Page 38 - Eric Bechler News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

S ♪ it's said there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline. this was supposed to be something like that. a romantic outing, an anniversary and birthday gift eric bechler planned for his wife pegye, but it turned into something else. and now pegye was gone. >> and the wife apparently fell of the boat. >> reporter: the coast guard immediately launched a search. but by nightfall no sign of peyge, alive or otherwise. and so eric called pegye's mom, june. >> he says, "we can't find pegye." and i said, "what do you mean

>> beach volleyball is played by kids. murder is not. detectives had put him in jail, but two weeks after eric's arrest came this headline in the local paper. witness in murder case doubts suspect's guilt. tina, who had worn a wire and helped police nail eric, now said maybe he didn't kill peggy. >> they knew the kids had lost their mom and now they're going to probably lose their dad for a very long time. so i felt guilty. >> guilty that she helped jail a man she once thought she would marry. >> he called me from the jail and he told me he had tried to hang himself with had his sheets the the...

>> yeah, i did. >> but she says she always believed he was guilty. eric bv echler went on trial. the star witness, tina knew, a witness who was, to be fair, compromised. not just about her waffling about eric's guilt and her checkered past, but one detail she says eric told her, something defense attorney john barnett said is critical. >> you would expect if peggy's head was caved in by 35 pound dumbbells, there would be blood. >> a lot of it. >> everywhere and there wasn't. >> on the stand, tina tried to defend herself. >> i'm a horrible witness when it comes to looking at me on paper. >> do ...

>> uh-huh. >> --sometimes do pretty crazy things when they realize that might happen to them. elieve that, but not pegye. >> reporter: glenda did tell the detectives that pegye and eric were having some issues, like how pegye was busy with work and kids while eric seemed occupied on the volleyball court. >> she just confided in me that they were having some financial troubles because, you know, they had a pretty high lifestyle to keep up with. >> reporter: glenda said eric and pegye seemed determined to work everything out. but now pegye was gone, eric was a single dad with three kids under th...

>> reporter: about seven months before pegye vanished, kobi says he and eric had a conversation that kobi describes as haunting 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 shocked and i didn't know what to say. he told me subsequently that he was thinking of taking her out to the ocean and dumping her into a barrel. >> he said that when he saw that 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'd killed his wife.