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With "troubled waters." >> reporter: to detective sean murphy it sounded more than suspicious. eric bechler taking up with a gorgeous redhead just three months after his wife was lost at sea. but murphy didn't have much more than a gnawing in his gut until his phone rang. >> we got a call from kobe's lawyer, said he wanted to arrange an interview again with kobe. >> reporter: kobe laker, eric's
Best friend and volleyball buddy. he told sheriff's detectives that the bechler marriage was great. now he had a different story. >> eric's told me on several occasions that he's sick and tired of his wife. he would tell me that he just couldn't take it anymore. he was tired of it. >> reporter: about seven months before pegye vanished, kobe says he and eric had a conversation that kobe describes as haunting him ever since. >> eric asked me about what he thought -- what i thought of the idea of him killing his wife.
Saint in the interview i had with the detectives. >> reporter: a dead end. but detectives were now convinced that eric killed his wife. >> even though it didn't lead to anything, that conversation with kobe, that got you from suspicion to knowing? >> yeah, it moved it all the way over. we knew we had a homicide. >> reporter: but knowing it and proving it were two very different things. you didn't get to process that
>> they said it doesn't appear to be feasible to them given the sea conditions. >> reporter: that's when the coast guard called the orange county sheriff's office. detective sean murphy was put on the case. >> they weren't able to duplicate even close to what was alleged by eric bechler that his wife was tossed off by a rogue wave. >> reporter: if pegye's disappearance was no accident, murphy's job was find out what did happen. detectives started by re-interviewing eric and asking him about his relationship with pegye. >> he said his marriage was good, there was no problems with it. >> reporte...
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 police were listening in. even so, he stuck to his story that peg...