Pod Insights The Binge Cases: Doctor Billions Fatal Beauty | 3. Dead End About this episode Alan’s mother and his widow Sandra face off in a legal battle. Sandra heads West as an indictment looms.
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Transcript 6,289 words · 13 speakers
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0:30 Speaker 01 Listen to all episodes of Fatal Beauty ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit Subscribe at the top of the page, or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. Feed your true crime obsession.
0:46 Speaker 02 The Binge.
0:53 Speaker 01 Before we get started, I just want to let you know we do discuss suicide in this episode, so please, listen with care.
1:01 Speaker 01 So let's talk about Alan and Sandra. I've already told you how their story ends, but let me tell you how their romance started.
1:12 Speaker 01 Dallas in the early summer was alive, buzzing with energy. On the street, people moved through the heat like slow currents in a vast, sunlit tide. Alan Rarig was new to town. His athleticism, once his greatest asset, hadn't gotten him a professional contract, but he hoped to finally hit his stride here in Dallas beneath a sky so blue it looks painted. He'd landed a job, thanks to an old buddy, but the place to live still needed securing.
1:43 Speaker 02 His sister-in-law encouraged him to go to an area, Highland Park, and see if anybody would have a garage apartment that he could rent.
1:55 Speaker 01 This was a neighborhood where first impressions were everything. Alan apparently understood the assignment.
2:01 Speaker 02 He was dressed in a blazer and a tie, and his bronco was black and it was shiny.
2:11 Speaker 01 The sparkling SUV made its way down Lorraine Avenue, cruising slowly in hopes of spotting a for rent sign. Instead, someone caught Alan's eye that June morning.
2:22 Speaker 02 Sandra was standing out in the yard, talking to her yard man.
2:26 Speaker 01 She looks like a pinup living inside a Norman Rockwell painting. Might she have a lead?
2:32 Speaker 02 He got out and walked up and introduced himself and told her what he was looking for. And she said, well, she didn't know anybody, but if he would come back in about 30 minutes, she would go with him and they could look for something.
2:47 Speaker 01 The guy's been in Dallas for one stinking day, and he's already got a total bombshell eager to lend him a hand?
2:54 Speaker 02 When he came back, they drove around and they went to grocery stores where they had little bulletin boards for notices and notes.
3:03 Speaker 01 They struck out that day. But in no time, Sandra pulled Alan into her world. He was 29, a tall, dashing redhead.
3:13 Speaker 02 She invited him immediately to some kind of a big party. And he was to wear a tux and she had a formal on. And she showed up at his apartment to pick him up with a limousine.
3:31 Speaker 01 Alan certainly wasn't in Oklahoma anymore.
3:34 Speaker 02 He was not used to anything like that kind of society.
3:40 Speaker 01 Usually, she relied on her potential suitors to wine and dine her. With Alan, she was something of a mama warbucks. Floor seats to Springsteen concerts, tickets to Mavericks games, a trip to Hawaii.
3:52 Speaker 02 She gave the impression that she had money and was very wealthy.
3:57 Speaker 01 After about five months of dating, he moved in with Sandra, got close to her children, integrated into her upscale life, as much as an unrefined jock from small-town Oklahoma could. And by December, they got married.
4:12 Speaker 02 He had no idea what he was getting into. No idea.
4:18 Speaker 01 Their marriage didn't even last a year. By the 11th month, they'd separated, and Alan had fallen from his wife's good graces. He was found dead a month later, half-frozen, half-decomposed in his Bronco.
4:32 Speaker 02 We think she planned exactly what she did.
4:36 Speaker 01 As far as his mother's concerned, Sandra had blood on her hands. So as the murder investigation gained momentum, frustration built because Sandra proved elusive. Cops tried to pin her down as their main suspect in Alan's murder, but after the funeral, she'd slipped through their grasp like smoke. The deeper the Oklahoma City police dug, the more they realized Sandra was always one step ahead of them. From Sony Music Entertainment, this is Fatal Beauty. I'm Cooper Mall.
5:13 Speaker 01 Episode three, Dead End. Turns out, almost as soon as the coroner zipped up the body bag in Oklahoma City, Sandra didn't just hire her own P.I.
5:29 Speaker 03 She quickly went down to the Dallas County Probate Court and had her self-appointed administrator of his estate.
5:38 Speaker 01 That's the person a court officially puts in charge when someone passes away. They gather assets, pay off debts, and make sure whatever's left of the deceased goes to the right people, all according to state law. In Alan's case, a $220,000 life insurance policy was on the line. Here's John Leek, author of The Meaning of Malice Again.
6:00 Speaker 03 She was anxious for the payout as soon as possible.
6:04 Speaker 01 Oklahoma Police detectives Pacheco and Mitchell decided it was time to pay the widow a visit in Dallas.
6:10 Speaker 03 She had the motives.
6:12 Speaker 01 The detectives figured she might give them more time if she was on her own turf. But when they arrived at Sandra's front door, she barely gave them the time of day. In fact, she shut them down. Detective Pacheco tried to appeal to her better instincts. Help us help you. Help us find whoever murdered your beloved Alan. But Sandra, she didn't budge.
6:37 Speaker 03 The Oklahoma City police kind of marveled at the fact that instead of simply cooperating to help them track down Alan's killer, she retained counsel and refused to talk to the police.
6:58 Speaker 01 From the moment Oklahoma City police detectives touched down in Big D, the investigation was looking like an uphill battle. They still had no physical evidence tying Sandra to Alan's death, just their suspicion and a trail of coincidences that seemed too eerie to ignore. Alan wasn't just going out to meet any estranged wife. He was meeting a woman who in 1982 was the last known contact of another person found shot in the head. And seven years before, Sandra was the last person to see her first husband also found shot in the head.
7:33 Speaker 03 At a certain point, one has to start lending some credence to this just can't all be a coincidence.
7:43 Speaker 01 I tried to get the detectives who pursued this case to talk to me. Detective Pacheco, well, let's just say, his wife hung up on me more than once. Ron Mitchell never shied away from talking to the press about Alan's murder, but he passed away before I got the chance. Leek's been generous sharing what Detective Mitchell told him in interviews, so he filled us in on this part of the investigation. Detectives decided to see if any of what Sandra had told them about Alan in that awkward interview before his funeral was true. The drugs, the gambling, the shady company.
8:17 Speaker 03 Who was the victim hanging around with? What was going on in the victim's life?
8:21 Speaker 01 What they learned only strengthened their belief that Alan's death was no random tragedy.
8:26 Speaker 03 They just couldn't find any evidence that he was hanging around with dangerous people. Pretty quickly, the Oklahoma City police detectives realized, this is just pure assertion from the widow.
8:41 Speaker 01 Sandra's so-called tips were not checking out. Next, investigators tried to nail down Sandra's movements the night Alan disappeared. Her alibi was simple. She showed up at the storage unit in Garland at 5:15 PM, waited around for Alan for an hour, but he didn't show. So she decided to get on with her evening. Friends corroborated they'd seen her for dinner and a movie, but she wasn't in for the night till late, around 1:45 AM. That didn't mean she was innocent, though, because the detectives' running theory was, if Sandra did kill Alan, it was before she would have met the Franks.
9:22 Speaker 03 She would have had time to have committed this crime during the two hours before she actually met these people.
9:31 Speaker 01 Here's what I wonder. I've chewed over this case with a few reporters now, some folks who have been in this thing for almost as long as I've been alive.
9:41 Speaker 01 They've all shared some viable theories of what could have gone down during the time Sandra was unaccounted for.
9:47 Speaker 01 Maybe she killed him, left him at the storage unit, or even her own garage, went to dinner, then came back for his body. Alan was found near an airport. When she got home that night, she could have driven him to Oklahoma City late at night, then hopped on a short flight back to Dallas. Or she might have had Alan stored somewhere in Dallas for a few days. She could have driven to Oklahoma City that Sunday or Monday even. After all, Alan's body was found four days after he disappeared.
10:17 Speaker 01 Nailing Sandra down on the timing thing would have been a lot easier if she had just cooperated. Instead, she got her P.I., Bill Dear, on the case. Remember Sandra had asked him to find out who had really done this before Alan's body had been found? Her private investigator is trying to clear her name, so he made a request he thought would help.
10:38 Speaker 04 Bill asks her to take a polygraph test.
10:43 Speaker 01 If she passed...
10:45 Speaker 04 Then you're going to be able to show the police, "Look, I had nothing to do with this."
10:50 Speaker 01 That's Whitley again. On December 23rd, Sandra and Bill Dear paid a visit to the polygraph examiner's office. Sandra brought her friend Susan for moral support. She hung back in the parking lot.
11:02 Speaker 04 She comes out and she's crying and she says, "I failed it."
11:06 Speaker 01 Polygraphs aren't always accurate. So a week later, they tried again. A polygraph translates every spike in your pulse into suspicion, inked onto a cold, unfeeling graph. Failing a polygraph is like watching a trap you didn't know you were in suddenly snap shut. And it had pinned down Sandra again.
11:28 Speaker 01 Two questions in particular vexed her. Do you know who was responsible for the murder of Alan Rarig? Did you kill Alan Rarig?
11:41 Speaker 01 Look, these days, a polygraph is considered by many a pseudoscience.
11:46 Speaker 01 You'd be hard pressed to find a judge willing to vouch they're legit. But back in the 80s, Bill Dear, Sandra's P.I., gave them credence.
11:54 Speaker 04 He looks at the evidence that he's been dealing with and the fact that she's failed this polygraph and ultimately comes to the conclusion that she is responsible or knows something more about Alan's death.
12:10 Speaker 01 The second failure landed with the weight of a gavel. He dropped Sandra as a client.
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13:17 Speaker 01 1986 arrived, and still no breaks in Allen's murder case. But every so often, his mother Gloria would find out something unsettling. Around this time, a friend of Allen's, a guy named Bill Dodd, forwarded her a letter. Allen had sent it to him not long after he and Sandra tied the knot.
13:38 Speaker 02 She told Al that she was pregnant.
13:41 Speaker 01 This was all new to Gloria. Why wouldn't he have told her she was going to be a grandma? And what happened to her grandchild? Gloria called up Phil, Allen's friend in Dallas, to see what he knew. Here's what she said he told her. Just a year earlier, before the newlyweds could pick a baby name or the color they'd paint the nursery, Sandra made a frantic call to Allen. Phil and Allen happened to be together that night, actually. The two had just returned from a basketball game.
14:13 Speaker 02 She had stopped at a 7-Eleven or someplace and called him and told him that she had had a miscarriage and that it was twin boys and they were redheaded.
14:28 Speaker 01 She had been pregnant with twins. Two babies gone. Gingers, just like their dad. Devastation hit Allen. In the short time he'd known he was going to become a father, he'd let himself dream of tucking his kid into bed, teaching him to read. And now he'd lost two babies?
14:47 Speaker 02 And he grieved over that.
14:50 Speaker 01 In the days following the miscarriage, Allen was met with armloads of support.
14:55 Speaker 02 The people at his office were just grieving with him and they took dinner to the house like you do when somebody passes away.
15:09 Speaker 01 When Gloria recounted this tragedy to me, I had some questions. At the risk of sounding insensitive, so early in a pregnancy, how would the twins have red hair? You can't see hair on an ultrasound until the end of the second trimester. Gloria loves Alan and remembers him fondly. But let's just say, when I asked her about this discrepancy, she didn't mince words.
15:33 Speaker 02 He was too dumb to know that she couldn't have had twins that had red hair.
15:43 Speaker 01 Alan took the miscarriage for what it was, a tragedy. But Gloria was skeptical. It was summer by the time Gloria found out the truth about Sandra's miscarriage.
15:54 Speaker 02 I got in touch with somebody that knew that she had had a hysterectomy.
16:00 Speaker 01 If she didn't have a uterus...
16:02 Speaker 02 She couldn't have given it.
16:04 Speaker 01 Gloria was speechless. Her son, who'd hoped to be a father one day, had married a woman who couldn't have any more kids and never told him. A woman who'd lied about being pregnant with twins, lied about having miscarried.
16:19 Speaker 02 It's just unbelievable, unbelievable. That's what was so infuriating to me because Al would have been such a wonderful father. She had taken all of that away and had lied to him about that.
16:37 Speaker 01 And if Sandra was capable of lying about this, where did she draw the line? From the start, she'd played him. He was never going to be a father. This was it. Gloria felt she had to stop Sandra from profiting off her son's death. His money should stay within the family,
16:58 Speaker 01 not go to the woman she suspected of taking his life.
17:03 Speaker 01 Nearly six months after Alan was shot to death, Gloria still hadn't heard any new developments from detectives on arresting Sandra. But she did hear from the life insurance company that sold Alan his policy. And the news wasn't good. Since Sandra hadn't been arrested, she was going to get the payout. In 24 hours. Gloria knew if she had any chance of stopping Sandra from getting that $220,000, she needed to get a lawyer ASAP.
17:33 Speaker 02 A friend had given me a name, David Wise, of an attorney in Dallas. And I contacted him and asked if he would help me with the death of my son.
17:45 Speaker 01 David Wise was a probate attorney in Dallas. He wasn't a cop, but he was exactly the kind of professional Gloria needed. Someone who could fight Sandra in court, stall that life insurance payout, and if possible, strip Sandra of her power over Alan's estate.
18:01 Speaker 06 I get a call from one of the lawyers in the law firm in Oklahoma City saying, "Look, we have a client whose son we think was murdered, and his wife's about to get the insurance proceeds. All we need you to do is draft a letter and take it basically down the street to the insurance company, but it needs to be there tonight or first thing in the morning."
18:23 Speaker 01 Over the phone, he took Gloria's case.
18:27 Speaker 06 We filed to have Sandra removed and prevent the payment out of the estate and prevent the insurance company from doing anything.
18:36 Speaker 01 The letter claimed Sandra, the beneficiary, was the prime suspect in Alan's murder. So the payout should be delayed. At least until that suspicion could be ruled out or proven.
18:51 Speaker 01 David didn't stop there. We're talking murder here. This wasn't merely a probate case. So he set up a hearing before Nikki DeShazo, Judge of Dallas County's Probate Court. He subpoenaed detectives Mitchell and Pacheco to come along with him.
19:06 Speaker 06 So we get before the court. I got there early and went in chambers with the judge and these two other lawyers for Sandra.
19:15 Speaker 01 Criminal defense attorneys in probate court. More fodder for the claim David was there to make.
19:22 Speaker 06 I said, "Well, you know, we think it is a criminal matter."
19:26 Speaker 01 If David wanted to approach it that way, Judge DeShazo was prepared to play by those rules. Here he is recounting what she said.
19:35 Speaker 06 Mr. Wise, you alleged murder, so the murder proof in our hearing today is going to be beyond a reasonable doubt, instead of a preponderance of evidence.
19:45 Speaker 01 Let's just say David was frustrated.
19:48 Speaker 06 It's some BS. I said, "Judge, this is not a criminal court. You cannot hold my client to that high standard of proof." She said, "Well, it's my court. I'm gonna do what I want to do, and I'm gonna hold it to that."
20:00 Speaker 01 They left it at that, and the hearing would be continued at a later date. If Sandra couldn't be the administrator of Alan's estate, they had to put someone else up for the job. David suggested Alan's cousin, Robert Smith. He was local to the area and willing to rise to the occasion.
20:18 Speaker 03 Robert was married and had three children.
20:22 Speaker 01 In early July, an official application was filed to remove Sandra as administrator and replace her with Robert. Eleven days after that petition was filed...
20:31 Speaker 03 Robert was then found shot to death in his vehicle parked in his home garage. Again, very cursory investigation, and then it was ruled suicide.
20:45 Speaker 01 Robert stood in Sandra's way, plain and simple. So she might have had a motive to kill. And yet, it's unclear if Robert's death was ever investigated as a homicide. His death quickly deemed as suicide.
21:00 Speaker 01 By now, you're probably thinking, how on earth does this keep happening?
21:07 Speaker 01 That question was nagging me, too. It seemed to me whether a death gets deemed a suicide or not was awfully subjective. Turns out, it wasn't until 1988 that the forensic scientists and medical community started laying out the criteria for what makes suicide a suicide. And that was two years after the last suicide in Sandra's orbit. But get this: in America, there's no universal standard for coroners or medical examiners to follow, to this very day. That means a determination that a death is a suicide, not a murder, is a judgment call. Coroners and medical examiners commonly rely on what first responders say, or witnesses
21:50 Speaker 01 who say the deceased seemed suicidal or was depressed.
21:57 Speaker 01 I was shocked when I found this out. Because shouldn't it take more than a witness's word to have a death be ruled a suicide? For murder to be off the table? Especially if, like in Sandra Bridewell's case, they stood to gain financially.
22:14 Speaker 01 Detectives were still digging for that burden of proof the judge required. Until early that September, David Wise got some good news.
22:23 Speaker 06 Pacheco and Mitchell told me that they were getting close in Oklahoma. They thought they would have enough evidence to indict her.
22:31 Speaker 01 For Allen's murder. It was circumstantial evidence, but a lot of it. How she stood to get the life insurance payout, how Sandra lied about Allen having shady connections or a drug habit, her odd behavior after his death, not cooperating. Her alibi wasn't rock solid either. The detectives hoped, altogether, it would be enough for a grand jury to indict Sandra. David notified the court and detectives Pacheco and Mitchell.
22:59 Speaker 07 They made this assurance to Gloria Rarick that an indictment was imminent.
23:05 Speaker 01 It would be presented to the grand jury in Oklahoma City that November, a different court than where the probate battle was playing out. Then in a bizarre turn of events, Sandra made a shocking move in the battle for Alan's cash.
23:17 Speaker 06 She resigned. Said there's no need for a hearing.
23:21 Speaker 01 But the damage had already been done. 102,000 of the 220,000 had already gone, paid towards debts, legal fees, and expenses that Alan had no idea she'd accrued.
23:32 Speaker 06 They paid out half because she had presented certain expenses on behalf of the estate.
23:38 Speaker 01 The remaining $118,000, if she wasn't indicted, it was all hers. And she was gonna need it.
23:47 Speaker 07 These families trying to help her out because she's just a poor widowed woman, whatever. She had used up all those people, and so those resources were gone.
23:56 Speaker 01 This is Carrie Huskinson. She's a private investigator who went to unbelievable lengths to trace Sandra's web of deception. By 1986, Huskinson told me she didn't have any allies. Not anymore.
24:10 Speaker 07 She had become a pariah in Highland Park.
24:13 Speaker 01 Between being named a prime suspect in a murder and duking it out in probate court with her former mother-in-law?
24:19 Speaker 07 Nobody wanted anything to do with her, so she needed fresh hunting grounds.
24:24 Speaker 01 Back then, in the 80s, pre-internet, it was easier to start over, to head somewhere new and wipe your slate clean. If there's no Reddit, anonymous haters can't keep resurfacing the allegations against you. So Sandra truly could leave for California, put her blinkers on, and try a new scheme. One that didn't require walking down the aisle.
24:46 Speaker 07 And it's a much bigger pond, and they don't know who she is.
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25:50 Speaker 01 Sandra made a soft landing in another wealthy enclave, Belvidere in Murrin County. Here's veteran reporter Glenna Whitley again.
26:00 Speaker 04 And she very much could talk the talk and walk the walk in those circles.
26:05 Speaker 01 It's a place where privilege meets paradise. Tucked just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, Murrin County feels like a world of its own, where rolling hills meet the Pacific, redwoods stretch toward the sky, and affluence is woven into the fabric of daily life.
26:22 Speaker 04 She enrolled the two girls in Branson School, which is a well-known private school, very hoity-toity.
26:30 Speaker 01 The Bridewells, yeah. Sandra dropped Rarick when she got there, moved into a luxury apartment near the San Francisco Yacht Club.
26:41 Speaker 01 Ever since I heard she'd moved to California, I wondered about the timing. If you're facing an indictment, why put down roots when there's a possibility of jail time? Huskinson reminded me who we're dealing with here.
26:54 Speaker 07 It was a good tactical move. And not only that, with the indictment, they'd have to extradite her, which she could fight. So it was a smart move, calculating. That's Sandra.
27:05 Speaker 01 Well, about that indictment.
27:08 Speaker 03 A couple of months goes by and there's nothing about a grand jury being impaneled. And it just didn't happen. I have no idea why. It didn't happen.
27:18 Speaker 01 Alan's mother is at her wits' end.
27:21 Speaker 03 Gloria then calls the prosecutor's office and is like, well, what's the deal? I thought that you guys were going to indict her.
27:28 Speaker 01 Turns out, they were making other plans.
27:31 Speaker 03 The DA says the FBI is taking over the case. They have more resources and more jurisdictions.
27:39 Speaker 01 This was the first Gloria had heard anything about that. Naturally, she was curious whether the FBI could make any bona fide progress on her son's murder case. Gloria told me their response was underwhelming. They didn't know anything more than what the Oklahoma City police had said. That's all the contact she ever had with them.
28:01 Speaker 04 The FBI never seems to get any traction in this case. Nothing ever comes of it. That is one of the big mysteries.
28:13 Speaker 01 I reached out to the FBI to ask about Alan's murder. I asked them if they ever called in his widow Sandra for an interview. I asked whether they ever nailed down her whereabouts from the day Alan went missing to four days later when he was found. I asked what evidence they were able to unearth that Oklahoma police hadn't. There was a lot of back and forth after I first reached out. Would I be able to get to the bottom of this mystery? Then, public affairs passed along final comment. The FBI's field office in Oklahoma were unable to help me, just like they were unable to help then. For her part, Gloria lost her nerve after Sandra went on the offensive.
28:54 Speaker 01 She hired a lawyer who made it clear that she should watch what she says about Sandra publicly. And that was it for Gloria.
29:03 Speaker 03 She dropped her claim to block the remainder of the death benefit.
29:08 Speaker 01 The last of Allen's life insurance, the $118,000, went to Sandra.
29:14 Speaker 02 It was devastating. It really was.
29:18 Speaker 01 This wasn't about the money. The end of the probate battle signaled an end to the investigation into Allen altogether.
29:25 Speaker 02 It seemed like it was totally a cold case.
29:30 Speaker 01 When Allen was murdered in 1985, she didn't just lose him. She lost the future she had dreamed for him. And worst of all, she believed the person responsible walked away free.
29:45 Speaker 01 Sandra had the motive, the lies, and the payout, but no charges were ever filed.
29:54 Speaker 06 They had a jurisdictional battle going on between the Dallas Police Department and the Oklahoma City Police Department. They found the body in Oklahoma City, and the Dallas Police didn't seem to want to be involved in it because the body was found in Oklahoma. And they should have been more involved, you know? It's a situation where the FBI should have been involved early on. They let the rabbit out of the trap with her.
30:17 Speaker 01 Here, David Wise is talking about all law enforcement. I reached out to the Dallas Police Department to see what a spokesperson had to say about his allegations that they should have been more involved. David Wise alleged they had dropped the ball. The spokesperson from the Dallas PD had no comment.
30:37 Speaker 01 Sandra was officially free to start over without criminal charges. It seemed no one could stop her.
30:45 Speaker 04 I think she began scamming men almost as soon as she moved to California. And that is based on me talking to men who she came on to, who she borrowed money from.
31:00 Speaker 01 That's the reporter, Glenna Whitley. She told me Sandra set quite the elaborate trap in Marin County.
31:07 Speaker 04 She moves to California with a house full of expensive antiques, china, you know, all the trappings that make her look like she comes from old money.
31:19 Speaker 01 Sandra acted like she didn't need their money, but that's exactly what she was after.
31:24 Speaker 04 She is able to get their confidence very quickly and plays upon their masculine sympathy to protect this beautiful woman who seems to find them so irresistible. And one of them was a guy named Dennis Kubo.
31:41 Speaker 01 An attorney who was recently separated from his wife, instantly captivated by Sandra. In August of 88, the two met at a dinner party in Sonoma County, wine country. She was beautiful but not flashy, sophisticated but not intimidating, just mysterious enough to make a man lean in, just tragic enough to make him want to help.
32:04 Speaker 04 She kind of evoked a sense of protectiveness in him.
32:08 Speaker 01 As their relationship deepened, she confided in Dennis about temporary financial setbacks, delayed trust fund disbursements, and postponed real estate deals. Their affair was getting intense, and Dennis was moved by her plight. And he just wanted to help her, so he offered her a loan. Would $5,000 work?
32:27 Speaker 04 He actually takes out money on a credit card and gives it to her.
32:33 Speaker 01 She promised to pay him back. His mistake was believing her.
32:37 Speaker 04 He thought, well, she's got to be good for it. He sees all of her art and her antiques and the way she dressed, the way she carried herself.
32:45 Speaker 01 Sandra spun stories like silk. There was always something, subtle, desperate, always justified. Her son's college tuition, rent, airfare, hotel rooms, car repairs.
33:00 Speaker 04 But it kept going and going.
33:03 Speaker 01 The requests grew more frequent and substantial. Dennis even racked up credit card debt for her. She promised to pay him back. She just needed a little money just to help her get through a rough patch. But here's the thing.
33:18 Speaker 04 It's not getting paid back.
33:24 Speaker 01 In about three months, Dennis had loaned Sandra nearly $24,000. That's over $63,000 today.
33:31 Speaker 04 He starts to realize, wait a minute, what's going on here?
33:36 Speaker 01 Before Dennis could get an answer, or a promissory note signed for that matter, Sandra's explanations became vague. The woman who had once been warm, affectionate, and grateful now seemed distant.
33:48 Speaker 04 She stops returning his phone calls and standing him up for dates.
33:53 Speaker 01 Sandra ghosted him. Dennis's date might have ditched him and the bill, but he wasn't alone. In January 89...
34:03 Speaker 04 He gets a call from another guy named Tom Finney.
34:07 Speaker 01 One mark had officially met the other.
34:10 Speaker 04 When they compared notes, you know, there's some similarities between the situations.
34:18 Speaker 01 Here's Tom Finney on San Francisco's New Center 4.
34:21 Speaker 10 She has very dark eyes that really, I believe, penetrates a person's mind.
34:29 Speaker 01 When the 45-year-old insurance executive learned he'd been duped by the Dallas Damsel in distress, he took it to the press. Dennis Kuba, he wasn't as media-friendly.
34:39 Speaker 11 Kuba declined an interview with New Center 4. Friends say he's too embarrassed.
34:45 Speaker 01 He never responded to my calls or letters either. In the news segment, Tom Finney appears with his wife, also named Sandra. Today, both of the Finneys have passed away, but here's what his wife said at the time about Sandra.
34:59 Speaker 04 She has very hypnotic eyes. If I ever met her again, I certainly wouldn't want to look in her eyes. I would truly be frightened to.
35:09 Speaker 01 The couple had met Sandra at a dinner party. Unbeknownst to his wife, Sandra had called Mr. Finney asking for help. There was something she wanted to run by him. You guessed it, she needed money. Here's what Tom Finney said about it.
35:24 Speaker 10 The FDIC happened to be investigating this bank, and that her trust was frozen, and that she could not get any money. And as a result of this, she was unable to pay her rent. She was unable to pay tuition for the... her kids at this school. And if she could have a very short-term loan.
35:49 Speaker 01 $10,000, to be exact.
35:52 Speaker 04 Tom Finney actually takes money out of his retirement account.
35:58 Speaker 01 I asked Whitley, who interviewed him in 1989. What Tom told her was his rationale for loaning money to this virtual stranger.
36:05 Speaker 04 I gave it to her because I felt sorry for her. I gave it to her because I felt sorry for her.
36:12 Speaker 01 Sandra had an uncanny ability to make men do what she wanted them to. She weaponized sorrow with the precision of a seasoned predator.
36:20 Speaker 11 Tom Finney said yes, and over the next several weeks, says he loaned Bridewell more than $70,000, and has the canceled checks and wire transfers to prove it.
36:30 Speaker 01 That amount didn't go unnoticed by his wife.
36:33 Speaker 04 Of course, you're married. It's your retirement account, too, you know?
36:37 Speaker 01 Tom had to come clean.
36:38 Speaker 04 He tells his wife, and she was just aghast.
36:44 Speaker 01 He assured her that the two never had an affair. But she was livid he'd given away their money. Can you blame her? Mrs. Finney had Tom call Sandra up to recover the fund stat. Here's Whitley recounting what Sandra had to say about that.
37:00 Speaker 04 She said, "Well, I think you gave me that money. If you want to divorce your wife and come live with me, you can enjoy your money." That was it.
37:11 Speaker 01 And it turned out, of course, that Sandra didn't just ruin the lives of these men. Whitley found out she'd stolen from a stable of men. Men who'd been left broken, and in some cases, their lives hollowed out like gutted fish. The ones who fought back found themselves ensnared in something even darker. An undeniable sense that Sandra wasn't just taking their money. She was taking their dignity, piece by piece.
37:40 Speaker 04 And most of these guys don't say much about it. They don't want to admit that they've been taken by a beautiful woman who's giving them sex and adoration. And then when she can't pay the money back, or has never intended to pay the money back, she dumps them and moves on.
38:01 Speaker 01 But Tom, he was willing to take Sandra to task. This is just speculation, but I've got a feeling his wife lit a fire under his ass.
38:09 Speaker 11 When the money was not repaid, Finney finally sued her in March. Bridewell's lawyer filed papers claiming any money was a gift.
38:18 Speaker 01 Tom Finney never saw a cent.
38:20 Speaker 04 He couldn't afford to pursue it. It seemed like there was no chance of him getting any money back because there was nothing in writing. And she's going to say, oh, we were having an affair and he gave me that money.
38:33 Speaker 01 Sandra didn't work and had three children, yet her lifestyle didn't falter. She afforded her life by destroying other people's.
38:44 Speaker 01 Had this been Sandra's game all along? Did she manipulate men, then blackmail them? She certainly had a type. She'd target wealthy men, respected men, church-going types, men with something to lose.
39:00 Speaker 07 I knew about Thomas Finney. I'd also heard rumblings when I was in Dallas, over in Highland Park, that she had done this to other people. And so it's just part of her MO.
39:11 Speaker 01 That's private investigator Carrie Huskinson again. She was hired by the wife of one of Sandra's later victims.
39:18 Speaker 07 Every man she ever encountered, she knew exactly how to play them.
39:23 Speaker 01 In California, Sandra would pursue men, take up with them, and threaten to expose their dalliance. Men were Sandra's currency. Their silence, her insurance. Between Dennis Kuba and Tom Finney, Sandra raked in over $90,000. And she didn't even have to marry either of them. Her past, unknown to them. Until, it wasn't.
39:49 Speaker 11 They checked into Bridewell's past in Dallas, and soon learned of a cover story on her in a Dallas publication called D Magazine, a report titled "The Black Widow."
40:00 Speaker 01 Alan's murder hadn't made a headline beyond local news. But now, the cat was creeping out of the bag.
40:15 Speaker 01 On the next episode of Fatal Beauty, a Christian wife hires a tenacious private investigator.
40:21 Speaker 07 I got a call at about 3:30 in the morning. She was crying, and then she said she had found long, black hairs on her pillow.
40:29 Speaker 01 It turns out, her husband had taken up with a mysterious brunette.
40:33 Speaker 07 And that's when she found out her name was Camille.
40:36 Speaker 01 Wait a second. Who?
40:42 Speaker 12 What's it take to be a mentor with big brothers, big sisters? It takes 30 minutes and a cup of coffee, a video game, best two out of three. It takes sharing thumbs-up emojis, clapping emojis, and loaded nachos at halftime. That's how you make an impact on a young kid's life. So go on, share a few hours a month, because mentorship may sound huge. But the truth is, it takes little to be big. To learn more, volunteer, or donate, go to bebignow.org.
41:22 Speaker 00 LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.
41:31 Speaker 00 We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.
Previous Fatal Beauty | 1. Body in the Bronco Next Fatal Beauty | 4. There's Something About Camille Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated