Fatal Web

But he's racing the clock. After three months in jail, Bridewell recently retained a lawyer, Griff Anderson. A hearing is scheduled for July 11; Anderson plans to ask for a bail reduction and expects to get it. "[The alleged fraud] is not a significant amount of money," Anderson says. "She's a 63-year-old woman with no prior convictions."

Leland Brooke, an assistant district attorney in North Carolina, says Bridewell's bail was set so high because she is a flight risk. But if no other charges are filed against her, Bridewell will probably be released from jail this summer.

Gloria Rehrig's worst fear is that, once out, the nomadic Bridewell will disappear forever.

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When Phil Askew learned that his friend and co-worker Alan Rehrig had separated from his wife Sandra and was living in a hotel, he put an end to that immediately.

"You come stay with us," he told Rehrig, with whom Askew had played basketball at Oklahoma State University in the early '70s.

After college, Rehrig moved to Phoenix with another buddy, Bill Dodd, to try to make it on the pro golf circuit. Dodd says Rehrig didn't give it much of a shot, instead waiting tables at a resort.

Rehrig moved back to Oklahoma to work in the oil business, but when that market crashed in the early 1980s, he was out of a job. Phil Askew offered him a spot at Nowlin Mortgage Co. in Dallas. The Askews were amused when Rehrig found a beautiful woman his second day in town.

When Rehrig started bringing Bridewell to business functions, they were surprised that Bridewell looked so much older than Rehrig, that she was so demure and clingy, so helpless. He had always dated athletic girl-next-door types.

"The day Alan met Sandra she invited him that evening to the Dallas County Club," Judy says. "In my mind, he was a trophy date."

For Thanksgiving 1984, Rehrig took Bridewell and her children to Edmond, Oklahoma. She was charismatic, warm and friendly. Though her son Britt seemed aloof, her daughters fit right in, often hanging on Rehrig.

About a week later, Rehrig called his closest friends and family and told them he was getting married. Not even his mother knew the secret: Bridewell had told Rehrig she was pregnant.

"He wasn't excited about being a dad," says friend Karl McKinney. "But growing up where we did, we take care of our stuff."

On December 8, 1984, a radiant Bridewell and Rehrig exchanged vows at The Mansion.

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Phil and Judy Askew's telephone awoke them at 3 a.m., and they knew it must be bad news. Bridewell was on the phone, saying that the police were going to call.

"What's going on?" Phil asked, but she said she didn't know.

Bridewell had asked Rehrig to move out around the first of November. Their chief conflict was money. American Express repeatedly called Rehrig about the large balance on his card. Other creditors were hounding him.

Money had been an issue from the beginning. Though Bridewell never showed him any financial records, Rehrig assumed his new wife was wealthy; he was making only $35,000 or so a year and felt uncomfortable not being able to support the family on that.

They had agreed she would pay the mortgage, and he would pay for everything else. Phil Askew says Rehrig handed his paycheck to her every two weeks, but Bridewell had expensive tastes and habits.

On December 6, 1985, Rehrig attended a Mavericks game with his friend Kirk Whitman and told him he was getting a divorce. "I don't understand this lady," Rehrig told Whitman. "I just want out of this marriage. She keeps insisting I want her property. All I want is my camping gear. I've told her time and time again I want nothing of hers."

The next day, Rehrig told Judy Askew that his estranged wife had asked him to meet her at a storage warehouse on Garland Road at 5 p.m. She wanted him to help her move some barrels. He hadn't seen Bridewell in a month and was anxious.

The Askews had watched the relationship deteriorate from afar. In February after the wedding, Rehrig was with Phil when Bridewell called to say she had miscarried. She told her new husband the fetuses were twin boys with red hair like Rehrig's.

"Sandra said she had started feeling bad and had driven herself to the ER," Phil says. "She lost the babies and didn't want to spend the night in the hospital. She said she was calling from the pay phone at the 7-Eleven." Rehrig was devastated but shared little about problems in the marriage with anyone, keeping even his mother in the dark. On a visit to Edmond in late October, Gloria detected nothing amiss. But on the way to spend the night at the Edmond home of his friends Ron and Debbie Barnes, Rehrig rode with Ron and Bridewell rode with Debbie. Both poured out their unhappiness.

"Alan starts telling me they are having a lot of problems, and he didn't know what to believe," Ron says. "He was questioning her honesty about lots of things." She had shaved five years off her age, for example. The floor-level season tickets to the Mavericks, supposedly inherited from her last husband? She had bought them from a scalper.

"He said she was spending $20,000 a month on clothes, food, travel, whatever," Ron says.