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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy Dahmer The Nightstalker VTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Good Evening. Sandra Bridwell was a beguiling Dallas socialite in the seventies and early eighties. Her first husband was a prominent dentist who has found shot to death in their home in nineteen seventy five. The medical examiner ruled his death a suicide. Her second husband, Robert Bridwell, developed the mansion on Turtle Creek, the first property of Rosewood Hotels
and Resorts. Shortly after mister Bridwell died of lymphoma. In nineteen eighty two, his treating doctor's wife was found shot to death in her car at love Field, a few hours after giving Sandra a ride to the airport. The medical examiner ruled the woman's death a suicide. Three years later, Sandra's third husband was found shot to death in his car, in which he was last seen driving to meet her. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, and Sandra
became the prime suspect, but was never arrested. In nineteen eighty seven. Sandra was the subject of a D magazine feature titled The Black Widow that suggested she had indeed murdered her third husband, as well as her first husband and the wife of the prominent cancer doctor who had treated mister Bridewell. Author John Leake grew up in Highland Park, down the street from Sandra Bridewell, and often visited her at her home to play with one of her children.
He began his multi year investigation in two thousand and seven when Sandra was arrested for aggravated identity theft. Assuming the guise of a Christian missionary, she ingratiated herself with an elderly lady in Southport, North Carolina, near Cape Fear to steal the unsuspecting victim's identity and to plunder her financial assets. Leake visited Bridewell in pre trial detention and
began documenting her life and wanderings. He then investigated the three gunshot deaths reported in the D magazine feature with the assistance a former Los Angeles criminalist Lynn Harrow and d former FBI forensic psychologist Greg McCrary. Dallas police photos of the first two death scenes display physical evidence that they were not suicides, but murders that were staged to
look like suicides. These murders bear striking similarities to the murders of Sandra Bridewell's third husband, and she was the last known contact of all three descendants. After serving two years in a federal penitentiary for aggravated identity theft, she was released in twenty ten and now Rome's free. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Meaning of Malice on the Trail of the Black Widow of Highland Park with my special guest, investigative journalist and author John Leek.
Good evening, and welcome to the program.
John Leek, Thanks for having me, Dan, This is great.
Thank you so much, and thank you very much for this interview on this extraordinary book.
I'm delighted and i appreciate your interest in it. It is a story I've investigated for many years, so I'm thrilled that you're.
Interested in it.
Before we start, this extraordinary tale and set in July sixteenth, nineteen eighty two, in your first chapter here, tell us how you came to be involved in this story, just your background and connection to this area and to this story.
I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. I had the good fortune to grow up in an affluent, independent township in the middle of Dallas County.
It's called Highland Park.
Highland Park has its own police force and school districts, and it's known in Texas as the Bubble. I think the idea is that it's shielded from the ills that affect the rest of humanity. That's not true, but anyway, that's the public perception. It's an affluent place. I was born in nineteen seventy and around the year nineteen seventy eight, I was just a boy, an eight year old. It
was only something I gradually became aware of. There was a lady named Sandra Bridewell, and she and her new husband, a very popular, something of a society lion in Dallas. His name is Bobby Bridewell.
They bought a house right.
Down the street from my childhood home, and in the year nineteen eighty three, I became friends with Sandra's second child, a girl named Catherine. Katherine and I were the same age. We were playmates or classmates at school. I started hanging around with Catherine, hanging around at the Bridewell House, and through that experience I became acquainted with Sandra Bridewell.
And to quickly jump forward.
After I became acquainted with Sandra, she a few years later landed on the front cover of our local glossy monthly magazine, D Magazine. It's called very popular local magazine
about events and people in Dallas. There was Sandra, my friend's mom and my neighbor, on the front cover of a very salacious, sensational story, the title of which was The Black Widow and the Although the authors of the of the feature did not come out and directly accuser has the title of the piece strongly insinuated she was under suspicion for committing multiple murders. And so that was quite a stunner. When I saw the front cover of
that D Magazine piece. I read the piece with great avid interest, and sure enough it would have seemed, based on reading that report, that Sandra was under strong suspicion for the gunshot death of her first husband in nineteen eight excuse me, nineteen seventy five. Then a friend of hers was found shot to death. Sandra was the last known contact in eighty two, and then Sandra's third husband was found shot to death in nineteen eighty five. She
was the last known contact of all three. So that piece came out in May of nineteen eighty seven, and the story has haunted me ever since.
You say that you got involved in two thousand and seven. But in this book you take us to again Lovefield Airport in Dallas, July sixteenth, nineteen eighty two. In the short term parking lot. There is a blue Mercedes three hundred station wagon and the family is there. Tell us what happens, what is discovered?
Hey, Mercedes, Ben's mechanic and his children are along for the ride. They're giving his cousin a ride to love Field Airport. He remarks to his children, look at that beautiful car. Someday I'll save up enough to buy one of those, and that prompts the curiosity of his small children. They park the car their he the father's pulling luggage out of it. The children wander over to the car and peer into it, and they see what appears to be a young woman who is not moving. Her body
is slumped all the way across the center console. Her upper body is actually lying on the passenger seat of the vehicle. One of the children. Says to the father, Daddy, there's a lady in this car, and she looks sick. He it's very hot at summertime in Dallas, it's ninety five degrees. He sees the windows are rolled up, the engine's not running. He immediately is alarmed by that thought
of her having a heat stroke in the car. He runs over to the vehicle, peers into the window and sees blood running out of her nose and sees what through the window what appears to be a small revolver, a snubnosed revolver in her right hand. He calls her. He runs into the terminal, notifies the terminal security.
They call the police.
The police come and they at first glance they perceived this woman and her name is Betsy Bagwell. They the police, the investigating officers, and a medical examiner field agent. It would seem that she's shot herself in the head while sitting in the driver's seat, and based on their perception, they draw the conclusions she has slumped over onto the passenger seat. There is a very cursory investigation of this.
The homicide detective on the case. He goes from Dallas Lovefield Airport to Betsy Bagwell's home which is in smack Dab in the middle of Highland Park, which is about a fifteen minute drive from love Field, and he goes to notify the next of ken, that is the husband who was a very prominent oncologist, the prominent cancer doctor in Dallas. And what I can tell you now kind
of leave you with suspenses. The homicide detective perceived when he arrived at the Bagwell residence that somehow the husband seemed to not be surprised by the news that his young wife had just been found shot in her car at love Field. The homicide detective makes the deduction that the husband must have somehow known, perhaps by way of
a suicide note, that she was suicidal. That is a deduction that the homicide detective makes, which would explain why the husband is apparently not surprised by the news of his wife's gunshot death. In fact, the plot thickens considerably. But one of the things that I examined as I got into my investigation is why why didn't the Dallas police perceive the suspicious circumstances of this death?
And they didn't.
Their initial impression was suicide, and the decedent's husband did not really say anything, at least not in a vehement way to challenge that perception. I always found that intriguing. A very cursory account of Betsy's death was written in this d magazine piece.
But it was very, very.
Superficial and cursory, and so even at the time, as a sixteen year old boy, I was intrigued by that. And I think that the death of Betsy Bagwell at love Field Airport in nineteen eighty two, I believe it's it's the moral and the dramatic heart of this story which happened right in my community.
Yes, let's get to Bobby Bridewell. You say his father was a famous oil man, successful oil man, and so was Bobby. But Bobby was a fun guy. He was a different guy. Friends with musicians, people like James Brown. He was a real fun guy. And he was a hotel developer and a creative genius according to his friends. Tell us who catches his eye in the fall of nineteen seventy seven, and what is his circumstances in terms of his own personal relationship?
Why I applaud your recollection of the story. Yeah, Bobby, he came from a Tyler, Texas oil family. It's kind of an interest worth a brief digression. Tyler is in the middle of the East Texas oil field, excuse me, one of the great oil fields in American petroleum history. H. L. Hunt Herbert Lamar Hunt, at one point was the richest man in the world. He made his fortune in the East Texas oil patch. Bobby grew up in Tyler. His dad was an oil man. His dad's nickname was slant
hole Billy. His name was William Bridwell, but in petroleum circles he's called slant hole Billy. And that's because he got caught horizontal drilling into a Texico lease, So slant hoole horizontal drilling. In other words, he was he was stuck as straw in someone else's milkshake and got caught. And so Bobby did not follow his dad's footsteps into the oil business. He caught into hotel development and it
was very good at it. He became friends with Eric Hilton and some big money guys that invested in his hotel. Richard Pugh of the Sun Oil Trust and Bobby were friends. Bobby was also interested in racehorses, and he owned a racehorse at Thoroughbred racehorse breeding operation just north of Dallas. He had a beautiful Southern bell wife. His first marriage was a beautiful Southern bell from Virginia. He caught her having an affair with the horse trainer, and that would
have been in somewhere around nineteen seventy seven. Was very despondent about it. It dampened his usually enthusiastic high spirits for fun and for life, kind of knocked down his ego a bit. And the fall of seventy seven his friends were really worried about him, and they thought we got to cheer him up. So for his thirty six birthday, they invited a young woman. Her name at that time
was Sandras Stiegel. Sandra's first husband was a guy named David Stiegel, a prominent dentist who apparently committed suicide as people understood it at the time, committed suicide, shot himself in his marital bed in his home, and so thereby widowing Sandra. But Sandra was known as a very beautiful, vivacious, fun girl. So one of his buddies invited Sander to the party to cheer Bobby up, and they set it up where she jumped out of a giant birthday cake
wearing a slinky dress. Bobby was quite charmed. Sandra was a very beautiful girl, and quickly was smitten and proposed marriage just a few months later. So now Sandra, who is a widow just a few years later, is now married to Bobby Bridwell, who's probably no exaggeration to say he's the most popular guy.
In Dallas society.
I mean literally just everybody loves Bobby, and so Sandra briefly enjoys a period is something like a Dallas social lighte and Bobby was friends with the Hunts and the Winds and all of these oil people in Dallas. So she's invited to the cattle barons ball in the society, you know, charity balls and all this kind of stuff, and she cut quite a figure. Unfortunately, Bobby was not
long for this world. He was diagnosed with lymphoma at the end of well, I should say beginning of nineteen eighty, and it soon became apparent, I think late eighty maybe eighty one, that he was a goner. It was around the end of Bobby's life that Sandra, by multiple witness accounts, took a fancy in his treating doctor his treating doctor, doctor John Bagwell. Like I said, he was a prominent doctor. He's probably the go to cancer doctor for Dallas society.
My grandmother was his patient in nineteen eighty, the same year as is Bobby Bridewell, and Sandra took a fancy to the doctor. It was about two months after Bobby Bridewell's succumb to lymphoma that the doctor's wife, Betsy was then found shot to death at love Field.
Yes, and police make no connection whatsoever between these two things, do they.
Well. Sandra actually showed up at the Bagwell residence on the night of bets He's death while the police were still there, and she said, I was just dining with some friends when doctor Bagwell called me at the restaurant and he was frantically looking for Betsy. And he asked me if I knew where she was, and I said that I did not. I had not seen Betsy since about five o'clock this afternoon.
Betsy.
This is what Sandra tells the Dallas police. Betsy gave me a ride to love Field Airport to rent a car, and when we arrived at the airport, I discovered I'd forgotten my driver's license, so Betsy gave me a ride back to my vehicle that had broken down. And when we got back to my vehicle, I thought, you know, it wouldn't start earlier, but maybe it will start now. I got into my vehicle. To my pleasant surprise, it started up. And so I parted company from Betsy at
five o'clock at the church. Don't know why she would then drive back to love Field and enter the parking lot and shoot herself, but I don't know. She must have been despondent. So the Dallas police sort of take notes from Sandra and they don't pursue any kind of examination of her. And as I discovered, it's rather strange. The doctor's wife, excuse me, the doctor's husband, doctor John Bagwell, for whatever reasons.
I mean, this is my starting point.
It seems that he is not telling the police to take a look at Betsy's last known contact. He doesn't, at least not with any vehemence, encourage the police to examine sand Or Bridewell, even though by Sandra's own account, she was Betsy's last known contact.
When Detective Coughlin speaks with Sandra, she tells him about what Betsy had said regarding suicide.
What Sandra told Detective Coglin was, I spent the day with Betsy. We talked about many themes, and one of the things that she wanted to talk to me about was the suicide of my first husband. She seemed very curious about that, and we want to know about my husband's suicide and how he did it and why he did it, and so that was one of the things we talked about. Sandra also told the police to that
Betsy seemed despondent. She mentioned a nurse at her husband's house hospital that she was concerned about, and so the implication that Sandra, or the impression she made on the detective was that Betsy was despondent, she had wanted to
speak expressly with Sandra about suicide. So the police records of all of this are rather thin, but it seems clear from what Detective Coglin did write in his supplemental report and what a medical examiner field agent wrote in his that the police detective concluded that Betsy must have had something like suicidal ideation and must have committed suicide, and that Sandra Bridwell's statement could just be taken at face value.
Tell us about you write about that her daughter was pursuing John Bagwell was in terms of trying to convince him that they needed a new daddy. And you also talk about private eye al Teel, who was hired by doctor Bagwell to look into this Sandra's background. So tell us about what he does find and yeah, tell us what Altel finds.
Well.
So what happens is a month after the case is closed on Betsy. What I was able to determine, and it was not easy. Doctor Bagwell did not want to speak to me. He refused to and nor did Betsy's closest friends agree to speak to me. Even though I have good family connections with these people. They preferred silent.
So it wasn't wasn't immediate. But what I was able to discover is that a month after Betsy's death, doctor Bagwell went and had a private meeting with the Dallas County medically And you can see from the medical Examiner's memo of the conversation it was a discreet and collegial conversation, and doctor Bagwell said, you know, the police ruled this a suicide, but you know, I'm concerned about the wife of a former patient who died of cancer. In spite of my best care, and she seems to have a
profound emotional problem. I don't want her to know that I'm trying to learn more about her.
I am.
This is doctor Bagwell telling the Medical Examiner. He says, I'm contemplating hiring a private investigator to examine this woman. And doctor Charles Petty, the Medical Examiner, notes in his memo, you know, I told doctor Bagwell, and this is important. You know, I can know more be certain of my suicide ruling, then he could be certain of a diagnosis in his clinical practice. So yes, hire a detective, and if you should discover something suspicious about this woman, let me know.
So that's clearly.
Noted and doctor Charles Petty the Medical Examiner's memo. But then only later, and I mean, you know this is years and years later, was I able to discover Doctor Bagwell did hire a private investigator, a guy named al Teel. Altel did look into Sandra, and he did put together a pretty good dosier of information, but he didn't give it to the medical examiner. It's nowhere in the medical
Examiner's records. And then there is a trace evidence special lists who confirm knowing never received anything further from doctor Bagwell or any of the professionals he had working for him. So it's this weird doctor Bagwell hired PI. The PI generated a dosia of information, but then that wasn't forwarded to the medical examiner. So what Tiald discovered is that Sandra continued to stalk doctor Bagwell even after the death
of Betsy. Sandra turned up at his medical offices. She cornered him in the parking lot, and yes, she had one of her children deliver a sort of childish drawing showing the Bagwell family united with the with the Bridewell family, and then the sort of child childish scrawled below this drawing saying, please take us all to Santa Fe. Marry my Mommy, take us all to Santa Fe where he had a.
Vacation home, and we'll all be so happy together.
That kind of freaked out doctor Bagwell receiving that note and with that childish drawing, he believed that Sandra had put the child up to it, and he was also freaked out about Sandra stalking at his medical offices. However, as I discovered from my investigation, and this is a very nuanced point, I could find no records of him telling the police, the Dallas Police, of divulging this information to the Dallas Police at the time the investigation was open.
He only disclosed these revelations or this information four years later, and that's getting into another chapter of this.
The Oklahoma City.
Police came to Dallas four years after Betsy's death investigating the death of Sandra Bridwell's third husband, whom Sandra met two years after Betsy's death. The third husband also turns up shot to death in his vehicle in Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma City Police come to Dallas because of indications that the victim had probably been shot in Dallas and his vehicle and his body then driven to Oklahoma City
and dumped in Oklahoma City. They came to Dallas to perform an investigation, and one of the guys who they spoke to.
Was doctor Bagwell. It was only then.
In an interview with the Oklahoma City Police that he divulged this information about san restalking.
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Now you had mentioned without saying his name, and you call this chapter fortuitous encounter with Alan Rayrigg. And you say that, you tell this incredible story about him just arriving in Dallas the day before he was working at this Nowland mortgage company real estate finance corporation, tell us about how he met Sandra Bridewell.
Well, this is really a fortuitous sort of twist of fate. So Alan Rairig, a twenty nine year old young man, had just arrived in Dallas the day He knew some of his work colleagues who lived in Dallas, but he
knew no one in Highland Park. But a colleague of his at the office said, you know, if you don't want to live in an apartment building, these people in Highland Park, they will sometimes rent apartments above their garage, like a garage apartment or a carriage house apartment as it was sometimes sort of called in an affected way. So you might go looking for a carriage house apartment
in Highland Park. So Alan, by a cruel twist of fate, happens to turn on to Lorraine Avenue, which again I lived on the same street, and sees this raven haired lady watering her azalea bushes in the front yard and he sees this beautiful woman and he just feels drawn to her, so he parks his vehicle, gets out, walks up to her, says, Hi, I you know, my name's Alan.
I heard that there are garage apartments. And she turns, makes this kind of gaze gazing eye contact with him and says, well, you know, please to make your acquaintance. I don't know of any garage apartments, but if you come back in half an hour, I'll give you a tour of the neighborhood. So he's sort of mesmerized by this girl and comes back half an hour.
In the interim, she's freshened up. They go for a ride.
She tells him that she's a widow, that her husband had died of cancer. She's raising three children on her own. And a whirlwind romance quickly ensues. And I could I can talk about this for a while anyway, I'll pause there.
Well, you say, that thing seems like a dream for this young man. He's just beginning his career, and he thinks this woman is not only beautiful and sexy, but also very very exciting and also wealthy.
He believes, Yeah, so no.
Alan mortgage company did deals with Rosewood, which is the real estate development company of Margaret Rose excuse me of not Margaret.
That's her sister. Suddenly her first name is slipping me.
Missus Rose Hunt is the sort of real estate development company. Her first property that she did was the mansion on Turtle Creek that Bobby Bridewell developed. He conceived the project and missus Hunt financed it. That then became the first property of Rosewood Hotels and Rosies Orts, which is now really one of the big luxury hotel companies in the world.
So no, Allan did deals with Rosewood. So all all Alan Rerig, who works for Alan Mortgage knows, is that, you know, Bobby Bridewell was this lady's husband, and he developed the mansion, and boy, he must have been a rich guy.
And Sandra is you know, his widow.
And she has this beautiful house in Highland Park, and so he thinks, correct, you said it just right. You know, not only is she a very beautiful and sexy woman, she seems to be a lady, a society lady of property. Now one of the eerie things about this is, unbeknownst to Alan, in fact, she's been totally ostracized in our community. After the death of Betsy Bagwell, most people in our community became frightened of Sandra. So she's just so persuasive
and her the way she carries herself. He doesn't really stop to think, you know, come to think of it, she doesn't really ever seem to be with other people. I mean, you know, maybe she's got a friend or two, but for example, with the exception of two women and one man, no one attended their.
Wedding on Sandra's side. And so it's kind of an eerie thing.
This young fellow who's just arrived, he thinks that he's, you know, met a remarkable woman of beauty, sex, appeal, and property. Unbeknownst to him, she's the most notorious woman in our community.
She meets Alan's mother, Gloria, and they talk and discuss things, and so Sandra says to Gloria that you think it might be time for us to have some insurance, some life insurance, and Gloria believes, yes, it is time. So they had discussed that and then tell us about the pregnancy.
Well, what I discovered is that in the fall of nineteen eighty four, Santra and Alan are having this kind of whirlwind romance, and she tells him, I'm pregnant. And you know, up till that moment, I mean, they've only just met a few months earlier, he seems to just be having fun. But in the moment she tells him I'm pregnant, you know, suddenly this is a lot more serious.
And he's kind of an.
Old fashioned Christian boy from Oklahoma, and so he feels he's going to do the right thing. So they may very very very quickly. Now, Alan does not tell his mom that the marriage was that the wedding ceremony was hastened by an apparent pregnancy. He doesn't tell his mom that and the baby's not showing at least, everyone thinks that it's because it's so early. Everyone later assumed it's because it's so early in the term that the baby
wasn't showing at the wedding. About three weeks after the wedding, Sandra tells Alan that she'd miscarried, and it was quite a bold pronouncement. She said, I you know, I miscarried and there were twins. You know, I miscarried twins. Unbeknownst to Alan, Sandra had had a hysterectomy about eight years earlier. The pregnancy that she claimed to have had was fraudulent that then necessitated telling a second lie, the second lie being that she'd miscarried, which.
Was of course very distressing to him.
So already at the outset of Sandra's relationship with Alan, you see a serious, a grave act of fraud, fraud in the inducement to Mary.
But Alan never knew that.
He was never made aware of this fraud in the inducement to Mary. It was something he never discovered on He did agree with Sandra, with his wife Anne, with his mom that Sandra had three children from a previous marriage. He was working at the real estate the mortgage company. He thought it would be a good idea to have a life insurance policy, so he purchased one in the spring of nineteen eighty five with a two hundred and
twenty thousand dollars death benefit. The marriage pretty shortly thereafter began to founder. The immediate cause of stress was her out of control spending. Sandra was a shopaholic, I guess you would say, constantly going to Neiman Marcus and other department stores and furniture and art and clothes and jewelry. And she very quickly racked up very very large consumer debts. Alan was just getting started in his career. It was
very financially distressing. They began to squabble and bicker about money, and by November the first, nineteen eighty five, so they've not even been married for a year, they separate. And they were separated for a month, and then Sandra proposed at the beginning of December that they meet. There was an immediate bit of business that she wanted to attend to. They had some stuff in a storage facility. The precise details of that only she now knows. Alan went to
meet her at the storage warehouse. He was staying with his friend at the time of their separation. He told his friend, I'm just running out to do an errand with Sandra. I'll be back for dinner. And he never returned from that appointment. That was the last he was ever seen alive. A few days later, his Ford Bronco was found park near an empty lot near the Oklahoma City Airport and his body was found in it, shot twice, once from the right through his torso and then once
in the back of the head. Sandra quickly became the prime suspect for his murder. She remains the prime suspect to this day.
You write later in this book and we'll talk a little bit about that and your own investigation into this. But they asked her, Sandra, one telling question that seemed to not register with the police, regarding the last time she saw her husband.
Yes, an Oklahoma City cold case investigator in the year two thousand and seventy, excuse me, two thousand and seven told a reporter for the Day Daily, Oklahoma. He said, we want to reopen this, this cold case, the murder of Norman Alan Rairig, and we want to take another look at his widow, Sandra Bridwell, and we have a strong investigative lead or a legal grounds for suspecting her. And so the cold case investigator tells the journalists for
the Daily Oakland Homan. On the night that Alan was found, a police investigator, apparently from the Dallas Police who received the memo from Oklahoma, Hey, we've found this guy. He's got Texas plates, the vehicles registered in an address in Dallas, So it was a Dallas cop.
It's not a formal.
Notification of kN becaut next of ken, which would have been done in person, because they haven't yet determined Allan's identity, wallet is not found on his body, no ideas found on his body. So the first order of business is who is this guy? So what the cop does?
He calls the Rare residence.
Sandra answers the phone, and he just says, was your husband wearing shorts in a navy sweater.
When you last saw him?
That's what the dead man in the bronco is wearing when they found him, and Sandra says yes, okay. The problem with that answer in the affirmative is that Sandra had already excuse me, which shortly thereafter, no, she already had pardon me. She had already said that Alan didn't make it to the appointment at the storage warehouse. So if that first assertion he never made it to the appointment is true, it raises the question when you were asked was he wearing shorts in a navy sweater?
Why did you answer yes? It's a good question.
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Now let's get to the most important part and the most fascinating part of this story is how you enter into this investigation and how do you undertake to try to attempt to do this reinvestigation.
I was long haunted by that d magazine piece that I told you about. It was written by Skip Hollinsworth, a very distinguished reporter who went on to have a big career, and it always just kind of stuck with me. I lived in Vienna, Austria for many years. That's where I began my career as a true crime author. My first book was about a Viennese serial killer named Jack Luntveger. Right at the time I finished the manuscript of my first book, I mean I had just sent it to
the publisher. I get a call from one of my mother's friends in Dallas saying Sandra has finally been arrested. The long arm of the law is finally caught up with her. She was arrested in Southport, North Carolina, in March of two thousand and seven for committing multiple acts of fraud against an elderly widow. Sandra was assuming the alias Camille Bowers and introduced herself to this elderly widow
as a Christian minister and missionary. She moved in with the old lady under the guise of being in between missions. She said, I'm scheduled to depart to Africa in a month, but in the interim, you know, I could live with you. I could help with cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping. The elderly widow was lonely and was delighted by this offer.
So Camille Bowers moves in with the old lady and promptly steals her identity, takes out credit cards in her name, tries to reroute her social Security benefit and the Social Security administration gets onto this. A local sheriff's deputy gets onto this. Sandra is arrested for multiple acts of fraud
against this old lady. I catch wind of this, I fly to Riley Durham, I go and I visit Sandra in pre trial detention, and she ultimately pled guilty to aggravated identity theft, which sounds like a kind of bureaucratic offense, but it's actually a grave felony. She served two years in a federal penitentiary for aggravated identity theft. And once I examined that and saw the same pattern of deception, manipulation, and fraud, that's when I decided to go back and
look at these gunshot deaths. The Oklahoma City Police never made a case against Sandra, which is rather mysterious because they're the totality of circumstances that Sandra murdered Norman Alan Rarig. In my opinion, I believe, based on my evaluation, I think would be sufficient to win a conviction if you presented the totality of circumstances to a jury.
In my opinion, I.
Believe that the.
Evidence is persuasive.
Nevertheless, the Oklahoma City Police did not make a case and they did not disclose any information to me. So I then focused my investigation on Sandra's first husband, who purportedly committed suicide in nineteen seventy five, and Betsy Bagwell, who purportedly committed suicide in nineteen eighty two. I was able to obtain the Dallas police photographs of the death scenes. Photographs were taken, and to my surprise, they were preserved.
They were still in the Records Division archive. I obtained those photographs, I showed them to two very imminent forensic experts and both agreed, and I think it's quite clear there aren't multiple signs displayed in these photographs that both husband Won and Betsy Bagwell did not commit suicide. There are multiple indications displayed clearly in the photos that another person was involved. And so what I concluded it is my opinion that the murder of Alan Rerigg was in
fact the third in a series of three. It began with Sandris's first husband, the dentist, then Betsy.
Bagwell, and then Alan Raig.
So you have a series of three gunshot deaths, and I believe, based on my analysis, that she is responsible for all three.
Just to throw a little something into the mix, there is a cousin that they deal with and his name is Robert Smith, and Robert Smith ends up dead as well.
A vehicle.
Yes, so that was not even The death of Robert Smith was not mentioned in the famous d magazine report of nineteen eighty seven. I only discovered that after I began my investigation. So remember, the third husband's name is Alan Raig.
He's found.
Sandra falls under suspicion, but she's still the executor of Allan's estate. She is primarily interested in the primary asset in the estate, which is a two hundred and twenty thousand dollars life insurance death benefit. Now remember this is nineteen eighty five dollars, so that's actually a pretty large sum of money. It's probably pushing about nine hundred thousand
dollars in today's dollars. So Sandra is trying to make the case that these bills that she herself had racked up they should be paid with part of the life insurance benefit, in that she should receive the rest. Alan's mother, who's a major figure in this story, she's probably the most redemptive character in the story. She suspects that Sandra
murdered her son. She petitions the Dallas County probe Court to remove Sandra's executor and to replace her as executor with Allen's first cousin, Robert Smith, who's also a resident of Dallas County. About ten days after Glorious submits her petition to the probate court, Robert Smith has found shot to death in his vehicle parked in his family garage. Again, shot fired from the right shot, almost in the exact
same way as Allan was shot. It looks kind of like a suicide because there's a deer rifle that is laying across the bench seat of the station wagon with the muzzle pressed to.
The wound on the right side of Robert's chest.
I believe that there are also indications in the Robert Smith death scene that this too was a staged suicide. In other words, someone else shot Robert with the deer rifle and staged it to look like a suicide. However, the death scene photographs in the Robert Smith case, I would characterize them as being more ambiguous.
I think.
It's not quite as cut and dried the indications of a stage of a homicide stage to look like a suicide, and the other thing in Robert Smith's case, I cannot establish that Sandra was the last known contact. She was the last known contact in.
The first three.
My decision was to sort of brack Robert Smith's with the question mark, I don't have enough information, to my satisfaction to draw a conclusion about that is very strange, it's very suspicious, but I think we would need more information. Now Robert Smith's widow doesn't want to talk about this, so I'm limited in how much I can learn about it. That contrast with Sandra's first husband, Betsy Baglin, the third husband. She was the last known contact.
Let's talk about some of the people that were trying to assist you other than this incredible woman, Alan Raig's mother, Gloria you say now is ninety two years old but sharp as attack. And some of the people that were responsible in law enforcement and also in the media that were supportive of what you were doing and were instrumental in giving you valuable information.
The first really important person is a Dallas crime reporter named Glenna Whitley. Now Glenna and I have become very close friends. We started off I guess you could characterize us as sort of collegial but somewhat competitive, Because Glenna had initially thought she'd write a book about this case.
Now life got in the way.
She's married, she has children, all kinds of other responsibilities, so she didn't do it. She was ultimately gracious enough to share her Dosier with me, So hats off and special thanks to Glenna for sharing her information. The other really important person who's rendered enormous assistance is a criminalist named Lynn Harold. She was for over thirty years. She worked for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Scientific Services.
Bureau, that is, the crime Lab.
Lynn was an expert witness for the prosecution in the matter of my first book, this Viennese serial killer. He actually got on a plane in the summer of nineteen ninety one and flew to Los Angeles and murdered three girls in LA. Lynn was a trace evidence specialist who provided very persuasive testimony at Jack's trial. I got to know her then she was still working at the crime lab.
I hung out in LA for a month. I spent several days just basically bothering her at the crime lab, and Lynn has been very helpful to me ever since. Whenever I've looked at some of these cold cases, I've looked at over the years she has helped me. Provided I'm able to obtain photographs, she's helped me to interpret them.
So I give a huge.
Amount of credit to Lynn for helping me with my analysis. She's a world class bloodstained pattern analyst. She understands all the elements of forensic science, and she was most notably, I think in terms of profile, she was the expert witness for the defense, excuse me, for the prosecution, or she provided expert scientific testimony that was useful for the prosecution. In the murder trial of the record producer Phil Specter, so Lynn testified that the bloodstained pattern dated mister Specter
had murdered the victim. Spector claimed that she had committed suicide in his home. And it's an interesting twist in this story.
Phil Spector hired.
As expert witnesses for the defense probably the three most prominent forensic pathologists in the country at the time, Vincent Demayo Vanner Spitz.
And Michael Boden.
So Specter had the dream team of forensic guys, as is his witnesses for the defense, but none of these guys made a plausible case at all in their argument that it was suicide. In fact, they really kind of made themselves look ridiculous. That is to say, Lynn was the expert witness that it was murder, and Demayo, Spitz, and Boden were the experts saying that it was suicide. Ultimately, the jury found Lynn's testimony more persuasive than the dream team.
Phil Spector was convicted of murder. The interesting twist is the medical examiner in nineteen seventy five in Dallas County who found the manner of death and husband number one a suicide was Vincent Demiyo.
So when I showed Lynn.
The photographs, she said who was the medical examiner at the time, and I discovered it it was it was Demayo, who you know she had had this contest with.
In two thousand and seven.
Now tell us the status of this case, your investigation, and just tell us where you think there should have been an intervention by law enforcement. At what point do you think then the FBI were involved? So tell us your thoughts.
What I've discovered is that when the medical examiners in Dallas County in nineteen seventy five, in nineteen eighty two, when they ruled the manner of death suicide, the way that was treated and perceived by the police in the District Attorney's office. They perceived that this was a judgment from on high. It was like the scientific expert has spoken, has passed the judgment down, and this, you know, is gospel.
I mean, I'm.
Speaking of the sensibility at the time. So even after Sandra fell under suspicion became the prime suspect for the murder of her third husband, no one in law enforcement went back and re examined a husband one and Betsy Bagwell. The assumption was that the medical examiner ruled suicide and therefore they must have been suicide. Law enforcement didn't go back and look at those earlier cases.
Only I have done that.
But you know, as Lynn Harold and then my other forensic consultant, a guy named Breg McCrary, who was a forensic psychologist at the FBI Behavioral Science Unit, you he agreed with Lynn. The medical examiners just got it wrong. I mean, to put it bluntly, they just got it wrong. And I'm not even convinced they looked at the death scene photos. I think they receive the word it looks like a suicide. And in the case oft see Bagwell. It looked like a contact gunshot wounded the head, which
is statistically associated with suicide, and that was enough. So what I've argued in my book is for starters, the medical examiners need to go back and change the manner of death from suicide to homicide, and that should prompt a full reinvestigation. I believe the evidence I presented in my book is sufficient, but obviously, you know, the competent authorities need to look at this on their own in terms of when the intervention should have happened. Well, to me,
that's the intriguing thing about this story. That's the that's the great kind of black hole at the heart of it. There should have been a much more rigorous examination of the gunshot death of Betsy Bagwell in nineteen eighty two. There were multiple reasons to suspect Sander Bridewell, but it's like the Dallas police just did not get the memo.
You need to look very carefully at Betsy's last known contact, that is the girl she gave a ride to love Field, look at her, and the police just didn't do that, and they should have. And the thing that I examined in my book are some plausible reasons for why they.
Didn't along with those reasons why law enforcement didn't catch the clues. But you do offer something that you say that Sandra was a good example of a fem fatale, and because the psychopathic personality can't quite explain Sandra Bridewell.
Well, she has multiple persona.
She was the stylish housewife, the fabulous cook who regularly and religiously attended church on Sunday. She could then become extremely seductive with enormous erotic.
Power and potency.
And then later in life she became a Christian minister and became an expert on the Bible, in the Gospel of Christ. So she could move around in these different persona. But you know, if you look at Robert Hare's psychopathy checklist.
I mean, it seems to me. Now I offer the caveat.
I'm not a trained psychologist, but just based on the descriptive categories, it seems to me. I'm not asserting it, I'm just saying it seems to me that.
She checks every single box.
But you know, and Greg McCrary has stated it seems to him with the caveat, based on your account, she is an extremely high functioning psychopath. But you know, what is a high functioning psychopath. I mean, it's kind of a mystery in a way.
Sure, what I can say is she was a great.
Seducer, and I have multiple documented examples of her seducing and blackmailing married men. Now, most of the examples I found, she would borrow money, or in one notable case, she persuaded a married man to co sign a bank loan. She then did not pay back a penny of the loan, and when the mayor married man then pressed her for it, she said, you know, sorry, you're not remembering this correctly. This was a gift and if you've got a problem with it, go talk to your wife. That was the
modus operandi that I found multiple examples of. And so it raises the suspicion again the totality of circumstances. She somehow blackmailed doctor Bagwell.
Into not.
Making a full and candid telling of what was going on with her at the time.
Of Betsy's death.
He did not, by all records, by all my interview with the detective, he did not in nineteen eighty two, when the case was open, make a full and candid.
You know, narrative of what is going on with this woman.
She was stalking him, and she continued to stalk him after Betsy's death. And I can find no indication that he divulged this information to the Dallas police.
It's uh, your book is I've got numerous references and anonymous call to Gloria. Other people have stated and said to people around that and knew Sandra that she was dangerous. They were afraid of her, and men, many men were shaking in their boots with what could happen the repercussions of being involved with Sandra.
Yeah, this this this kind of eerie moment where people say, you know, when I first met her, I thought she was charming.
She was talented, she was funny, she.
Was a great cook, she was always beautiful dressed, she had a beautiful house. But then, you know, with repeated exposure to her, you began to notice that there was
something weird. It seems sort of manipulative, deceptive. In the case of men initially found her immensely charming and seductive, they commenced the relationship where her, you know, the tone of the relationship could change and she could start, you know, suddenly not being just a woman of great fun, but a needy woman, woman who needed things from the man, needed money, needed a car, needed a house, you know,
or whatever it was. And if you then displeased her, she could then become sort of frightening and the whole tone would change. In the case of Betsy Bagwell, well, no one in my community believed that she had committed suicide. So it's a very strange state of affairs where everyone in my tight commits community saying there's no way that Betsy committed suicide. You know, what is the medical examiner thinking? And yet.
The Dallas police and.
The medical examiner are unaware of what everyone in our community is saying in private. So it's like there's this broken circuit of communication. The perception of Sandra, the fear of Sandra in my community is not being conveyed to the police and the medical examiner. And you know, so the question for me is why not? Where is the circuit being broken? And the only thing I can conclude is that the circuit breaker was Betsy's husband. He just I can't find any indication of a candid statement to
the Dallas Police at the time. Now, four years later, when the Dallas excuse me, when the Oklahoma City Police came to Dallas investigating the murder of the third husband. He gave a pretty candid interview at that point. Four years later. Now, one of the most intriguing things about his interview in nineteen eighty six with the Oklahoma City Police, I can't find any indication the Oklahoma City Police presented that interview transcript.
To the Dallas Police.
So again it's like the circuit breaks. There's no limitation for the prosecution of murder. The Oklahoma City PD detectives could have gone back to the Dallas Police and said, hey, do you guys know what this doctor is saying. The doctor is telling us, he's saying, I know that Sandra was instrumental in Betsy's death. Not I deduce the doctors saying I know she did it. So what is going on here?
Why isn't law enforcement looking at this.
I'm speaking of the death of Betsy Bagwell. So to this day, there are elements of mystery in this. But what I can say is the death scene photos show this was no suicide. So whatever society bullshit is going on with Betsy's widow and friends, that the photos tell the tale.
This this was not a suicide. It was a homicide.
I want to applaud your investigation as well, because you, as you write that, it was a very difficult quest for information, numerous freedom of information requests, and you employed other people to assist you in this and you did not get cooperation, especially from Oklahoma Police Department City Police Department. I want to thank you very much, John Leak for coming on and talking about the Meaning of Malice on
the Trail of the Black Widow of Highland Park. For those that might want to look at your other true crime books and other nonfiction books, could you tell us about your website and any social media you do.
Yes.
My website is author John Leek. That's author John, last name l Eake dot com. I also have a YouTube channel, author John Leek. I've just got that up and running with a trailer and a documentary about this case. I would be most grateful as a working author if people would purchase The Meaning of Malice on Amazon. That's the Meaning of Malice on Amazon dot com.
Thank you so much, John Leak, The Meaning of Malice on the Trail of the Black Widow of Highland Park. Thank you very much for this interview. It's been a pleasure and good night. Thank you, Dan, thank you