Susan Reinert

Case background and investigation

Susan Reinert, 36, taught English at Upper Merion High School in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and lived in Ardmore with her two children, Karen, 11, and Michael, 10. According to the Wikipedia article on Jay C. Smith, the three were last seen on the evening of June 22, 1979.

On June 25, 1979, Reinert's body was found in the trunk of her own car in the parking lot of a hotel in suburban Harrisburg, more than an hour from her home. UPI reported that the body was unclothed and bruised. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that she died of a massive overdose of morphine. Her children were not with her and have never been located; according to the Unresolved podcast's account of the case, they were declared legally dead in 1986.

Investigators focused on William Bradfield, a fellow Upper Merion teacher who had been romantically involved with Reinert and who was the beneficiary of life insurance on her, which the Inquirer put at about $730,000. According to Wikipedia, Bradfield was convicted in 1981 of fraud for taking $25,000 from Reinert. In 1983 he was convicted in connection with the killings of Reinert and her children and sentenced to life in prison. He died in Graterford prison in January 1998, according to the Inquirer.

Jay C. Smith, the former principal of Upper Merion High School, was charged in 1985. Prosecutors alleged that he and Bradfield had plotted the killing to collect the insurance money, UPI reported. A jury convicted Smith in 1986 of three counts of murder, and he was sentenced to death. Smith denied involvement throughout; UPI quoted him as saying at sentencing that he had no Reinert blood on his hands.

In 1992 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Smith's conviction and barred a retrial, citing what the Inquirer described as egregious prosecutorial misconduct, including the concealment of evidence. He was released after about six years on death row. According to Wikipedia, his later civil suits against police and against author Joseph Wambaugh, whose 1987 book Echoes in the Darkness covered the case, were unsuccessful. Smith died on May 12, 2009, at age 80, still maintaining his innocence.

Bradfield's 1983 conviction was the only one in the case that was left standing, and both men convicted at trial have since died. The bodies of Karen and Michael Reinert have never been found, and what happened to them after June 22, 1979, has not been established.