Alan’s mother and his widow Sandra face off in a legal battle. Sandra heads West as an indictment looms. Binge all episodes of Fatal Beauty, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. Fatal Beauty is A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: How did Alan and Sandra's relationship begin and evolve?
This was a neighborhood where first impressions were everything. Alan apparently understood the assignment.
He was dressed in a blazer and a tie and his bronco was black and it was shiny.
The sparkling SUV made its way down Lorain Avenue, cruising slowly in hopes of spotting a for rent sign. Instead, someone caught Alan's eye that June morning. Sandra was standing out in the yard talking to her yard man. She looked like a pinup living inside a Norman Rockwell painting. Might she have a lead?
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.
The guy's been in Dallas for one stinking day, and he's already got a total bombshell eager to lend him a hand.
When he came back, they drove. where they had little bulletin boards for notices and notes.
They struck out that day. But in no time, Sandra pulled Alan into her world. He was 29, a tall, dashing redhead.
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.
Allen certainly wasn't in Oklahoma anymore. He was not used to anything like that kind of society. 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.
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Chapter 2: What suspicious circumstances surrounded Alan's death?
Oklahoma police detectives Pacheco and Mitchell decided it was time to pay the widow a visit in Dallas.
She had the motives.
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 Allen. But Sandra, she didn't budge.
The Oklahoma City police kind of marveled at the fact that instead of simply cooperating to help them track down Allen's killer, she retained counsel and refused to talk to the police.
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.
At a certain point, one has to start lending some credence to this just can't all be a coincidence.
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. Leak'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.
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Chapter 3: How did Sandra respond to the murder investigation?
Who was the victim hanging around with? What was going on in the victim's life?
What they learned only strengthened their belief that Allen's death was no random tragedy.
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.
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 p.m., 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, that she wasn't in for the night till late, around 1.45 a.m., 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.
She would have had time to have committed this crime during the two hours before she actually met these people.
Here's what I wonder. I've shoot 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. They've all shared some viable theories of what could have gone down during the time Sandra was unaccounted for. 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.
Nailing Sandra down on the timing thing would have been a lot easier if she had just cooperated. Instead, she got her PI, Bill Deere, 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.
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Chapter 4: What role did private investigators and polygraph tests play in the case?
Hello, everyone. I'm Carol Costello, a former CNN anchor and national correspondent. In 2011, a religious con man on the run from the law killed three men using the Craigslist ad to lure his victims. But had the Ohio Craigslist killer faced justice for crimes he was accused of before the murders, those killings would never have happened.
This is a story about the law of redemption and how a con man used the Bible to exploit our criminal justice system. Carol Casella presents The God Hook as a co-production of Evergreen Podcasts and Jack Paul Productions. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
1986 arrived, and still no breaks in Alan's murder case. But every so often, his mother Gloria would find out something unsettling. Around this time, a friend of Alan's, a guy named Bill Dodd, forwarded her a letter. Alan had sent it to him not long after he and Sandra tied the knot.
She told Al that she was pregnant.
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, Alan'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 Alan.
Phil and Alan happened to be together that night, actually. The two had just returned from a basketball game.
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.
She had been pregnant with twins. Two babies gone. Gingers, just like their dad. Devastation hit Alan. 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? And he grieved over that. In the days following the miscarriage, Allen was met with armloads of support.
The people at his office were just grieving with him. And they took dinner to the house like you do when somebody passes away.
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Chapter 5: What was revealed about Sandra's alleged pregnancy and miscarriage?
We filed to have Sandra removed and prevent the payment out of the estate and prevent the insurance company from doing anything.
The letter claimed Sandra, the beneficiary, was the prime suspect in Allen's murder, so the payout should be delayed, at least until that suspicion could be ruled out or proven. 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.
So we get before the court. I got there early and went in chambers with The judge and these two other lawyers for Sandra.
Criminal defense attorneys in probate court. More fodder for the claim David was there to make.
I said, well, you know, we think it is a criminal matter.
If David wanted to approach it that way, Judge DeShazo was prepared to play by those rules. Here he is recounting what she said.
Mr. Wise, you've alleged murder, so the burden of proof in our hearing today is going to be beyond a reasonable doubt. instead of by preponderance of evidence.
Let's just say David was frustrated.
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Chapter 6: How did Gloria fight to stop Sandra from getting the life insurance payout?
David notified the court and Detectives Pacheco and Mitchell.
They made this assurance to Gloria Rarig that an indictment was imminent.
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 Allen's cash.
She resigned. There was no need for a hearing.
But the damage had already been done. $102,000 of the $220,000 had already gone. Paid towards debts, legal fees, and expenses that Allen had no idea she'd accrued.
They paid out half because she had presented certain expenses on behalf of the estate. The remaining $118,000, if she wasn't indicted, it was all hers. And she was going to need it.
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.
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.
She had become a pariah in Highland Park.
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Chapter 7: What happened to the new administrator Robert Smith?
She enrolled the two girls in Branson School, which is a well-known private school, very hoity-toity.
The Bridewells, yeah, Sandra dropped Rarig when she got there, moved into a luxury apartment near the San Francisco Yacht Club. 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.
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.
Well, about that indictment.
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.
Alan's mother is at her wits end.
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.
Turns out they were making other plans.
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Chapter 8: Why was it difficult to get Sandra indicted and what was the status near the episode’s end?
The DA says the FBI is taking over the case. They have more resources and more jurisdictions.
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.
The FBI never seems to get any traction in this case. Nothing ever comes of it. That is one of the big mysteries.
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. She hired a lawyer who made it clear that she should watch what she says about Sandra publicly. And that was it for Gloria.
She dropped her claim to block the remainder of the death benefit.
The last of Alan's life insurance, the $118,000, went to Sandra. It was devastating. It really was. This wasn't about the money. The end of the probate battle signaled an end to the investigation into Alan altogether.
It seemed like it was probably a cold case.
When Alan 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. Sandra had the motive, the lies, and the payout, but no charges were ever filed.
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