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By contrast, William Bradfield is almost cuddly. He is a big, bearded teddy- bear type who fancies himself a classics scholar and an authority on the life and work of Ezra Pound. His real expertise was for juggling a busy love life. Explains one disenchanted ex-friend: "Imagine Bill Bradfield telling me he would never be interested in Susan Reinert and then going over there and making love to her while planning to kill her. At the same time, taking Wendy to the apartment he shared with Sue Myers and saying, 'Some day all of this will be yours.' While also carrying on an affair with Joanne, living with Sue Myers, and still being married to Muriel Bradfield."
Readers of these books must be prepared for complications. The evidence against Bradfield and Smith was sufficient to convince two juries of their guilt. (Smith is also suspected of murdering his daughter and son-in-law, although their bodies have never been located.) But one is never quite certain of what actually happened. Both men maintain their innocence, even though Smith came close to boasting about the crime to a fellow inmate. Bradfield had a solid motive: $750,000 worth of insurance policies that Susan Reinert had taken out, naming him the beneficiary. (He had previously been convicted of stealing $25,000 from her.)
Establishing a strong narrative line for this Pennsylvania death trip is not easy. Old Pro Wambaugh chooses the cop's-eye view, telling much of the story as developed by the state police investigation and dispensing considerable amounts of macabre station-house humor. He is also fond of old-fashioned hard- boiled detective prose: "Bill Bradfield avoided that man like a vampire avoids sunburn," and "as predictable as a Tijuana dog race." At times his tone grows weary, as if he were thinking, "How the hell did I ever get mixed up with these wackos and patsies?" Schwartz-Nobel is less imaginative and stylish in her handling of a sensational case with TV-movie potential. She also has bad taste, quoting at the end of her account a "poem" written by Bradfield that begins "Sue was extremely sensitive and terribly, easily hurt./ I tried to put limits on the relationship." Are there no limits to the exploitation of the pathetic and the bizarre?