This story from the York Daily Record on May 31, 1992, tells about a York County junkman's find of evidence in the murder case of Susan Reinert in 1979. One of the defendants in this dramatic case, Jay C. Smith, died last week. Background posts: West York ritualistic suicide forgotten by many, but investigators remember anand Longtime district justice: 'You can wait for my book' and Witman murder among York County's most notorious crimes.
The crime story made headlines in Pennsylvania for years.
Joseph Wambaugh extended the case's international reach with his portrayal in the 1987 book "Echoes in the Darkness."
The case spawned a TV mini-series.
And a York County man played a role in the case.
"Jay C. Smith, 80, the former Upper Merion High School principal convicted of a teacher's shocking 1979 murder, then freed from death row by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1992, died Tuesday," the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Smith was implicated in the murders of Upper Merion teacher Susan Reinert and her two children and sent to death row.
And the find of the York County junkman helped free him... .
