Jay Smith dies at 80; was key figure in '79 Reinert slaying case

The goings-on at Upper Merion High School in the late '70s were just not what one would expect from an academically superior school catering to the scions of the upper middle class.

The principal was acting dangerously weird and eventually was arrested on robbery charges, and the English teacher, a bearded, charismatic hunk who was so fascinating to female teachers that he was called a "Svengali," was leading a cult-like following of teachers, both male and female.

Out of this smoldering mix would come murder and mystery, the implications of which linger to this day.

On Tuesday, the strange high-school principal, Jay C. Smith, who spent six years on death row in the killing of an Upper Merion teacher and, probably, her two children before being freed on a technicality, died of heart disease at the age of 80.

Smith never ceased trying to persuade the world that he had nothing to do with the murders of Susan Reinert, 37 - whose chained, naked and battered body was found in her car in a motel parking lot near Harrisburg on June 25, 1979 - or her two children.

The Dauphin County coroner ruled that she had died of a massive dose of morphine.

The bodies of her two children, Karen, 11, and Michael, 10, presumed murdered with their mother, have never been found.

The Svengali teacher, William S. Bradfield Jr., was found guilty of the three murders in 1983 and given three life sentences. He died in Graterford Prison in February 1998 at age 65.

In 1986 Smith also was found guilty of all three murders, and given three death sentences. However, he was freed in 1992 by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which found "egregious errors" in the prosecution's case.

The prosecution in both cases contended that Bradfield intended to murder Reinert for a $730,000 insurance policy that named him as beneficiary, describing him as her "future husband."

Authorities contended that Bradfield left the actual commission of the murders to Smith while he enjoyed a trip to the Jersey Shore with three other teachers.

The case spawned three books, including the best-selling "Echoes in the Darkness" by crime writer Joseph Wambaugh, which was made into a TV miniseries.

Jay Smith self-published a book in January - "Joseph Wambaugh and the Jay Smith Case" - that accuses Wambaugh of influencing the case against him by paying $50,000 to Jack Holtz, the lead investigator, for inside information.

Wambaugh always denied that his actions had any influence on the case.

In September 1978, when Upper Merion High students returned to classes after their summer break, they discovered a school in shock and dismay.

Jay Smith, their principal, had been arrested prowling in the parking lot of the Gateway Shopping Center, in Devon. Police found a mask, four loaded semiautomatic weapons, a homemade silencer, a syringe full of knockout drugs, a rope and strapping tape.

A search of his home turned up three pounds of marijuana and a stash of pornography, as well as artwork and other materials taken from the high school, including four gallons of nitric acid and security-guard uniforms.

He was charged with robberies of two Sears stores, which were committed by a man posing as a security guard, then let out on bail.

Things went rapidly downhill from there. Parents and teachers complained that the campus had become an open-air drug market. And Smith, it was said, sometimes delivered rambling, hours-long harangues over the public-address system.

During a hailstorm on June 22, 1979, a neighbor of Susan Reinert's in Ardmore saw her and her two children dash from the front door and jump into their car. Her brutalized body was found three days later.

Bradfield was implicated when fellow teachers told authorities that he repeatedly had told them he was going to murder her.

So, authorities say, while Bradfield was cavorting with fellow teachers in Cape May, Smith murdered Reinert and her children.

As a kind of postscript, Richard L. Guida, who as a deputy state attorney general prosecuted both Smith and Bradfield, pleaded guilty in 1986 to cocaine distribution and was sentenced to nine months in federal prison, his promising legal career destroyed. *