it doesn t appear to be feasible to them, given the sea conditions. 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. if pegye s disappearance was no accident, murphy s job was to 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. you didn t take his word for it? no. in our game, we don t take anyone s word for anything. we look into it. and that s what we did. they met with the improbably-named kobi laker, eric s best friend. and kobi backed up eric. they had a terrific marriage. and there was no problems whatsoever. but if the marriage seemed solid, there were questions
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, like, almost a week. right. right. so that that wasn t good. that hindered the investigation. the boat, said detective murphy, was pretty clean. crime scene did find blood, just one drop, under one of the cushions. but not enough to determine whether it was human blood. it could have come from a fish. not enough evidence to arrest eric for murder or even prove that a murder occurred. pegye s close friend glenda didn t believe eric was a killer. there s no way that eric would have done that. you know, i mean there s just absolutely no way. it was unfathomable to me. tina new fe
without that statement, they have a lot of circumstantial evidence and a lot of what ifs, but they don t have anything that makes this a homicide. the defense offered another theory about pegye bechler. she was under a great deal of pressure and could easily be distracted, and, in combination with alcohol which she rarely drank but she did on that day, could contribute to a lack of care in driving the boat. you don t think pegye bechler faked her death? you think she s dead? i don t think she faked her death. no, i do not think that. you think she died accidentally 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
be, one would expect. the best. she was the best person. this video from local news shows a devastated eric. it was now day two of the search for pegye. still nothing. the next day, the coast guard interviewed eric. we re just going to do an inquiry into the boating accident. ok? ok. eric bechler could barely speak. what did you take with you on the boat? we had a couple bags and a cooler. we wanted to see if we could see catalina, but it was so hazy. i told pegye that it was, you know, it was too hazy, we shouldn t go too far out. eric told the coast guard he tried to body board on their way out and said there was a pretty good swell in the ocean. was it as high as the side of the boat? probably. it was, you know, big enough to notice. eric said they stopped out here on the water to enjoy some
was caved in by 35 pound dumbbells, there d be blood. quite a lot of it. everywhere. and and there wasn t. on the stand, tina tried to defend herself. i m a horrible witness when it comes to looking at me on paper. did you think anybody would believe you? no. you know, i knew that i told exactly what he had said to me and i knew that i was doing the right thing. and i honestly didn t care what anybody thought. then there was the conversation she had recorded at el torito. eric s own words. the jury heard all of them. nobody knows anything but you! barnett offered his own explanation. i argued that the reason he said it is to shut her up, to calm her down. in any event, the defense said eric never said on tape that he hit pegye. the only person who heard him say that was tina. a drug user. a woman with a fraud conviction on her record.