Page 32 - Eric Bechler News Today

And so eric called pegyes mom, june. >> he says, we cant find pegye. and i said, what do you mean you cant find her? where is she? what are you trying to tell me? >> eric told june that pegye was driving a boat, towing him on a body board, when all of a sudden a wave wiped him out. when he came up from under the water, he said, he could no longer see pegye inside the boat. >> we thought they should be finding her, because we really just thought she would swim out of it. >> you see, pegye was qui...

Reasons to kill her. thats what he stood to gain if he had gotten away with it. >> and, said the prosecutor, the circumstantial evidence was willing. eric had a weight tree at home that appeared incomplete. investigators believe eric used the missing weights to kill pegye and then sink her body. and what about the blood? a luminol test conducted on the boat indicated there might have been a lot of blood in the boat. but it was cleaned up, matching tinas testimony about blood everywhere. and of c...

But then two weeks after erics arrest came this headline in the local paper -- "witness in murder case doubts suspects guilt." tina had worn a wire and helped police nail eric. now she said maybe eric didnt kill pegye. >> i knew the kids had lost their mom and maybe they were going lose their dad for a long time, so i felt guilty. >> guilty that she helped jail a man she once thought shed marry. >> he called me from jail and told me he had tried to hang himself with his sheets. >> it was erics f...

You didnt process the crime scene for weeks. >> so that wasnt good. that hindered the investigation. >> the boat, said detective murphy, was pretty clean. crime scene did find blood. just one drop under one of the cushions. but not enough to determine whether it was human blood. it could have come from a fish. not enough evidence to arrest eric for murder, or even prove that a murder occurred. pegyes close friend, glenda, didnt believe eric was a killer. >> theres no way that eric would have don...

Calm her down. >> in any event, the defense said, eric never said on tape that he hit peggy. the only person who heard him say that was tina. a drug user. a woman with a fraud conviction on her record. >> without that statement, they have a lot of circumstantial evidence and a lot of what ifs, but they dont have anything that makes this a homicide. >> the defense offered another theory about peggy bechler. >> she was under a great deal of pressure and could easily be distracted. and in combinati...

Interviewed eric. eric bechler could barely speak. >> what did you take with you on the boat? >> we had a couple bags and coolers. we wanted to see if he could see catalina, but it was so hazy. i told pegye, you know, it was too hazy. >> eric told the coast guard he tried the body board on the way out, and said there was a pretty good swim in the ocean. >> as high as the side of the boat probably. big enough to notice. >> eric said they stopped out here on the water to enjoy some margaritas pegy...

And i couldnt hold on. it was just going in circles. the boat kept going farther and farther away. and i couldnt see any other boats. i was screaming. i looked around. >> and so pegye bechler was simply gone. maybe even within sight of the same beach that had spawned her marriage. eric seemed devastated, fearing his wife and business partner was dead. but erics mother, linda, saw things quite differently. >> im sure that they would find her. that it would all turn out well. >> not just because p...

Welcome back to "dateline extra." im tamron hall. in the hours after the boating accident that left pegye bechler missing, her friends and family had high hopes she would be found alive. they all knew something about pegye to make it impossible to think she would be lost at sea. heres josh mankiewicz with "troubled waters." >> its said theres nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline. this was supposed to be something like that. the romantic outing, an a...

Modeling and had a small part on the tv show "baywatch nights." but that turned out to be the peak of her career. soon tina found herself slipping into the darker side of showbiz. she started doing drugs, and lost custody of her two young children because of it. and fell for a succession of guys who did not treat her kindly. >> i had an ex-boyfriend put a gun to my head, play russian roulette between me and him. >> tina who was broke and near rock bottom was desperate. >> i got down on my knees,...

Him ever since. >> eric asked me about what he thought -- what i thought of the idea of him killing his wife. and i was pretty much shocked. i didnt know what to say. he told me that he was thinking of taking her out to the ocean and dumping her in a barrel. >> he said when he saw there was a boating accident and erics wife was missing, he knew right then and there, he saw it on tv, he knew that he had killed his wife. and he lied to us. he said because he panicked and was afraid and he didnt kn...