Page 24 - Eric Bechler News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

The kids to visit pegye's parents -- >> there was a lot of animosity towards me. i understood why. >> reporter: all they saw was this hot young woman who had been brought in to replace their missing daughter. >> right. right. exactly three months to the day. i can't even imagine what they were thinking. >> reporter: pegye's family wasn't alone. detective sean murphy had also noticed the new woman in eric bechler's life. >> she was ostentatious. she was just a hot number as they say. she was cohabitating with him right after this horrible boating accident with his wife. >> reporter: so murphy a...

At the ceiling together. all of a sudden as we were talking, it just came to me and i said to him, i said oh, my god, you hit her over the head. he goes how did you know that? >> reporter: the fact is, she hadn't known. call it intuition or the effects of the drug or a random guess. but it was an opening and tina barreled through. >> i said you need to tell me the truth. he's calmly talking to me and he says i'm going to tell you the truth. he goes we had this huge party so everybody could see how happy we were together. >> reporter: all their friends were there, witnesses to the happy marriag...

Thought -- what i thought of the idea of him killing his wife. and i was pretty much shocked. i didn't 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 eric's 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 didn't know what to do. >> reporter: detectives convinced kobe to wear a wire and to meet eric at a restaurant in orange county. eric had no idea that po...

>> reporter: until that summer day in 1997 when the unimaginable happened. >> male, kind of distraught, said that his wife fell overboard. >> reporter: it was a boating accident, said eric, and the coast guard agreed. something they see all too often. but soon, secrets emerged that would make some people wonder. what really happened to pegye bechler? >> coming up -- >> i absolutely thought they would find her. >> reporter: maybe alive? >> i did. she was a fabulous swimmer.

Good, there was no problems with it. >> reporter: you didn't take his word for it? >> no. in our game we don't take anyone's word for anything. we look into it. that's what we did. >> reporter: they met with the improbably named kobe laker. eric's best friend. and kobe backed up eric. >> they had a terrific marriage and there was no problems whatsoever. >> reporter: but if the marriage seemed solid, there were questions about pegye. at least according to linda bechler, eric's mother. linda says pegye told her something in confidence just before she disappeared. >> she stopped me on the stairwa...