reporter: police planted microphones in her car, in her purse and on her body. and tina arranged a meeting. she told eric that after the domestic violence call, sheriff s homicide detectives came in to ask questions about eric. this dinner date, tina told eric, was to get their stories straight in case the cops questioned her again. tina, wired up, picked up eric from his home and drove to a restaurant called el torito. were you worried about this? not really. i was more worried that i wasn t going to get him to confess again. i have two stories in my head. i don t want to screw up at all. there s no story to tell. you weren t there. it was an accident. reporter: once inside the restaurant, tina tried to get eric to repeat the details of pegye s death. eric wouldn t go there. details aren t important. reporter: so tina tried to get him to say why he did it.
the kids to visit pegye s parents there was a lot of animosity towards me. i understood why. reporter: all they saw was this hot young woman who had been brought in to replace their missing daughter. right. right. exactly three months to the day. i can t even imagine what they were thinking. reporter: pegye s family wasn t alone. detective sean murphy had also noticed the new woman in eric bechler s life. she was ostentatious. she was just a hot number as they say. she was cohabitating with him right after this horrible boating accident with his wife. reporter: so murphy arranged to bump into tina. said hey, if you have any information about this boating accident involving eric, your boyfriend, just give us a call. i gave her my card with my number on it. reporter: nothing came of it. tina didn t call. but someone else did. coming up, the best friend has second thoughts. has second thoughts. kobe laker goes under cover. many people living with diabetes
thought what i thought of the idea of him killing his wife. 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 pegye s death was a terrible accident. i was there. i know what happened. i tried so hard to understand that people can think anything else.
they were living the dream. a good-looking couple with an expanding family and a booming business. he whisked her away on a birthday boat cruise, then disaster struck and pegye bechler was gone. was it an accident? or was it perhaps something more sinister? here s josh mankiewicz with troubled waters. reporter: if you crave money or fame or if you want to meet beautiful people, maybe even become one of them, you will find your way to southern california. it s where everything is possible or seems to be. this is the story of two women drawn for different reasons to the sun, to the bright lights, to the blue water. both chased that promise of success. both saw what can go wrong. it was a gorgeous summer day in newport beach, california. the last of fourth of july weekend.
were listening in. even so, he stuck to his story that pegye s death was a terrible accident. i was there i know what happened, and i it s so hard for me to understand you know that there could be another people could think anything else. you never said, hey look man, i don t know what the you guys are talking about, but i m innocent. 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. 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 kobi, that got you from suspicion to knowing? yeah, it moved it all the way over. so 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 boat as a crime scene for, like, almost a week.