Echoes in the Darkness

by Joseph Wambaugh

  The letter began:

  In place of VF phones. If contact is necessary, use: 265-9633, or 265-9634 or 265-9635.

  These three phones are located inside the Sheraton and are available 24 hours. VF phones are not, as park closes after dark.

  Before I leave to go to the phones, if I think I heard the signal, I will take my phone off the hook. After an interval a call to my home phone will give a busy signal since it’s off the hook. This will indicate I heard the signal and I am on my way.

  Big problems re last two weeks of August 1977.

  I went to see Fred W. if possible on Saturday, August 27th to kill a couple of birds.

  1. McKinley to discuss some confidential problems re coaching.

  2. Fred W. to see his new house. I’d promised him this.

  3. See more of S. Jersey other than shore as lack of such data was hurting in job seeking.

  When ran into third party, near Crackerbox, decide it was O.K. since all could go to lunch together.

  Since McK and W not available took off after lunch with third party.

  Possible approach could be: Told Mitch I remember I saw him in D.C.

  He said he also remembered incident. Indicated that you (Fred W.) should have remembered it as JCS called FW a couple times re McKinley appointment. Even told FW that it was to be JCS recommendation.

  B: Fred, I think I sensed that JCS may feel you are afraid of Supt. That’s why you have a “bad” memory re Smith in D.C.

  Stress silence so other side knows nothing.

  The cops called this their “little treasure,” a letter from Jay Smith to Bill Bradfield scripting an alibi performance, even as to how he should try to flimflam Fred Wattenmaker into “remembering” what had not happened on August 27, 1977.

  The letter was unsigned, but the task force didn’t care. On the typed envelope were the fingerprints of Chris Pappas, which was to be expected. And a fingerprint of William Bradfield, which thrilled them. And some beautiful huggable fingerprints of Dr. Jay C. Smith.

  Bill Bradfield and Jay Smith were gettimg double billing, even with Joe VanNort. They were an item. They were scripting each others performances. They were Gable and Lombard, Tracy and Hepburn, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.

  Joe VanNort now said he wanted to see Jay Smith in the electric chair with Bill Bradfield on his lap.

  They wanted to put Chris Pappas in a glass bubble. He was more than valuable. He was the most priceless Greek treasure since Schliemann found a mummy he thought was Agamemnon.

  Through the weeks of secret interviews, Chris sat and pleaded with them to understand that even if Bill Bradfield had conspired to perjure himself for Jay Smith, and even if he’d swindled Susan Reinert out of twenty-five big ones, he couldn’t have murdered anybody.

  Chris Pappas told every agent and cop he met that Bill Bradfield had been sincere on the airplane when he drank a toast to saving Susan Reinert’s life. He tried earnestly to make the cops understand that any man who could discuss Aquinas and Summa Theologica couldn’t possibly commit murder.

  They cherished Chris Pappas so much that they humored him about Bill Bradfields absence of malice, even when Chris turned over the practice chains and locks that Bill Bradfield had asked him to keep during the rehearsals. They agreed that perhaps Big Bill wasn’t a Bluebeard even when Chris gave them the acid and his mentor’s magnum pistol.

  They humored him even after Chris told them how Bill Bradfield had coached Shelly on her testimony before the grand jury, describing for them Shelly’s anguish over swearing to falsehoods on the Bible.

  They showed Chris nods of understanding when he assured them that Bill Bradfield would probably set up trust funds for the kids if they could be found alive.

  But the humoring had to stop when he told them one last incredible incident that they would never have believed if they hadn’t become so thoroughly familiar with the Bradfield disciples.

  Just before June, 1979, graduation at Upper Merion, Bill Bradfield had come to the Pappas house with urgent news.

  “I received a call from Doctor Smith tonight,” he’d told Chris. “He said he’s going out. I know that means a hit, but I don’t know who or where.”

  “Do you think it’s Susan Reinert?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think so. He gave me a hint.”

  “What’s the hint?”

  “He said, ‘I’m getting all dressed up for it. But I won’t be going inside.’ ”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “Getting all dressed up … The prom! This is prom night!”

  “That’s silly,” Bill Bradfield said. “Who would he kill at the prom?”

  Chris went home feeling silly about the prom idea and went to bed. Thirty minutes later the phone rang. It was Bill Bradfield.

  He said, “I’ve got it all figured out. That cop who searched his house. He’s working off-duty at the prom tonight. Doctor Smith wants him dead so he can’t testify!”

  Forty-five minutes later, the capeless crusaders were speeding to Upper Merion in Chris’s Datsun. Bill Bradfield was relaxed and cool and chatty. Chris Pappas was so energized he could see everything in detail. Even in the darkened car he could see wisps of gray in Bill Bradfields coppery beard. He saw oil drops on that goddamn homemade silencer that Bill Bradfield held in his hands. Chris Pappas glowed in the dark.

  As if Chris wasn’t terrified enough Bill Bradfield calmly rolled down the window and said, “If we’re going to kill a human being, we’d better test our weapon.”

  He fired three shots into the night sky over King of Prussia.

  Chris Pappas literally felt his pulse jerking in his neck. It was like some maniac version of a Gidget movie: Prom Night, starring Jay C. Smith with a supporting cast of disappeareds and remotes.

  They stayed till the last dance but, as usual, Jay Smith danced alone whenever he danced.

  Bill Bradfield said, “He must be killing somebody else. Let’s go home.”

  The cops could only sit dumbstruck when Chris told this tale.

  One of the troopers couldn’t help himself. He looked at Chris like he was something that had materialized at a seance, and said, “Chris, I gotta understand how you felt. When Bradfield had you shinnying up that rope, did you maybe think if you let go you’d fall and vanish forever in a lake of drizzly bullshit?”

  Chris later said that he wished the police could’ve tried harder to understand him.

  Chris Pappas received two memorable phone calls after Bill Bradfield obviously sensed that Chris was talking to the task force. The first call was angry and contained an implied threat.

  Bill Bradfield not only accused his young pal of turning Sue Myers against him, but of having an affair with poor Sue.

  He said, “Read the last chapter of the Odyssey, Chris! Read it!”

  During the long rambling conversation, he repeated it five times.

  Finally, Chris said, “You mean the next to last chapter. You’re talking about when Odysseus comes home and reclaims his woman and his betrayers are killed.”

  “Don’t get snotty!” Bill Bradfield wailed. “Read the last act of Macbeth!”

  Another call came even later at night. Bill Bradfield was crumbling fast. He wasn’t threatening anybody. He was certain now that Chris was talking to the task force and said so.

  Chris described Bill Bradfield as speaking in a “quaking grandmother’s voice.” It sounded like the grandmother was dying. Chris had to press the phone to his ear to make out the feeble little sounds.

  “Is … is that you, Chris? Is … is that my friend? I … I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me, Chris! Why does my friend turn against me? They’ll trick you, Chris! They’ll get to you!”

  “Somebody’s already gotten to me, Bill,” Chris Pappas said. “That somebody’s you.”

  It was the last time in his life that Chris Pappas ever spoke to his friend William Bradfield.

  2
1

  Confucius

  By February, they were able to secure a search warrant to seize all relevant material described by Chris Pappas as being in the former attic of Bill Bradfield who was now on sabbatical and living with his mother, keeping a very low profile out in the country.

  Sue Myers had been alone for nearly a year and still hadn’t been allowed to return to her Upper Merion classroom. She had no money in the bank and owed legal fees to her attorney and got lots of nutty phone calls from Bill Bradfield accusing her of betraying him. She was taking Librium to keep herself together. It was probably a perfect time for search warrants. She needed a pal.

  In fact, when the searchers arrived she was chattier than they’d ever seen her. She and Jack Holtz started talking about his hobby of cooking and Sue thought he was sort of an attractive guy when you got to know him.

  Sue helped them search, and along the way thought she might as well tell them a few things she’d never told them. She talked about seeing the stack of $100 bills in the file drawer, and how the date coincided pretty well with Susan Reinert’s bogus investment of $25,000. And as long as she was on the subject she added that just before Susan Reinert’s murder she’d seen a will with Bill Bradfield named as beneficiary.

  And Sue Myers said, “Wait’ll you see these letters. Are they ever sickening!”

  The boys got handed some Shelly letters wherein the teenager told him that he’d just have to learn to dance before they got married. And then Sue helped them locate some Rachel letters written in that tiny, precise script. For good measure, Sue threw in some Susan Reinert letters that Bill Bradfield had squirreled away.

  Sue told them that she wished she’d saved his jogging diary because in it he once wrote that he’d like to kill Susan Reinert, but added that at the time she had thought it was overstatement.

  Between exchanging recipes with Jack Holtz and getting it all off her chest, she was really starting to like these guys. Sue told them how Bill Bradfield sometimes made rough drafts of important letters, and voilà! they found a lulu of a rough draft. The message was written in cipher and became known to task force members as the “my danger conspiracy” letter.

  It was a most pleasant day for all concerned. They had lots of little snippets and treasures to link Bill Bradfield and all his friends in a conspiracy of deceit and perjury. A case against him for stealing Susan Reinerts investment was starting to look awfully good.

  So Sue Myers had climbed aboard the government bus, along with Vince Valaitis and Chris Pappas. She had a pretty swell time talking chicken cordon bleu with Jack Holtz. And she grew certain that Joe VanNort’s partner, who was seven years younger than she, was a downright flirt.

  She used to get mad when Joe VanNort referred to “Bradfield.” Shed always say, “It’s Mister Bradfield.” But now she was calling them all by their first names.

  Everyone was in such a great mood that Joe VanNort’s lopsided grin almost straightened itself out.

  The “my danger conspiracy” letter was sent to the FBI for a cryptanalyst to examine and explain in the event they ever got to court. A code generally deals with words or phrases, and a cipher works from individual letters with number substitutes. What the cops had was a mess of numbers separated by commas, with several letters interspersed.

  They knew from Chris Pappas that the key to the cipher was to be found in the Confucius translation by Ezra Pound, and Sue obligingly provided that tome. On page 12 there were Bill Bradfield’s handwritten numbers beside the lines.

  The cops figured this could wow a jury. They’d get the FBI cryptanalyst to do a presentation complete with a quickie course on ciphers, and lots of big blowup charts, and maybe some slides.

  It was only to wow a jury, because Bill Bradfield had obligingly written the correct letters in the English language right above each cipher on his rough draft. So every searcher could just sit right down and read the deciphered message for himself. It said:

  “Does the FBI know V has it. Has V removed ball and destroyed or better claim whole thing stolen. Then get rid of it. Did I sell it to you. FBI must not get it. Does FBI know you mailed it.”

  When the cops got that far they said, wait a minute, the only V in the case was Vince Valaitis. But Vince was riding the bus named Salvation and was tickled to death to be aboard.

  Then they compared it to the scenario that Bill Bradfield had penned for Chris Pappas. It was in the same barely coherent style. He’d write in the third person and then switch to the second person or even the first. The V referred to a “her” so they decided that the V was a code within a code, and stood for Rachel. Then it worked as jottings to himself and to her on a rough draft of a message to her.

  The garbled message continued:

  “Can you think up substitution or substitute saying wait and tell V or have her say it’s stolen. Immunity improbable. My danger conspiracy.”

  On the back of the message he’d scribbled “Smith,” then scratched it out and written “P of D.”

  The police and the FBI did not have the authority to tap Bill Bradfield’s phones or read his mail. If the message was meant for Rachel, Bill Bradfield could have mailed her a postcard and they’d never have known. He could’ve hired a skywriter to smoke his message over the Harvard campus and they probably wouldn’t have heard of it. Or he could’ve picked up a telephone some evening and called her and told her his fears and said, “Would you please switch typing balls.”

  He could’ve done that very easily. But if he had, he wouldn’t have been Bill Bradfield. And perhaps the disciples wouldn’t have remained so steadfast without all the melodrama. Ezra Pound had also loved ideograms.

  Matt Mullin got the duty of securing a handwriting exemplar from Bill Bradfield, and during the process, he was asked to identify things they’d found written by him in the Reinert residence.

  Among these was Karen’s autograph book with Mickey and Minnie Mouse on the cover. Bill Bradfield had written on one of the first pages. His entry was dated October 25, 1977.

  It said: “To Karen, Lorelei-To-Be.” Then there was a good-luck message written in Greek, followed by “From her friend, B. Bradfield.”

  Part of the exemplar procedure required him to write the names of everyone connected with the case for further comparison.

  When he wrote Karen’s name he said to Matt Mullin, “Karen was a beautiful, gifted child.”

  The theory of Susan Reinert being lured away from her home was based on information from her friend at Parents Without Partners. The friend said that Susan had claimed she was going to meet an attorney on Saturday, June 23rd, to “sort out” various legal matters with Bill Bradfield. The cops believed that the night she disappeared, she’d gotten a call from Bill Bradfield saying that they had to meet the attorney that night, and to bring along her will and investment certificate.

  This would explain why she’d taken Michael from the cub scout meeting and made him change his baseball shirt, and why she had changed the blouse Ken Reinert had seen on her when she picked up Michael. They were dressing up to meet a lawyer, the cops believed.

  If she hadn’t made a photocopy of that certificate, the police would never have known it existed. As to the will, there was the copy retained by her attorney, but it seemed possible that someone else had demanded to see it, and that’s why it was gone.

  They turned Bill Bradfields alibi for June 22nd into a state trooper drive-a-thon. Various tests were conducted at different hours of the night and day. During the lightest traffic time it took more than one and a half hours to drive from Shelly’s pal’s house to Susan Reinert’s house where Bill Bradfield had allegedly “lost” Jay Smith in the hailstorm, to his ex-wife’s home in Chester County where he supposedly hung around alone for an hour or two, either inside or outside, depending on his version of the story.

  When the FBI contacted Rachel at Harvard she said that she’d bought the typewriter from Bill Bradfield. She gave them a typed exemplar from the machine and this time did
it so willingly that they figured she’d switched typing balls.

  They weren’t able to match the exemplar with the photocopy of Susan Reinert’s investment. The FBI lab could only say that they’d both been typed by an IBM machine with a Gothic typeface.

  Sue Myers said she was just pleased as punch to hear that he’d “sold” her typewriter to the ice maiden. She wanted to have the lovebirds thrown in jail for theft, but Joe VanNort had to tell her what he’d soon be telling the FBI: “We ain’t after typewriter thieves. We’re after murderers.”

  The FBI investigates few criminal violations and does most of its work with the blessing of U.S. attorneys and magistrates. Police investigate a wide variety of criminal activities, involving huge numbers of lawbreakers. They usually don’t have the time and opportunity to obtain warrants, and often have to improvise and move along to the next case. The differences in style between the FBI and the state cops was never more evident than when the discussions began as to how they should proceed in the arrest of William Bradfield.

  Joe VanNort announced that he was going to arrest Shelly along with Bill Bradfield and charge them both with theft by deception.

  “You can’t arrest that young girl,” Special Agent Matt Mullin said.

  “Watch me,” he was told.

  Joe VanNort’s blue-gray eyes were getting squinty at that point and not from his cigarette smoke. There was a confrontation that evening in Belmont Barracks. The old cop and the young agent were getting testy.

  “You don’t have enough to charge her with,” the agent said.

  “The hell I don’t. She stashed away money for him. She either wiped fingerprints off the money or watched him do it. She lied to us and she lied to the grand jury. She’s a conspirator in my book.”

  “I’d like to talk to her one more time before you arrest her,” Matt Mullin said.

  “You can talk to her after I put her in jail,” Joe VanNort said. “That’s it. Period.”