Fatal Web

Dear accompanied Bridewell to her duplex in University Park where she and Rehrig had moved after selling her house. Dear checked the locks and points of entry. The house seemed safe. The kids seemed indifferent to the proceedings. Dear told her to remain inside, but something about the encounter didn't sit well with him.

Oklahoma City detectives Ron Mitchell and Steve Pacheco had made arrangements to talk to Bridewell and her children on December 18, but when they knocked on her door, Bridewell explained it wasn't a good time. Could they come back the next day?

Early the next day, the detectives received a letter from criminal defense attorney Vincent Perini, telling them there would be no interviews of Bridewell or her children.

Dear says he had made some unsettling discoveries about his client. Bridewell had spent the money from her second husband's estate like "saltwater through her fingers," he says, and was essentially broke. She wasted no time in filing a claim on Rehrig's $220,000 life insurance policy.

When Bridewell insisted someone had stolen her house key, Dear arranged for all the locks to be changed. A security system was installed. If she had been in fear of her life from Rehrig, why had Bridewell waited until after his death to put one in? Why hadn't she called Dallas police about her husband's activities, as Dear had advised before the murder?

When Dear visited the storage shed with Bridewell he noticed she needed no cheat sheet to open the combination lock. Not many of her possessions were in the unit, and she took nothing out. And why had she needed Rehrig's help when she had a 17-year-old son taller than Rehrig? Kathryn and Emily remembered their mother rushing into the house on Saturday night, changing clothes and then rushing out again. Barbara and Alan Frank, friends from Austin, told police that Bridewell had agreed to meet them around 7 p.m. for a movie the day of Rehrig's disappearance but ran late.

Bridewell appeared after 8 p.m., says Barbara Frank, in time to make it to the last showing of the film White Nights. The Franks confirmed her alibi from the time she picked them up for the movie until 1 a.m., but Alan Frank refused to cooperate with police beyond that. (Frank refused to comment for this story.)

On Sunday morning, Susan Rousch called Bridewell around 11 a.m. Emily answered and said her mother wasn't home and had probably gone to church. (Detectives were later unable to locate anyone who had seen her at services that day.) Bridewell returned Rousch's call about 12:30 p.m.

That meant Bridewell had no alibi witnesses for at least 10 hours—enough time to drive to Oklahoma City and either drive or fly back.

Dear says he began to think that Bridewell—who wanted him to find "the real killer" but wouldn't talk to police—was playing him for a chump. He found nothing to support Bridewell's allegations about Rehrig using drugs and gambling. What else was she lying about?

Dear arranged for Bridewell to take a polygraph. On December 23, her former next-door neighbor Rousch went with Bridewell for moral support to take the test. Rousch says Bridewell came out in tears saying she had flunked two key questions.

Rousch was there when Bridewell took another polygraph a week later. Again she left in tears. Dear says the questions his client failed were: Did you kill Alan Rehrig? Do you know who was responsible for the murder of Alan Rehrig?

Dear says he went to Perini and said, "I think she's nothing but a cold-blooded killer. I don't represent criminals." He says he feared that Bridewell's son might turn up a "suicide" and a convenient scapegoat.

Dear says he told Perini he was going to the Oklahoma City police with the results of his investigation. Under Texas law, Dear says, he was required to hand over information to the police about an impending crime.

"He said if I went to the police he'd see to it that I would lose my license," Dear says.

Perini doesn't recall a confrontation with Dear over Bridewell. "I don't remember that he wanted to go to police with his files," Perini says. "If it's true, that poses some very serious problems. That's completely a breach of the confidence of the rules required by a lawyer. I can see no justification for that whatsoever. Bill Dear and I worked for her. He shouldn't be sharing them with you or the police."

Detectives Pacheco and Mitchell were working the case out of Askew's office in spurts, driving down to Dallas for a week at a time. Like many policemen, Pacheco and Mitchell didn't think too much of private investigators, especially tall arrogant Texans like Dear. They declined to look at a copy of his file.