00:00:00
here's a recommendation for you it's a limited series podcast that I loved it's called Empire on blood it goes deep
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inside a case like few other podcasts the reporter spent seven years getting to the bottom of a case about a guy who
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was sent away to prison for two murders that he claims he didn't do one thing I love is that Empire on blood takes us
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deep inside the belly of the Beast it's the criminal justice system in the Bronx
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which is even wilder than I expected the prose computer goes by the name Turtleman the detective calls himself
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father Frank cuz he gets confessions and then there's a black magic practicing drug dealer who is waging a campaign for
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freedom from a prison pay phone oh and by the way in this pod they actually solved the case Empire on blood was
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number one when first released a few years ago now it's back with new bonus episodes that's Empire on Blood season 2
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on the burden feed listen on apple or wherever you get your podcast you can find the link in the show notes and on
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our recommended page [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
00:01:49
listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who does not sleep he
00:01:54
dreams here is the captain and I'll be dreaming of you it's good to be seen and good to see you thanks for listening
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thanks for telling a friend we chose this week's beer with our hearts with heavy hearts one of our
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funding for that well we thank you yeah B we you in beer Ron if you're not subscribed to us on patreon or apple
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podcast do so now please and thank you and Colonel that's enough of the business all right everybody gather
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around grab a share grab a beer let's talk some true crime the mainline murders was the
00:04:09
largest and longest running investigation ever conducted by the Pennsylvania State
00:04:15
Police portions of the following were taken from the famous cop turned author Joseph Wah's book echoes in the darkness
00:04:25
one of three books about the mainline murders on June 25th 1979 the naked corpse of school teacher
00:04:34
Susan Riner was found wedged into her hatchback car in a hotel parking lot near Philadelphia's Main Line her two
00:04:44
children had vanished the massive FBI and state police investigation ultimately centered
00:04:53
on two men the mainline murders remains one of Philadelphia's most intriguing murder
00:05:02
cases this is true crime [Music] garage today we are going all the way back to 1979 to take a hard look at this
00:05:25
case that is regularly referred to as the mainline murders this case did make the news on a national level but for the
00:05:34
folks in Philadelphia Harrisburg and other parts of Pennsylvania this case for many many years was a subject of
00:05:42
dinner conversations water cooler talk and weekly newspaper headlines and stories many in the area became obsessed
00:05:51
with this case and I think many will see why as this true crime story unfolds so
00:05:58
let's go back to the morning morning of June 25th 1979 which is a Monday which could be a key element to this case we
00:06:08
go to the area known as the mainline the Philadelphia Mainline known simply as the mainline is an informally delineated
00:06:17
historical and social region of suburban Philadelphia Pennsylvania lying along the former Pennsylvania Railroads once
00:06:26
prestigious Mainline it runs Northwest from Center City Philadelphia parallel to Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike
00:06:34
also known as US Route 30 there seems to be some debate about what areas or parts of town
00:06:43
should be included or excluded as part of the mainline area the captain and I are not from this area so we cannot
00:06:51
offer our two cents or really any cents at all on the matter but for what it's worth this case starts in a location
00:06:58
that many have called the Mainline on this Monday morning in June of 79 a phone call came in to police
00:07:06
Dispatchers in Harrisburg Pennsylvania the caller did not give a name instead the caller went right into the reason
00:07:13
for the call the mail caller was notifying police about a vehicle in a motel parking lot in sueta Township
00:07:22
according to the caller in the car located in the parking lot of the host in he found a woman in the back of the
00:07:30
vehicle who as he put it was quote sick now I don't know who is responding to the scene but we know that police were
00:07:40
sent out to this location to have a lookie State Police will run point on this investigation so given that and the
00:07:48
location it may have been State Police or Highway Patrol responding to the call police arrived at the host in motel
00:07:56
parking lot just after 5:30 a.m. the sick woman in the back of the car call that they responded to turned out to be
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a dead woman in the trunk of a car authorities believed that the woman had been dead for approximately 24 hours and
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her nude body which had been haphazardly thrown into the trunk of this abandoned
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Plymouth vehicle over the next several hours police would set out to identify this woman by the end of the day police
00:08:26
sorted out that the woman was a mother who along with her two children had gone missing sometime earlier that weekend in
00:08:33
fact went missing sometime the weekend before that early Monday morning call to police about a sick woman in the car so
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of course a huge part of this mystery right from Jump Street is where are these kids here we go Captain this is
00:08:50
the report from the Lancaster New Era newspaper Circa June 1979 the headline her two children
00:08:59
missing teacher's body found in car trunk near Harrisburg my slightly summarized version of this article reads
00:09:08
the nude body of a high school teacher whose two children are missing has been found in the trunk of a car parked at a
00:09:15
nearby Motel police said they found the body of Susan Riner aged 36 early Monday
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at the host in parking lot in nearby Swatara Township after receiving a telephone tip from a mail call it State
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Police said that she had been criminally assaulted but they would not say whether
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she had been sexually molested the County coroner said she died from Suffocation Trooper John Holtz said the
00:09:42
woman's children Karen age 11 and Michael age 10 were with her Friday evening when she was last known to have
00:09:51
been alive quote we're hoping that the children will be at a friend's house we doubt it very much but we are hoping for
00:09:59
that said the trooper Mrs Reiner who was divorced taught English at upper Maran High School in Philadelphia suburbs a
00:10:09
neighbor said she was devoted to her children and was active in Parents Without Partners a group focusing on
00:10:16
divorced parents Mrs reinert's husband Kenneth said he last talked to the children Friday night Kenneth reinard
00:10:24
went with police to Harrisburg to identify the body quote no one we talked to yet can give us a reason as to why
00:10:32
she was in Harrisburg and along with this news story there is a picture of Susan Riner the dead mother and the two
00:10:39
missing kids Karen and Michael Riner so we have teacher and mother Suzanne she has two kids Karen and Michael they're
00:10:49
last seen on Friday they're reported missing over the weekend then her body is discovered at this hotel parking lot
00:10:58
do you know who reported her missing well that's a good question because that part of the story is a little ambiguous
00:11:05
okay so yeah what I think has happened here is at some point it didn't go unnoticed that she was missing like it
00:11:14
went noticed that that she wasn't where she was supposed to be but I don't know that that call actually made it to
00:11:20
police I don't think they were officially reported missing I think what happened here Captain is once they
00:11:27
determined the identification of the nude woman found in the back of this car they start reaching out to people
00:11:34
and right away the feedback they're getting is oh yeah she we've been wondering where she was or we've been
00:11:41
wondering where the kids were so it's possible that she was missing but not reported missing exactly and I think
00:11:46
that's exactly how this played out so she's found on a Monday morning in Harrisburg
00:11:53
PA and we've already got two missing kids we got two missing and one murdered for this investigation that's how this
00:12:02
thing sadly is going to kick off for investigators now first I want to talk about this car it's key here to know
00:12:09
that the car that Susan reinert's body is found in this is her own vehicle she owns this vehicle this is Susan's orange
00:12:16
red Plymouth Horizon hatchback so it's a hatchback vehicle and you'll hear me bounce back and forth between Susan and
00:12:24
Sue most people called her Sue so the vehicle as understand it Captain was backed into a parking spot the report
00:12:34
states that it was located three rows from the main entrance to the motel Lobby checkin area so I don't know if
00:12:44
that means three rows to the left or to the right or if it was a bigger parking lot and it's three rows in front or
00:12:52
behind where what would be considered the main entrance to this Motel Lobby checkin area and as said it was a
00:13:00
hatchback the hatchback so these are typically smaller cars and the hatchback was left open or at least open when the
00:13:09
police arrive on the scene no one knows for certain who the caller was that phoned this
00:13:17
in unfortunately the recording of that call was erased or lost but the police dispatch was interviewed and the
00:13:26
takeaway from that interview was that the dispatch Bater believed that the caller sounded rushed or hurried very
00:13:34
brief very vague and the opinion was that the caller sounded and communicated in a way that was suggestive that they
00:13:43
wanted to end the call or get off of the phone well we got a couple possibilities
00:13:47
here it could be the killer making the call so that the police find the body therefore they can have some kind of
00:13:55
awareness of of the situation and how many times have we heard these killers once I killed the person I thought the
00:14:03
cops would be on me in seconds and so this could be a move out of fear or desperation or it could just simply be a
00:14:12
passer by that is saying that this this individual's sick but clearly she's found like you said in the nude so this
00:14:21
could just be a disturbing scene and some people just don't want to get involved the caller was male and may
00:14:29
have had a Mexican accent or at least pretended to sound Mexican this again according to the
00:14:37
reports now no one seemed to have a clue as to why the vehicle Sue's vehicle would be found here at this location
00:14:48
this is a little more than let's say it's approximately 100 miles from the home where Susan and her two kids lived
00:14:56
so it's a good distance away from her home some Reports say over 90 miles some say over 100 this Motel no longer exist
00:15:08
so it gets a little difficult to pinpoint exactly the distance between her home and this location but based off
00:15:16
of those reports I think we can say with all confidence approximately 100 miles from our home so the key here though but
00:15:24
a couple things by creating a distance let's say she was murdered somewhere else and then this is just a Dumping
00:15:31
Ground it would take longer for law enforcement to figure out who this victim was but also by placing the body
00:15:39
in a motel parking lot it then leads you to believe it's possible that she was meeting somebody and did she meet
00:15:48
somebody at the hotel yeah that's what I want to wonder that's what I am asking myself and everybody else out there
00:15:56
because I get what you're saying that distance would complicate identification of the victim however it's her car you
00:16:06
right you know as a police officer you're going to open up the passenger door open up the glove box check the
00:16:11
registration and go oh it's registered to a woman I have a hunch here that that the victim's name might be who the
00:16:18
vehicle's registered to and so that being the case now we have to go all right did
00:16:25
she what's the scenario here that puts her where we found her so either she drove the car to this location or to
00:16:33
this general area and some something happens there or something happened prior to and then the car with Susan inside
00:16:44
was delivered to this location so we see how these Mysteries start to unfold in front of
00:16:53
the investigators first who is this woman okay we've soared that part out where the hell are the
00:16:59
kids we have no clue and now it's you almost feel like you're back at square one yes we've identified the woman but
00:17:08
how the hell and why the hell is her car found in this location and it's 1979 so the news breaks that there's a
00:17:17
murdered school teacher and her two kids are missing this is going to make the community and the public on high alert
00:17:27
and this is probably also one of the reasons why we're still talking about this case today yeah and it's it's all
00:17:33
handson deck as far as searching for these kids um I really liked some information that I found on
00:17:42
this case and I wish that I knew the uh police officer who was in charge of the search for the kids because from the way
00:17:52
that it was described Captain he pretty much calls a a meeting gets everybody who who has any clout anybody in in
00:18:03
upper management with the state police and he says search everywhere search every car every truck every building
00:18:10
every basement every house every movie theater every shopping mall every school search everywhere question everyone to
00:18:20
find these kids do whatever the hell you have to do to find these kids and one of
00:18:26
the the officers says but what about what about these people's rights you know the the places we're going to be
00:18:34
searching the people we're going to be questioning what about their rights and he says [ __ ] their rights find these
00:18:40
kids I love to hear that passion I love to hear this man leading the charge and rallying the troops and telling them do
00:18:49
whatever you got to do to find these kids they're they're 10 and 11 years old now we'll Circle back to the crime scene
00:18:57
Captain but let's do a little back ground on the three victims because right now as said we got two very
00:19:03
difficult investigations going on and thankfully you have the resources of the state police on this from the beginning
00:19:10
but you are simultaneously and with different teams you are investigating a homicide but
00:19:17
more importantly you are also trying to find children's children ages 10 and 11 so we now need to figure out who the
00:19:25
mother Suzanne is and who these children Karen and Michael are yeah so what we learn is Suzanne Riner is 36 years old
00:19:35
she was employed in the fall of 1971 as an English teacher at upper Marian High School now she's involved in a lot of
00:19:46
the clubs there you know these high schools have a lot of different clubs for the kids and she's involved in some
00:19:52
of these clubs so she's not just a teacher she's very active she was also co-advisor for the school yearbook she
00:20:02
was active in other activities including Parents Without Partners in 1977 she was education director she was a cinema
00:20:15
buff and taught a film course at the high school as well all of the students and staff loved her from what we could
00:20:21
find she was very dedicated to the school to her students and to her career her neighbors say quote Sue was the last
00:20:30
person you would think this would happen to she was always so cautious and careful about who she was with she
00:20:37
didn't go to bars she called them freak scenes she was a very devoted mom always
00:20:44
driving the kids to gymnastics and or baseball she was divorced so at College Sue met Kenneth Riner he was attending
00:20:54
school as well and he was also in the Air Force the two got married right after college and then moved around for
00:21:02
a while because of his Air Force gig Sue began her teaching career during that time while they were still moving
00:21:10
around they lived in several different states over the years eventually they ended up back in Pennsylvania settling
00:21:18
down in the greater Philly area the two simply from what everybody's saying here
00:21:25
Captain the two simply Got Married Too Young they split up and divorce when the kids were still little by all accounts
00:21:32
it was a mutual and amicable split it was shared custody of the kids and no alimony or child support but the
00:21:42
kids did stay with Sue the majority of the time Ken got Karen and Michael mostly on weekends and
00:21:50
holidays after the divorce Sue and the kids settled into a tidy 2 and a half story twin house on woodrest Avenue and
00:21:58
Ardmore a section of haford Township and as said at the time of The Disappearance
00:22:05
Karen was 11 born in September of 1967 and Michael was 10 born in June of 69 we mentioned the Parents Without Partners
00:22:15
program that Sue was a part of and in fact she was a rather big part of her local chapter of Parents Without
00:22:23
Partners this group was sort of a thing back in the day with chapters throughout
00:22:27
the country this club is a support group for those who need it but very much a social group
00:22:34
as well so some people join more for the social aspect and may support others during their time there Susan played a
00:22:43
leadership role sometimes she would help facilitate group meetings and she would
00:22:48
also help to organize events when they had them because Susan spent so much of her time with work and with her two kids
00:22:58
I think think that might be why we get some conflicting observations about her social or more importantly romantic life
00:23:06
what are the conflicting reports well she was a very private person as well so some people who knew her likely simply
00:23:14
were not informed as to the details of her private life some say that she was not seeing anyone and others say she
00:23:22
absolutely was seeing someone spent a whole lot of time with someone well what time she could with with this individual
00:23:30
and the relationship given how busy she was with her career and with her kids so
00:23:36
there are some people that are saying that she didn't see anybody at all and there are other people that are saying
00:23:41
she was not only very much involved with somebody and had been for a long period
00:23:45
of time but that relationship was serious enough that it was headed toward marriage well that seems like Polar
00:23:52
Opposites right she wasn't seeing anybody oh no she was seeing somebody and and guess what they're going to get
00:23:59
married yeah and again it you're canvasing and talking to everybody that knew this woman so it's not crazy to
00:24:09
think that you are going to have those conflicting observations cuz that's all they are is people that are making
00:24:17
assumptions based off of their interactions with her how limited those may be we don't know in some cases and
00:24:24
they're what they're seeing and what they're observing with her and her kids look if she's not home a lot if she's
00:24:30
busy with work and busy running around with the kids and not home a lot maybe the neighbors weren't so aware of
00:24:38
somebody that she may have been involved with but when you get to talking to people that she worked with and her
00:24:44
family they're telling a different story yeah she was involved with somebody and
00:24:49
that person his name is William Sydney Bradfield he went by Bill Bradfield he was the chair of the English Department
00:25:00
at upper Maran high school so with this Revelation found by police this is where
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back cheers mimes and cheers to you Colonel yeah cheers to you Captain cheers to all the people over the pond
00:28:44
all the great people that we met at crime con UK and cheers to uh future crime con people don't forget we got uh
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Denver coming up next year and we already have tickets are on sale for that use our promo code to save a little
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bit of cash and that promo code is TCG if you want to get crime conon tickets for next September in Denver when we
00:29:09
left off we introduced Bill Bradfield to the beautiful listeners and he worked at
00:29:18
the high school with Susan and had worked there with her for quite some time we're talking several years now she
00:29:25
one of her jobs there was working as an English teacher he was in charge of the English Department as as I understand it
00:29:34
and he's she's 36 at the time he was in his he would have been in his 40s I believe early 40s so he's a little bit
00:29:42
older than her so they worked together again we talked about conflicting observations here but they worked
00:29:50
together and they were carrying on a secret relationship for quite some time that was either secret or not so Secret
00:29:57
at all depending on on who you were talking to another person that we will hear a lot about in this True Crime
00:30:03
Story is Dr J Charles Smith he was the one-time principal of upper Marian High School so he was running the show over
00:30:14
there he was the boss of both Bill Bradfield and Susan Reiner he was the principal at the school for 12 years but
00:30:23
not at the time of Susan's death so we have eyewitnesses that saw Susan with her two children on Friday but let's go
00:30:31
into the events leading up to finding her body in the hotel parking lot yeah because the events leading up to this
00:30:40
one there's a there's a quite a gap through the course of this weekend of unknown whereabouts for
00:30:49
Suzanne and the kids but there's some very questionable Behavior going on even starting on that Friday when we know
00:30:57
that the three were alive and well the three had plans for the weekend we had mentioned that that Kenneth or Ken their
00:31:04
father would often have them on weekends but not on this weekend so this weekend Susan was going to be a part of
00:31:15
a Parents Without Partners event that was taking place out of town so this event was going on in Allentown
00:31:24
Pennsylvania remember she's in the Greater Philadelphia area and she Not only was planning to
00:31:32
attend but she had already made arrangements to bring the kids with her now that wasn't going to take place
00:31:40
until Saturday morning they were not going to leave to go out of town until sometime on Saturday morning and we know
00:31:46
that based off of Arrangements that she made she had a book a place to stay Saturday night and she was open and had
00:31:54
told plenty of people about her plans for that weekend but before we get to Saturday morning
00:32:00
we're going to start off with what I think are some confusing happenings that go on on Friday June 22nd 1979 so
00:32:09
Kenneth Riner the ex-husband and father he was with his son that Friday so this would have been late afternoon early
00:32:19
evening he's with his son at a father son softball game his son played baseball so this is just kind of a
00:32:26
natural thing father softball game something weird happens before the game is over it's near the end of the game
00:32:34
but Suzanne shows up and she picks up her son before the the game is over so her son he have he has to kind of leave
00:32:46
abruptly and for my understanding Captain I I have some conflicting times that are reported on this but I think
00:32:53
it's pretty safe to say that this takes place close to 8:00 p.m. late in the 7:00 hour or close to 8:00 p.m. so it
00:33:01
would be getting kind of dark and a little late by this time anyway Kenneth gets a phone call from his son Michael
00:33:08
around 8:30 Michael is calling to tell his father like hey I'm sorry that that I didn't get to stay to the end of the
00:33:17
game but I had to go with Mom and you know Dad saying all the right things yeah I understand it's not a big deal
00:33:23
what are you doing this weekend and later Kenneth would tell police that when he spoke with Michael everything
00:33:29
was fine like there was nothing weird going on and he didn't even frankly he didn't even find it weird that that
00:33:35
Michael didn't stay to finish the baseball game it was it was near the end of the game anyway and he says that
00:33:40
Michael sounded excited and was talking excitedly about the weekend plans so he's going to be tagging along both kids
00:33:49
are going to be tagging along for this Parents Without Partners event with Mom but there's this is Parents Without
00:33:57
Partners so lot of the the parents are bringing children with them yeah so it's kind of exciting right you're a young
00:34:04
kid you're going to meet other young kids and they have kid fun events scheduled for the weekend well if you're
00:34:11
around 10 years old and your parents tell you you're going to stay a day or so at a hotel if there's a pool you're
00:34:21
you're super excited even if there's not a pool you're just excited because it's
00:34:24
something different yeah what about an elevator have you seen kids how nuts kids will go with an elevator that hits
00:34:32
multiple floors you should see how I react in an elevator one event that Michael was excited about was they were
00:34:40
going to be doing some bowling over the course of the weekend I don't know I don't have the layout of the Parents
00:34:48
Without Partners events scheduled for that Saturday or even that Sunday but that was one thing that he had mentioned
00:34:55
to his father he was excited about going bowling excited excited about the weekend now before this call can end we
00:35:03
kind of get a repeat of the softball game where Mom kind of cuts in and she's like hey Michael we got to get going dad
00:35:12
says to Michael well where you where you guys going you know he can hear his ex-wife
00:35:17
in the background saying hey Michael you know time to get off the phone we got to
00:35:21
get going in a little bit and the report that has remained to this day we're talking about a old case right 45 years
00:35:30
ago so these old cases are very intriguing for many reasons one problem I have with older cases is I worry that
00:35:38
we C at times can be talking about situations that are very much like a game of telephone right where somebody
00:35:45
has said something or one report has been this way and then it morphs slightly over the years into something a
00:35:52
little bit different and all we can do with the older cases is to report it to the best of our ability and to report
00:35:59
the information that has been given yes and the great thing about this case opposed to some other cases that we've
00:36:05
reviewed in the past is some of these statements are a matter of of record of state record but for this particular
00:36:16
item I don't know that it is but regardless what we do know that takes place is according to Kenneth the call
00:36:25
ended sooner than he had expected with Michael saying he had to get off the phone he says to his son where are you
00:36:31
going or where are you guys off to something very casual like that and he says that he could hear his ex-wife in
00:36:39
the background say because I think the boy asked Mom where are we going and she said something like well tell tell your
00:36:46
father we're going to Parents Without Partners we're going to the Parents Without Partners event which is not
00:36:53
untrue but again we're trying to dissect this conversation and and we're probably missing some of
00:37:00
the details here because they we know that they were planning to go to that on Saturday morning we just don't know the
00:37:08
the back and forth uh and exactly how it played out because that could be she could be giving an honest statement not
00:37:16
understanding the question because to me when I hear this conversation Captain I
00:37:21
my mind goes to Dad is asking well where are you going right now that you got to
00:37:25
get off of the phone not where are you going this weekend yeah and and the difficult thing with these cases is look
00:37:31
we we have a murdered mother in a hotel motel holiday in parking lot whatever whatever it is I've seen it reported as
00:37:40
a hotel motel I don't even know the difference now you have this guy again they were married okay so it didn't work
00:37:49
out but he probably gives a [ __ ] about her and he definitely gives a [ __ ] about
00:37:53
his kids and so after you have this tragedy you go back and you're going to dissect every little thing and to me I I
00:38:04
find it to be a little strange that you leave the sporting event early because it doesn't seem like you're in this huge
00:38:12
uh rush to leave but that to me is indication that you're in a huge rush to leave and then this cutting short of the
00:38:20
phone call to the father seems like you're also in a huge rush to leave I think he nailed it here Captain because
00:38:28
they're not planning to leave for this event until the following morning both both of these things getting cut short
00:38:36
are indicators to me that something unplanned has come up and that this seems like it's something unplanned that
00:38:43
Mom has been a made has been made aware of and maybe the kids don't need to be so much in the know right it seems like
00:38:51
Mom is steering the ship here and she had to cut short the softball game which likely wasn't planned and now she's
00:38:58
cutting short this phone call and we do know that they leave we do know that Mom
00:39:02
and the kids leave that Friday night from their home and everything appears to be a okay at the time maybe they're
00:39:09
rushing out of there but other than rushing out of there everything from people that see them that evening
00:39:16
everything appears to be a okay well question Dwight sh is she the one that is rushing things along or is somebody
00:39:25
making her Rush things along well that's what I mean I I think something has come
00:39:31
up that she's been made aware of and now she's got to rush around with the kids they're 10 and 11 she's not going to
00:39:37
leave them at home she can't just leave the son at the softball game it appears to me that she has got something going
00:39:44
on that that they're unaware of so what let's go forward a little bit so that this phone call is an approximately 8:30
00:39:52
p.m. with the father now most reports out there say shortly after 9 uh a little more detailed reports will say
00:40:00
about 9:20 p.m. is the last known sighting of Susan Riner and her children this is where we get this huge
00:40:09
gap of what the hell happened between 9:20 p.m. on that Friday and 5:20 p.m. oh sorry 5:20 a.m. on Monday when
00:40:20
somebody phones into police that there's a sick person in the in a back of a car
00:40:24
in a motel parking lot that there's a big gap there and so we can surmise from that that likely the
00:40:34
only person or people to see Suzanne and the kids during that time and we don't know what time that is are likely the
00:40:43
Killer and or killers and abductors of the children so at 9:20 p.m. what we have here is we the kids were playing
00:40:52
outside for a portion that of that evening now it can't be for too long because Michael was at the softball game
00:41:00
and we know that they leave a little after 9:00 p.m. that night there was also a hail storm you know you get those
00:41:07
summer storms where they just kind of come rushing in and you get weird hail shooting out of the sky on a summer
00:41:14
night that was one of those situations and shortly after the storm the kids are seen by neighbors they come outside and
00:41:22
they're running around looking at the hailstones and and collect picking them up and and things of that nature so more
00:41:29
than one neighbor sees the kids so there's no question about that we have two individuals independently of one
00:41:36
another giving about the same statement to police I saw the kids outside I saw her car in the driveway and then her car
00:41:46
leaves so the kids get hop in the car mom drives off and remember this is suzan's orange SL red depending on which
00:41:56
report you read Plymouth Horizon hatchback it's a 1978 hatchback this is the one that will be later found in that
00:42:04
Motel parking lot we do get one neighbor that will be able to provide a description of what the children are
00:42:13
wearing at the time that they were last seen by the neighbors and this could play a key role in the case later of
00:42:22
course it makes so much sense though because police at the time right from Jump Street are trying to find these
00:42:28
kids and so they need they know what the kids look like they need a description of what they were wearing when they were
00:42:34
last seen and so this is provided to them by at least one of the neighbors however we should point out that none of
00:42:44
the neighbors that saw the kids or saw Susan that night none of them are saying that they saw Suzanne with a with a
00:42:49
suitcase or the kids with suitcases and keep in mind the plan always was for them to leave for that trip Saturday
00:42:56
morning also an event that takes place that evening Captain is and I I think this to me plays a big part in how I can
00:43:06
try to perceive or the perception that I start to build of the key people in this
00:43:13
case Suzanne spoke with her in-laws via telephone that evening the Parents Without Partners event was in
00:43:24
Allentown Pennsylvania this is kind of we kind of have to have to give a bit of a a history lesson here to the listeners
00:43:31
to so everybody can kind of understand the situation in the late 70s there was a bit of a I hate to use the word crisis
00:43:40
especially with all the things going on today it seems very uh trite to use that word but um at
00:43:49
the time it was referred to by some as a gas crisis uh gasoline prices were were
00:43:56
very high the supply was very scarce and so Suzanne maintained a a good relationship with her in-laws and I
00:44:08
think this goes to show us that she likely maintained a good relationship with her ex-husband as well so she's on
00:44:16
the phone with her in-laws and she ask her father-in-law ex-father-in-law hey my gas tank is
00:44:25
reading here you know you got you got e for empty you got you got full tank here's what my gas gauge is saying do
00:44:34
you think I got plenty of gas to get to and from Allentown where we know that she was intending to go to that weekend
00:44:42
and he says yeah I think you're going to be perfectly fine you won't have to stop
00:44:45
for gas on the way so not only do we have the the neighbors telling us that everybody's alive and well that Friday
00:44:54
evening we have the in-laws saying the same thing as well that we spoke with Suzanne on the phone then we don't find
00:45:01
we we never see the kids no report of the kids ever again after that and as said now we go to Monday morning June
00:45:10
25th 1979 at 520 a.m. is when that call comes in police are on the scene by 5:30
00:45:17
Suzanne's nude bodies found in the trunk of her own car which is parked at that host in
00:45:24
parking lot some Reports say 90 mil a little more than 90 Mi some say 100 Mil from her home the other report that we
00:45:33
do get here Captain is the host in is three miles from the Pennsylvania turnpikes in Harrisburg
00:45:41
exchange now we know that a man telephoned and reported about a sick woman in the trunk of the car of course
00:45:49
police arrive on the scene and find a situation much different than what's phoned into them here is what's
00:45:56
interesting too about this scenario the first people they're obviously going to talk to are the people working at the
00:46:01
motel so the clerks at the host in said that they first noticed this vehicle in the parking lot a few hours before the
00:46:10
arrival of the police but were unsure of exactly when it had arrived well when you're at a hotel motel
00:46:20
holiday in there's a lot of moving pieces and parts so I wouldn't assume that we're going to get get that great
00:46:27
of any eyewitness accounts from employees right well and on top of that what I'm what I'm hearing too is they
00:46:36
know for certain that it was there a few hours before police arrived on the scene
00:46:40
okay so that's key but now you can't tell me when it arrived how long did it sit there right was it was it there on
00:46:50
Saturday on Sunday what what when did it show up well like you were saying from Friday
00:46:57
last scene on Friday to Monday that's a big gap and one of the things that we we've been doing for the last almost 10
00:47:05
years is when we're looking at a case we want to shorten that Gap we we want to know what happened in between and and
00:47:12
get a better definitive timeline well and if the hatchback is found open your that car would have been
00:47:19
noticed had the hatchback been open prior now that's one thing that's one statement we don't have from the
00:47:26
clerks when you did notice the hours prior was the hatchback open or not we don't have that statement what we do
00:47:33
have is speculation from the investigators who would later say that they think that Sue's body might have been in
00:47:43
that vehicle sitting in the parking lot for the better part of a day with the killer likely disposing of the car and
00:47:52
the body sometime that Sunday now that's speculation but it's coming from the individuals that investigated this case
00:48:00
so it's it's a very good educated guess you hope well if you're law enforcement and she's not meeting somebody at that
00:48:08
location and this is just a Dumping Ground then if you're law enforcement you have to be thinking well this killer
00:48:15
then needs a way out of that location so did anybody see anything of that nature
00:48:21
it's also 90 to 100 miles away from her home right so of course they're going to
00:48:25
check with the motel staff and what do they discover they neither Sue nor the children stayed
00:48:33
there at any time during that weekend and nobody on the staff recognized any of them when shown
00:48:41
pictures of of the three if you're law enforcement this is a very confusing situation they would go on to they being
00:48:49
law enforcement would go on to clear Kenneth Riner the ex-husband at some point but not right out of the gate in
00:48:57
fact it would be several months before they would remove him from possible suspect list but another really tragic
00:49:05
and very sad part of the story is he gets a call early Monday morning they found his exwife in her car in that
00:49:15
parking lot he has to hop in his vehicle now to bring everybody up to speed they've been divorced for several years
00:49:22
by this time and he's he's a successful Banker he's been remarried in fact he had just had a he's got a newborn child
00:49:31
at home an infant and so that Monday morning per phone calls from detectives he's hopping
00:49:39
into a vehicle and driving miles and miles away from his own home he lived in a different suburb of
00:49:47
Philadelphia and drives out there and he's going to go to the the morg to identify by his ex-wife's body
00:50:01
and from everything there were three detectives that were with him during the course of that evening so he goes to the
00:50:08
morg he identifies his ex-wife's body and then they take him to a a restaurant or Diner or something
00:50:16
that night and they interview him there uh cuz it's a weird scenario for detectives right you have this person
00:50:25
who should be high on suspect list because he's the ex-husband but also somebody that you are consoling a little
00:50:33
bit uh so they they interview him at a diner and all three detectives had walked away that night with the same one
00:50:42
of them drove him home at some point because he he was physically unable to to drive himself home he was that
00:50:49
distraught he was that wrecked from the situation and I mean they said he broke down when he identified his ex wife's
00:50:57
body but he really lost it when he looked at detectives and said where where are my kids so they didn't H they
00:51:06
didn't have a a gut feeling that he was involved early on based off of his reactions but eventually they will clear
00:51:15
him based off of a very solid Alibi I mean he's he's at home with his new wife and and other people had seen him that
00:51:22
Friday Saturday Sunday he's accounting for that that whole week again to complicate things even
00:51:29
further we get the cause of death here we get two different determinations of cause of death the coroner at the time
00:51:38
determined that Susan had been suffocated or exxi they they weren't quite sure but those two things are are
00:51:47
quite similar they did determine that she had been beaten right away they they had a good idea that she was probably
00:51:54
drugged before her murder and it and it had appeared that she had been bound at some point my mind goes to being tied up
00:52:02
but most reports that I've seen Captain say that based off of injuries to the body they believe that chains may have
00:52:10
been used instead of ropes rope ligatures but what complicates this is the time period so it's 1979 right and
00:52:20
remember they they're they have reason to believe that maybe she had been drugged prior to being killed well they
00:52:27
have to send off for test and it takes a long time back in those days for the results to come back I think in her case
00:52:34
it was like three or four months but just to be clear what you're saying about the the The Binding and the
00:52:40
ligatures there they're not left no that that's why're of what right they're guessing what may have been used
00:52:50
saying that she she had been bound beforehand and the reports say likely with a chain now when those using change
00:52:57
you're not messing around when the reports come back the toxicology reports to put it in its simplest form there was
00:53:05
an extreme amount of morphan in in her system and it was so much so that they they believe that it
00:53:13
would have ODed or killed a person her size 10 times over meaning that it was administered to her with the purpose of
00:53:23
meaning that the per whoever gave this to her gave such a large amount that they that
00:53:29
it would kill her regardless if they used another method to attempt to kill her that meaning that you couldn't screw
00:53:35
this up I I'm I'm going to do this and I'm gonna make sure that it's done that I I'm not going to botch this thing I've
00:53:43
decided to do this and now she has to die so possibly she was bound or most likely she was bound at some point she
00:53:50
was somebody administered this drug that was going to kill her 10 times over and
00:53:56
still either strangled her or used some other method to kill her here's why I say this
00:54:01
complicates the situation because depending on what report you read you get three different causes of death
00:54:08
however all three things likely would have killed her and I think that that's why it's it's difficult to say this one
00:54:15
thing is exactly what did it so the the the drugs could have killed her Suffocation could have killed her xixi
00:54:22
could have killed her part of that too Captain was you know she could have been suffocated or it could have been as
00:54:28
simple as there was a mistake because they did find tape that had been placed over her mouth and they determined that
00:54:34
this was placed over her mouth before she passed so that could have played a part in her murder likely depriving her
00:54:41
of necessary oxygen now the reason why I I I hate the complication of not knowing
00:54:49
the exact cause of death is that I think that that if you if you can say that they couldn't determine that then what
00:54:56
confidence do you have in this next part of their report so Dr Bush concluded that Susan had been deceased for
00:55:03
approximately 24 hours when her body was found in the host in parking lot so that's putting speculation that her time
00:55:10
of death had come and this is from their report sometime between 12:15 a.m. and 6:15 a.m. the day prior
00:55:19
on Sunday June 24th so this would be like at least 27 hours after she had driven away from her home all of those
00:55:28
miles away this creates this large window of darkness and mystery for the investigators to try to fill in the
00:55:36
blanks yeah the case just gets more confusing for law enforcement and furthermore you wonder if if we could
00:55:43
sit down with the detectives and ask them why did you speculate that her body in the vehicle may have sat there in
00:55:50
that parking lot and been there since sometime on Sunday why why is that speculation what was your indicators to
00:55:56
to make you come to that possible conclusion was it simply the time of death given to you by the doctor or was
00:56:05
there other factors that played a part into coming to that that possibility as a
00:56:14
likelihood and here's some of the even more troubling things about this whole scene and the early
00:56:23
stages of the investigation so tring enough though well yeah but we have two missing children yeah now police can
00:56:31
find no trace of several of suzan's belonging so this includes her clothing remember she's found n they
00:56:41
can't find her purse and if you look if you look up pictures of Susan Reiner I've not seen a
00:56:47
single picture of her not wearing glasses she wore eyeglasses regularly she required them so those eyeglasses
00:56:55
are not found as well what is found inside the car is referred to many times as random pieces as of
00:57:04
possible evidence but a lot of these items Captain don't really seem relevant to
00:57:11
the investigation I mean people have things in their car and leave things in their vehicle so what they find is an
00:57:18
umbrella a matchbook cover from a motel you would think that that would be a good piece of evidence but this Motel is
00:57:25
from Gettys B and it was confirmed that Sue had stayed there about a year prior for a conference so is a souvenir yeah
00:57:35
this appears to be just something that was placed in the car at some point and never removed they found fast food W
00:57:42
rappers an empty Coca-Cola bottle part of a blanket which is a weird thing to say I would love to know more about what
00:57:50
part of a blanket is and means they found a to a towel and they found a blue comb now this blue comb will become a
00:58:00
huge part of this investigation the blue comb in some reports not all but some reports state that it was found
00:58:09
underneath her body in the trunk of that car the blue comb it's one of these mass-produced Combs but it had a a
00:58:17
printing on it right so the printing on it was 79th Army Reserve command from norst toown Pennsylvania so this this is
00:58:26
going to be a lead for the investigators here now they only find a partial fingerprint an unidentified partial
00:58:39
fingerprint but other than and there I guess there were some fibers that were found as well but again with partial
00:58:46
fingerprints and some fibers it's hard to sit there and look at it on day one and know is this evidence or just stuff
00:58:53
that we should be finding in the car so police really working out of the gate here Captain find not a whole lot of
00:59:02
stuff in the in the vehicle that could link them to the potential killer or Killers or even where the kids may be if
00:59:10
I'm law enforcement 1979 I'm confused as hell why the hell is Susan in this Motel
00:59:18
parking lot why is she dead where is her children I'm going to talk to the ex-husband we get some answers from him
00:59:27
but really we just get more confusion then we do the toxicology report that makes it to me even more confusing we
00:59:35
have almost three methods of death in a sense we're looking we're still looking for these children so they're going to
00:59:42
go look at Susan's house and if they don't find the children there hopefully there's some sort of evidence to answer
00:59:49
any of these questions well what they're going to get I think Captain is more of
00:59:54
a mystery but one one thing that they can sort out is the statements from the neighbors will prove to be true because
01:00:05
remember the neighbors some of them able to describe what the kids were wearing saying that everybody's alive and well
01:00:11
the kids were outside playing the family of three eventually leaves in the 9:00 hour to go to Parts Unknown where
01:00:21
they're going nobody seems to know but remember they were not supposed to be leaving until Saturday morning for their
01:00:28
out of town trip and neighbors say none of them report seeing them carrying suitcases to the car well and to me this
01:00:36
is very eerie like I this this makes the the hair on my my arms stand up the first thing that police notice at the
01:00:46
veh inside the the family's home is they go into the children's bedrooms in the kids' bedrooms they find
01:00:56
suitcases open on the bed with clothing folded and stacked neatly next to each of the kids
01:01:06
suitcase almost like preparing to pack packed yet yeah and the the way that I picture this and the way that I think
01:01:15
that it played out is kids are outside playing you know at some point when you're a teenager you start packing your
01:01:22
own bag but they're 10 and 11 mom is is very likely starting the packing process
01:01:28
they're going to leave early Saturday morning from all accounts she had booked a hotel room for Saturday night nothing
01:01:36
was booked for Friday night so it looks to me like Mom's busy inside packing and
01:01:42
preparing for tomorrow morning kids are outside playing and then something must have happened to put a stop to that
01:01:49
because those kids were going to sleep in those beds that night right she would have finished the packing job before the
01:01:55
end of the night but something must have happened to to cause the three of them to hop in a car and take
01:02:05
[Music] off want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage stay tuned until
01:02:20
tomorrow so much more to get to until then be good be kind and don't live [Music]