Episode 1: The Puppet Master and the Prince of Darkness, Part 1: Puppet Theater

True Crime Campfire

True Crime, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2019

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In episode 1, we learn about the major players in this bizarre true story. There's William Sidney Bradfield, a.k.a. Bill--a handsome, charismatic teacher of English, Latin and Greek at Upper Merion High School. Adored by students and colleagues alike, Bill is a larger than life figure with larger than life stories that may or may not be true. And there's Dr. Jay C. Smith, retired Army Colonel and principal of Upper Merion High. Nicknamed The Prince of Darkness by colleagues, Dr. Smith is unlike anything this respectable community has ever seen, with his eccentric habits and unsettling eyes. He may make people uncomfortable with his perverted jokes and bizarre conversation, but no one knows (yet) about Dr. Smith's dark secret life. Then there's Susan Reinert, a kindhearted teacher and mother of two whose deadly mistake will be to put her trust in the hands of the wrong man. Join Katie and Whitney for the beginning of this epic story of love, greed, manipulation and murder.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire.
0:05.0	We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney.
0:08.0	And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction.
0:12.0	We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire.
0:15.0	This season is the puppet master and the Prince of Darkness, the story of two very different kinds of psychopath.
0:28.0	One was a manipulative narcissist who used his good looks and magnetic personality to gather a theater full of naive
0:34.5	puppets to unwittingly help him commit a grisly triple murder for profit. The other
0:39.7	was a pure predator, a lone wolf who thrived on mayhem and perversion and got involved in this bizarre
0:45.8	case for the sheer thrill of the kill.
0:48.8	Both were brilliant and accomplished.
0:51.2	Both were respected members of their community, and when they formed their deadly partnership, it spelled
0:56.0	chaos and death for the people who trusted them. The puppet master and the Prince of Darkness Part 1, Puppet Theater.
1:18.3	It was 7 PM on Sunday June 24th, 1979, when two men traveling on business to Three Mile Island in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
1:27.8	saw the Orange Plymouth Horizon sitting in the Host Inn Hotel Parking Lot, its hatchback wide open.
1:34.5	They didn't think much of it as they checked in at the front desk, completely forgetting
1:38.1	to advise the employee of the car.
1:40.6	A few hours later, at 2 a.m. an officer on patrol saw the vehicle as well.
1:45.1	Hatchback still open. He didn't get out of his car to investigate, but when he
1:49.6	radioed in he found that the car belonged to one Susan G. Reinert of Ardmore, Pennsylvania, about an hour and a half drive from Harrisburg.
1:57.0	He did check to see if the hotel had a guest by that name, they did not, but before he could look into it further, he was called away to a fatal car accident.
2:06.0	It wasn't until 520 a.m. 10 hours after the car had initially been seen
2:11.0	that a good Samaritan calling himself Mr Larry Brown advised the Dauphin County dispatcher
	...

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