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Chapter 1: Who is Sandra Bridewell and why is she significant?
There was no acknowledgment. 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 III sure did. In cases of nonviolent crimes, acts of grace can actually influence sentencing outcomes. The gavel fell.
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.
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 PI Carrie Huskinson. This is what she said.
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.
From Sony Music Entertainment, you're listening to the finale of Fatal Beauty. I'm Cooper Maul. Episode 6, Hard to Get. 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...
We got wind that she had been in trouble out in North Carolina, so we started following that.
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.
Alan's case was one we always wanted to solve, and his mother was his champion. She was always checking in with supervisors or the DA's office just to see if anything new had happened.
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Chapter 2: What were the charges against Sandra Bridewell?
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 Briton, Sandra's son, also refused to speak with them. 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 asked for testimony, you show up.
Detective Todd, although no longer on the case, was highly invested and recalled for me what went down.
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.
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 Eastridge again.
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.
Why would Britton be afraid? Detective Eastridge told me he thought Sandra's son didn't talk because he was in some way involved. Somehow culpable. I'd play you the tape, but sometimes he can be hard to understand given what he's dealing with living with ALS. But hearing this from Eastridge got me thinking. When Detective Todd began looking into Sandra's past, she also reached out to the kids.
In talking with Catherine, I believe she knew something was suspicious. That was about as far as she got with her. Brett was a different story. Brett was almost cold and said, contact my attorney. He was just like his mother. You contact my attorney.
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.
She told me at one point during an interview that while on vacation in California at a resort, Alan and Britt 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.
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Chapter 3: How did Sandra's past affect her legal situation?
And since Allen 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.
Everybody's looking past the buck. Because murder cases are money, they're resources, and they're a lot of responsibility.
Eastridge told me that's just how the cookie crumbles.
That's how law enforcement is. Everybody has their own problems and nobody wants to deal with someone else's.
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 Stiegel, then her friend, Betsy Bagwell.
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.
Detective Easter's hope 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.
But Dallas PD had no interest in looking at it any further, so we were kind of stymied on that.
And let's not forget the medical examiner couldn't be certain that Betsy's death in 1982 had truly been a suicide. 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.
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