May 16, 2024 • 34 mins
Dallas Socialite Sandra Bridewell cultivated an image of elegance and vulnerability.
In part one of our series, Beneath the Charm: Unveiling The Black Widow, Sandra Bridewell’s first husband’s life tragically ends with his alleged suicide.
Was the promising young dentist driven to shoot himself in a fit of depression over the crushing burden of mounting debt from Sandra’s lavish lifestyle?
Or was there a sinister motive for murder? True crime author, John Leake continues the story from his book The Meaning Of Malice: On The Trail Of The Black Widow Of Highland Park.
Within a year of her husband’s death, Bridewell hunts for a new suitor.
A whirlwind romance and marriage to her second husband catapults her to the top of Dallas society—but not for long.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
- Dallas Socialite, SandraBridewell cultivated an image
of elegance and vulnerabilityin part one of our series.
Beneath the Charm,unveiling the Black widow,
Sandra Bradwell's, firsthusband's life tragically, ends
with his alleged suicide.
Was the promising young dentist driven
to shoot himself in a fit
(00:25):
of depression over the crushing burden
of mounting debt fromSandra's lavish lifestyle?
Or was there a sinistermotive for murder? True crime?
Author John Lee continuesthe story from his book,
the Meaning of Malice on the Trail
of the Black Widow of Highland Park.
Within a year of her husband'sdeath, Ridewell Hunts
(00:47):
for a new suitor, a whirlwind romance
and marriage to her secondhusband, catapults her to the top
of Dallas society, but not for long.
- It's no exaggeration
to say Bobby Broadwellwas the most popular
(01:10):
man in Dallas society.
Everybody loved Bobby.
He had this infectious humor and,
and lust for life and having a good time
and a kind of a devil may care.
He came from a Tyler, Texas oil family.
He himself had gottenout of the oil business
(01:30):
and gotten into hotel development.
The people he knew in termsof sourcing capital, a lot
of them were from the oil business.
Um, he was friends with, uh, and,
and other major hot hotel people.
He was friends with Eric Hilton.
He was friends with the Sandsfamily, the Hunt family.
He was really well connected.
(01:51):
Bobby is most well known
for developing themansion on Turtle Creek.
That's kind of his crowning achievement
as a hotel developer,
- Where any Hollywood celebritycomes to Dallas, this is
where they stay, or anybodythat's high profile with money
- And that, that was his vision.
So the Shepherd Kingmansion on, on Turtle Creek,
(02:14):
on the actual creek, youknow, lies just north
of downtown Dallas.
Shepherd King was acotton barren, you know,
the old saying in Texasbefore oil cotton was king.
- Yeah. And the CottonExchange was in Dallas. It was.
Correct. Huge industry.
- Correct. And thatcotton exchange brought in
(02:35):
people from Italy.
There was, there were prettycultivated people in Dallas
that were associatedwith the cotton industry.
And interestingly enough,these huge fortunes were made
after the Civil War, as,that's a whole nother
story we could talk about.
But Shepherd King madea fortune in cotton,
(02:56):
and he wanted to build the most stately
home in all of Dallas.
So he brought in Masons from Italy,
and he built this mansion onTurtle Creek in the twenties.
Okay. By the time you getto, to Bobby Bridewell,
taking a look at this,in the late seventies,
it had fallen intodisrepair like no one was.
(03:17):
There had been some offices there.
I think Toddie Lee Wynn had his oil
offices there for a while.
But, but by the timeBobby starts eyeballing,
this is basically abandonedand he has this vision.
Um, this could be aluxury hotel, kind of like
the Hilton Hacienda and Santa Fe.
(03:39):
We could preserve the original mansion,
add in the same architecturalstyle, a modern hotel to it,
and the rich and famous and the glamorous.
We'll all stay here whenthey come to Dallas.
- Lee says, Bobby Bradwell'sfriendship with one of the sons
of Texas Oil air.
Caroline Rose Hunt turned themansion into the first luxury
(04:03):
property of the RosewoodHotels and Resorts.
Caroline Hunt became one
of the nation's wealthiestwomen in the 1980s,
turning a $600 millioninheritance into vast wealth north
of a billion dollars.
By the time of her death in2018, she was the daughter
of HL Hunt, a storied wildcatter,
(04:25):
and perhaps the world's richest man.
When he died in 1974,
the mansion on Turtle Creekwas a smashing success.
Sandra had made the catch of all catches.
- Bobby owned a thoroughbred race, horse
farm and training track in Salina,
(04:48):
which is about 40 miles north of Dallas,
which was just an outrageousextravagance for, I mean, he,
he did well in the hotel business,
but to have a thoroughbred,uh, you know, breeding facility
in Salina, Texas, just northof Dallas, was quite something.
He was married to a,
a beautiful southern bell from Virginia.
(05:11):
The story is, is that hecaught her in flag delicto
with her horse trainer,
and it was kind of a blow to his heart.
He loved this girl,
and to his ego, it was alittle, little bit of a, a,
you know, a, a rude awakening for him.
So he, for the firsttime in anyone's memory,
Bobby was rather despondent.
(05:33):
His 37th birthday was coming up.
His friend Boe Price hadthis idea, well, you know,
we will cheer the old boy up.
And Bo had just the woman in mind, Sandra
Stegel, who was recentlywidowed when her first husband
purportedly died of suicide,be price, invited Sandra
(05:56):
to Bobby's 37th birthday party.
And at at the climactic moment,
she jumped out of a cake
- And Bobby is immediately smitten.
- He's immediately charmed by this girl,
and so quickly goes ahead
and moves forward withdivorce from his wife.
(06:17):
The ink is hardly dried onthe divorce decree when he
marries Sandra a month later.
And that's really where I, as a boy,
as an early teenager, became vaguely aware
of this story.
So Bobby and Sandra bought a house
on Lorraine Avenue in Highland Park.
(06:39):
I grew up on Lorraine.
So she, her three childrenfrom her first marriage
and Bobby buy a house justdown the street from me.
I became friends withSandra's second child,
a girl named Catherine, who wasmy classmate around the year
1983.
(07:01):
And they had this house on Lorraine.
That was fun because there wasno adult supervision by then.
So Sandra's marriage to Bobbywas not to last very long.
It was, by all accounts, afun marriage with prosperity
because he was developingthe mansion on Turtle Creek,
but it didn't last long
(07:21):
because Bobby came downwith, was diagnosed
with Lymphoma Terminal.
So by the time I startedhanging out at the Bridewell
residence in 1983, Bobby had died,
had succumbeded tolymphoma the year before.
But during that brief marriage
(07:44):
between 19 78, 19 82,
when Bobby died, that four yearperiod, Sandra was something
of a socialite in Dallas.
She was invited to these parties
and the Cattleman bar,the Cattle Baron's Ball,
I think she was actually partof the committee on that.
(08:05):
Um, she was somethingof a lady about town.
- And when he is suffering from cancer,
she becomes very close with his oncologist
and the wife of his oncologist.
- Yes, that's where theplot thickens in this story.
So, um, by the time you get to end
(08:27):
of 81, early 82, it's become evident
that Bobby is a goner.
I mean, it's very aggressivechemotherapy, you know,
he's basically skin andbones, lost all of his hair.
He is very sick, and it becomes evident
that he's not going to make it.
During this time in early 82, um,
(08:52):
she seems to become more
and more dependent, needy in terms of
calling on requesting assistance
from the oncologist.
Not only is a treatingphysician for Bobby,
but you know, a general
(09:12):
seeking help
and assistance from the oncologist family
who also lives in HighlandPark just a few blocks away.
- And this is Dr. JohnBagwell and his wife Betsy.
- Betsy, uh, Dr.
John Bagwell was the sonof a very prominent, uh,
physician in Dallas.
(09:33):
Father was also John, uh, John Spurgeon.
Bagwell was the president
of staff at the BaylorUniversity Medical Center,
a very prominent Dallas physician.
So his son followed in father'sfootsteps, studied oncology.
John became John.
The, the, the youngerbecame the oncologist of
(09:57):
Highland Park Society.
I, I believe he wasMargaret Hunt's oncologist.
He was my grandmother's oncologist.
And he had a beautifulhouse on Maplewood Avenue,
which is in the heartof Old Highland Park.
That original DavidWilbur Cook lay out there.
It's, it's a reallybeautiful part of town.
(10:17):
And Sandra began to fantasize about Dr.
Bagwell as a, um, a very interesting man
with a very interestingposition in society.
- And then his wife is found
to have committed suicide with a handgun.
- Two months after BobbyBridewell succumbed to cancer, Dr.
(10:40):
Bagwell's wife, Betsywas contacted by Sandra.
Sandra had repeatedly complainedof her car breaking down
the story that was providedto the Dallas police.
Sandra herself told theinvestigating officer was, well,
my car had broken downat the Highland Park
(11:01):
Presbyterian Church.
So I contacted Betsy
and asked if she would give me a ride
to the rent car agencyat Lovefield Airport.
So Betsy was last seen with Sandra
in Betsy's car.
So Betsy herself is giving Sandra a ride
(11:22):
to Lovefield airport,purportedly to rent a car.
A few hours later, Betsyis found shot to death
in her car, parked in the short-term
parking lot at Love Field.
- Sandra Bridewell isthe last person to see
Betsy Bagwell alive.
(11:43):
Walk me through her alibi
and the crime scene photosthat you've now examined
and had other people look atand why you think it was not
- A suicide.
The timeline of this is, ispretty, pretty intriguing.
So Betsy meets
with her two best friendsat the Dallas Country Club,
our our local golf
(12:04):
and social club, um, here in Dallas,
two blocks from the Bagwell House.
Betsy meets her two friendsat the Dallas Country Club,
and she tells them at lunch,Sandra is driving me nuts.
You know, I felt bad whenher, when Bobby died.
I understand she has to rearthree children on her own,
but she keeps showing up all the time.
(12:26):
She keeps saying her car is breaking down.
The lady is driving me nuts.
And you know, I told her, you know,
I'm gonna give her a ride to love field,
but what am I gonna do
with this girl like Betsy's at Wit's end,
because Sandra's bothering her.
She then sets off from theDallas Country Club, goes
(12:48):
to pick up Sandra and, and giveSandra a ride to love field.
Betsy does not come home from the errand,
even though she's in themidst of preparing dinner,
or in I should say the earlyphase of preparing dinner.
When she runs out, she justflatly doesn't come home.
(13:10):
And so initially no onehas any idea where she is.
It's only through a prettyremarkable fortuitous
event that happens at Love Field
that she's discovered at Love Field.
And that's somethingI go into in the book.
Her body was not apparent
(13:33):
to anyone just walking past the car
by this really strange twist of, of fate.
Some children look into the car.
It's this brand new Mercedes 300 TD wagon.
The father of the childrenis a Mercedes mechanic.
And as he's pulling into lovefield, he tells the children,
that is the most beautifulfamily car ever built.
(13:56):
That sparks the curiosity.
The children that look into the vehicle,
and they see this womanstretched all the way out across
the seats of the vehicle, her head
and her upper body areactually lying on the
passenger seat of the vehicle.
Hadn't those childrennot peered into the car?
(14:18):
Who knows when Betsy would've been found?
As it turns out, this is about four hours
after she embarked on this errand
with Sandra Dallas.
Police come to the scene.
It looks like Betsy committed suicide.
She has a revolver in her right hand.
(14:38):
Now it's just describedin the incident report a
revolver in her right hand.
Only later was I able toobtain the photos to look at
how exactly it wasfound in her right hand.
It's clearly braced between
her right thigh
and the gear shifter in a way
(15:00):
that looks very staged.
And it's a cheap 22.
It's a, an RG 22 caliber
revolver became infamous in 1982
because John Hinkley usedthe exact same kind of weapon
to shoot President Reagan
and some of his security detail that was
(15:21):
- Kind of called a Saturday night special.
- Saturday night. It's theSaturday night special.
It's the weapon is stolen.
It was traced back to aman who lived in Oak Cliff.
He had in the interim died.
His wife told the police, well,
the gun had been stolen from the glove box
of my husband's truck years ago,
(15:44):
and he just never reported it stolen.
Um, so how exactly
Betsy would've obtained thisstolen Saturday night special?
No one was e ever able to obtain any kind
of plausible explanation of that.
Sandra, interestingly enough, was dining
(16:07):
with friends at a place that,
which was quite well knownin the days called Latoka.
It was an Italian restauranton Love's Lane when Dr.
Bagwell called the restaurant
and told the head waiter to summon Mrs.
Bridewell to the phone.Sandra takes the call.
(16:29):
Remember, this is beforecell phones. This is 1982.
mm-Hmm,. Sandrais summoned to the phone,
I guess, in the manager'soffice of the restaurant.
And Dr. Bagwell asks her onthe phone, where is Betsy?
And she never returned fromwhatever the errand was
that you, that you girls ran.
(16:49):
And Sandra says, well, Idon't know where Betsy was.
She took me to love Field to rent a car.
I went into the rent car agency
and I discovered I'dforgot my driver's license.
So Betsy gave me a ride back
to the Highland Park Presbyterian Church
where my car had broken down.
And I got into the car
(17:10):
and just thought, well, maybeI'll try starting it again.
The car started right back up.
So I told Betsy, you know,sorry about the inconvenience.
Looks like my car'sworking. See you later.
And she said, and that'sthe last time I saw Betsy
at Highland Park Presbyterian Church.
(17:31):
Okay, so John Bagwell,
my understanding is he's asking himself
what is going on here.
About an hour later
after he is had this phone call
with Sandra at Latoka Restaurant,
a Dallas police detectivearrives at his house
(17:52):
to inform him the next of Ken,that his wife has been found
in her vehicle at theshort-term parking, lot
of love field shot to death,and it appears to be a suicide.
About an hour after the policearrived to notify the next
of kin, Sandra herself shows up
(18:12):
at the Bagwell house
and gives a brief interview
with the Dallas police detective.
She says, Dr.
Bagwell called me when Iwas dining with friends.
I began to grow concerned about Betsy.
So at the conclusion ofdinner, I came here to find out
what happened, what's happened.
(18:33):
And the cop tells her, the
homicide detective tells her, well, Mrs.
Bagwell was found at LoveField, shot to death.
So Sandra tells the police officer, well,
I spent the day with Betsy.
Now, I'm, I'm inferring thatthis is a private conversation,
perhaps in the policevehicle outside the house.
(18:54):
Dr. Bagwell does not seem tobe privy to this conversation.
What Sandra tells the police officer,
at least what's noted in the reports,
and they're very, very cursory reports,
Sandra tells the cop, Ispent the day with Betsy.
She seemed despondent.
She wanted to talk about a nurse at,
(19:16):
at her husband's hospital,
and she really wanted to askme about the circumstances
of my first husband's suicide.
She seemed very interested inthe death of my first husband.
She asked many questions about suicide.
And so, I don't know.
(19:36):
I mean, I guess she was,oh, this is shocking.
So you're saying that she killed herself.
And so the homicide detective notes this,
and the only conclusion I can draw,
and I've interviewed thepolice detective, of course,
40 years had elapsed.
He didn't remember all ofthe details at the time.
(19:58):
But what the documents indicate is
that the police foundSandra's story plausible.
It would seem that Mrs.Bagwell was despondent.
It would seem she had a morbidcuriosity about the death
of Sandra's first husbandby a parent suicide.
(20:18):
So the police concludethat the reason Betsy was
with Sandra was
because she was sufferingfrom suicidal ideation
and wanted to talk to Sandra about it.
- But Betsy's friends thatshe had had lunch with,
didn't see any sign ofdepression, never had hurt as such
(20:39):
- A thing.
No. What Sandra was saying to them was,
the only thing causingme stress in my life
is Sandra Bridewell is driving me nuts.
Now, the plot thickens here
because those two friends ofSandra Bridewell, who happened
to be, um, connected with socially
(21:00):
and through, through familyconnections, they didn't want
to talk about this.
They never spoke to thepolice after Betsy was found.
And they became aware of this, I know
from multiple witnesses,they had no doubt at the time
that Sandra had murdered Betsy.
(21:22):
But they never went to the police
to share their perceptions,their suspicion
or their conviction with the police.
The police never spoke witheither of these ladies.
- What would've been SandraBradwell's motive for a murder?
- I believe that thetotality of circumstances,
(21:43):
her own statements, Sandra told a woman
with whom she was close at the time
that she was having an affair with Dr.
Bagwell. She told her civil attorney,
who was Bobby Bradwell's attorney
before he died, she told him
that she was having an affair with Dr.
(22:04):
Bagwell. Now, her representation
of the affair was, it wasn't related,
necessarily related to Betsy's death.
Betsy apparently was an unhappy woman.
Her assertion was, I washaving an affair with Dr.
Bagwell make of that what you want. Okay.
(22:26):
Dr. Bagwell denied that affair.
He said, it's, it's nottrue. I should say Dr.
Bagwell told his friends, it's not true.
The police at the time thatthe investigation is open,
are unaware of this apparent,intimate connection.
Like they don't know about it at all.
(22:47):
They're just taking Sandra'sstatement at face value.
They are unaware that Sandrais telling other people,
not the police, but other people.
She's having an affair with Dr. Bagwell.
The other thing that Idiscovered is I found evidence
that she blackmailed Dr.
Bagwell. So if you look atall of these pieces together,
(23:11):
the most plausible explanationfor what happened here,
Sandra believed that if Betsywere found shot to death
of an apparent suicide, if itreally looked like a suicide,
so much so that the police would conclude
that it was a suicide, that Dr.
Bagwell would resume
(23:37):
or, and her perception deepen
his relationship with her, thatshe would in effect supplant
Betsy in her home andas the partner of Dr.
Bagwell. Now, the evidence indicates
that this scheme did not work.
That he realized at the time,
(24:00):
and this was a result of myinvestigation, he realized,
Betsy, I don't care what the police
or the medical examiner is saying,
Betsy didn't kill herself.
Sandra murdered her.
But he's put between thisrock and a hard place.
'cause the police andmedical examiner are saying
that your wife committed suicide.
The problem with this whole
(24:24):
state of affairs is that the police
and the medical examinerare drawing their conclusion
of suicide based on avery superficial analysis.
I believe that if Dr.
Bagwell had, at the time thepolice were looking at this,
given a full
and candid account of thisfraught relationship with Sandra,
(24:47):
they would've viewed thiswith Farrar suspicion.
They would've questioned thatinitial perception of suicide.
That was my investigativehypothesis when I obtained
the death scene photos,they were very confirmatory.
The death scene photos show
(25:07):
Betsy did not commit suicide.
There are multiple indications
that another party was involved.
- So after this, Sandra meets her third
husband, a man much younger.
How does this start off?
- So remember,
(25:28):
the Dallas Police Departmentis not privy to all
of this social intrigue that is happening
around the death of Betsy Bagwell.
They just don't know about it.
But Highland Parks Society does,
and that's one of the strangestfeatures of the story.
There's like this greatwall of China insulation
(25:49):
between what the Dallas police know
and what Highland ParkSociety knows or thinks.
It knows. So there's all this talk
about something wasgoing on between Sandra,
maybe she was justaspiring to supplant Betsy,
but the perception is in Highland Park
(26:10):
that Sandra had somethingto do with Betsy's death.
Okay? So why didn't lawenforcement pursue this girl?
That's the question that'sbeing asked about town
because as far as HighlandPark society was concerned,
Sandra must have hadsomething to do with it.
Okay? This results inSandra being ostracized.
(26:31):
She's having a harder time getting dates
because people are afraid of her.
- And in Highland Park at this point,
has she become known as the Black Widow?
- Not yet. So there's this fear
and suspicion about the deathof Betsy Bagwell in 1982.
Everyone's asking, whywasn't she arrested?
(26:52):
No one knows, but sheis becoming ostracized.
Her. The number of friends iswhittled down to just a couple
of diehard believers in Sandra.
She doesn't really have verygood integration in this
society anymore, but she stillhas this house on Lorraine
Avenue down the street.
(27:12):
For me, that's where I thinkmy experience is a strange one.
My mother didn't know
that I was hanging outat the Bridewell house.
'cause in those days, we would just leave
to go play in the neighborhood.
I would go play in Turtle Creek,
and I didn't tell my mom,oh, by the way, mom, I'm,
I'm gonna hang out with my buddy Catherine
(27:34):
at the Bridewell house.
So my mom didn't know about this.
I didn't know as a 13-year-old about all
of these rumors about Mrs.
Bagwell, Andrew Bagwell,
that her son was the grade above me.
I never heard any talk about this.
I didn't know at the timethat Sander was ostracized
(27:54):
in 1984.
So two years
after the death of BetsyBagwell, a young man
who just arrived in Dallas the day before.
His name was Alan Reigfrom Edmond, Oklahoma,
suburb of Oklahoma City.
Alan has arrived in Dallas the day before.
(28:17):
He meets Sandra,
a guy at his commercial realestate mortgage office, says
to Alan, if you're lookingfor a nice place to stay
and you don't wanna stayin an apartment, some
of these people in Highland Park have
garage apartments, back houses.
So go cruise, HighlandPark, and look around
(28:39):
and kind of peer at garages
and see if you see whatlooks like in an apartment,
maybe you could find one for rent.
Allen is driving down Lorraine Avenue.
It's June of 1984.
He sees this raven haired,
white skinned beauty wateringher azalea bushes, pulls over,
(28:59):
feels drawn to her, gets outof his vehicle, goes to talk
to her, says he's lookingfor garage apartments.
She says, well, I don't knowof any garage apartments,
but I'd be happy to show you around.
Whirlwind romance ensues.
She tells him A few monthslater, she's pregnant.
He proposes marriage.
He's a Christian boy from Edmond, Oklahoma
(29:21):
and wants to do the honorablething, proposes marriage.
They get married in December of 84.
About a month after theymarry, she tells them
that she's miscarried.
So the rationale for marryinghas now been nullified
by an apparent miscarriage.
Unbeknownst to Alan,he never learned this.
(29:44):
She'd actually had ahysterectomy years earlier,
so the whole pregnancy was fraudulent.
He doesn't know that she has three
children from her first marriage.
So she proposes to him
that he purchased a life insurance policy.
He purchases the life insurance policy
with a $220,000 death benefit.
(30:06):
- Six months later, thecouple separated on the eve
of their first wedding anniversary,
Alan Rig told a friend he was going
to run an errand with Sandra.
A few days later, rig was found, shot
to death in his parked carnear the Oklahoma City airport.
A three hour drive away from Dallas.
(30:27):
Lee says Sandra told OklahomaCity homicide detectives
that her estrangedhusband was hanging around
with gambling bookies
and she suspected him ofhaving an addiction to cocaine.
Meanwhile, Gloria Rig, his mother,
received an anonymous phonecall telling her about the
suspicious deaths ofSandra's first husband
(30:48):
and Betsy Bagwell.
Gloria Rig petitioned a court
to stop paying her lateson's life insurance benefits
to Sandra Bridewell
and removed her as theadministrator of her son's estate.
Alan Riggs first cousinreplaced Bridewell,
and a few days later, he was found shot
(31:09):
to death in his parked carinside the garage of his home.
The cause of death was ruleda suicide under a cloud
of controversy stemmingfrom her connection
to three gunshot deaths.
Sandra Bridewell suddenlybolted out of Dallas in 1986.
In the final episode
of our three-part seriesBeneath the Charm,
(31:32):
unveiling the Black WidowJohn Lee Trails Bridewell
to the West Coast, it'sa tale of romance scams
and identity theft, which you will not.
- Dallas Socialite, SandraBridewell cultivated an image
of elegance and vulnerabilityin part one of our series.
Beneath the Charm,unveiling the Black widow,
Sandra Bradwell's, firsthusband's life tragically, ends
with his alleged suicide.
Was the promising young dentist driven
to shoot himself in a fit
(00:25):
of depression over the crushing burden
of mounting debt fromSandra's lavish lifestyle?
Or was there a sinistermotive for murder? True crime?
Author John Lee continuesthe story from his book,
the Meaning of Malice on the Trail
of the Black Widow of Highland Park.
Within a year of her husband'sdeath, Ridewell Hunts
(00:47):
for a new suitor, a whirlwind romance
and marriage to her secondhusband, catapults her to the top
of Dallas society, but not for long.
- It's no exaggeration
to say Bobby Broadwellwas the most popular
(01:10):
man in Dallas society.
Everybody loved Bobby.
He had this infectious humor and,
and lust for life and having a good time
and a kind of a devil may care.
He came from a Tyler, Texas oil family.
He himself had gottenout of the oil business
(01:30):
and gotten into hotel development.
The people he knew in termsof sourcing capital, a lot
of them were from the oil business.
Um, he was friends with, uh, and,
and other major hot hotel people.
He was friends with Eric Hilton.
He was friends with the Sandsfamily, the Hunt family.
He was really well connected.
(01:51):
Bobby is most well known
for developing themansion on Turtle Creek.
That's kind of his crowning achievement
as a hotel developer,
- Where any Hollywood celebritycomes to Dallas, this is
where they stay, or anybodythat's high profile with money
- And that, that was his vision.
So the Shepherd Kingmansion on, on Turtle Creek,
(02:14):
on the actual creek, youknow, lies just north
of downtown Dallas.
Shepherd King was acotton barren, you know,
the old saying in Texasbefore oil cotton was king.
- Yeah. And the CottonExchange was in Dallas. It was.
Correct. Huge industry.
- Correct. And thatcotton exchange brought in
(02:35):
people from Italy.
There was, there were prettycultivated people in Dallas
that were associatedwith the cotton industry.
And interestingly enough,these huge fortunes were made
after the Civil War, as,that's a whole nother
story we could talk about.
But Shepherd King madea fortune in cotton,
(02:56):
and he wanted to build the most stately
home in all of Dallas.
So he brought in Masons from Italy,
and he built this mansion onTurtle Creek in the twenties.
Okay. By the time you getto, to Bobby Bridewell,
taking a look at this,in the late seventies,
it had fallen intodisrepair like no one was.
(03:17):
There had been some offices there.
I think Toddie Lee Wynn had his oil
offices there for a while.
But, but by the timeBobby starts eyeballing,
this is basically abandonedand he has this vision.
Um, this could be aluxury hotel, kind of like
the Hilton Hacienda and Santa Fe.
(03:39):
We could preserve the original mansion,
add in the same architecturalstyle, a modern hotel to it,
and the rich and famous and the glamorous.
We'll all stay here whenthey come to Dallas.
- Lee says, Bobby Bradwell'sfriendship with one of the sons
of Texas Oil air.
Caroline Rose Hunt turned themansion into the first luxury
(04:03):
property of the RosewoodHotels and Resorts.
Caroline Hunt became one
of the nation's wealthiestwomen in the 1980s,
turning a $600 millioninheritance into vast wealth north
of a billion dollars.
By the time of her death in2018, she was the daughter
of HL Hunt, a storied wildcatter,
(04:25):
and perhaps the world's richest man.
When he died in 1974,
the mansion on Turtle Creekwas a smashing success.
Sandra had made the catch of all catches.
- Bobby owned a thoroughbred race, horse
farm and training track in Salina,
(04:48):
which is about 40 miles north of Dallas,
which was just an outrageousextravagance for, I mean, he,
he did well in the hotel business,
but to have a thoroughbred,uh, you know, breeding facility
in Salina, Texas, just northof Dallas, was quite something.
He was married to a,
a beautiful southern bell from Virginia.
(05:11):
The story is, is that hecaught her in flag delicto
with her horse trainer,
and it was kind of a blow to his heart.
He loved this girl,
and to his ego, it was alittle, little bit of a, a,
you know, a, a rude awakening for him.
So he, for the firsttime in anyone's memory,
Bobby was rather despondent.
(05:33):
His 37th birthday was coming up.
His friend Boe Price hadthis idea, well, you know,
we will cheer the old boy up.
And Bo had just the woman in mind, Sandra
Stegel, who was recentlywidowed when her first husband
purportedly died of suicide,be price, invited Sandra
(05:56):
to Bobby's 37th birthday party.
And at at the climactic moment,
she jumped out of a cake
- And Bobby is immediately smitten.
- He's immediately charmed by this girl,
and so quickly goes ahead
and moves forward withdivorce from his wife.
(06:17):
The ink is hardly dried onthe divorce decree when he
marries Sandra a month later.
And that's really where I, as a boy,
as an early teenager, became vaguely aware
of this story.
So Bobby and Sandra bought a house
on Lorraine Avenue in Highland Park.
(06:39):
I grew up on Lorraine.
So she, her three childrenfrom her first marriage
and Bobby buy a house justdown the street from me.
I became friends withSandra's second child,
a girl named Catherine, who wasmy classmate around the year
1983.
(07:01):
And they had this house on Lorraine.
That was fun because there wasno adult supervision by then.
So Sandra's marriage to Bobbywas not to last very long.
It was, by all accounts, afun marriage with prosperity
because he was developingthe mansion on Turtle Creek,
but it didn't last long
(07:21):
because Bobby came downwith, was diagnosed
with Lymphoma Terminal.
So by the time I startedhanging out at the Bridewell
residence in 1983, Bobby had died,
had succumbeded tolymphoma the year before.
But during that brief marriage
(07:44):
between 19 78, 19 82,
when Bobby died, that four yearperiod, Sandra was something
of a socialite in Dallas.
She was invited to these parties
and the Cattleman bar,the Cattle Baron's Ball,
I think she was actually partof the committee on that.
(08:05):
Um, she was somethingof a lady about town.
- And when he is suffering from cancer,
she becomes very close with his oncologist
and the wife of his oncologist.
- Yes, that's where theplot thickens in this story.
So, um, by the time you get to end
(08:27):
of 81, early 82, it's become evident
that Bobby is a goner.
I mean, it's very aggressivechemotherapy, you know,
he's basically skin andbones, lost all of his hair.
He is very sick, and it becomes evident
that he's not going to make it.
During this time in early 82, um,
(08:52):
she seems to become more
and more dependent, needy in terms of
calling on requesting assistance
from the oncologist.
Not only is a treatingphysician for Bobby,
but you know, a general
(09:12):
seeking help
and assistance from the oncologist family
who also lives in HighlandPark just a few blocks away.
- And this is Dr. JohnBagwell and his wife Betsy.
- Betsy, uh, Dr.
John Bagwell was the sonof a very prominent, uh,
physician in Dallas.
(09:33):
Father was also John, uh, John Spurgeon.
Bagwell was the president
of staff at the BaylorUniversity Medical Center,
a very prominent Dallas physician.
So his son followed in father'sfootsteps, studied oncology.
John became John.
The, the, the youngerbecame the oncologist of
(09:57):
Highland Park Society.
I, I believe he wasMargaret Hunt's oncologist.
He was my grandmother's oncologist.
And he had a beautifulhouse on Maplewood Avenue,
which is in the heartof Old Highland Park.
That original DavidWilbur Cook lay out there.
It's, it's a reallybeautiful part of town.
(10:17):
And Sandra began to fantasize about Dr.
Bagwell as a, um, a very interesting man
with a very interestingposition in society.
- And then his wife is found
to have committed suicide with a handgun.
- Two months after BobbyBridewell succumbed to cancer, Dr.
(10:40):
Bagwell's wife, Betsywas contacted by Sandra.
Sandra had repeatedly complainedof her car breaking down
the story that was providedto the Dallas police.
Sandra herself told theinvestigating officer was, well,
my car had broken downat the Highland Park
(11:01):
Presbyterian Church.
So I contacted Betsy
and asked if she would give me a ride
to the rent car agencyat Lovefield Airport.
So Betsy was last seen with Sandra
in Betsy's car.
So Betsy herself is giving Sandra a ride
(11:22):
to Lovefield airport,purportedly to rent a car.
A few hours later, Betsyis found shot to death
in her car, parked in the short-term
parking lot at Love Field.
- Sandra Bridewell isthe last person to see
Betsy Bagwell alive.
(11:43):
Walk me through her alibi
and the crime scene photosthat you've now examined
and had other people look atand why you think it was not
- A suicide.
The timeline of this is, ispretty, pretty intriguing.
So Betsy meets
with her two best friendsat the Dallas Country Club,
our our local golf
(12:04):
and social club, um, here in Dallas,
two blocks from the Bagwell House.
Betsy meets her two friendsat the Dallas Country Club,
and she tells them at lunch,Sandra is driving me nuts.
You know, I felt bad whenher, when Bobby died.
I understand she has to rearthree children on her own,
but she keeps showing up all the time.
(12:26):
She keeps saying her car is breaking down.
The lady is driving me nuts.
And you know, I told her, you know,
I'm gonna give her a ride to love field,
but what am I gonna do
with this girl like Betsy's at Wit's end,
because Sandra's bothering her.
She then sets off from theDallas Country Club, goes
(12:48):
to pick up Sandra and, and giveSandra a ride to love field.
Betsy does not come home from the errand,
even though she's in themidst of preparing dinner,
or in I should say the earlyphase of preparing dinner.
When she runs out, she justflatly doesn't come home.
(13:10):
And so initially no onehas any idea where she is.
It's only through a prettyremarkable fortuitous
event that happens at Love Field
that she's discovered at Love Field.
And that's somethingI go into in the book.
Her body was not apparent
(13:33):
to anyone just walking past the car
by this really strange twist of, of fate.
Some children look into the car.
It's this brand new Mercedes 300 TD wagon.
The father of the childrenis a Mercedes mechanic.
And as he's pulling into lovefield, he tells the children,
that is the most beautifulfamily car ever built.
(13:56):
That sparks the curiosity.
The children that look into the vehicle,
and they see this womanstretched all the way out across
the seats of the vehicle, her head
and her upper body areactually lying on the
passenger seat of the vehicle.
Hadn't those childrennot peered into the car?
(14:18):
Who knows when Betsy would've been found?
As it turns out, this is about four hours
after she embarked on this errand
with Sandra Dallas.
Police come to the scene.
It looks like Betsy committed suicide.
She has a revolver in her right hand.
(14:38):
Now it's just describedin the incident report a
revolver in her right hand.
Only later was I able toobtain the photos to look at
how exactly it wasfound in her right hand.
It's clearly braced between
her right thigh
and the gear shifter in a way
(15:00):
that looks very staged.
And it's a cheap 22.
It's a, an RG 22 caliber
revolver became infamous in 1982
because John Hinkley usedthe exact same kind of weapon
to shoot President Reagan
and some of his security detail that was
(15:21):
- Kind of called a Saturday night special.
- Saturday night. It's theSaturday night special.
It's the weapon is stolen.
It was traced back to aman who lived in Oak Cliff.
He had in the interim died.
His wife told the police, well,
the gun had been stolen from the glove box
of my husband's truck years ago,
(15:44):
and he just never reported it stolen.
Um, so how exactly
Betsy would've obtained thisstolen Saturday night special?
No one was e ever able to obtain any kind
of plausible explanation of that.
Sandra, interestingly enough, was dining
(16:07):
with friends at a place that,
which was quite well knownin the days called Latoka.
It was an Italian restauranton Love's Lane when Dr.
Bagwell called the restaurant
and told the head waiter to summon Mrs.
Bridewell to the phone.Sandra takes the call.
(16:29):
Remember, this is beforecell phones. This is 1982.
mm-Hmm,
I guess, in the manager'soffice of the restaurant.
And Dr. Bagwell asks her onthe phone, where is Betsy?
And she never returned fromwhatever the errand was
that you, that you girls ran.
(16:49):
And Sandra says, well, Idon't know where Betsy was.
She took me to love Field to rent a car.
I went into the rent car agency
and I discovered I'dforgot my driver's license.
So Betsy gave me a ride back
to the Highland Park Presbyterian Church
where my car had broken down.
And I got into the car
(17:10):
and just thought, well, maybeI'll try starting it again.
The car started right back up.
So I told Betsy, you know,sorry about the inconvenience.
Looks like my car'sworking. See you later.
And she said, and that'sthe last time I saw Betsy
at Highland Park Presbyterian Church.
(17:31):
Okay, so John Bagwell,
my understanding is he's asking himself
what is going on here.
About an hour later
after he is had this phone call
with Sandra at Latoka Restaurant,
a Dallas police detectivearrives at his house
(17:52):
to inform him the next of Ken,that his wife has been found
in her vehicle at theshort-term parking, lot
of love field shot to death,and it appears to be a suicide.
About an hour after the policearrived to notify the next
of kin, Sandra herself shows up
(18:12):
at the Bagwell house
and gives a brief interview
with the Dallas police detective.
She says, Dr.
Bagwell called me when Iwas dining with friends.
I began to grow concerned about Betsy.
So at the conclusion ofdinner, I came here to find out
what happened, what's happened.
(18:33):
And the cop tells her, the
homicide detective tells her, well, Mrs.
Bagwell was found at LoveField, shot to death.
So Sandra tells the police officer, well,
I spent the day with Betsy.
Now, I'm, I'm inferring thatthis is a private conversation,
perhaps in the policevehicle outside the house.
(18:54):
Dr. Bagwell does not seem tobe privy to this conversation.
What Sandra tells the police officer,
at least what's noted in the reports,
and they're very, very cursory reports,
Sandra tells the cop, Ispent the day with Betsy.
She seemed despondent.
She wanted to talk about a nurse at,
(19:16):
at her husband's hospital,
and she really wanted to askme about the circumstances
of my first husband's suicide.
She seemed very interested inthe death of my first husband.
She asked many questions about suicide.
And so, I don't know.
(19:36):
I mean, I guess she was,oh, this is shocking.
So you're saying that she killed herself.
And so the homicide detective notes this,
and the only conclusion I can draw,
and I've interviewed thepolice detective, of course,
40 years had elapsed.
He didn't remember all ofthe details at the time.
(19:58):
But what the documents indicate is
that the police foundSandra's story plausible.
It would seem that Mrs.Bagwell was despondent.
It would seem she had a morbidcuriosity about the death
of Sandra's first husbandby a parent suicide.
(20:18):
So the police concludethat the reason Betsy was
with Sandra was
because she was sufferingfrom suicidal ideation
and wanted to talk to Sandra about it.
- But Betsy's friends thatshe had had lunch with,
didn't see any sign ofdepression, never had hurt as such
(20:39):
- A thing.
No. What Sandra was saying to them was,
the only thing causingme stress in my life
is Sandra Bridewell is driving me nuts.
Now, the plot thickens here
because those two friends ofSandra Bridewell, who happened
to be, um, connected with socially
(21:00):
and through, through familyconnections, they didn't want
to talk about this.
They never spoke to thepolice after Betsy was found.
And they became aware of this, I know
from multiple witnesses,they had no doubt at the time
that Sandra had murdered Betsy.
(21:22):
But they never went to the police
to share their perceptions,their suspicion
or their conviction with the police.
The police never spoke witheither of these ladies.
- What would've been SandraBradwell's motive for a murder?
- I believe that thetotality of circumstances,
(21:43):
her own statements, Sandra told a woman
with whom she was close at the time
that she was having an affair with Dr.
Bagwell. She told her civil attorney,
who was Bobby Bradwell's attorney
before he died, she told him
that she was having an affair with Dr.
(22:04):
Bagwell. Now, her representation
of the affair was, it wasn't related,
necessarily related to Betsy's death.
Betsy apparently was an unhappy woman.
Her assertion was, I washaving an affair with Dr.
Bagwell make of that what you want. Okay.
(22:26):
Dr. Bagwell denied that affair.
He said, it's, it's nottrue. I should say Dr.
Bagwell told his friends, it's not true.
The police at the time thatthe investigation is open,
are unaware of this apparent,intimate connection.
Like they don't know about it at all.
(22:47):
They're just taking Sandra'sstatement at face value.
They are unaware that Sandrais telling other people,
not the police, but other people.
She's having an affair with Dr. Bagwell.
The other thing that Idiscovered is I found evidence
that she blackmailed Dr.
Bagwell. So if you look atall of these pieces together,
(23:11):
the most plausible explanationfor what happened here,
Sandra believed that if Betsywere found shot to death
of an apparent suicide, if itreally looked like a suicide,
so much so that the police would conclude
that it was a suicide, that Dr.
Bagwell would resume
(23:37):
or, and her perception deepen
his relationship with her, thatshe would in effect supplant
Betsy in her home andas the partner of Dr.
Bagwell. Now, the evidence indicates
that this scheme did not work.
That he realized at the time,
(24:00):
and this was a result of myinvestigation, he realized,
Betsy, I don't care what the police
or the medical examiner is saying,
Betsy didn't kill herself.
Sandra murdered her.
But he's put between thisrock and a hard place.
'cause the police andmedical examiner are saying
that your wife committed suicide.
The problem with this whole
(24:24):
state of affairs is that the police
and the medical examinerare drawing their conclusion
of suicide based on avery superficial analysis.
I believe that if Dr.
Bagwell had, at the time thepolice were looking at this,
given a full
and candid account of thisfraught relationship with Sandra,
(24:47):
they would've viewed thiswith Farrar suspicion.
They would've questioned thatinitial perception of suicide.
That was my investigativehypothesis when I obtained
the death scene photos,they were very confirmatory.
The death scene photos show
(25:07):
Betsy did not commit suicide.
There are multiple indications
that another party was involved.
- So after this, Sandra meets her third
husband, a man much younger.
How does this start off?
- So remember,
(25:28):
the Dallas Police Departmentis not privy to all
of this social intrigue that is happening
around the death of Betsy Bagwell.
They just don't know about it.
But Highland Parks Society does,
and that's one of the strangestfeatures of the story.
There's like this greatwall of China insulation
(25:49):
between what the Dallas police know
and what Highland ParkSociety knows or thinks.
It knows. So there's all this talk
about something wasgoing on between Sandra,
maybe she was justaspiring to supplant Betsy,
but the perception is in Highland Park
(26:10):
that Sandra had somethingto do with Betsy's death.
Okay? So why didn't lawenforcement pursue this girl?
That's the question that'sbeing asked about town
because as far as HighlandPark society was concerned,
Sandra must have hadsomething to do with it.
Okay? This results inSandra being ostracized.
(26:31):
She's having a harder time getting dates
because people are afraid of her.
- And in Highland Park at this point,
has she become known as the Black Widow?
- Not yet. So there's this fear
and suspicion about the deathof Betsy Bagwell in 1982.
Everyone's asking, whywasn't she arrested?
(26:52):
No one knows, but sheis becoming ostracized.
Her. The number of friends iswhittled down to just a couple
of diehard believers in Sandra.
She doesn't really have verygood integration in this
society anymore, but she stillhas this house on Lorraine
Avenue down the street.
(27:12):
For me, that's where I thinkmy experience is a strange one.
My mother didn't know
that I was hanging outat the Bridewell house.
'cause in those days, we would just leave
to go play in the neighborhood.
I would go play in Turtle Creek,
and I didn't tell my mom,oh, by the way, mom, I'm,
I'm gonna hang out with my buddy Catherine
(27:34):
at the Bridewell house.
So my mom didn't know about this.
I didn't know as a 13-year-old about all
of these rumors about Mrs.
Bagwell, Andrew Bagwell,
that her son was the grade above me.
I never heard any talk about this.
I didn't know at the timethat Sander was ostracized
(27:54):
in 1984.
So two years
after the death of BetsyBagwell, a young man
who just arrived in Dallas the day before.
His name was Alan Reigfrom Edmond, Oklahoma,
suburb of Oklahoma City.
Alan has arrived in Dallas the day before.
(28:17):
He meets Sandra,
a guy at his commercial realestate mortgage office, says
to Alan, if you're lookingfor a nice place to stay
and you don't wanna stayin an apartment, some
of these people in Highland Park have
garage apartments, back houses.
So go cruise, HighlandPark, and look around
(28:39):
and kind of peer at garages
and see if you see whatlooks like in an apartment,
maybe you could find one for rent.
Allen is driving down Lorraine Avenue.
It's June of 1984.
He sees this raven haired,
white skinned beauty wateringher azalea bushes, pulls over,
(28:59):
feels drawn to her, gets outof his vehicle, goes to talk
to her, says he's lookingfor garage apartments.
She says, well, I don't knowof any garage apartments,
but I'd be happy to show you around.
Whirlwind romance ensues.
She tells him A few monthslater, she's pregnant.
He proposes marriage.
He's a Christian boy from Edmond, Oklahoma
(29:21):
and wants to do the honorablething, proposes marriage.
They get married in December of 84.
About a month after theymarry, she tells them
that she's miscarried.
So the rationale for marryinghas now been nullified
by an apparent miscarriage.
Unbeknownst to Alan,he never learned this.
(29:44):
She'd actually had ahysterectomy years earlier,
so the whole pregnancy was fraudulent.
He doesn't know that she has three
children from her first marriage.
So she proposes to him
that he purchased a life insurance policy.
He purchases the life insurance policy
with a $220,000 death benefit.
(30:06):
- Six months later, thecouple separated on the eve
of their first wedding anniversary,
Alan Rig told a friend he was going
to run an errand with Sandra.
A few days later, rig was found, shot
to death in his parked carnear the Oklahoma City airport.
A three hour drive away from Dallas.
(30:27):
Lee says Sandra told OklahomaCity homicide detectives
that her estrangedhusband was hanging around
with gambling bookies
and she suspected him ofhaving an addiction to cocaine.
Meanwhile, Gloria Rig, his mother,
received an anonymous phonecall telling her about the
suspicious deaths ofSandra's first husband
(30:48):
and Betsy Bagwell.
Gloria Rig petitioned a court
to stop paying her lateson's life insurance benefits
to Sandra Bridewell
and removed her as theadministrator of her son's estate.
Alan Riggs first cousinreplaced Bridewell,
and a few days later, he was found shot
(31:09):
to death in his parked carinside the garage of his home.
The cause of death was ruleda suicide under a cloud
of controversy stemmingfrom her connection
to three gunshot deaths.
Sandra Bridewell suddenlybolted out of Dallas in 1986.
In the final episode
of our three-part seriesBeneath the Charm,
(31:32):
unveiling the Black WidowJohn Lee Trails Bridewell
to the West Coast, it'sa tale of romance scams
and identity theft, which you will not.
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