Pod Insights The Binge Cases: Doctor Billions Fatal Beauty | 6. Hard to Get About this episode Investigators finally have Sandra exactly where they want her and look again at Alan’s murder. Could she have had an accomplice?
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Transcript 6,253 words · 18 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 Get this. When you're with Xfinity, you're already a member. No sign up, no cost. Score epic experiences from our family at NBC Universal. Plus movie tickets, discounts on streaming, mobile, and more. Check the Xfinity app every Thursday for exclusive perks and experiences. Only with Xfinity. Now that's the way to start a weekend. Let the magic begin. Restrictions apply. Visit Xfinity.com/membership to learn more.
0:31 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.
0:55 Speaker 01 By now, Sandra was indicted and behind bars. But just how long she would stay there had yet to be decided. I know this seems unbelievable, but the fact is, in the eyes of the law, Sandra, at 63, was a rookie offender.
1:13 Speaker 02 She had not been convicted of many other crimes.
1:16 Speaker 01 He wishes to remain anonymous, but the investigator who worked at the direction of the U.S. Attorney's Office told me it's not uncommon for first-time offenders to be offered plea bargains. Sandra's back was up against the wall, though.
1:30 Speaker 02 If she didn't accept a guilty plea, then we would have to go to trial. And if she was found guilty by a jury of her peers, she would end up probably being sentenced to more time.
1:42 Speaker 01 Of the five charges against her, Sandra only had to plead guilty to one: aggravated identity theft. After the breathless investigation, the sting operation, the resources spent trying to bring her in, the system is built to cut deals like this for first-time, nonviolent offenders, no matter how strong the case. That's how it works. Frankly, this pisses me off. Sandra was no rookie. She hadn't accidentally committed a crime, but she'd never been caught. And for that, the system decided to treat her like some unfortunate soul who made a single bad choice. She was only considered a rookie because her first husband, David Steegel's, death
2:26 Speaker 01 had been ruled a suicide, on her word and the word of the psychiatrist she arranged for her husband to see. In the case of Betsy Bagwell, Sandra may have just gotten lucky, because Betsy's own husband refused to go to authorities with evidence that her supposed suicide seemed staged. Then Alan Rarick. Could she have foreseen the jurisdictional shitshow that would occur if his body was transported across state lines? I wouldn't put it past her.
2:56 Speaker 01 I've got a lot of ways to describe Sandra Bridewell, and rookie isn't one of them. But here she was in her 60s, a lifetime of deception behind her as she walked up to the federal courthouse to enter her plea bargain. Inside, it was an unconventional reunion. The women who had tirelessly gunned for Sandra to face consequences were in the same place. This was a moment Alan Rarick's mother Gloria had waited decades for.
3:24 Speaker 03 I was so excited that Jane Todd told me to tell me she had arrested her in North Carolina.
3:35 Speaker 01 So when Sandra finally stood before a judge, not for Alan's murder, but for aggravated identity theft, Gloria was there. It might not have been the justice she had hoped for, but it was something. Reporter Glenna Whitley would never have missed it.
3:52 Speaker 04 I mean, it was a rush, just like, yes, she's finally been arrested. And all these years, she had never been in custody.
4:04 Speaker 01 These women sat next to one another as Sandra Bridewell entered the room.
4:08 Speaker 03 She walked in like she was Miss Queen. I sat right on the front row when she came in that door. And I had a big lapel pin with Al's picture on it, on my jacket.
4:22 Speaker 01 A powerful reminder that her son had been stolen from her. Maybe Sandra would catch a glimpse of his face and feel something.
4:31 Speaker 03 She did not look toward me at all. She walked totally past me.
4:38 Speaker 01 And just about six months later, she was back there again. This time for sentencing. Reporters gathered to catch a glimpse of the Black Widow, who was now gray. I couldn't help but notice that nobody they grabbed for a soundbite characterized her as a novice. In a segment from Raleigh's local news station, WRIL, investigator Marty Folding, who's no longer with us, painted a picture of a seasoned predator.
5:06 Speaker 05 As she aged and her looks diminished, she went from a gushing Southern belle who could use her charms to get what they want to a missionary who could get what they want through religion.
5:20 Speaker 01 Sandra's last victim, Sue Mosley, spoke her truth.
5:24 Speaker 06 Camille has humiliated everybody that calls themselves a Christian and loves the Lord.
5:33 Speaker 01 Yet at one point in the hearing, in a surprising pivot, she cut Sandra some slack.
5:42 Speaker 01 Sue Mosley approached the stand. She wore a charcoal blazer, a pearl necklace with matching earrings, her gray hair pulled back. Detective Jane Todd remembered this wasn't easy for her.
5:54 Speaker 07 Sue was really nervous.
5:57 Speaker 01 Who wouldn't be?
5:59 Speaker 07 She got emotional there at one point.
6:02 Speaker 01 Then she spoke directly to Sandra.
6:04 Speaker 07 She forgave Sandra for what she had done.
6:12 Speaker 01 I'll speak for myself here. I can safely say Sue Mosley is a better person than me. And I think you'd be hard pressed to find many people willing to extend forgiveness for being defrauded, manipulated, and robbed in their golden years. Her son Jim told me that was his mom through and through.
6:30 Speaker 08 Being a very Christian lady, you're taught to forgive no matter what.
6:35 Speaker 01 It was an outstanding act of grace, significant to all but one person in the room that day.
6:43 Speaker 07 There was no acknowledgement out of Sandra. She kept her head down most of the time that Ms. Sue was on the stand.
6:53 Speaker 01 Sandra had always been a paradox in this way. She was cunning and brazen when she needed attention from someone else, but cowardly when someone demanded her attention. While Sandra may not have paid Sue's forgiveness any mind, Judge James Dever the Third sure did. In cases of nonviolent crimes, acts of grace can actually influence sentencing outcomes. The gavel fell.
7:20 Speaker 01 Officially charged with one count of identity theft, Sandra was sentenced to the mandatory minimum term of two years in prison. She'd have one year of supervised release. By then, it was anyone's guess whether she still had the nerve or the audacity to pull another con on an unsuspecting family.
7:39 Speaker 01 The more I think about Sandra's whole story, the more I find myself circling the same two opposing questions. Did she outthink law enforcement at every turn? Or did cops make mistakes and let her slip away when they should have had her dead to rights? In the final weeks of production on this podcast, I was mulling this over with P.I. Carrie Huskinson. This is what she said.
8:05 Speaker 09 Many people have asked, how is it that Sandra was able to get away with killing people, never being held accountable? And I'm just going to say this, that I believe the reason why she's never faced justice is totally and completely because of the incompetence of law enforcement.
8:29 Speaker 01 From Sony Music Entertainment, you're listening to the finale of Fatal Beauty. I'm Cooper Mall, episode six, Hard to Get.
8:44 Speaker 01 It turned out a cold case investigator in Oklahoma City already had Sandra in his sights from the moment of her capture. His name is Kyle Eastridge. When news of her arrest made headlines...
8:55 Speaker 10 We got wind that she had been in trouble out in North Carolina, so we started following that.
9:08 Speaker 01 Detective Eastridge is retired now, but he used to be a homicide detective, and eventually cold cases became his focus. After retiring, Eastridge was diagnosed with ALS. In our conversations, I never got a sense it kept him down. The guy's got a mean sense of humor and an encyclopedic knowledge of homicide investigations.
9:29 Speaker 10 Alan's case was one we always wanted to solve, and his mother was his champion. She was always checking in with supervisors of the DA's office just to see if anything new happened.
9:50 Speaker 01 Will police handle investigations? DA's decide which cases are worth prosecuting, and the cases are usually reopened if new evidence pops up, like fresh tips, DNA breakthroughs, and forensic tech improvements.
10:03 Speaker 07 Ms. Rerig was trying to get it reopened, and we were having a little bit of problems.
10:11 Speaker 01 Detective Jane Todd was just as adamant as Gloria. She even called up the DA herself and asked him to reopen the case. A cop in Charlotte, North Carolina, pushing a DA in Oklahoma City? That wasn't exactly standard.
10:23 Speaker 07 I never got word back from him, so I called Ms. Rerig and asked Ms. Rerig, I said, "Look," I said, "go to your church, have them write letters, get up with the DA, tell them you want the case reopened."
10:35 Speaker 01 Detective Todd thought, how could the DA say no to that? After all, public pressure and media attention can push a case back into the spotlight. All in all, 100 people from Gloria's fellowship signed a petition.
10:48 Speaker 07 And the DA ultimately got up with the cold case department.
10:51 Speaker 01 It worked.
10:53 Speaker 07 And... I finally got a call from Kylie Estridge.
10:57 Speaker 01 By spring 2007, Allen's cold case was officially being reopened.
11:05 Speaker 10 Now we just gotta do some girl fashion gumshoe police work and go out and find witnesses and see if we can build a timeline that will bring us the information to charge.
11:26 Speaker 01 Detective Estridge was determined to do what couldn't be done two decades ago: find the missing pieces. But in 2007, this investigation faced the same challenges it did in the 80s.
11:38 Speaker 10 It's a case that never really had a lot of physical evidence.
11:47 Speaker 01 There was only one person who could fill in the gaps, the one person who had always been at the center of the storm. Maybe Detective Estridge would have better luck than Detective Todd.
11:57 Speaker 07 The whole time I had her in custody, she would never admit to having a third husband named Allen Ririck.
12:06 Speaker 01 It's an odd thing to deny, because it's a fact. But maybe Sandra was trying to convince herself her whirlwind marriage to Allen had never happened. Her denial ran that deep.
12:19 Speaker 07 I mean, she just totally refused to say that she was married to him.
12:25 Speaker 01 They had to puncture her bubble, to get her to admit basic facts and get her to admit what had actually happened the day Allen met her at the storage unit.
12:34 Speaker 10 I knew I was gonna have to try to talk to her, and she was in a spot she couldn't give away.
12:45 Speaker 01 Now that she lived in a jail cell, she couldn't slam the door on cops, or evade them. A few months after Sandra was incarcerated, Detective Estridge got a shot to interview her.
12:57 Speaker 01 This was it. He took a flight down to Raleigh.
13:00 Speaker 10 I needed to try to get her now down to a story.
13:06 Speaker 01 I asked him if before going down there, like the detectives before him, he also suspected Sandra had killed Alan.
13:13 Speaker 10 For me, it's the whole picture that makes her suspicious. And there's a lot of people that fight over money and get divorced. But Sandra had an idea in her head that she belonged in that world. It was a big driving factor for her. And what even convinced me more was that when Sandra got to the age that she began losing her looks a little bit, she didn't have that,
13:57 Speaker 10 if you want to call it, sex appeal to lure in these guys. She shifted her tactics to fraud.
14:09 Speaker 01 Detective Easterich suspected Sandra would stop at nothing for a financial gain, not even murder.
14:16 Speaker 01 And perhaps when the two locked eyes in the interview room, Sandra sensed that in him. She entered controlled, deliberate, unshaken.
14:25 Speaker 10 I introduced myself. She said she knew who I was and didn't care.
14:32 Speaker 01 She had incredible self-possession.
14:34 Speaker 10 From the time she walked in and sat down to the time I left, she wasn't nervous. Her eyes were sharp. She didn't have that babe of the woods look. She looked like she was in charge. It was a real odd dynamic to me.
15:00 Speaker 01 Sandra invoked her right to an attorney and showed Detective Easterich the door.
15:04 Speaker 10 She shut me down immediately.
15:10 Speaker 01 But he'd been in the room long enough with her to figure out one thing.
15:14 Speaker 10 She just has no morals or ethics. Kind of like a sociopath, you know? She doesn't care about anybody else's suffering as long as she gets something out of it.
15:32 Speaker 01 The fact is, she lured men into her web pretending to be fragile, in need of saving. But she was never the one drowning.
15:42 Speaker 01 She was the tide pulling them under. The architect of the game, shifting pieces at will. The queen who made pawns believe they were kings.
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16:26 Speaker 11 Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.
16:28 Speaker 12 Witness the beginning of the revolution.
16:30 Speaker 11 Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.
16:33 Speaker 12 Filmed for IMAX.
16:34 Speaker 11 Make them remember you.
16:37 Speaker 12 The Hunger Games: Sunlight's on the Leaping, November 20th. Made in PG-13.
16:43 Speaker 01 Outside the prison walls, the search for the truth wasn't over. The investigation pressed forward, and soon Detective Eastridge wasn't working alone.
16:52 Speaker 08 I more or less jumped in. A lot of what I learned about this case was on the fly through him explaining things and me asking questions.
17:02 Speaker 01 That's Detective Ryan Porter. He'd recently been selected for Oklahoma City's homicide unit when he was assigned Eastridge as his partner. Detective Porter told me what stood out to him when he was first put on the case.
17:14 Speaker 08 There was just a lot of weird things that he had brought up. She's cooperative one day and then she shuts it off. She hires an attorney. That's not somebody that's a widow that has absolutely nothing to do with a case would do.
17:31 Speaker 01 I can imagine this was a real head-scratcher of a cold case, especially given it was his first.
17:37 Speaker 08 It made no sense to me why somebody who, if they had no involvement whatsoever, would not cooperate, let you talk to their kids, let you talk to everybody.
17:47 Speaker 01 That only made Detective Porter more certain there was something worth hiding. So the detectives turned their attention to the people who had lived under Sandra's roof, her three children.
17:58 Speaker 08 Especially Britton and Catherine would have had more information because of their age.
18:05 Speaker 01 They were 17 and 15 when Alan died, while the youngest Emily was only 12. I remembered a detail Glenna Whitley shared with me about when Sandra gave her first and only interview with Oklahoma Police Detectives Pacheco and Mitchell.
18:19 Speaker 04 The timing of everything was very important, and the children could have known something about where she was over this weekend, over this period of time.
18:31 Speaker 01 Better late than never. Here detectives were nearly three decades later asking timeline questions.
18:38 Speaker 08 Let's make another run at her kids. They're adults now, let's go take a run.
18:43 Speaker 01 Maybe they had heard something, seen something. Maybe after decades of silence, one of them would finally give them the lead they needed.
18:51 Speaker 08 Kyle had already done a lot of the footwork in locating where the three children were located, now Emily, Catherine, as well as Britton, where they were at. We were very optimistic we were going to get someplace.
19:07 Speaker 01 Sandra's kids could be the key to the case. To get their statements, it looked like Detectives Porter and Eastridge would have to embark on their own version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
19:17 Speaker 08 Kids are scattered throughout the United States at that particular time. And when I say from East Coast to West Coast, I mean East Coast to West Coast.
19:27 Speaker 01 They began with Emily, Sandra's youngest daughter. The two caught an early morning flight and spent the whole day traveling before arriving at her door.
19:40 Speaker 08 Emily was so willing to meet and talk with us, but too much time and her age at the time of this makes it very difficult for her to recall things or get specific dates.
19:55 Speaker 01 Beyond her age, Detective Porter raised another valid argument for Emily's lack of recollection.
20:01 Speaker 08 Sandra kept her mouth shut. She doesn't necessarily talk about stuff. She appears to just be a habitual liar and she can do it with no thought involved whatsoever. So that just tells me that she probably shielded the kids from as much as she could.
20:21 Speaker 01 But kids don't stay in the dark forever. Even Emily had come to suspect the worst about her mom.
20:28 Speaker 10 She was convinced her mother was involved.
20:33 Speaker 01 I picked up a similar sentiment when I reached out to Emily, but she declined to speak with me. Emily did talk to the detectives, though. But her interview?
20:43 Speaker 08 Didn't give us anything that was going to be helpful for the actual homicide.
20:47 Speaker 01 And it was on to the next one.
20:49 Speaker 08 From that, we left the next morning, again at 6:00 AM, and drove to central United States and tried to talk to Catherine.
20:58 Speaker 01 Things didn't exactly go as planned.
21:01 Speaker 08 She wouldn't come to the door.
21:02 Speaker 01 Detectives Eastridge and Porter were striking out. After driving halfway across the country, they were no further ahead. And things were looking dire when the oldest, Britton, Sandra's son, also refused to speak with them.
21:20 Speaker 01 The detectives were clearly not getting what they needed on their own. So, starting in late 2007, a grand jury was impaneled. When a grand jury asks for testimony, you show up. Detective Todd, although no longer on the case, was highly invested and recalled for me what went down.
21:40 Speaker 07 And of course, they subpoenaed Brett, Emily, and Catherine. Emily testified. Brett, of course, his attorney pled the fifth for him. And Catherine, she pled the fifth.
21:56 Speaker 01 This refusal to testify from the two eldest baffled me. I'd been told they were estranged from their mother. So why wouldn't they talk? Was it too painful to confront who their mother really was? Was it a primal sense of loyalty to her? Or was it something else? Here's Easteridge again.
22:16 Speaker 10 What was significant about it to me was how hard he fought not to testify about this and how hostile he was about it. It made us think that there might be a level of fear on his part.
22:38 Speaker 01 Why would Britton be afraid? Detective Easteridge told me he thought Sandra's son didn't talk because he was in some way involved. Somehow culpable. I'd played you the tape, but sometimes he can be hard to understand, given what he's dealing with, living with ALS. But hearing this from Easteridge got me thinking. When Detective Todd began looking into Sandra's past, she also reached out to the kids.
23:02 Speaker 07 In talking with Catherine, I believe she knew something was suspicious.
23:08 Speaker 01 That was about as far as she got with her.
23:11 Speaker 07 Brett was a different story. Brett was almost cold and said, "Contact my attorney." He was just like his mother. "You contact my attorney."
23:24 Speaker 01 I thought this was odd. Why would Britton need an attorney to speak about his mother's alleged crime? Then Detective Todd shared something Emily told her.
23:34 Speaker 07 She told me at one point during an interview that while on vacation in California at a resort, Alan and Brett were out using jet skis and her mother had asked her brother to run over Alan with the jet ski, make it look like an accident.
23:57 Speaker 01 Could Sandra have wanted it out for Alan from the start? Had she contemplated making his death look like a tragic mishap in open water? Suddenly, Britton lawyering up made a twisted kind of sense. Maybe this wasn't just about covering for his mother. Was he protecting himself?
24:22 Speaker 01 In the winter of 1985, one of the working theories was Alan Rarick had been killed in Dallas, then transported to Oklahoma City.
24:31 Speaker 01 And remember, the driver's seat was pulled up in the Bronco for someone much shorter than him. Someone like Sandra.
24:40 Speaker 01 But if she had driven him there in the Bronco and left it, how in the hell did she get back to Dallas? Detective Porter told me the initial investigators ruled out one form of travel.
24:50 Speaker 08 They checked air flights to make sure she didn't fly back down to Dallas from Oklahoma City, which she didn't.
24:58 Speaker 01 So if she didn't fly back, and if she wasn't strong enough to lift a hefty man like Alan...
25:04 Speaker 10 You almost had to have some second person involved.
25:11 Speaker 08 So who around that timeframe most likely had a driver's license that she knew well, she trusted, and she knew she could manipulate? I'll leave it at that. You're pretty smart. You'll figure it out.
25:24 Speaker 01 If you're having a hard time putting two and two together, Detective Easteridge told me flat out.
25:29 Speaker 10 Her son was old enough he could have helped her.
25:35 Speaker 01 Could Sandra have forced her own son to help her dispose of Alan? He was just 17 in 1985. That fragile space between boyhood and adulthood, where the lines of right and wrong can blur under the weight of influence. At that age, you crave your parents' approval, fear their disappointment. And if that parent is a master manipulator, a woman who spun lies as easily as breathing, what chance did he have?
26:07 Speaker 01 Could Britten have been keeping a secret for his mother this whole time? I had to ask him myself. I sent him a FedEx to what was listed as his last known address and called a bunch of numbers associated with him. I tried his partner on Facebook and LinkedIn. Then I tried calling her. And something weird happened.
26:28 Speaker 01 This cellphone number had been associated with both her and Britton. When I called, a man picked up, so I asked if she was available. The guy replied, "What is this concerning?" After I described this podcast and that I'd been looking for this lady's partner to comment on claims he'd helped move a body, that's when the man on the line said, "Interesting. You have the wrong number."
26:54 Speaker 01 This made me think I was speaking to Britton himself, but he didn't want to admit that. I followed up with a text and told him one working theory cops had was Britton might have helped his mother move Alan Rarick's body. I'd wanted him to comment, or at least respond with a "no" comment, but he never did.
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28:23 Speaker 01 When I began looking into Alan's cold case, before I had ever even heard of Kyle Eastridge or Ryan Porter, I first visited a website called Oklahoma Cold Cases. On the bottom of the page dedicated to Alan Rarig, it directs anyone with information regarding his murder to contact a guy named Mike Burke. He was a detective before going on to work for the district attorney, solely focusing on cold cases. I couldn't get him to talk to me, but I made one last attempt, hoping Detective Porter could convince him.
28:53 Speaker 08 I was trying to talk him into getting on the phone with you, and he just said, "Look, I would ruin the rapport between us and Dallas if that happened."
29:05 Speaker 01 That answer stopped me cold. Did he mean he couldn't get on the phone because he didn't want to throw Dallas police under the bus? Was that it? If speaking to me would risk relationships between law enforcement agencies, just how badly had Dallas mishandled this case? In my reporting, more than one source had told me they thought Dallas hadn't truly cooperated with the Oklahoma City cops. I don't believe that Dallas PD was doing very much.
29:34 Speaker 03 We didn't feel like we had any real cooperation from the Dallas police.
29:40 Speaker 07 They just dropped the ball. They didn't put in the time to actually do the research. They took the word of everybody else around them.
29:55 Speaker 01 I shared with Detective Eastridge what I'd been hearing through the grapevine to see what he thought.
30:00 Speaker 10 They work a ton of murder cases there. They don't care about the whodunnit. They want to clear their plate as easy as they can.
30:14 Speaker 01 And since Alan turned up dead in Oklahoma City, with no hard physical evidence he'd been killed in Dallas, it never seemed like it belonged on their plate to begin with. For a bigger city burdened with more investigations, paid by tax dollars, it seems fair to say they're not exactly chomping at the bit to overextend themselves on a hunch.
30:34 Speaker 10 Everybody's looking past the buck because murder cases are money, they're resources, and they're taking a lot of responsibility.
30:50 Speaker 01 Easteridge told me that's just how the cookie crumbles.
30:53 Speaker 10 That's how law enforcement is. Everybody has their own problems and nobody wants to deal with someone else's.
31:06 Speaker 01 I get that, but by the time Alan died, Sandra was already under some pretty substantial suspicion for two other deaths: her first husband, David Steagle, then her friend Betsy Bagwell.
31:19 Speaker 10 If you look at it, the way Betsy Bagwell died is real similar to how Alan died. And they were both headed to meet her. They were both not seen alive again after that.
31:40 Speaker 01 Detective Easteridge hoped if he could get Dallas investigators to see the connection between the two cases that he did, then they'd be invested in helping him solve Alan's homicide.
31:49 Speaker 10 But Dallas PD had no interest in looking at it any further, so we'll be kind of stymied on that.
32:02 Speaker 01 And let's not forget the medical examiner couldn't be certain that Betsy's death in 1982 had truly been a suicide.
32:10 Speaker 01 Over a dozen years later, Carrie Huskinson revisited the case, scrutinizing forensic details. She collaborated with a blood spatter expert, and with his help, determined that Betsy likely didn't die by her own hand, that the crime scene had been staged. Huskinson was excited and called the Dallas PD Cold Case Squad with what she'd found. But the officer who picked up didn't react like she hoped he would.
32:37 Speaker 15 He just started yelling at me, telling me, "And what is it you expect us to do? Huh? Huh? Huh? You want us to get the cause of death changed on the death certificate to say homicide? And then what?" He said, "You know, we're just gonna have a cold case sitting on our desk, and how does that help anybody?"
32:55 Speaker 01 Huskinson's frustration was palpable. She had laid out the evidence, but instead of interest, she was met with hostility, as if reopening the case was more of a burden than a pursuit of justice.
33:08 Speaker 10 The truth is that they just want the easy out for their case. It's a suicide, let's not deal with it any further case closed.
33:24 Speaker 01 Dallas police just seem so laissez-faire about Sandra. It's maddening.
33:31 Speaker 01 I called them a few times, sent emails with questions, and yet, a spokesperson said that they would not comment on a case they didn't take over.
33:40 Speaker 08 You shouldn't want somebody that's, you know, a potential suspect of a homicide roaming your community and not helping the people that are trying to get them picked up and taken care of.
33:50 Speaker 01 Yet Dallas let Sandra Bridewell roam, and they didn't help solve Alan's murder.
33:57 Speaker 01 There's one thing we haven't discussed yet that could have made a difference in solving Alan's murder.
34:02 Speaker 10 The only thing that would have really helped on physical evidence side would have been if we had found the weapon and ballistically matched it.
34:16 Speaker 01 Basically, it would have been something if they had found the gun that killed Alan in Sandra's home and matched it to the bullets found in the Bronco. But during the first investigation, Detectives Pacheco and Mitchell never searched Sandra's home. It's kind of incredible. Maybe if Sandra's attorney didn't intercept them, they would have found the gun then. Detective Easterich had pieced together a timeline, a carefully reconstructed series of events that to him, left little doubt about who pulled the trigger. But in homicide investigations, what detectives believe and what prosecutors can prove are two very different things.
34:53 Speaker 10 I know from the prosecutor's standpoint, they wanted that slam dunk.
35:01 Speaker 01 A case so airtight that no defense attorney could poke holes in it.
35:05 Speaker 10 We really dug for that to see if we could find anything that would put over their comfort zone on charging her, but we just couldn't do it.
35:21 Speaker 01 The stakes were too high. Charge Sandra with weak evidence, and if she were acquitted, double jeopardy meant she could never be tried again, even if the murder weapon surfaced years later, or if one day, someone who knew too much decided to talk.
35:37 Speaker 10 Actual people duped by her, they weren't real keen on reliving it.
35:45 Speaker 01 Whispers had filled Dallas since the late 70s, but lips remain sealed.
35:51 Speaker 10 I just remember this concept pushback from people that wanted no involvement.
36:05 Speaker 01 Why didn't people want to talk to law enforcement about Sandra? When I spoke to Gloria Rarig, she told me straight. They're all afraid of her. But I'm not. I've been trying to get her on the phone ever since this podcast was just the seed of an idea. At an age when most people have already retired, Sandra got out of prison, and it feels like she's been on the move ever since. She's been looking over her shoulder for 15 years.
36:34 Speaker 01 I've chased Sandra's shadow across the country. Multiple P O. Boxes, dead-end phone numbers and emails. I reached out to the people she stayed with during her supervised release. They didn't call back. Every lead unraveled. And just as we were wrapping up production on this podcast, Ryan Porter tipped me off that Sandra had been stopped at Boston Logan International Airport last summer for erratic behavior. Finally, a solid lead. I called the Massachusetts State Police more times than I can count, and I finally heard back.
37:08 Speaker 16 It's Debbie calling you back from the Mass. State Police. I just wanted to let you know I searched our system for 2024 January 1st all the way through December 31st, and no records actually appeared.
37:24 Speaker 01 No such incident report existed. No Sandra Camille Powers. Maybe I was foolish to think I could catch a ghost in a year when others have spent decades trying and failing to. When I told Jane Todd and Carrie Huskinson I wanted to talk to Sandra for this podcast, they responded with the same gentle tone your mom uses when she knows your dream is about to be crushed. Sandra's not just hard to find. She's 81 and has perfected the art of vanishing. While most people her age are slowing down, she's still outrunning everyone. For Gloria Rarag, Sandra may be out of sight,
38:07 Speaker 01 but she's never out of mind.
38:10 Speaker 03 When I know the truth, and I pray about it all the time. Every night when I go to sleep, I think, God, give me something. Give me some peace about this.
38:24 Speaker 01 Leads have run dry. Investigations have stalled. Sandra's continued to live her life untouched by the weight of what happened. And yet, those who remember Allen refuse to let him become just another cold case.
38:39 Speaker 03 Al was so liked and so loved by so many. Everybody who knew him, they just liked being around him, with him. And that's why this interest has stayed with me and all his friends.
38:59 Speaker 01 They need answers. Detectives Eastridge and Porter tried their damnedest to give that to them.
39:04 Speaker 08 I went to her house with Kyle. And just the absolute sweetest lady. You meet her, you want to help her get closure. And it breaks your heart when you're sitting there and you know, I'm just not there. I'm just not there.
39:24 Speaker 01 Detectives are off the case, but Gloria's still carrying the weight.
39:29 Speaker 03 And he would be pleased to know that I was still fighting for this. He would.
39:37 Speaker 01 I wanted to take the baton from Gloria, to fight to make some movement on this case, to be the fresh set of eyes that caught something everyone else had missed. But the truth is, that's all I was able to do. Carry it for a while. I didn't deliver the moment she'd been waiting for since that frigid December night. The reality of cold cases is, something has to shift. A witness has to remember differently. The right person has to start talking, or the wrong person has to slip up. At 95 years old, Gloria's well aware she may not see the day Sandra's held accountable.
40:20 Speaker 03 Even if I die before I can get this done, I'm still gonna pray that somebody else will take it up and see that we get justice for this. That's my hope.
40:35 Speaker 01 Justice isn't a straight line. It twists and turns, stops and starts, stumbles and backtracks. I'll never stop fighting to uncover what happened.
40:51 Speaker 01 It's unsettling to think that maybe, after all this time, the only thing standing between the truth and the people who have fought for it is the woman herself. Sandra has always been the keeper of her own secrets, the architect of her own legend, the woman who charmed her way into high society, wrapped men around her finger, and more often than not, slipped through the cracks. But even Sandra can outrun the inevitable.
41:20 Speaker 08 If Sandra were to pass, I mean, I would be extremely hopeful that somebody would take another run at these kids with her gone now, just for closure.
41:31 Speaker 01 And what would that mean for Sandra? She will have gone to her grave without ever being convicted of a murder. She will have gotten away with it. But perhaps justice can be just as poetic as it's been elusive. Because if truth comes out after she's six feet under, she won't be around to spin the story. And for a woman like Sandra Bridewell, that may be the greatest punishment of all.
42:04 Speaker 17 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 bbignow.org.
42:40 Speaker 01 Fatal Beauty is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment. It was hosted and reported by me, Cooper Mall. Catherine St. Louis is our story editor. Jonathan Hirsch is our executive producer. Sound design and mixing by Josh Hahn. We use music from APM and Epidemic Sound. Our associate producer is Zoe Culkin. Our fact checker is Naomi Barr. Our production managers are Sammy Allison and Tamika Balance-Kolosny. Our lawyer is Rachel Goldberg. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rozick, Jamie Myers, Eric Miller, Skip Hollensworth and Clenna Whitely, whose reporting for D Magazine and The Dallas Observer is an essential piece of the story of Sandra Bridewell. If you'd like to read more about Sandra's life,
43:23 Speaker 01 grab a copy of John Leake's "The Meaning of Malice: On the Trail of the Black Widow of Highland Park." Please rate and review Fatal Beauty. It helps people find our show.
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