Join us as we talk with true crime author John Leake as we uncover the chilling legacy of Sandra Bridewell, the notorious 'Black Widow of Highland Park'. In this compelling episode, we take you beyond the tranquility of Highland Park and unravel a story of charm and lethal secrets. Get ready to hear from John, who grew up on the very same street as Bridewell, as he shares intimate knowledge of one of the darkest narratives our community has experienced.
To learn more about John Leake click here
To purchase The Meaning of Malice – on the trail of the Black Widow of Highland Park click here
This episode sponsored by Tequila Komos, Kathy L Wall State Farm Agency, and SA Oral Surgeons. To learn more about our sponsors visit Tequila Komos, Kathy L Wall State Farm Agency and SA Oral Surgeons
Join us as we talk with true crime author John Leake as we uncover the chilling legacy of Sandra Bridewell, the notorious 'Black Widow of Highland Park'. In this compelling episode, we take you beyond the tranquility of Highland Park and unravel a story of charm and lethal secrets. Get ready to hear from John, who grew up on the very same street as Bridewell, as he shares intimate knowledge of one of the darkest narratives our community has experienced.
To learn more about John Leake click here
To purchase The Meaning of Malice – on the trail of the Black Widow of Highland Park click here
This episode sponsored by Tequila Komos, Kathy L Wall State Farm Agency, and SA Oral Surgeons. To learn more about our sponsors visit Tequila Komos, Kathy L Wall State Farm Agency and SA Oral Surgeons
This episode sponsored by Kathy L Wall. State Farm Agency. Learn more at kathylwallcom. And Stuart Arango Oral Surgery. Learn more at saoralsurgeonscom. And Tequila Comos luxury tequila refined. Ask for it by name at Pogo, spex or your favorite liquor store. Welcome to the Bubble Lounge. I'm Martha Jackson and I'm Nellie Sciutto. And Nellie, I don't know if you attended the 100-year celebration down at the park last weekend for UP. It was amazing. I did not attend it, but you found a great subject in our interviewee today. Yeah, no, the reason I bring it up in tying in today with today's episode is I just was looking around at all the sweet families and just how pristine our neighborhood is and it just looks so picture perfect most of the times, but then when it's not, there's something that flares up every now and then a big scandal, something really juicy, like it's just so over the top, which is why we invited today's guest in.
Speaker 2:Today, our guest is John Leake, who is a true crime. Author.
Speaker 1:That's right. He just released a book called the Meaning of Malice on the Trail of the Black Widow of Highland Park. It's all about a woman that lived in Highland Park in the 80s who had many mysterious circumstances in her life. It's an absolutely fascinating story, especially for everyone that lives here in the neighborhood. You are going to love this episode, hey Park City's families.
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Speaker 3:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and your connection to Highland Park.
Speaker 3:I was born and raised in Highland Park, grew up on Lorain Avenue for people who are familiar with the bubble, that's just a few blocks south of Beverly Drive and went to Highland Park High School. Graduated in 1989. When I was a boy growing up on Lorain Avenue in the late 70s and early 80s we had a neighbor. She married a very socially gifted but also kind of a wheeler and dealer businessman husband named Bobby Bridewell. He's known in these parts principally for developing the mansion on Turtle Creek.
Speaker 3:Bobby, in the year 1978, purchased a house down the street from my family home on Lorain Avenue, right after marrying a very intriguing, mysterious and beautiful lady. When he met her, her name was Sandra Stiegel. That was the name of her first husband. Bobby then married her and she became Sandra Bridewell, which is the name she achieved notoriety with, and she lived down the street. She had three children. They all went to the Highland Park Independent School District. I was friends with Sandra's second child, a girl named Catherine, who's exactly my age, and I started playing with Catherine in the years 82 and 83, excuse me, 83 and 84. And it was during that time that on a few occasions I encountered Sandra Bridewell in her home.
Speaker 2:So you must have been a writer from the beginning, because you were obviously very observant.
Speaker 3:Well, I had the good fortune to grow up in a very literate house. My dad had a big library, my parents were both readers, so I read a lot and I was starting around the age of 12. I became a devotee of Stephen King novels. I read all of them Cujo, salem's, lot, the Shining. You know these were all really scary books. But you know, I have to say I mean Stephen King. We think of him as kind of a pop writer, but he is a true prose master. Kind of a pop writer, but he is a true prose master and in many ways I think I kind of imbibed a lot of his prose style, not to mention his interest in horrifying situations.
Speaker 3:So I think that was kind of my interpretive framework. You know, from a literary standpoint, as a kid I started reading Stephen King novels.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I was going to ask if it was your interest in Stephen King that got you into true crime.
Speaker 3:You know, it wasn't surprisingly enough. I was interested in crime novels like Stephen King or horror novels like Stephen King when I was a teenager, but I wasn't really interested in true crime. That was something that came about largely by accident. I was living in Vienna, austria, where I went on a graduate school scholarship, and while I was living in Vienna I stumbled across a true story about a Viennese author and journalist who, also unbeknownst to Viennese society at the time, was also a serial killer. He was leading a double life as kind of a minor celebrity author on the one hand and a serial killer by night on the other hand. And so I stumbled across this true story and I quickly ascertained that no one had written anything about it in English, and I just thought this is an incredible story.
Speaker 3:There was a book that had been published about it, but I quickly it was in German, and I quickly discovered that the author was in love with him. And I quickly discovered that the author was in love with him, meaning, and she was insisting that he was innocent. So I began to realize she's rather biased, she's not an unbiased researcher and teller of the tale. So that then became my first book. When you publish a true crime book and it does pretty well, then that kind of you stick with what you've been able to do. And so ever since I wrote and published my first book, I've just stuck with true crime and I discovered an affinity for it. I like investigative stuff and the other reason why I mentioned my first book is because while researching that first book I got to be friends with some forensic scientists who have been gracious and providing time and expertise to me ever since, and those forensic scientists have played a key role in my latest book.
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Speaker 2:Remember, you've earned this moment. You've earned Comos. So I know you've written several books, but let's go back to this Highland Park story for a minute. You knew Mrs Bridewell and you observed her carefully and the story interested you because of that. Tell us the story for those of us who haven't read it well, the.
Speaker 3:The story is that when I encountered sandra and I hasten to add that I didn't know her I I encountered her.
Speaker 3:Yes, I was like 13 years old and then 14. I uh, during those years I didn't know, in the year 1983 when I encountered her in her home that she was already, in 1983, a very notorious woman in Highland Park. She was largely ostracized by our society. And the reason why she was regarded with fear and why she was ostracized in Highland Park society is because the year before I met her 1982, year before I met her 1982, she had fallen under suspicion for having something to do with the gunshot death of the wife of a famous, or should I say famous, a prominent local doctor, a cancer doctor. So Betsy Bagwell was the name of this woman who was found shot to death in her car in the short-term parking lot at Love Field in July of 82. Betsy was the wife of Dr John Bagwell. He was a major oncologist at the Baylor University Medical Center. They had a house on Maplewood Avenue I think it's the prettiest part of Old Highland Park and they had two children and their son, andrew, was in the class just above me in Highland Park. I didn't know about this at the time, that is to say in 1983. But I later discovered that all of the adults did. But I later discovered that all of the adults did, and I now understand that the death of Betsy Bagwell is really the moral heart of this story.
Speaker 3:Where my perceptions of Sandra pick back up is I noticed that Catherine, her daughter, with whom I was friends. I did notice that they moved in the year 1985. And they moved to University Park near McCullough High School Excuse me, mccullough Middle School, over on Asbury Avenue. I was aware of that, but I mean, catherine was still there. She was still at middle school and still at high school Excuse me, still at high school by then. And then one day, just kind of seemingly out of the blue, catherine and her family just abruptly left Highland Park. This would have been the spring of 86. And I was like what happened to Catherine? Did she just leave? And some mutual friends? Yeah, they moved out to California.
Speaker 3:Okay, then in the year 1987, this was my junior year in high school a friend of mine walks into the Highland Park High School cafeteria, holds up a copy of the May 2000, excuse me, the May 1987 issue of D Magazine and the cover story features a photograph of Mrs Bridewell and it says death and gossip in Highland Park. And my friend says this is Catherine's mom and you're not going to believe this story. That D Magazine cover story in 1987 is a key piece of reporting in the unfolding of this story but, as I discovered as I got into my research, it's very incomplete. You know, I'm a great admirer of the lead author, skip Hollinsworth. He and I are actually friends and I think he did. I mean, he's a beautiful writer.
Speaker 3:I now believe that there were some constraints placed on how far he could go with this. I don't know how overtly those constraints were communicated, but particularly in the case of Betsy Bagwell, there is more in that D Magazine feature on the story. There's more redacted than there is reported. There are major redactions from that report which made me all the more intrigued. It's like what is going on with this story. So in the case of betsy bagwell, the dallas County medical examiner ruled her death a suicide, even though none of her friends believed that it was a suicide.
Speaker 2:And hadn't she been driven to the airport by With Sandra?
Speaker 3:Yes, she's giving Sandra a ride to Love Field, purportedly to rent a car, because Sandra kept contacting the Bagwells and saying my car is broken down, it won't start. So purportedly, betsy says All right, I'm going to give you a ride to Love Field and while we're there you need to rent a car. So Betsy is last seen alive driving to Love Field with Sandra in her vehicle. Now she then doesn't come home. Later she's found shot to death in her vehicle at Love Field.
Speaker 3:The investigating officer asks Sandra well, like you know what's the deal, and Sandra says oh, betsy gave me a ride to Love Field to rent a car. I went into the rent car agency, discovered I didn't have my driver's license, so she gave me a ride back to Highland Park Presbyterian Church where my car had broken down, and to my surprise my car started right up. So I told Betsy oh you know, sorry for the inconvenience, looks like my car works after all. And then I don't know what happened to Betsy. I guess she decided to drive back to Love Field and kill herself. And so this is the outlines of what is reported in the D Magazine piece, and even at the time, as a 16-year-old boy, I thought that's a very weird story.
Speaker 1:It really is. So it sounds like you wanted to know more. You felt like you weren't getting what you needed from the D Magazine article, and so you got involved and you kind of took it up a few notches and really got some more information.
Speaker 3:Well, I did, but you know time elapsed. What happened was so that's 87. Okay, fast forward 20 years. There had been reporting on Sandra by a very good investigative journalist named Glenna Whitley, who wrote for both D Magazine and the Dallas Observer wanderings around the country, but there was still all of these open questions about Betsy Bagwell. And then the other thing I didn't mention is Sandra's first husband.
Speaker 2:David Stiegel.
Speaker 3:This was not her first rodeo. This ain't her first rodeo. He too, in the year 1975, had been found shot to death in the head, also in the head, also with a .22 caliber pistol. Shot to death in the head, also in the head, also the .22 caliber pistol. In his case, david was found in his marital bed in his home in Greenway Parks. Cops show up. Sandra says we were not sleeping in the
Speaker 3:same room. I woke up this morning, went into the master bedroom to check on him. He was lying in a pool of blood. I called the police, cops come do what I would characterize as a very cursory examination of the scene and conclude that he shot himself in his bed. So again, medical examiner, rules suicide. Okay. So by the time you get to Betsy seven years later, very similar circumstances, although it's in a vehicle and not at home in bed, but victim shot in the head with a .22 caliber pistol. Kind of looks like suicide. Again, ruled suicide. Now, the one thing that Sandra did in the case of Betsy Bagwell that I happen to think is extremely clever. So yeah, so that evening, when Betsy's found at Love Field, the investigating homicide detective goes to the Bagwell residence to notify the next of kin, which is Betsy's husband, john Okay, while the cops are at the Bagwell residence and they're talking like what could have happened to Betsy, why would you know? Why was she at Love Field? You know? Why would she kill herself Apparently? Who shows up at the Bagwell house?
Speaker 2:Sandra.
Speaker 3:Sandra and she says well, I was at Latoska Restaurant over on Inwood when Dr Bagwell, who's a friend of mine, he called the restaurant and he summoned me to the phone and he asked me if I knew what had happened to Betsy. So I finished dinner with my friends who just happens to be an attorney, who just happens to be with me and I thought I wonder what happened to Betsy Boy. That's really worrisome. So we rushed over here right after dinner and that's when the police officer takes her statement and she said well, betsy and I drove to Love Field to get a car, we spent the whole day together, which wasn't true, which I know wasn't true and she really seemed kind of depressed and she wanted to talk to me about the death of my first husband. She seemed very interested in suicide and she wanted to know, you know, how did my first husband kill himself?
Speaker 2:This is so crazy because she's almost she's bringing up the first murder.
Speaker 3:Which, by the way, I've spent a lot of time reading the psychiatric literature and cases of serial killers. It's not uncommon for a and I hasten to add, I believe, based on my research, that she is. But she's innocent until proven guilty. But what I can legally say is based on my five years of research. I believe that she is responsible for the death of Betsy Bagwell, as well as others, and what I can say is the literature on serial murder shows that a high-functioning serial murder oftentimes inserts himself or herself into the investigation. Now, what do I think she's up to? First of all, she Betsy did not seek Sandra's company to talk about suicide. I have evidence that's false. That is a false claim, okay. Secondly, um, sandra knew that the Dallas County medical examiner would see this. Ain't this lady's first rodeo? Yes, so she turned that to her advantage. Instead of remaining sort of shy and elusive about talking to it, she actually brings it into the conversation and says this is precisely the reason why Betsy wanted to talk to me is because my first husband committed suicide.
Speaker 2:See, I can see why you're drawn to a character like this, because I'm a writer too. I can see why you're drawn because it's almost like a deliciously evil person, like very bright, knows what she's doing. She's setting them up along the way, correct?
Speaker 3:Everything is planned very carefully, everybody is sort of set up. Men in particular kind of have no idea what's hitting them with this lady. The extraordinary manipulative charm and seductive qualities of this lady where women are concerned, it's almost just pitiful. I mean, it's just. And one of the things that you know I discovered in my research is I would identify a guy who I would have strong reason to believe knows something, possibly possesses valuable forensic information. So I'd ring the guy up, and oftentimes these are people that are connected with my broader social network or my family, and you know he'd initially be kind of friendly on the phone and then I'd say I want to talk about Sandra. And the response was often well, you know, I'm not sure that's something I want to talk about. And it became evident pretty quickly and I have multiple witnesses, female witnesses, who've contacted me to tell me this that Sandra was very adept at seducing married men. And then so you seduce a married man, you ask him for something money to co-sign a bank loan, to whatever. You ask him for something.
Speaker 2:Is that what we do? I?
Speaker 1:know I'm taking it, Ask for some money. Well, I mean you know, if you want to y'all are both pretty ladies, if y'all want to start seducing married men first of all, it's very easy Ask for money. It's very easy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the first thing. For beautiful women like the two of you, it's very easy. And then, secondly, yeah, they'll get out their checkbooks. But once they do, then you have to say, oh, you know, I thought that was just a gift gift. And then when he says, well, honey, it wasn't a gift. Like you said, you needed a loan to send a child to college or to buy a new car. It wasn't a gift At which point you say, well, I think that's something you should discuss with your wife. Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:Maybe she would be interested in hearing about whether it was a gift or a loan.
Speaker 2:So that's why these guys were not going to go up against her, because it would expose themselves.
Speaker 3:There's an old Italian mafia concept called omerta. Omerta, it's the code of silence See nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, okay. Silence. See nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, okay. And and the old italian mafia omerita is enforced with threats of violence, like if you, if you should decide you want to talk about this, your family will just, you're gonna, you're gonna have violent action taken against you. In the case of this story, I call call it the omerta of sex.
Speaker 1:Sex in an extramarital environment will virtually guarantee silence, so it's one of the things I had to contend with in my research. Well, I was curious, besides what you're talking about here, what other challenges you had in your investigations as far as getting more information. Did you encounter any other problems?
Speaker 3:Well, it was nothing but problems. So two years after Betsy Bagwell was found shot, a young guy from Oklahoma City named Alan Rarig, 29 years old, had just moved to Dallas the day before and is driving down Lorain Avenue. A buddy in his office tells him people in Highland Park rent garage apartments, so he's literally looking for a new place to stay. In his new home Sees this raven-haired lady watering her azalea bushes in her front yard, feels drawn to her as most men did. Parks his car, goes and talks to her, says hey, I'm looking for garage apartments. She says I don't know of any, but if you want to come back in half an hour I can show you around, oh my. So she goes and freshens up, probably puts on some bright red lipstick. He comes back in half an hour. She gives him a little tour of the neighborhood, okay. And then the usual thing unwinds, whirlwind, romance ensues. She tells him she's pregnant. Okay, now, unbeknownst to him, that's impossible because she'd had a hysterectomy seven years earlier. But he doesn't know that. Yeah, he's kind of an old-fashioned Christian boy from Oklahoma.
Speaker 3:Decides to do the right thing, proposes marriage. They marry at the mansion on Turtle Creek, the hotel conceived and developed by her second husband, bobby. Now Bobby died of lymphoma. I should go ahead and interject that On the eve of the one-year wedding anniversary of Alan and Sandra he's then last seen alive for the last time, running out to meet Sandra to do an errand with Sandra. He doesn't return from the. He's estranged from her at the time. The marriage went south pretty quick. He's living in a friend's house in North Dallas. Quick, he's living in a friend's house in North Dallas. He's last seen by his friend pulling out of the driveway to go meet Sandra. Doesn't return from the errand. His body is found four days later in his vehicle parked in an empty lot near the Oklahoma City airport, shot in the right side of the head.
Speaker 2:So this is number three.
Speaker 3:Number three.
Speaker 2:But she did not serve a lot of time.
Speaker 3:She didn't serve any time, didn't?
Speaker 2:she serve a little bit of time. No, she got arrested eventually for identity theft For identity theft.
Speaker 1:She was never even that is so crazy.
Speaker 3:Sandra, four of these three gunshot deaths. So remember husband one ruled suicide. Betsy Bagwell ruled suicide by the time you get to husband three. Now that may have been the initial intention with husband three. May have been to stage it to look like a suicide once again, but he reacted. He was a young athlete. You can see from the angles of the gunshots. First one hits him in the torso and it looks like he's trying to get out of the way and he and it doesn't kill him. So there's a second shot to the back of the head, a suicide like a execution shot to the back of the. So there's no as dumb as medical examiners seem to have been back in the day. There was no misinterpreting that for suicide. He was shot twice, including in the back of the head so so this guy was killed.
Speaker 3:Last known contact was her was his estranged wife, who had persuaded him to take on a life insurance policy with the 220 000 death benefit a few months earlier. She's the prime suspect. She quickly liars up. She says she loved her husband. Has no idea what happened to him. Oh my God. Oh my God, this is so terrible. But then she doesn't cooperate with the police. Hires Vincent Perini. He's a formidable local defense attorney in Dallas and refuses to talk to the cops, while at the same time saying I really love my husband and I'm really afraid that he got mixed up with bad people, but I don't want to talk about it with the police. So she remains the prime suspect for the murder of Alan Roehrig in 1985 to this day.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:But she was never arrested for it.
Speaker 2:How do you think she managed to fly under the radar? Do you think it was a little bit of like not in our neighborhood? What do you think made people she?
Speaker 3:didn't fly under the neighborhood. But they couldn't pin it on her, she was just absolutely notorious. Well, I think that the root of the investigative problem goes back to the murder of Betsy Bagwell. The problem goes back to the murder of Betsy.
Speaker 1:Bagwell okay.
Speaker 3:With her first husband. She had not been in contact, had any suspicious contact with law enforcement. Before they come, she's this pretty girl wearing a pretty yellow dress and is hysterical, and beside herself Guy's a dentist. Apparently he's stressed out about money. Kind of looks like suicide. So okay, looks like suicide, sort of we'll call it a suicide.
Speaker 3:The plot really thickens and the whole thing becomes morally and legally very, very fraught, very problematic with the death of Betsy Bagwell in 82, because everybody knew that Betsy didn't commit suicide. Her husband knew that she didn't commit suicide. In fact, as I much later discovered, her husband was being stalked by Sandra at this time and was continuing continued to be stalked by her after Betsy's death. Continued to be stalked by her after Betsy's death. Sandra told some of her friends she was having an affair with him. At the time. None of Sandra's story with respect to Betsy made any sense whatsoever I got, so now I'm getting to the heart of the story.
Speaker 3:What I had to do to advance the football all the way into the end zone with this is I had to get the original crime scene, or because they were ruled suicides, let's call it death scene. Photos of Betsy at the airport in her vehicle, and of David Stiegel, the first husband. I was able, through an Open Records Act request, to obtain those photos. It was a major pain but I was able to obtain them. And then I forwarded the photos to my forensic experts the people who I mentioned. I encountered, or I got to know with my first book.
Speaker 3:They examined those photographs and what those photographs clearly display are multiple signs that another party was involved in these deaths. They weren't suicides and I could show you those images and I could tell you what you're looking at. And once you see it you can't unsee it. I mean it becomes very evident. The bloodstain patterns. There's multiple things with ballistics and in the case of Betsy's body it had clearly been moved after she was shot. Husband one and Betsy Bagwell the physical evidence displayed in the crime scene photos proves these weren't suicides, these were homicides. Okay, and their circumstances the last known contact, everything about them links with the murder of Sandra's third husband. Murder of Sandra's third husband. Once you see that these are all part of the same series and that Sandra was the last known contact of all three and had a clear motive for all three, then you realize that the logical conclusion, at least for me, speaking for myself, is that she is in fact fact, responsible for all three of these.
Speaker 1:Where is she now? She's still floating around out there somewhere, right?
Speaker 3:She is. I have intelligence. She's been cited in different spots.
Speaker 3:She's not in Dallas, at least to my knowledge she's not in Dallas, but I believe she's still alive. She is still free. She served two years in a federal pen for aggravated identity theft. She presented her, so the femme fatale in the 80s. As she ages, that then persona then turns morphs into Christian missionary and minister and she plied the church congregations of the American South and California, interestingly enough, introduced herself as a missionary and a minister. She claimed to have some kind of ministerial credentials. She knew the Bible backwards and forwards.
Speaker 3:In the year 2006 she ingratiated herself with an elderly widow in Southport, north Carolina, which we know from the film Cape Fear. That's, that's right there on Cape Fear. Sandra turns up in Cape Fear and ingratiates herself with an elderly widow, says you know, I'm in between missions to Africa. I've got about a month to kill before I head off to take care of starving children in Africa In the interim. You know I could stay with you, I could cook, I could clean, I could keep you company around the house. This widow was very eagerly and graciously accepted Sandra's proposal. Sandra moves in with her. Sandra then quickly stole her identity, took out credit cards in her name, tried to change the bank routing of her Social Security benefit. Finally the law caught her on that. But that was a notable thing I realized, because in many ways the same techniques of manipulation, deception, false identities, all of these tricks that she had employed with these poor husbands of hers in the 70s and 80s, there you see the same pattern.
Speaker 2:You see the same pattern. I was stuck on when you said I've got a month to kill.
Speaker 1:That's where.
Speaker 2:I left off.
Speaker 1:It's a fascinating story. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. And where can people learn more about you and buy the book?
Speaker 3:I have a website, authorjohnleekcom, and then I have a YouTube page where you can see a presentation of evidence in this case. If you go to YouTube and do a search Author John Leek on YouTube and you can buy the book on Amazon.
Speaker 1:Well, and as always, I will provide a link for you all, so you don't have to memorize it.
Speaker 2:So that's been really fascinating. Thank you so much for being on, John. You've got a lot of other books out there too, and you're clearly a great writer, and ladies dig yourselves into this story.
Speaker 3:Thank you, ladies, I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well. That's been another episode of the Bubble Lounge. I'm Martha Jackson.
Speaker 2:And I'm Nellie Sciutto, and we'll catch you next time.