Page 7 - Eric Bechler News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Mom, they need someone to step in and -- and i'd be their mom, but do things their mom would do for them. >> but when they took the kids to visit pegye's parents -- >> 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. >> pegye's family wasn't alone. detective sean murphy had also noticed the new woman in eric bechler's life. >> she was just a hot number, as they say. and she was cohabit...

Get that? " and i said, "i don't know." >> his reaction troubled her, but she hit play and it just got worse. the news report did not match the story eric had told her about pegye's disappearance. >> and he told me there was three to four foot waves. it was really choppy out there. >> but on the report they said on the day pegye went missing, there were only two foot waves and the weather was described as ideal. >> he lied. he lied all this time to me. you know, and he was just really quiet. >> he's sitting right next to you. >> sitting right next to me. >> how does eric look at that point? >>...

>> yeah, i did. >> but, she says, she always believed he was guilty. and in the winter of 2000, eric bechler went on trial. the star witness, tina new. a witness who was, to be fair, compromised. not just by her waffling about eric's guilt and her own checkered past, but also by one detail in the story tina says eric told her, something defense attorney john barnett says is critical. >> you'd expect if pegye's head was caved in by 35 pound dumbbells, there'd be blood. >> quite a lot of it. >> everywhere. and -- and there wasn't. >> on the stand, tina tried to defend herself. >> i'm a horrible ...

Relatives square off in court, with the victim's mother calling the Newport man 'a disgrace' and his mother denouncing a 'miscarriage of justice.'

Head." and he goes, "how did you know that? " >> 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-- i'm going to tell you the truth." he goes, "we had this huge party, so everybody could see how happy we were together." >> 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...