Imagine your kids recently returned to school after summer break.

One morning you grab the paper as you pour yourself a cup of coffee.

Because, yes, in my world I still sometimes read a handheld newspaper, although I don't drink coffee.

And the headline reads something like this.

One teacher murdered, three suspended, and the principal behind bars.

Back to school has an entirely new meaning.

Would you send your kids back to school?

Would you send them back to that particular school?

Many parents in Upper Marion School District faced that question in 1979,

after learning of the murder of Susan Reinert,

an English teacher at the high school who was found murdered earlier that summer.

Her two young children who'd been with her the night before she was found had vanished.

Rumors circulated throughout the hallways, but it wasn't only the students who whispered.

It was the teachers.

The faculty lounge was rife with gossip, and yet it wasn't gossip.

The rumors about Principal J Smith and his unusual pornography collection were true.

His arrest for robbing a local department store also turned out to be true.

And what about William Bradfield, an English teacher with Upper Marion High School for 15 years,

who told anyone who wanted to listen,

and even those who didn't,

his friend and fellow teacher Susan Reinert was in danger.

From what or whom was she in danger?

...