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Principal Suspect

The True Story of Dr. Jay Smith and the Main Line Murders

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About this listen

Joseph Wambaugh's Echoes in the Darkness and its subsequent TV dramatization have made household words of both Susan Reinert, the murder victim, and Dr. Jay Smith, a high school principal and her accused killer. The naked body of Susan Reinert, a suburban Philadelphia school teacher, was found jammed into the hatchback of a car. Her two young children were missing and never found.

Thus began one of the most prominent murder cases in Pennsylvania history, and one that would grip the nation. Now the defense attorney for the main suspect of the murders - Jay Smith, the principal of the school where Reinert taught - takes you inside the cover-ups and corruption that dramatically affected the outcome of the case. Did Jay Smith do it? Did he deserved the death penalty? It is you who must decide.

Contains mature themes.

©1996, 2014 William C. Costopoulos (P)2021 Tantor Crime Murder True Crime
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One of the best true crime books I have ever listened to. And I thought that I had listened to all of them. Narration by Campbell is also great as usual. Faultless

Great book

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The true story about the murder of Susan reinart and disappearance of her two children definitely jay smith and William bradfield were guilty of the crimes committed here and trying to get there hands on three quarters of a million this book and echoes in the darkness would be great to have on your bookshelf buy the book you’ll be glad you did highly recommended

Great book

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Narrative was so confusing I was totally lost by just chapter 5 and gave up. Narrator was terrible, sounded like Grampa Simpson. Don’t waste your time, far better true crime audiobooks out there.

Don’t bother

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I was unable to finish listening to this. Not only was the narrative confusing and frankly quite boring but I could not listen to the trial phase of this book because the constant repetition of ‘Question’ followed by ‘Answer’ throughout the questioning of witnesses almost drove me mad. Why was it necessary for the narrator to do this since it is so blatantly obvious when the lawyer was asking questions of the witness and the witness replies?

Gave up!

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