School Teacher Secrets

In Harrisburg Pennsylvania on June 25th 1979 early on a Monday morning the Marion Police Department get a strange call. A Spanish sounding man by the name of Larry Brown says there is a sick woman lying in the back of her car at the rear of a hotel. An officer is dipatched to the scene. The nude lifeless body of a respected teacher named Susan Rienhart was found dead in the back of her Volkswagen hatchback. She was a teacher at a very prestigious upper Marion High school, 90 miles from Harrisburg. During her autopsy it was determined that she had been given a "hot shot" of narcotics which killed her. She had flecks of red carpet fiber in her hair and had marks on her back that looked like she had been whipped. Also found are some grains of sand between her toes which is strange as there is no beach in any direction for many, many miles. At the crime scene the only thing found of significant evidentiary value was a comb under the body with a military base insignia. Little did the police know that this was about to turn into one of Pennsylvania's most baffling mysteries.

The first step of the investigation was to contact the ex husband as spouses are always the original suspect. During his chat with the cops he asked where his children were. Karen and Michael should have been with their mother but were not. Well this was the first the cops had heard of this so they raced to Susan's house to find the children but to no avail. They looked high and low but without luck. One person of great interest to the cops was the principle, Dr. Jay Smith, who had some perverted secrets. Upon searching his house and office, a chain. whips, and pornography was found, along with a box of combs just like the one found under Susan's body, but no red carpet. Additionally, a pin just like one that Karen always wore was found. He also had a criminal record of armed robbery of a Sears store. This was clearly a strange high school principle. He was known to Marion High School teachers as the "Prince of Darkness". He had written to his wife from prison telling her to get rid of a carpet in his rec room.

But there was no motive and there was another suspect. Another teacher at Susan's High school where Jay Smith was the principle who Susan was having an affair with is named Bill Bradfield. He was a genuine educator with a mesmerizing presence and an Icon in Upper Marion High school. When interviewed of course he denied any involvement with Susan. But the cops soon learn that Susan had taken out $730,000 worth of life insurance with the teacher as the beneficiary. But he doesn't seem to have had the opportunity. When his teaching associates are interviewed by the cops they swear he was with them on a trip some 240 miles away.

Finally the cops discover a $25,000 receipt that Susan had for "investment" purposes that Bill Bradfield had given her. So they charge the teacher with theft. He is convicted and when re-interviewed the teachers now claim that while they were on their trip, Bill Bradfield was an hour late showing up for the trip and all he could talk about was how Dr. Jay Smith was going to kill Susan Rienhart. By now it is six weeks into the case and in spite of all the tips the two children are still missing. The FBI now gets involved. Oh yes and one more thing. A year before the murder, Dr. Jay Smith's own two children went missing and were never seen again. They were last seen getting into Dr. Jay Smith's car. This has become a national case.

Finally Bill Bradfield is arrested for Susan Rienhart's murder. The Jury takes an hour and 15 minutes to convict him of three counts of murder, a state record in a murder trial. So now the authorities can go after the so called "Prince of Darkness". But the case goes cold and four years after the cops finally get a break when a prison informant wearing a wire gets Dr. Smith to incriminate himself. He is arrested and stands trial in 1986.

During the trial hearsay testimony is introduced but strangely there is no mention of the grains of sand between Susan Rienhart's toes. He gets convicted and sentenced to death but when his lawyers find out that the sand was not disclosed to them (which could have exonerated him) they petition the State Supreme Court for not only a new trial but a complete release and exoneration. In an unprecedented twist they win the appeal and Dr. Jay Smith is released. After Bill Bradfield dies in prison of heart failure a search of his belongings is accomplished and a picture of a makeshift headstone is discovered. It has never been found and neither have the bodies or whereabouts of Karen and Michael or Dr. Smith's two kids. There is still a picture of that headstone on the Pennsylvania State Police website for unsolved crimes. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.