Pennsylvania

By R.Z. Sheppard

In 1979 the body of Susan Reinert was found stuffed into the wheel well of a Plymouth Horizon that had been abandoned at the parking lot of a Harrisburg, Pa., motel. She was a recently divorced schoolteacher. Her children Karen, 11, and Michael, 10, had vanished, most likely on the day their mother was killed. They have never been found, and are presumed dead. A seven-year investigation eventually led to the arrests and convictions of two men, former colleagues of Reinert's at the Upper Merion High School outside Philadelphia.

Given the public taste for upscale homicide, the case became known as the Main Line murders. This is not as elegant as it sounds. Echoes in the Darkness and Engaged to Murder have nothing to do with Grace Kelly's relatives or rowing on the Schuylkill, although some of the characters in the story had a fortune in fantasy lives. So it is no surprise that Joseph Wambaugh, the former Los Angeles cop who writes well about the police (The Blue Knights, The Onion Field), attempts to establish a gothic mood. He associates the feeling with eastern Pennsylvania's brooding Germanic influences and forbidding estate architecture. His competition, Philadelphia Inquirer Reporter Loretta Schwartz-Nobel, prefers the interior decoration of the not-so-new journalism. She has had the doubtful advantage of interviewing the imprisoned criminals in the case, and likes to titillate readers with her reactions: "That night, after falling into a troubled sleep, I had my first dream about William Bradfield. He had escaped from prison and had come directly to my house. I was alone. When I opened the door and saw him, I was surprised, but greeted him as a friend. He put his arms around me. 'I've waited a long time for this,' he said, and then he lifted his hands to my throat."

Bradfield was an Upper Merion English teacher and is now serving three life sentences for conspiracy in the Reinert murders. The actual killings were done by Jay Smith, the school principal, who was sentenced to death and awaits execution. How Smith ever got to be an administrator of impressionable youth remains one of those mysteries of American public education. He fixed people with a cold, goatish stare and liked to shock. His opening remark to a teacher who had recently lost her husband: "As a young widow, perhaps you could tell me how you handle your sex life." When police searched Smith's house they found pornographic material, including books with titles like Her Four-Legged Lover. He claimed to be exploring the use of animals as sexual surrogates and writing a book tentatively called How to Prevent Homosexuality in Your Children. His basement contained items of even more interest to the law: 580 grams of marijuana, illegal pills, stolen office equipment, four gallons of nitric acid, gun silencers made from automobile oil filters and Brink's security-guard uniforms used in a robbery of a Sears store. Smith was in prison for that caper when he was charged with the Reinert deaths.

By contrast, William Bradfield is almost cuddly. He is a big, bearded teddy- bear type who fancies himself a classics scholar and an authority on the life and work of Ezra Pound. His real expertise was for juggling a busy love life. Explains one disenchanted ex-friend: "Imagine Bill Bradfield telling me he would never be interested in Susan Reinert and then going over there and making love to her while planning to kill her. At the same time, taking Wendy to the apartment he shared with Sue Myers and saying, 'Some day all of this will be yours.' While also carrying on an affair with Joanne, living with Sue Myers, and still being married to Muriel Bradfield."

Readers of these books must be prepared for complications. The evidence against Bradfield and Smith was sufficient to convince two juries of their guilt. (Smith is also suspected of murdering his daughter and son-in-law, although their bodies have never been located.) But one is never quite certain of what actually happened. Both men maintain their innocence, even though Smith came close to boasting about the crime to a fellow inmate. Bradfield had a solid motive: $750,000 worth of insurance policies that Susan Reinert had taken out, naming him the beneficiary. (He had previously been convicted of stealing $25,000 from her.)

Establishing a strong narrative line for this Pennsylvania death trip is not easy. Old Pro Wambaugh chooses the cop's-eye view, telling much of the story as developed by the state police investigation and dispensing considerable amounts of macabre station-house humor. He is also fond of old-fashioned hard- boiled detective prose: "Bill Bradfield avoided that man like a vampire avoids sunburn," and "as predictable as a Tijuana dog race." At times his tone grows weary, as if he were thinking, "How the hell did I ever get mixed up with these wackos and patsies?" Schwartz-Nobel is less imaginative and stylish in her handling of a sensational case with TV-movie potential. She also has bad taste, quoting at the end of her account a "poem" written by Bradfield that begins "Sue was extremely sensitive and terribly, easily hurt./ I tried to put limits on the relationship." Are there no limits to the exploitation of the pathetic and the bizarre?