Echoes in the Darkness

by Joseph Wambaugh

  But Matt Mullin figured, that’s it, semicolon. He said wryly, “Rachel has Sue Myers’s typewriter. Why isn’t she part of the conspiracy?”

  Then Joe VanNort erupted: “Goddamnit, boy, I ain’t after no typewriter thief and I ain’t after no perjurers! I ain’t gonna arrest Rachel or Pappas or Valaitis or Myers because I’m gonna need them all one a these days to testify for me when I get Bradfields ass for murder!”

  “It’s a malicious arrest,” Matt Mullin said. “You’re arresting Shelly because she won’t cooperate. The U.S. attorney would tell you it’s violating her civil rights and violating a federal law.”

  “I don’t need no U. S. attorney to tell me when to take a crap or when to book a suspect,” Joe VanNort said.

  “Let’s agree to talk about it tomorrow,” Matt Mullin suggested, and his always flushed face looked like somebody had double-dipped him in Day-Glo.

  The next day, Matt Mullin came to the police barracks with a U.S. attorney who also tried to persuade Joe VanNort not to arrest Shelly.

  When the U.S. attorney was all finished, Joe VanNort sucked a fresh cigarette down to a nub and said, “We ain’t botherin’ you with this. It’s a state law, not a federal law. I’m goin’ to the district attorney and I’m gonna file charges. Period. And when we make the arrest, the FBI don’t have to be there if it bothers ’em.”

  Since the conspiracy to commit theft by deception involved three counties they had to have a lot of meetings with different district attorneys, and finally Deputy D.A. Ed Weitz from Delaware County got the job of prosecuting the case.

  The arrest of William Bradfield took place in May, 1981, almost two years after the murder of Susan Reinert, and the FBI did not take part.

  The cops preferred to arrest Bill Bradfield when he was out jogging. He was said to be doing three miles at that time, trying to control his weight and soaring blood pressure.

  Joe VanNort, Jack Holtz and Lou DeSantis had a woman trooper call his mother’s home to see if he was at home. The trooper was told he was asleep, and the message was relayed to the waiting cops who drove up the lane to the ancient stone farmhouse where the Bradfields lived. They were met at the door by an old woman: frail, respectable, upper middle class, frightened.

  The cops stated their business and Mrs. Bradfield asked them to wait a moment. She returned to the door looking even more frightened and asked to see their identification again. After that, she disappeared and when she returned she let them inside.

  Jack Holtz sneered, which is no mean trick with a gumload of snuff, and whispered, “Hiding behind his mother’s apron strings, as usual.”

  Bill Bradfield got dressed quickly and greeted them in the living room with one question: “Are you arresting me for murder?”

  “Naw,” Joe VanNort said, showing his lopsided grin. “Just for theft by deception and theft by fraudulent conversion.”

  They could literally see the color return to his face. He was relieved.

  They drove to the district magistrates office and he was garrulous. As usual he talked about everything but what they wanted to discuss. He told them how his father used to take him hunting around Chester County and that it was lovely and peaceful living out in the country.

  And by the way, he said, he’d like to give them some “concrete evidence” about Susan Reinerts murder, but he couldn’t do it because of his lawyer.

  The only unpleasant moment came at the magistrates office when he refused to sign a form stating that the cops had advised him of his constitutional rights. Then he said that he wanted a cash bail-out on the spot.

  Jack Holtz glared and said, “Screw him. Let’s take him to jail.”

  But Joe VanNort was in a jovial mood. They called John Curran’s office and a lawyer said he’d come, and Bill Bradfields mother said she’d arrange for the bail money. Joe VanNort was enjoying himself.

  In fact, he took Bill Bradfield to a deli while they were waiting for the $25,000 bail to be posted, and bought his prisoner a sandwich.

  When they’d finished eating and returned to the magistrate’s office, Bill Bradfield said to the lawyer, “I want it on the record that these police officers are gentlemen, and have treated me so kindly.”

  Jack Holtz later said it was all he could do to keep from grabbing Bill Bradfield by the throat.

  Bill Bradfield asked Joe VanNort, “Are you arresting any of my friends?”

  “Yeah, Bill,” the old cop said, with a Marlboro between his teeth. “Afraid we gotta bust poor little Shelly.”

  Bill Bradfields brooding blue eyes turned exceptionally misty, and he said, “I wish you’d let me call her, first. She’s such a fragile child.”

  “I don’t see nothin’ wrong with that, Bill,” Joe VanNort said. “I always kinda liked kids myself.”

  * * *

  There were a couple of hearings prior to the August trial, hearings in which John Curran challenged the various warrants and the introduction of certain evidence. The testimony in support of the warrants was given mostly by Sergeant Joe VanNort and it was striking to hear.

  Joe VanNort was more rambling and disjointed than Ronald Reagan without a script. Joe VanNort had been a cop for nearly thirty-one years and he’d given a whole lot of testimony, and though he wasn’t an articulate man he knew how to testify. But in those hearings he sounded like an untrained civilian.

  In fact, on the morning they went to the courthouse in Media, Pennsylvania, for the trial of Bill Bradfield, Jack Holtz was driving and Joe was sitting next to him and being very quiet.

  When they drove into the lot, Joe looked at Jack Holtz and his blue-gray eyes were as cloudy as the Poconos in autumn. He asked, “Where are we?”

  Jack Holtz thought he must’ve dozed off, but Joe was wide awake.

  “What’re we doin’ here?” Joe VanNort asked.

  Jack Holtz laughed and said, “This is the Bill Bradfield trial. You better wake up.”

  When they got out of the car and walked inside, Jack kept glancing over at Joe. He didn’t look well.

  The state police and the district attorney had worked out a deal with Shelly’s lawyer. She flew in from California and surrendered herself at the district magistrate’s office and the preliminary hearing for the felony charges took place right there. It was very convenient for Shelly.

  Both defendants were held to answer for the criminal charges against them and bound over for trial. Shelly was taken by Jack Holtz and Joe VanNort to a women’s jail for mug shots and fingerprints, and was released to her parents who posted $10,000 bail.

  It wasn’t long before Joe VanNort got a telephone call from the district attorney. Shelly had agreed to become a witness against Bill Bradfield if the commonwealth would drop charges against her.

  “Of course we will,” Joe VanNort said expansively. “Shelly belongs to us now. Why she’s almost like a daughter to me already.”

  He said it so loud the FBI director in Washington could’ve heard. Joe VanNort didn’t believe in making life easy on the feds.

  The three-day trial in Media was held before Judge Robert A. Wright, with John Paul Curran and his law partner Charles Fitzpatrick for William Bradfield, and Edward J. Weiss appearing for the commonwealth. The small courtroom was jammed with press and gallery.

  Both sides were warned that any undue mention of a murder investigation could result in an immediate mistrial, and the whole show would have to be restaged. Bill Bradfield was being charged with theft by deception and theft by failure to make required disposition of funds received. Shelly was granted immunity.

  John Curran made a judgement call and decided that Bill Bradfield would not take the stand in his own defense. He’d said too many things in Orphans Court that Ed Weiss could use as a bludgeon. Bill Bradfield later said that he very reluctantly agreed to heed his lawyer’s advice.

  The bankers testified to Susan Reinerts maneuvers to secure $25,000 in cash, and how she insisted that her investment required it.

  The father of Chris
Pappas was called and testified to getting $3,000 from Bill Bradfield and purchasing money orders which were returned to Bill Bradfield so that he could pay Curran, the implication to the jury being that Bill Bradfield didn’t want the guy defending him to know about all his nice crisp $100 bills. Chris’s brother testified to doing the same with another $2,000 worth of $100 bills.

  Chris Pappas took the stand and told of seeing $28,500 in the trunk of Bill Bradfields red Cadillac, and told the bizarre story of wiping down the money in the attic.

  All trivia fans from that day forth had a question for the barroom;

  Question: How long does it take to wipe the fingerprints off $28,500 in $100 bills?

  Answer: Thirty-five minutes.

  Then Chris testified to hiding the money and later putting it into a safety deposit box in a bank in West Chester.

  The defense was badly hurt when the prosecutor asked Chris if Bill Bradfield had told him where he got the money.

  Chris said, “He told me that he had a savings account at the Elverson City Bank.”

  “Did he specifically mention that account?” the prosecutor asked.

  “That’s correct,” Chris said.

  “And did he tell you how he’d been withdrawing that money?”

  “He did,” Chris said. “He told me he’d attempted to withdraw all of it at once and the bank officials gave him a hard time about it. He explained that it was his own money and they were reluctant to let that large a sum go all at once. And he told me that he could only retrieve the money in increments of about five or six thousand at a time.”

  Of course the jury started to get the idea that Bill Bradfield had merely borrowed Susan Reinerts story of banker problems when he’d explained the money to Chris.

  John Curran asked a lot of questions trying to establish that Chris knew his mentor to be a man who owned valuable property, but Chris let the jury know that prior to the spring of 1979 the man of property had not thrown $100 bills around.

  Sue Myers took the stand and testified that she’d known Bill Bradfield since 1963 and lived with him since 1973. She said that after she moved in with him, she’d done all the bill paying, and that they didn’t have a savings account at Elverson in the amount of $25,000. In fact, she said that Bill Bradfield had had to take a second mortgage on the property his ex-wife occupied, and had to refinance it in a futile effort to save the business. It was dreary testimony for Sue Myers.

  “Did you also put money into the business?” the prosecutor asked Sue that first day.

  “Yes.”

  “And what profit did either of you earn from that business?”

  “None.”

  “Zero?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean at any time.”

  “None.”

  “What happened to that business?”

  “Mister Bradfield sold it.”

  “And the proceeds from that were what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was very embarrassing stuff for Sue. The hummingbirds were flying all over the courtroom and sometimes hovering over the heads of friends and colleagues who were looking at each other in disbelief. Because of all the saps and suckers, she’d been with him the longest time. By virtue of seniority she was the sappiest.

  Her testimony was wooden and aided by tranquilizers. It was only as responsive as it had to be. Distance was the best way to deal with utter humiliation. Sue was so distant she couldn’t have been reached by Houston Control.

  Shelly took the stand and for the first time began telling the truth. She testified that a friend had flown to California to bring a signature card for a safety deposit box. She testified to coming back to Pennsylvania and getting the money out of the box and counting it and stashing it away in her house.

  She testified to sending a couple of $100 bills to Bill Bradfield’s ex-wife later in the summer when she was instructed to do so. That was relevant because it shot down his defense of having saved the money for years; those particular bills were not in circulation until 1978.

  An FBI accountant did a good job of proving that Bill Bradfield did not have that kind of cash potential in any bank account. The judge thought it was prejudicial for the witness to say he was from the FBI. So he didn’t, but when his coat fell open the jury saw an accountant who was packing heat.

  Bill Bradfields mother took the stand on the second day. She was a refined old woman who was mortified to be there.

  “Good afternoon,” Curran said, preparing to ask his first question.

  “How do you do,” she answered.

  “What is your relationship to the defendant?”

  “William is my son,” she said.

  And the jurors’ eyes went from his mother to William Bradfield. Questioning eyes asked: How?

  She testified to living in a two-hundred-year-old fieldstone home and said that they’d formerly lived on a one-hundred-acre farm in Chester County. She said that she and her husband had built a home for William and one for their daughter.

  Curran was trying to show that the money that everyone had been stashing and wiping could have come from Bill Bradfields mother. She testified that over the years she had written him three checks that totaled $17,000.

  The old woman said that her son had been raised in a Christian home, and so she did not approve of his living arrangements. “But I accepted it,” she said, “and in no way did it change my love for my son.”

  Mrs. Bradfield wasn’t fond of Sue Myers and said, “I considered her a very extravagant young woman. She set a very lavish table. Her clothing was quite expensive and I considered her a woman who spent a great deal of money.”

  The prosecutor had a go at Mrs. Bradfield and brought out that the larger amounts that she’d given to her son over the years were loans which had been repaid, and not gifts that he could have socked away.

  Toward the end of the trial there was a conversation held in the judge’s chambers among Judge Wright, John Curran, Bill Bradfield and Ed Weiss. It had to do with the judge charging the jury and explaining the defendant’s failure to take the stand.

  Bill Bradfield was upset that he wasn’t going to get a chance to talk.

  The judge said to him, “You don’t have to take the stand.”

  “I would like to, if I may,” Bill Bradfield said.

  Curran said, “Bill, are you willing to accept that this is something we recommended under the circumstances?”

  The defendant said to the judge, “I feel compelled to accept the advice of my attorney. For two years I’ve wanted to tell my story. I wanted very much to in this case.”

  “Of course we are past that now, Mister Bradfield,” the judge informed him. “The evidence is closed and I can’t permit you to tell your story now.”

  “I have to go with my attorney’s advice,” Bill Bradfield said glumly.

  Weiss was a feisty prosecutor and he was getting irritated by Bill Bradfield’s claiming that no one had ever given him a chance to speak. He piped up with an observation that got Bill Bradfield steamed.

  Weiss said, “Your Honor, I’d like to make a comment in response to Mister Bradfield’s remark. I’ve repeatedly offered to withdraw these charges if he’d come forward and tell his story, and he’s declined to do so.”

  “That’s not correct!” Bill Bradfield cried.

  “Bill, do not participate,” John Curran warned. He was always having to tell Bill Bradfield not to participate.

  “We are not going to get into an argument here,” the judge told them all.

  Bill Bradfield kept trying to interrupt and John Curran kept shutting him up and finally Bill Bradfield started to cry. He was pretty weepy those days.

  When John Curran got to address the jury he talked about Runnymede and the Magna Carta because he was a lawyer who liked big pictures. Then he said that it all came down to guilt by innuendo, guilt by suspicion, guilt by association.

  Of Bill Bradfield he said, “You heard about Mister Bradfield. In many w
ays you may not like him. In many ways you may think he’s spoiled. In many ways you may think he lives in that academic area where people do not deal with day-to-day problems that people in the working world have to deal with. Maybe his mother spoiled him by giving him a house and giving him seventeen thousand dollars in checks and a thousand dollars a year in cash gifts over a period of fifteen years.”

  About Susan Reinert he said, “Where is the evidence that some theft by deception took place? If Susan Reinert loved Mister Bradfield as the evidence indicated, she would’ve given him the money. She would’ve given him twenty-five thousand dollars if he’d wanted it. If she loved him. It seems to me that if she were here today, she’d be mortified to see the man she loved.”

  Pat Schnure and Susan Reinerts friends were groaning like a herd of Herefords after that one. Bill Bradfield was starting to sound like Edward VIII when he abdicated.

  Then it was Weiss’s turn and he waxed poetic from Sir Walter Scott: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”

  He talked of Bill Bradfield’s dreams of sailing around the world, and of his opening a business that bled him dry, and of how his dreams were gone. And of how he’d succumbed to greed.

  When the judge at last charged the jury, he said, “You may have heard evidence which may be construed to show that the defendant took part in what you may consider immoral conduct for which he’s not on trial. This evidence must not be construed by you as evidence of his guilt in this case. I call your attention to the fact that this case has nothing whatsoever to do with the death of Susan Reinert or the disappearance of her children. If you in any way let those things enter your minds or your consideration, you will be violating your oaths that you took as jurors, and will tend to make a mockery of our criminal justice system.”

  The jury was out less than an hour and when they’re that fast, it’s bad news for the defendant. When he was found guilty on both theft charges, the courtroom broke into applause.

  “All right! Lets have none of that!” the judge warned the cheering gallery.

  The prosecutor felt that now Bill Bradfield might have cause to flee the jurisdiction and so asked that the bail be revoked, but the judge compromised and increased it to $75,000. It was guaranteed by his mother.