Main Line Murders /// Part 1 /// 791 | Forensic Files

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

Main Line Murders /// Part 1 /// 791

Part 1 of 2

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The Main Line Murders is the largest and longest running murder investigation ever conducted by the Pennsylvania State Police. On June 25th, 1979 the naked corpse of schoolteacher Susan Reinsert was found wedged into her hatchback car in a motel parking lot. Her two children Michael and Karen have not been seen since June 22, 1979. They were just ten and eleven years old, respectively. The two children were last seen playing in front of their mother’s house. Why did the family of three leave their home late that Friday night? Where were they going and why? This is a murder mystery with too many unanswered questions.

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses the Mainline Murders, focusing on Susan Riner's murder and her missing children.

Key points

Empire on Blood Podcast. A gripping limited series podcast exploring a complex murder case in the Bronx.
The Mainline Murders. A chilling investigation into the murder of a school teacher and the disappearance of her children.
Search for Missing Children. A passionate police officer leads the charge to find two missing kids after a murder.
The Secret Relationship. Susan was involved with Bill Bradfield, her colleague, complicating the narrative.
The Last Known Sighting. The last confirmed sighting of Susan and her children was at 9:20 p.m. on Friday.
Confusion for Law Enforcement. Law enforcement faces a perplexing situation with no trace of the missing children.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Empire on Blood takes us deep inside the belly of the Beast.

Podcast recommendation

0:19WatchOct 9, 2024

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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