Page 9 - Eric Bechler News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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 mean, i had an ex-boyfriend put a gun to my head, play russian roulette between me and him. i was held over the balcony by my neck. >> tina, who was broke and near rock bottom, was desperate. >> i got down on my knees, literally begging. and i said, "i'll do whatever you want, lord. just help me. i can't do this anymore. i need you to show me a sign." >> and the universe sent you eric bechler. >> and the ...

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. and he lied to us, he said, because he panicked. and he was afraid. and he didn't know what to do. >> detectives convinced kobi to wear a wire and to meet eric at a restaurant in orange county. eric had no idea that police were listening in. even so, he stuck to h...

You think she's dead? >> i don't think she faked her death. no, i do not think that. >> you think she died accidentally -- >> that's -- >> -- and her body still hasn't been found? >> that's right. >> prosecutor debbie lloyd argued pegye's death was eric's doing. >> he basically had 3.5 million reasons to kill her. and that's about what he stood to gain if he had gotten away with it. >> and, said the prosecutor, the circumstantial evidence was compelling. eric had a weight tree back at home that appeared to be incomplete. investigators believed eric used the missing weights to kill pegye and th...

Successful at both. detectives had put him in jail. but then, two weeks after eric's arrest, came this headline in the local paper. "witness in murder case doubts suspect's guilt." tina new, who'd worn a wire and helped police nail eric, now said maybe he didn't kill pegye. >> i knew that the kids had lost their mom, and now they're gonna probably lose their dad for a very long time. and so i felt guilty. >> guilty that she'd helped jail a man she once thought she'd marry. >> and i remember he called me from the jail and he told me that he had tried to hang himself with his sheets. >> it was e...

You never said anything about anything. >> i have so. do i have to say it every week? >> kobi tried again. >> i protected you. i basically made you look like a saint in the interview i had with the detectives. >> i am. >> a dead end. but detectives were now convinced that eric killed his wife. >> even though it didn't lead to anything, that conversation with kobi, that got you from suspicion to knowing? >> yeah, it moved it all the way over. so we knew we had a homicide. >> but knowing it and proving it were two very different things. >> you didn't get to process that boat as a crime scene for...