said i could have helped her but i didn t. reporter: now, that s completely different from what he told police. right. reporter: chilling as that sounded, tina feared it still wasn t the whole story. she was determined to get the rest. but like a career in show biz, you have to be careful what you wish for. coming up i don t trust you. i m afraid of you. nobody yells anything but you. from model and actress to undercover agent. secret operation to learn the truth. this is where it gets really scary. hi, i need a thriller for my wife. political or psychological? psychological. small town or big city? small town. methodists.or mules? mules. how s this? signed?! no way. nobody knows thrill seekers like we do. barnes & noble they work together doing important stuff. the hitch? like you, your cells get hungry.
things when they realize that might happen to them. i believe that. but not pegye. reporter: glenda told the detectives that pegye and eric were having some issues. like how pegye was busy with work and kids while eric seemed occupied on the volleyball court. she just confided in me that they were having some financial troubles because you had a pretty high lifestyle to keep up with. reporter: glenda said eric and pegye seemed determined to work everything out. but now pegye was gone and eric was a single dad with three kids under the age of 4. and a new player was about to enter the story. you were drawn to eric right away? yes. reporter: like countless young women before her, tina new had drop-dead looks and hollywood dreams. she had done some bikini modeling and had a small part on the tv show baywatch nights.
of 2000, eric bechler went on trial. the star witness, tina, a witness was, to be fair, compromised, not just by her waffling by eric s guilt and her own checkered past but the one detail and story tina says eric told her something the defense attorney says is critical. you d expect, if pegye s head was caved in by 35 pound dumb bells, there d be blood. quite a lot of it. everywhere. 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? do you think anybody would believe you? no. i knew that i told exactly what he had said to me. and i knew that i was doing the right thing. i honestly didn t care what anybody thought. then there was the conversation she had recorded at el torrida, eric s own words. the jury heard all of them. and offering eric s own
it became apparent the evidence was not sufficient to bring her case to trial. didn t have the goods? just wasn t there. wasn t there. yet she s the foundation of your theory? there s no question about it. for the time being bambi was able to put horry county jail in her rear-view mirror. and with it, rick. by now bambi had cut ties with her old boyfriend. it sounds like she had your back, rick, and then she didn t. yeah. what happened? jail changes people. you know? rick was hoping it would be just a matter of time before he, too, would be released. the forensics they had against you, no hair, no fingerprint, no dna. nothing. but he did have charlie s blood on his shoe. to humphries, that evidence was part of a bloody trail from the crime scene that was about to lead both the prosecutor and rick gagnon into a courtroom showdown. coming up one of rick gagnon s fellow inmates comes forward with a damning story.
actually supported what mullens said, that rick had an accomplice. humphries believed the evidence was enough to put the defendant away. he only wished he could make the same case against rick s old girlfriend. what about bambi? she wasn t being tried in this courtroom. no. i think it s a travesty. her fingerprints were on it? all over it, figuratively. and that s just how he laid it out in his closing. he told the jury this is a story about a spoiled woman, bambi bennett, who had manipulated her boyfriend, rick gagnon, into doing her murderous dirty deed. get back the deed, get her mother off her back. he heard from bambi, how her parents were not fair to her, my parents are horrible people, and i m you know, they ve taken advantage of me. to make things right, argued the prosecutor, the dutiful boyfriend and his right-hand man entered the house and hunted down bambi s parents in their night clothes.