smith 6.smi.0 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Former suspect in teacher's murder tries to clear name with book
Friday, January 02, 2009
BY PETE SHELLEM
Of The Patriot-News

The day former high school principal Jay C. Smith was released from death row by the state Supreme Court, in his usual understated fashion, he asked for a nuclear bomb to drop on Pennsylvania. http://louis2j2sheehan.bloggerteam.com

"That's how bitter I feel," Smith said shortly after walking from the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon. "The Pennsylvania State Police tried to kill me."

That day was in 1992. Smith had spent six years on death row after being convicted of the murders of Montgomery County English teacher Susan Reinert and her two children.

Now Smith is trying to drop a bomb on author Joseph Wambaugh, the man he blames for his murder convictions, in the form of a self-published book, "Joseph Wambaugh and the Jay Smith Case."

"I wanted to make sure that if anybody ever studied Wambaugh in the future that they would find out what he wanted to do to me," Smith said.

Smith's case changed the state of the law in Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court overturned his convictions, ruling that prosecutors had acted so outrageously, hiding deals with informants and evidence that would have supported Smith's defense, that to try him again would amount to double jeopardy.

Usually, when errors are made in a criminal case, the remedy offered by appellate courts is a new trial. Before the Smith ruling, double jeopardy, which prevents a new prosecution, was granted only when defendants were acquitted or when prosecutors had deliberately provoked a mistrial.

A few months before the court's ruling, a junkman removed a box of evidence from the home of Jack Holtz, the lead investigator in the case.

The key piece of evidence in that box, dealing a major blow to the case, was a letter from Wambaugh offering $50,000 for information on the condition that Smith be arrested and face court. There also were documents that showed Holtz collected the money.

Although the high court didn't mention the new evidence when it ruled, it was clear the case was falling apart and another conviction would have been doubtful. Almost all of the evidence against Smith was compromised in some fashion before the court ruled.

Wambaugh, whose book about the Reinert case, "Echoes in the Darkness," was made into a television miniseries, recently told the Philadelphia Inquirer he still believes Smith is guilty.

In a telephone interview with The Patriot-News, which broke the story about Wambaugh's deal with Holtz, Wambaugh angrily denied that his actions affected the case.

"Nothing came out that would give him anything in a fair-minded court of law," Wambaugh said.

"You notice how big my name is and how little his name is on the cover of the book? He's trying to sucker people in and make them believe I wrote the book. He's trying to make a buck. He's using you. We have to have more integrity than this."

Smith's book is something of a memoir but concentrates mainly on his troubles with the law and his claims of persecution. At 80, he remains obsessed with clearing his name.

"I would like to make money -- anybody would -- but the principal motive was to make sure there was something in print about what happened to me," he said. "I don't believe there would have been a case had [Wambaugh] not got into it and paid them money."

Smith was convicted in 1986 of conspiring with William S. Bradfield Jr., another English teacher in the Upper Merion Area School District, to kill Reinert, whose nude and battered body was found in the trunk of a car abandoned in the parking lot of a Swatara Twp. motel in 1979. They also were found guilty of murdering her two children, whose bodies have never been found.

Bradfield, who was Reinert's fiance and the beneficiary of her $750,000 life insurance policy, was convicted in 1983 and died in prison in 1998 while serving three life terms.

Smith had been arrested on gun charges while creeping around vans in a parking lot in Chester County wearing a hood and brandishing two pistols.

A subsequent search of his home turned up three pounds of marijuana and property that had been taken from the school.

It also turned up a uniform that authorities used to tie him to the theft of money from Sears stores by someone wearing a Brinks uniform.

The day Reinert's body was found, Smith was being sentenced in Dauphin County Court for the other crimes. A commemorative comb from his Army Reserve unit was found under her body.

The same comb, which was supposedly being held in evidence, was found in the box in Holtz's attic, an apparent souvenir that was replaced by a duplicate at trial.

An Army Reserve colonel who holds a doctorate in education administration, Smith became a personal care home administrator after his release and most recently ran an adult day care center. He is retired and lives with his wife, Maureen, in Luzerne County.

Holtz, who was glamorized in Wambaugh's book, retired under internal investigation, and his work in other cases has since come under scrutiny. The prosecutor in the case, Richard L. Guida, was sent to jail for cocaine use.

Smith sued Wambaugh and the state police, but he lost. http://louis2j2sheehan.bloggerteam.com

In his book, Smith claims he is innocent of all the charges against him, not only the murders.

He blames his daughter's heroin addiction for his downward spiral. He said he had the guns and mask when he was arrested because his daughter had robbed his home and he was trying to recover his property.

"That was the beginning of it, and that set off a huge amount of publicity," he said.

Smith's daughter, Stephanie Hunsberger, and her husband, Edward, were reported missing in 1978 and have not been found.

Smith published his book through Xlibris, an online service that charged him $1,800 to print it. He receives about $10 for each book that sells. The book is listed on Amazon.com and is available in Barnes & Noble bookstores.

PETE SHELLEM: 255-8156 or pshellem@patriot-news.com

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