- Amidst the sprawling cityscape of Dallas where power and prosperity intersect with secrets and lies. Sandra Bridewell story, unravel Bridewell was a beautiful alluring socialite in the affluent enclave of Highland Park when Dallas was the world's most popular TV show. And the Dallas Cowboys were America's team.
It is a tail woven with deception, sex, and the dark underbelly of high society in a close knit community known as the Beverly Hills of the Southwest Highland Park, known infamously as the Black widow. Sandra's life story reads like a script from a classic thriller. Her charm and beauty masking a sinister reality of purported suicides, murders, beatings, romance scams, religious cons, and identity theft.
True crime author John Lee peels back the layers of Sandra Bradwell's enigmatic persona in the meaning of malice On the trail of the Black Widow of Highland Park, you suspect that Sandra Bridewell is not only a black widow, but a serial killer. - I do. I, I believe after evaluating all of the evidence, circumstantial and physical evidence displayed in these death scene photos, I say death scene because they were originally ruled.
The first two violent deaths I looked at were ruled suicides by the Dallas County Medical Examiner. I obtained copies of the photos. I had those photos examined by contemporary forensic experts. Remember we're talking 1975 and 1982. The first two cases I had these photos examined by contemporary forensic experts, really up to date in their training. And the evidence displayed in the photos shows that these were not self-inflicted. There was another party involved.
So that physical evidence displayed in photos combined with the circumstantial evidence in witness testimony leads me to believe that Sandra Bradwell is in fact an officially undetected serial killer. Now, now I say officially because law enforcement has never arrested her or even subjected her to a difficult interview. But she's long been suspected of involvement in these deaths. - Sandra Broadwell arrived in Dallas in 1950 as a child after her mother had been killed in a car accident.
Her father's soft drink bottling business had fallen on hard times. He lost his leg in a hunting accident. He remarried and sold cemetery plots. Sandra did not get along with her stepmother, and she had a burning desire to get out of South Oak Cliff, a working class neighborhood across the Trinity River from downtown Dallas. - Sandra went to, I think, a pretty good public school called the Kimball School and, and Oak Cliff, which is rhythm and blues.
People will be familiar with that from their familiarity with the biography of Stevie Ray Vaughn. Stevie Ray Vaughn was a Kimball High School graduate about a year after Sandra. So I don't think that it was a, um, a rough neighborhood per se. But given what we now know about Sandra's social aspirations, I think it was perceived as a humble neighborhood. - And what is it there that sort of triggers this yearning and this desire to be a socialite in Dallas?
- I think that's a fascinating question that runs through this whole story. You know, there was a, an article in D magazine about cinder, the, the Cinderella syndrome that seems to be so prevalent in Dallas culture. The, the report was published in the nineties, but it's talking about how Dallas, something about our culture here. You know, Neiman Marcus, the Dallas Cowboys, the Meins, the Hunts seems to promote this Cinderella aspiration. Pretty girl, rich man. Mm-Hmm. .
And this seems to have really ignited in Sandra's imagination. Um, I'm a beautiful girl. Um, I'm talented and she was, I'm talented. I've learned about cooking, French cooking and culture and interior decorating. I'm gonna find myself a wealthy man. She went to Tyler Junior College, which in those days was in the dead center of the East Texas oil patch, where these huge fortunes had been made.
And it seems to me likely that already then in the early sixties, she was hoping to land perhaps the son of, uh, east Texas, you know, oil family. The interesting thing about that is she didn't do that when she was at Tyler Junior College for a year, but later she did in the person of Bobby Bridewell, he actually came from a Tyler Texas oil family.
- And that oil money from the East Texas oil field, it flowed into Dallas, into Highland Park, which is, uh, surrounded by the city of Dallas as a separate city, but it's also referred to as the Beverly Hills of the Southwest. And today, you, it's a who's who of, you know, Jerry Jones has got an estate there, the Perots, and I can, you can just tick off, especially the oil money that is there. - You know, there are all of these oil families that built beautiful homes in, in Highland Park.
Interestingly enough, a lot of people don't realize this. David Wilbur Cook, who is the landscape designer for Beverly Hills, he also did the layout for Highland Park. So it's an apt comparison. - How does she take root in Highland Park? She met, she meets this young upcoming dentist. How, how does that come about? - That's a great question.
Um, and it's kind of, sort of a romantic, sort of a youthful, sexy moment In Dallas, there was a, in the sixties, there was an apartment complex right off of University Avenue near Southern Methodist University called the Spanish Trace. And the developers of the Spanish Trace were friends with Eddie Ackerman, who was the, the CEO of Braniff Airlines.
And in the conception of this apartment complex, they had the idea, this is where the young and the beautiful and the rich, you know, are going to live as they're getting their start in Dallas. So the Spanish Trace was a real scene. It had a swimming pool, you know, it's the sixties. And by some favorable arrangement with Braniff, they had a certain number of apartments allotted to beautiful braniff stewardesses, which would in turn draw in the, the well-healed, um, handsome young men.
So Sandra lived in an apartment across the street from the Spanish Trace called the Windsor House. Her first husband, a guy named David Stegel, was a graduate of the Baylor School of Dentistry. He lived at the Spanish Trace. And so that's where they, they met, he was young, he was handsome, um, and very, we don't think of dentistry as a very glamorous profession, but he was studying with a famous reconstructive dentist in Beverly Hills.
And I, I suddenly, his name is slipping me, um, doesn't matter. But he was a well-known reconstructive dentist in Beverly Hills. He was kind of the dentist to the stars in getting your teeth, your smile perfect for the camera. David Stegel was making trips out to California to train with the guy. And in he, as he mentioned to a friend, and in one notable moment, they had Paul Newman in the dental chair. So I imagine he told Sandra that this is what he aspired
to do, and, um, she found it compelling. Well, - You know, and, and Braniff Airlines really reflected this high fashion life in the fast lane because, you know, it had a certain motif painted on the aircraft, but they were the first to outfit all of their flight attendants in fashions done by famous designers. The interiors were done by famous designers. - Salvador Dali was a designer. Yeah, - Yeah. And, and, and the flight attendants had to meet this, this criteria for beauty.
You know, there was one slight flaw. A tooth didn't look just white enough, they didn't make the grade. Yeah. - This is, this is the early era of, of, of jet travel. And there was this, I mean, now we just take for granted that jet travel is kind of a beat down, but in those days it was new, it was glamorous. And I think Braniff and Pan Am had kind of deals with Hilton. Hilton Hotels, was very aggressively building properties in places like Acapulco, Mexico.
One of the things that the Spanish traces, um, if you signed a one year lease at the trace, you were invited for the annual Acapulco Bash in which you would be flown down on Braniff. And so they were really cultivating this era of glamor and sex appeal. - So Sandra Bridewell must have thought, she's hit the jackpot. She's living there, she's in the midst of all of this. What she's around 22 years old and here's this up and coming dentist.
- Yeah. And so what becomes evident pretty quickly is she had very unrealistic expectations of how much a dentist could earn, uh, compared to a guy working in oil, gas, real estate or banking. I mean, remember, dentistry isn't scalable. I mean, you can only spend so many hours in a dental chair or working on a dental chair. And so one of the first things that she does, they purchase a house in Greenway Parks, which is immediately adjacent to the Park cities. Also a very beautiful neighborhood.
She hires John Aston Perkins to be her interior designer. Now, he was a Yale trained art historian and interior designer who was the designer of Ross Perot. Clint Murson, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. So quite quickly, David realizes while this interior design projects antiques, tapestries original oil paintings is, um, it's, it's, it's outstripping my income. - Yeah. In a chapter in your book, the Meaning of Malice, that chapter is titled A Black Belt in Home Decorating .
- Yes. That, that Clint Marcus and Sr said of his first wife. She has a black belt and shopping. Apparently Clint's first wife would go to Neiman Marcus and literally buy every single dress and her size, every single she'd just clean out the joint. And of course, Clint Murchison possessed an enormous oil fortune so he could afford it. I borrowed that phrase, not shopping, although Sandra had a black belt and shopping as well.
But home decorating was her thing, and she had a black belt in it for sure. - And Murchison was the original owner of the Dallas Cowboys. Correct. Back ball at oil money. - Correct. So it was, you know, I think of this era, I think in 1974 you had the Israeli, um, uh, Arab Israeli war and the oil embargo. So, so oil in between 74 and 1980, it shot up to over a hundred dollars per barrel.
So these independent oil and gas companies in Dallas were suddenly if, if provided they add good leases at the time, you know, were coining money. And it's interesting because this was an era of stagflation in the United States as a whole. So Dallas really was standing out as a bright spot in the American economy.
And, and with America's team, the Dallas Cowboys, these mediagenic players with Neiman Marcus, some of these kind of keytones of Dallas glamor, it attracted these Hollywood producers to come up with this TV series Dallas. And the first episode was shot in 1978, and this is the same year in which Sandra Bridewell marries her second husband, Bobby Bridewell, after a few years after her first husband, apparently David Stegel, the dentist, apparently committed suicide.
- So at that point, we're talking, um, beginning of 1975, she has driven this young husband to the brink of bankruptcy. He's in debt, he's in trouble. And then suddenly she's phones a friend and says, something terrible has happened to David. - Yes. Before she called the police. I mean, this was something I pieced together after the fact. But it all hangs together. It's something has happened to David.
And the story she told is, I was sleeping in a different room, the implication being we were estranged. And I got up the next morning around seven o'clock, I went into the master bedroom. And already upon entering the room, I could see he was lying in a pool of blood. It, it frightened me. So we now know, or I discovered, she didn't call the police. She called some friends, a prominent dentist who knew David.
I believe she called maybe another medical man as well. And - They, what they rush over in to sea, in the bedroom, in the bed dead before the police have even - Correct, which I, I, I can only speculate about what she was doing there, but, but I believe she was putting a layer of insulation between her and the police. In other words, when the police arrive, she's sort of beside herself with, with emotion. And these men who are sort of coming there to assist, establish her social bonafides.
These are serious guys. These are medical guys, prominent people in the community. I believe when law enforcement arrived, they perceived, wow, this is a socially integrated woman. And already straight off the bat, you see a lack of serious inquiry, a lack of serious examination of what's gone on here. They survey the death scene in the marital bed. Apparently at the time it sort of looked like suicide, like he'd shot himself in bed. The medical examiner did not perform an autopsy.
He only performed an external examination. And I ultimately obtained the external examination report. And then later I obtained the death scene photos. They tell a different story than that of suicide. The, the, the first thing I noticed, just reading the external exam report was on his forearm, nowhere near where the radial artery comes up into the wrist where you take the pulse, but like the forearm proper, where the muscle and, and a lot of fascia tissue is.
The medical examiner describes these relatively superficial incisions as - If he was trying to commit suicide, - Cut his wrist suicide as if he was, as if he was trying to commit suicide with some kind of cutting instrument. And the implication is, well, that didn't work these incisions to his right forearm. So he then took this pistol, 22 caliber target pistol and shot himself in the head. So the first question I asked was, and I spoke, some of his old dental buddies were still alive.
You know, why would he slash himself on the forearm? I mean, the medical examiner notes that it, it didn't incise any major blood vessel. He knew David knew that. I mean, he studied a year of anatomy at the Baylor School of Dentistry. He knew this would have no lethal effect. It would be painful, it would be upsetting and distressing to cut oneself on the forearm. But he knew that it would have no lethal effect. So why did he do this before shooting himself in the head?
And then when I looked at the, the, the death scene photos, you can see from the bloodstain pattern, he never moved his right arm never moved. So it's not like he climbs into bed with a razor slashes himself, thinks to himself, you know, oh no, I'm not bleeding out. I'm gonna have to go find a pistol. The bloodstain shows he got into bed with a loaded and cocked pistol was lying there and, and never moved.
So in other words, if you follow the logic of this, I'm gonna get into bed with a pistol ready to go, the cartridge chambered, but before I shoot myself in the head, I'm gonna slash myself to no lethal effect on the right forearm. I just found that strange. And then, but then when I got the photos and I started looking closely at the photos, um, the first thing you notice is he's been tucked in.
So the, the way the, the bedding is tucked along the backside of his legs, the backside of his buttocks, someone has smoothed out the comforter on the right side of the bed and then tucked him in. The comforter is drawn up over his left hand lying outstretched, left hand lying on the weapon. The comforter is drawn up over that. Now it's impossible to shoot yourself in the left side of the head with the pistol. The hand then falls on the bed,
and then to then draw the covers up. That's impossible. - And you tracked down the origin of the pistol, the, - The, the gun revolver. Yeah. The gun belonged to one of David's close friends who lived in a big fancy house just north of Preston Center in Dallas. David's medical offices were impressed and center. Um, Sandra was very close with this man's wife I know from multiple witnesses. Sandra was always hanging around over at the house. The ladies both had a love of champagne.
They would hang around at the pool, drink champagne into the evening. The pistol was found or was known to be in a dr, a dresser in the back house, apartment over the garage. I do not believe that David went into the back house, apartment over the garage and stole the pistol. I believe the totality of circumstances indicates that she did. - And David was the father of their three children. But the people that came to console her, you talked to them and they were kind of bothered.
She had a cheerful demeanor. And she leaves without even taking the portraits of her children. - You're referencing his dental office. So David had worked all of these years to become a reconstructive dentist. Um, and in his office, he had three portraits of his chil of his three children by, um, Giddings, the famous studio photographer.
And when Sandra sold his dental practice to, uh, interestingly enough, a female dentist in Dallas, the female dentist said, God, these giddings portraits of your three beautiful children, that they're, they're beautiful, like come by and get them any time. And she just thought it was notable that Sandra never came by to get the photos. - A year after burying her first husband, who suspicious death with a handgun was ruled a suicide.
Sandra struck up a relationship with a very wealthy, high profile restaurateur. - She goes on the hunt, and probably the most interesting, uh, relationship that she had, um, in, in the year after David died of a purported suicide was, was with Norman Brinker, who was a famous entrepreneur. He was an Olympic equestrian, I believe it was the 1952 Olympics in Seoul, Korea. A a real man in full, a man about town, um, handsome Rich.
He da Norman Brinker is famous for starting this whole new style of dining in the United States. It's somewhere between fast food and really formal, there's a categorical name for this, um, casual dining chains that are affordable for middle class families. But you nevertheless took your family and sat down and had proper service. So Steak and Ale was an early norm. Brinker. And then ultimately he, I think he was involved in Chili's, TGI, Fridays, you know, multiple casual dining chains.
And, and he made a great fortune. Norm Brinker is really one of the great restaurateurs of all time in, in terms of, um, his portfolio, Sandra, and, and encountered Norm. And as he perceived it at the time, it was a fortuitous encounter at a car wash. And he found her very charming. He invited her out on a date, and they had a brief romance or, uh, a fairly high profile. They were, they were spotted about town. Sadly, for Sandra, it was not to last.
- So now she goes on the hunt for other wealthy men. Is she doing that at this point, at the church she's attending, or is it some other social function? But is she, is she even showing up in their offices? - So, church, St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, um, I and I have taken pains to protect the identity for the family. She did seduce a church warden at St. Michael, a married man, a very wealthy man, and was able to extract how to put it, well, I'll just jump to it.
She persuaded him to co-sign a loan. He thought he was just guaranteeing the loan that so that she could get the loan and service the loan herself. She didn't pay a penny of the loan. Um, and when he countersued her, or it was a cross action suit, he was sued by the lender for non-performance.
He then did a cross action suit against Sandra for non-performance of the loan, at which point she revealed with the court reporter present that the loan arrangement had come about following the commencement of an intimate relationship, . And as she began to speak with the court reporter typing away about the details of their intimate relationship, his attorney waved the whole thing off and said, we'll, settle the matter. Let's just forget it.
We'll petition the court to dismiss this with prejudice. And it's an interesting moment in Sandra's career because she realized if you're a married man and you're a high profile guy, and particularly if your public image is that of a church warden, you are going to take great pains to avoid exposure. - What was about her that made her so alluring? You know, I, I read how you, I've read how she would touch men on the arm as she told them something.
Would you describe her? She was apparently a striking brunette. But what was this other aura that just sort of exuded sex? - I think, and I remember, I, I encountered Sandra multiple times in my early teenage years. I lived down the street from her. Um, and I even as a 13 and 14-year-old boy, remember this smoldering. Now, I I wouldn't have described it in these terms at the time, I didn't know, I didn't know what I was looking at. But 13, 14, it's at a time of awakening sexuality.
I, I remember even then thinking there's something mesmerizing about this woman. She had these big brown eyes that would just hold you in her gaze and whatever you were saying. And I mean, look, I was 13 or 14. I was probably talking about a BMX bike or something. She would hold you with this gaze as, as though it was the most fascinating thing she'd ever heard. And she had this lustrous brown hair.
And what I remember and what other men have have admired was this, this, uh, white skin, this, this milky white skin that contrasted with her raven hair and brown eyes. So she was, she was devastating, particularly if you were a man who had not had this kind of attention from a woman like that, you know, for a long time, if ever, - Sandra Bridewell will have a devastating effect on men and women in the years to come.
In part two of our three episode series Beneath the Charm Unveiling the Black Widow, John Lee, explores more mysterious shooting deaths than Sandra Bridewell Social Web. It's a tale of intrigue and sorrow. You will not want to miss.