as he was concerned, a good man had become involved with a bad man for a good reason, and was refusing to save himself.

Vince had a theory that Jay Smith himself had placed the comb under Susan Reinerts body, knowing it would implicate him.

"He always loved to shock and torment," Vince told the FBI. "He'd tantalize you by drawing a circle within a circle within a circle."

During one of his many meetings with Vince Valaitis, Chick Sabinson alluded to Jack Holtz offering Vince a drink and said, "I have to apologize. I didn't know he'd try to ply you with liquor. By the way, I'd like to put a radio transmitter on you in case Bradfield says something incriminating. Would you do it?;

"Can't!" Vince said fearfully. "He'd detect it. He's a hugger."

"Mugger," Joe VanNort added when he heard about that one. "Hugger-mugger, just like I said."

Chapter
19

The Basement

After the FBI started pressing its agents toward the Jay Smith connection, the red fibers found on the body of Susan Reinert took on significance. Particularly after what Vince Valaitis said about the prince of darkness.

Jack Holtz wanted to pursue the Jay Smith connection along with the FBI, but Joe VanNort still wasn't convinced and ordered him to stick with Bill Bradfield and his cronies.

He said Bill Bradfield and Jay Smith were only connected in the same way that pus and phlegm are connected.

The FBI called on Grace Gilmore, the woman who'd bought the house on Valley Forge Road just before Jay Smith was sent to prison. She said yes, there was red carpet in the upstairs portion of the house.

Grace Gilmore told them that she'd closed escrow on the property prior to the weekend of June 22nd, but Jay Smith was allowed to stay in his basement apartment until Monday in that he correctly assumed that he might get sentenced to prison that day.

Grace Gilmore told Special Agent Hess that she'd gone to the shore with her sister on Friday, June 22nd, and didn't return to the house on Valley Forge Road until Sunday afternoon. She didn't get access to the basement until Monday, after Jay Smith was gone for good.

She'd never really seen him the day she returned. While putting away some things in the upstairs part of the house, she heard a noise from the basement apartment. Then she heard his car drive away. He always entered and left the basement by way of the garage entrance, which could not be seen from the street. His basement was off-limits to anyone.

The FBI also learned that when she'd bought the house there'd been a beige carpet in the basement. It was long gone now. She said it had been sopping wet on Monday, June 25th. and she'd cut it in four places and had it hauled away.

When the feds asked if it looked as though the carpet had been washed that weekend, she said that's what she'd figured. Naturally, the feds crawled around the trash dump like rubbish rats, but to no avail.

Next, the FBI contacted the local cops who'd made the original arrest on Jay Smith back in 1978 when his secret life was revealed. The cops said they'd noticed at the time that there was a large remnant of the upstairs red carpet stored in that basement. Yet Grace Gilmore had found no red remnant when she moved in.

The agents started speculating that Susan Reinert may have been placed on that carpet remnant to await her fate, but they hadn't any idea where she would've picked up the two blue fibers found on her body.

Interviews with Jay Smith's younger daughter were not helpful. Sheri was a sad and lonely young woman, whose immediate family was dead, imprisoned or missing. She was forced to live with various friends and relatives.

Jay Smiths brothers had known nothing of his secret life, but were generally supportive and loyal to him. They seemed to feel that he might be involved in the earlier crimes but certainly was not a killer.

But a friend of his missing older daughter came forward with a tidbit. She told the FBI that young Stephanie had said that Jay Smith once warned her and a boyfriend that they knew too much about his business and that he was going to shoot them both and chop them up and pour nitric acid over their bodies. This because they'd discovered some information about his unusual sex practices. He just didn't like people bad-mouthing his sex life.

The owner of a massage parlor told the FBI that she'd been solicited by Dr. Jay to go into business. He'd given her $800 seed money to get started and find a location, but he had one caveat: whenever she called him she was to let the phone ring one time and hang up. Then she was to call back immediately and he'd answer.

She told the agents that she felt intimidated by Jay Smith. He seemed too sure of himself. She thought that if she went into business with that guy she might end up like his timid librarian friend over whom he seemed to have abnormal control. He made her so uncomfortable that she gave him hack his money.

The FBI also learned that when Jay Smith arrived late for his sentencing on Monday, June 25th, he told the judge he was late because he'd made arrangements for a friend to deliver him to Harrisburg, but the friend had been unable to make it.

The FBI contacted the friend and learned that Jay Smith had placed a call to him earlier in the weekend, not on Monday. And he did not ask for a ride to Harrisburg. He said that Jay Smith had sounded distressed-his voice was unusually high.

The state cops found out that the 79th USARCOM comb was one of thousands given away as a recruiting gimmick. A tiny bit of ridge detail was lifted from the comb. The ridges were similar to two of Jay Smith's fingerprints, but there wasn't enough for a comparison.

Jay Smith's telephone bill showed calls to his attorney's office that weekend: one at 3:50 p.m. on Friday, and another on Sunday at 8:37 p.m. One more call was made to O'Brien's home telephone, also at 8:37 p.m.

At that time, the FBI and state cops knew nothing of the two men from South Carolina working at Three Mile Island who had reported seeing Susan Reinerts car at about 7:00 p.m. Sunday evening. As far as the lawmen knew, the car could have been driven to Harrisburg anytime before late Sunday night when it was first seen by the patrol cop. The times of the telephone calls to Jay Smith's lawyer had no particular significance yet.

It was time to see the prince of darkness face to face.

Joe VanNort and Jack Holtz paid him a visit at the state prison in Dallas, Pennsylvania. But a more significant visit was made by Special Agent Hess of the FBI. Jay Smith told Hess he was willing to cooperate because he had nothing whatever to hide, and he didn't need all this publicity about the Reinert murder when he was busy trying to appeal his conviction.

He'd decided that it had been a mistake not to take the stand in his own behalf during the Sears St. Davids case, but every FBI agent and state cop who ever talked to Jay Smith was inclined to think that his lawyer John O'Brien had been correct in not putting Dr. Jay on the stand. You just got the feeling that this was not a wholesome fellow the second you looked him in the eye.

Jay Smith told Hess that during that last weekend in his house on Valley Forge Road, he'd completed a few chores prior to turning the house over to the new owner, Grace Gilmore. He said that he was supposed to cut the lawn for her on Saturday but hadn't had time. He said that she'd been at the house on Saturday from early morning to late afternoon getting her own things in order, and that she'd returned on Sunday and was there from 9:00 a.m. until noon. He said that she'd walked in on him once and surprised him when he was working in his basement apartment.

Jay Smith told Hess that he drove his 1973 Mercury Capri to the store to buy some groceries for an apartment he had been ready to move into before the judge sent him to prison. He said that his youngest daughter Sheri had been in a couple of times over the weekend, and that Friday, June 22nd, was her birthday.

When Hess asked if they'd spent Friday night celebrating the birthday, Jay Smith admitted that he hadn't bought her a card or a present of even seen her on that day, because Friday night he had to visit his dying wife in Bryn Mawr Hospital, a duty he performed twice daily.

Jay Smith said that on Saturday he'd gone to Wayne to pick up a letter from a minister attesting to his sterling character to present in court the following Monday. He claimed that he'd made four or five phone calls having to do with character witnesses.

As to his personal opinion whether William Bradfield was the kind of guy to go around killing people, Jay Smith said that anyone could kill a man or even a woman in a fit of rage, but he didn't think Bill Bradfield could ever kill children. He said he'd only seen Bill Bradfield a couple of times outside of school to discuss his alibi testimony.

As to the other Bill Bradfield cohorts, he said that Sue Myers would do anything Bill Bradfield ordered her to do and that Vince Valaitis was a polite young fellow who was completely under the control of Big Bill. He figured that latent homosexuality was rampant in the clique. No discussion with Jay Smith would be complete without a little sexual innuendo.

He was forever implying that it wasn't so bad being called a thief and murderer, but as far as sex was concerned he was as regular as the next guy. As to the exotic stuff he seemed to agree with Voltaire that if you try it once, you're a philosopher. He ignored the other admonition that if you do it twice you're a pervert.

* * *

Joe VanNort could say what he wanted about the FBI, but they were thorough. They showed Jay Smiths picture to every doctor, nurse, patient, technician, secretary, janitor, security guard, gift shop worker, cafeteria employee, anyone who could feasibly have seen him during the weekend of June 22nd on any of the three shifts at Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Then they started on the volunteer workers. They talked to every candy striper, priest, nun, minister and rabbi. Cataracts and comas provided the only escape from the feds with their photos.

Many said they'd sure remember that face. Some of those on Stephanie's ward knew him, but no one had seen him on the weekend in question. By the time the FBI finished checking out Jay Smith's version of the weekend, they could at least prove that he was lying.

Nobody had seen Jay Smith from Friday until late Sunday afternoon when he drove away from Valley Forge Road.

Jay Smith was down but not out. After his dead wife's friend turned over the "lovecock" letters and all the rest of Stephanie Smith's diary to the press, he launched a $30 million libel suit against a couple of newspapers. He was turning into quite a jailhouse lawyer. Convicts came to him for help with their appeals.

And he fired off a bulletin to his former colleagues at Upper Merion to brighten their school year. It was as windy and droll as any of his former open-mike interludes. He called it "Letters from State Prison."