Page 40 - Eric Bechler News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Children. >> 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? >> reporter: when we come back -- >> i absolutely thought they'd find her. >> reporter: where was pegye and what had gone wrong on that boat? >> there would be a sea of questions to come. >> you thought, what, pegye faked her death? wh...

>> there was a lot of animosity towards me. and i understood why. >> all they saw was this hot young woman who'd been brought in to replace their missing daughter. >> right. right. and 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 just ostentatious. i mean, she was just a hot number, as they say. and she was cohabitating with him right after this horrible boating accident with his wife. >> reporter: so murphy arranged to bump into ti...

Find her. >> maybe alive. >> uh-huh. i did because she was a fabulous swimmer. >> reporter: glenda went to the bechler house to see eric. >> how did he look? >> hysterical, a little bit. you know, he'd been crying and, you know, his face is red and, you know, all of those things. he looked upset, as you should be, one would expect. >> the best. the best person. >> reporter: this video from local news shows a devastated eric. it was now day two of the search for pegye. still nothing. the next day, the coast guard interviewed eric. >> we're just going to do an inquiry into the boating accident. ...

You can't find her? where is she? what -- what are you trying to tell me?" >> reporter: eric told june that pegye was driving the 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. >> reporter: you see, pegye was quite at home in the water. growing up, it was the only time she didn't have to wear that back brace. and she became a very accomplished swimmer. >> she wouldn't panic. sh...

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 marriage. then a couple of days later, she says, eric told her he took pegye out to sea on that rented boat and although pegye didn't know it, he took a...