Echoes in the Darkness (11 page)

The photographic story was remarkable. He had a high forehead so if there had been additional hair loss it was not noticeable, but he'd gotten heavy and soft and bent, and his face had undergone a coarsening. The Tartar eyes had grown more hooded. The flesh around those eyes collapsed and the sagging lids became reptilian. His heavy dark brows, which always had a tendency to lift cynically, now arched diabolically. Never refined, his wide mouth seemed more fleshy and sagged at the lips from the pull of swollen jowls. And with the added weight and grossening, his weak knobby chin receded noticeably within the folds of his neck.

Now the educator did not merely look dissolute, but extraordinarily sinister. Not a face likely to instill confidence in a jury.

Because of the Quaker influence, the sign at the edge of town reads: west chester welcomes thee.

"I could have been president of the United States but I lost the election for mayor of West Chester" is the way John J. O'Brien sized up his brief foray into local politics.

John O'Brien enjoyed trial work, especially criminal law, but thus far his triumphs had been limited to cases such as one involving a hobo who took upon himself the duty of picking up litter in the public park near a lovers' lane. The litter mostly included discarded underwear and lawyer O'Brien got a kick out of successfully proving that the hobo was an environmentalist, not a voyeur.

A man given to self-deprecating humor, O'Brien was surprised and excited when his divorce client, Mrs. Stephanie Smith, asked him to defend her husband, Dr. Jay Smith, who he knew stood charged with a series of highly publicized crimes.

John O'Brien tilted his round Irish face and his dark brows gave him a pixieish look, when he recalled the request.

"I'm just a small-town lawyer," O'Brien reminisced, settled in his front-yard rocking chair. The wooden sign suspended over the door of his Victorian office in a residential neighborhood of West Chester said: john j. o'brien, attorney at law. And below it the word notary had been added, proving that it wasn't all that easy for a small-town lawyer to make a buck.

"Like everyone else," the lawyer recalled, "when I first met Stephanie Smith I couldn't believe she was the wife of a school principal. But she was a decent soul, and I really liked her. She was the kind who always gave you a hug and kiss when coming or going, whether you wanted it or not."

It seemed that the principal could not get an impartial trial anywhere in the Philadelphia area what with the newspaper coverage of his scandalous secret life. O'Brien wanted at least to win a venue change for the most serious offense, the theft from the St. Davids Sears store, but venue changes were timeconsuming.

Stephanie Smith was by then trying to keep her spirits up while her cancer advanced to more critical stages. She still wore her hair teased and sprayed but she'd changed the color to a less garish shade of auburn. And the dying woman even got plastic surgery on her hooked nose during what she knew would be her last year on earth. Possibly the attention of the press was welcomed by Jay Smith's suffering wife who was in and out of the hospital during short periods of remission.

In the first week of the Jay Smith scandal, she held a press interview and said to reporters, "Hon, you can live with a man for twenty-seven years and not know him. Why, Jay didn't even let me know he was in jail 'til thirty-six hours after the arrest. I was shocked!! I hadn't seen Jay since Saturday and thought he'd went to army reserves or something. He always would come and go without telling me nothing. It wasn't unusual not to see him for days at a time."

Then Stephanie told reporters how she'd met young Jay Smith when he was a student teacher at Chester High School and how, like Jay, she was from a poor local family and how, after they married in 1951, she helped to support him during his university years, and waited and worked while he was overseas in Korea as an army officer.

And despite what lawyer O'Brien advised, during every interview Stephanie gave, there would be lots of potentially damaging tidbits about his "eccentric" ways. She gave reporters what they wanted, but she made it known that she admired her husband.

"He's such a thinker," Stephanie Smith said in another interview. "He never talked much around the house but he'd go down to his den and speak into his tape recorder. Hon, he has a wonderful speaking voice! But he always said I didn't own him and I shouldn't get involved in his life, and he wanted his privacy. I was always taught that the man is the master of the house and you just accept what he wants."

Stephanie Smith also let it be known that her husband frequently commented that "the devil will rule the earth."

The cops said, so what else is new? But the opinion was entered in a public report as a matter of routine.

General John Eisenhower also gave a statement concerning his former colonel: "I think of him often. He was clever and loquacious. He had a terrific sardonic sense of humor. His only eccentricity was his penchant for being a loner. I remember once hinting that we might get together socially for a beer, but he said that the way he lived he had no friends and wanted no friends. I didn't take offense because I knew he was a busy man and perhaps didn't have time for such things. He was a free thinker, versed in the classics. He did not join his fellow officers in the mess or at parties."

The press blitzed Upper Merion, but at first all they could get were some vague statements to the effect that Dr. Jay

Smith was a lone wolf who never talked about anything but his work and never mixed socially with colleagues. Despite his years at Upper Merion, some faculty members could not even say for certain if the Smiths had children.

As the fall term was about to begin, Jay Smith was arranging to get out of jail and was composing a few press releases of his own. First, he denied any criminal activity whatsoever, stating that it was preposterous to think he was the bogus courier. Secondly, he theorized that part of his problem was caused by the Upper Merion school administrators who were "out to get him" and inflaming the media.

Some observers might note that from the beginning of his troubles and down through the years, Dr. Jay Smith, on those rare occasions when he would speak, was always more concerned with allegations of sexual perversion than by the very serious felony charges leveled against him.

As to the other public agencies "out to get him," he had this to say: "The police find a collection of special books that I keep for research. But because they deal with such subjects as sex, homosexuality and bestiality, the police seem preoccupied with them. They see the books on homosexuality and they say, 'Ah ha! Smiths a homosexual.' So they ask my wife and she sets them straight and they scratch that one from their list."

He assured his public that he was planning to publish a book entitled How to Prevent Homosexuality in Your Children.

As to the canine books, he admitted that he was interested in exploring the possibility of training animals as sexual surrogates and that he planned to launch a mail order firm to distribute his findings.

So naturally, all the cops made up gags about Jay Smith's coming SPCA journal called lx>ving Your Pet. And Jay Smith's version of a Ralph Nader-style blockbuster called Consumers Guide to Dildos.

But of course the cops couldn't care less if Jay Smith was bisexual or trisexual or king of the collies. They were interested in the strange little matter of the syringe with the massive dose of drugs, his alibi being that it belonged to his son-in-law Eddie Hunsberger.

Well, where was Edward Hunsberger? And where was his wife, Stephanie, daughter of Jay Smith? They represented Jay Smith's potential alibi for all the drugs found in the basement.

When the cops tried to find the Hunsbergers, they discovered that Eddie and Stephanie had failed to keep an appointment at a methadone clinic back in February. The clinic employees told them that several attempts to contact the recovering addicts at the Smith home had produced no leads, so the counselors feared drug relapse.

One clinic counselor told police that during her last telephone inquiry into the whereabouts of her clients Edward and Stephanie Hunsberger, she'd managed to reach Dr. Jay Smith himself who told her that the young couple would not need further monitoring.

"I've gotten them a Placidyl and some real good pot," he told the startled counselor. "They're going to de-tox themselves. "

When she recovered from that revelation and told Dr. Smith she didn't think that was a good idea, he surprised her further by saying, "Thank you for the help you've given Stephanie and Eddie. And by the way, I have access to good pot that I got in Trenton. If you're ever interested."

When Jay Smith got arrested, he was found to be carrying the social security card of his daughter, Stephanie Hunsberger. And the police discovered that somebody had been forging the name of Edward Hunsberger and Stephanie on several welfare checks that had been sent to the Smith home for six months after the young couple was last seen. The cops didn't bother trying to prove forgery against Jay Smith because there were enough charges to investigate, but they were really starting to wonder about the Hunsbergers' disappearance.

The detectives had a theory about the night of his arrest. The local owner of a large supermarket chain owned a van exactly like the one Jay Smith was peeking into. The police wondered if the school principal had been plotting a kidnap.

More than one cop expressed exactly the same sentiment as they tried to piece together a profile of the elusive and mysterious principal of Upper Merion. "For a long time," a cop said, "that guy was a loose cannon, careening all over the place."

Shortly after his arrest, while he was in the Chester County Farms Prison trying to arrange bail, he received a letter of sympathy and support from a colleague. And that colleague received a speedy reply from the beleaguered educator. The reply was written in August, 1978, and mailed from the prison farm. The letter from Jay Smith to William Bradfield began:

Dear Bill,

Please cut out the Dr. Smith stuff. Jay or Jack is what friends call me. I prefer "Jack." I count you as a friend. . . .

In that letter Jay Smith asked for three books: Moby Dick, Ivanhoe and Warriners Grammar. He said that he intended to begin teaching other prisoners if he couldn't get a bail reduction to gain his freedom.

And while Bill Bradfield and Jay Smith were busy writing letters, Susan Reinert was busy writing a letter about him. It was sent to her therapist and was dated September 3rd.

Dear Ros,

Our former principal. Dr. Smith, has been arrested on robbery charges. The papers have been full of bizarre stories so I'm sure the opening of school will be "interesting. " I always thought he was strange but not criminal.

I have seen Bill. Nothing much different. I still love him. He now says he loves me but there are no more plans for our seeing each other than there have ever been. I have gotten a little more interested in dating others again. Will see what happens.

Love, Susan

The diary notes of Susan Reinert indicate that she was groping for new determination to change the direction of her hopeless affair with William Bradfield.

In a sad piece of self-analysis she wrote: "Rejection, low selfworth, constant battle. He would rather live with someone who wants to kill me than to live with me."

By the time school opened, the police noted that all of the crimes for which Jay Smith was charged had occurred on Saturdays when an educator is free. Then they discovered from Dorothy Hunsberger that she had last seen her son Eddie and Jay Smith's daughter Stephanie on a Saturday in February. And it didn't take long for local journalists to discover that when Edward and Stephanie Hunsberger had disappeared, all of their possessions were left behind in the Jay

Smith home. They had vanished from the earth with only the clothes on their backs.

Naturally, it didn't take long for a reporter to write: "Dr. Smith or Mr. Hyde?"

Vince Valaitis was sorry that Bill Bradfield just wasn't around much in the fall of 1978. And when he was, he seemed to have lost much of his need for Vince's humor. Some of it Vince attributed to the failing shop in Montgomery Mall.

Vince and Sue spent lots of time discussing their merchandise, wondering if they should expand into other facets of arts and craft, since the jewelry and pottery and wall hangings weren't moving at all. There were times when, during his shift at the store, Vince Valaitis would take in only five or ten dollars. Yet Bill Bradfield claimed that the store could not be abandoned as a failure. And to all of little faith, he said there might be a possibility of opening yet another store in Philadelphia, and a third in Exton Mall. Far from giving up, Bill Bradfield believed that they might one day control franchise rights for southeastern Pennsylvania.

The corporation treasurer Vince Valaitis and the corporation secretary Sue Myers would nod their heads and agree with the corporation president, and Sue Myers would whisper privately that if Bill Bradfields father had operated Western Electric like this, Pennsylvania would still be reading by candlelight.

Sue rued the day she'd ever helped hatch this get-rich scheme. She hoped that Bill Bradfield would decide to compete with his old man in some other way. And Vince, she figured, better resign himself to the fact that his 5 percent of the business would turn out to be one clay pot and a beaded headband.