Michael Reinert
Above: Michael, circa 1979
Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance
Missing Since: June 22, 1979 from Ardmore, Pennsylvania
Classification: Endangered Missing
Age: 10 years old
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian male. Brown hair.
Details of Disappearance
Michael and his sister Karen were last seen at approximately 9:20 p.m. on June 22, 1979, leaving their home in Ardmore, Pennsylvania with their mother, Susan, and getting into her hatchback car. They were never heard from again. A photograph of Susan is posted below this case summary. She was employed as a teacher at Upper Merion High School at the time of her and her children's disappearances.
Susan, Michael, and Karen were planning on meeting Susan's boyfriend, William S. "Bill" Bradfield, on the day of their disappearances. A photograph of Bradfield is posted below this case summary. He was the chair of the English department at Upper Merion High School. They had begun their relationship in 1974, while Susan was still married to Michael and Karen's father. In March 1979, three months before she and her children disappeared, she told friends that Bradfield was going to marry her. She had $730,000 in insurance on her life, all of it with Bradfield as the beneficiary, and she gave him large sums of money to invest for her. She had changed her will to write her children out and make Bradfield the sole beneficiary as well. However, Susan did not know that Bradfield was also dating at least three other women, including a student at his high school.
At 5:20 a.m. June 25, Susan's nude body was found in the trunk of her own car, which was parked in the parking lot of the Host Inn in Swatara Township, Pennsylvania. A man with a Spanish accent telephoned in a report about a sick woman in the trunk of a car in the inn's parking lot, which lead to the discovery of Susan's remains. She had been beaten and bound with a chain, then killed with an injection of morphine 24 to 36 hours after the beating. There was no sign of Michael or Karen at the scene and an extensive search turned up no signs of either of them.
In 1981, Bradfield was charged with misusing Susan's money in fake investments. She had given him $25,000 to invest in a six-month certificate and was murdered shortly before the certificate was due to mature. He was convicted of theft by deception and sentenced to two years in prison. Shortly after his release in 1983, Bradfield was rearrested and charged with conspiring to murder Susan, Karen, and Michael.
Prosecutors said Bradfield had murdered Susan and the children to keep her from finding out he had stolen her money. He was convicted of murder and given three life sentences in prison, but investigators did not believe he had acted alone. Jay C. Smith, who was the principal of Upper Merion High School at the time of Susan's death, was charged with murdering her and the children in 1985. By then he was already in prison, serving a five-year sentence for an unrelated robbery conviction. A photograph of Smith is posted below this case summary. Authorities believed he had committed the actual killings, but Bradfield had orchestrated them. Smith's lawyer argued that Bradfield had deliberately framed him, but Smith was convicted of three counts of murder and sentenced to death.
In 1998, Bradfield died while in custody. He never admitted to involvement in Susan's murder and Karen and Michael's disappearances. Smith's conviction was overturned in 1989 after evidence was uncovered which cast doubt on his guilt; the evidence was allegedly unethically concealed by the prosecution during his trial. He was freed from prison in 1992. He subsequently filed a civil rights lawsuit against his prosecutors, but the suit was rejected in 1998.
Michael and Karen are presumed deceased, but their remains have never been found. They were declared legally dead in 1987; their father died in 2002. After Bradfield's death, authorities discovered a photograph among his effects which shows a stone in a wooded setting, standing upright as if marking something. An image of this photograph is posted below this case summary. Police are seeking to identify the place where it was taken; they believe the children's remains may be buried there.
Joseph Wambaugh published a book about the Reinert family's murders, titled Echoes in the Darkness, in 1987.
Left: Susan Reinert;
Center: William Bradfield;
Right: Jay Smith
Above: Possible gravesite
Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Pennsylvania State Police
717-671-7500
Source Information
Pennsylvania State Police
The Crime Library
FindLaw: Cases and Codes
The Times Herald
Updated 2 times since October 12, 2004.
Last updated July 3, 2006; details of disappearance updated.
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