- Amidst the sprawling cityscape of Dallas where power
and prosperity intersect with secrets and lies.
Sandra Bridewell story, unravel
Bridewell was a beautiful alluring socialite in the affluent
enclave of Highland Park
when Dallas was the world's most popular TV show.
And the Dallas Cowboys were America's team.
It is a tail woven with deception, sex,
and the dark underbelly of high society
in a close knit community known as the Beverly Hills
of the Southwest Highland Park, known infamously
as the Black widow.
Sandra's life story reads like a script from
a classic thriller.
Her charm and beauty masking a sinister reality
of purported suicides, murders, beatings, romance scams,
religious cons, and identity theft.
True crime author John Lee peels back the layers
of Sandra Bradwell's enigmatic persona in the meaning
of malice On the trail of the Black Widow of Highland Park,
you suspect that Sandra Bridewell is not only a black widow,
but a serial killer.
- I do. I, I believe
after evaluating all of the evidence, circumstantial
and physical evidence displayed in these
death scene photos, I say death scene
because they were originally ruled.
The first two violent deaths I looked at were ruled
suicides by the Dallas County Medical Examiner.
I obtained copies of the photos.
I had those photos examined
by contemporary forensic experts.
Remember we're talking 1975 and 1982.
The first two cases I had these photos examined by
contemporary forensic experts, really up
to date in their training.
And the evidence displayed in the photos shows
that these were not self-inflicted.
There was another party involved.
So that physical evidence displayed in photos combined
with the circumstantial evidence in witness
testimony leads me to believe
that Sandra Bradwell is in fact an officially
undetected serial killer.
Now, now I say officially
because law enforcement has never arrested her
or even subjected her to a difficult interview.
But she's long been suspected
of involvement in these deaths.
- Sandra Broadwell arrived in Dallas in 1950 as a child
after her mother had been killed in a car accident.
Her father's soft drink bottling business had
fallen on hard times.
He lost his leg in a hunting accident.
He remarried and sold cemetery plots.
Sandra did not get along with her stepmother,
and she had a burning desire to get out of South Oak Cliff,
a working class neighborhood across the Trinity River
from downtown Dallas.
- Sandra went to, I think,
a pretty good public school called the Kimball School and,
and Oak Cliff, which is rhythm and blues.
People will be familiar with that from their familiarity
with the biography of Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Stevie Ray Vaughn was a Kimball High School graduate about a
year after Sandra.
So I don't think that it was a, um,
a rough neighborhood per se.
But given what we now know about Sandra's social
aspirations, I think it was perceived
as a humble neighborhood.
- And what is it there that sort of triggers this yearning
and this desire to be a socialite in Dallas?
- I think that's a fascinating question that runs
through this whole story.
You know, there was a, an article in D magazine
about cinder, the, the Cinderella syndrome
that seems to be so prevalent in Dallas culture.
The, the report was published in the nineties,
but it's talking about how Dallas,
something about our culture here.
You know, Neiman Marcus, the Dallas Cowboys, the Meins,
the Hunts seems to promote this Cinderella aspiration.
Pretty girl, rich man. Mm-Hmm. .
And this seems to have really
ignited in Sandra's imagination.
Um, I'm a beautiful girl.
Um, I'm talented and she was, I'm talented.
I've learned about cooking, French cooking and culture
and interior decorating.
I'm gonna find myself a wealthy man.
She went to Tyler Junior College, which in those days was
in the dead center of the East Texas oil patch,
where these huge fortunes had been made.
And it seems to me likely
that already then in the early sixties, she was hoping
to land perhaps the son of, uh,
east Texas, you know, oil family.
The interesting thing about that is she didn't do
that when she was at Tyler Junior College for a year,
but later she did in the person of Bobby Bridewell,
he actually came from a Tyler Texas oil family.
- And that oil money from the East Texas oil field,
it flowed into Dallas, into Highland Park, which is, uh,
surrounded by the city of Dallas as a separate city,
but it's also referred to as the Beverly Hills
of the Southwest.
And today, you, it's a who's who of, you know,
Jerry Jones has got an estate there, the Perots,
and I can, you can just tick off,
especially the oil money that is there.
- You know, there are all of these oil families
that built beautiful homes in, in Highland Park.
Interestingly enough, a lot of people don't realize this.
David Wilbur Cook, who is the landscape designer
for Beverly Hills, he also did the layout for Highland Park.
So it's an apt comparison.
- How does she take root in Highland Park?
She met, she meets this young upcoming dentist.
How, how does that come about?
- That's a great question.
Um, and it's kind of, sort of a romantic, sort of a
youthful, sexy moment In Dallas, there was a,
in the sixties, there was an apartment complex right off
of University Avenue near Southern Methodist University
called the Spanish Trace.
And the developers of the Spanish Trace were friends
with Eddie Ackerman, who was the, the CEO of
Braniff Airlines.
And in the conception of this apartment complex,
they had the idea, this is where the young and the beautiful
and the rich, you know, are going to live
as they're getting their start in Dallas.
So the Spanish Trace was a real scene.
It had a swimming pool, you know, it's the sixties.
And by some favorable arrangement with Braniff,
they had a certain number of apartments allotted
to beautiful braniff stewardesses,
which would in turn draw in the, the well-healed,
um, handsome young men.
So Sandra lived in an apartment across the street from the
Spanish Trace called the Windsor House.
Her first husband, a guy named David Stegel, was a
graduate of the Baylor School of Dentistry.
He lived at the Spanish Trace.
And so that's where they, they met, he was young,
he was handsome, um,
and very, we don't think of dentistry
as a very glamorous profession,
but he was studying with a famous reconstructive dentist
in Beverly Hills.
And I, I suddenly, his name is slipping me,
um, doesn't matter.
But he was a well-known reconstructive
dentist in Beverly Hills.
He was kind of the dentist to the stars
in getting your teeth, your smile perfect for the camera.
David Stegel was making trips out to California
to train with the guy.
And in he, as he mentioned to a friend,
and in one notable moment,
they had Paul Newman in the dental chair.
So I imagine he told Sandra that this is what he aspired
to do, and, um, she found it compelling. Well,
- You know, and, and Braniff Airlines really reflected this
high fashion life in the fast lane
because, you know,
it had a certain motif painted on the aircraft,
but they were the first to outfit all
of their flight attendants in fashions done
by famous designers.
The interiors were done by famous designers.
- Salvador Dali was a designer. Yeah,
- Yeah.
And, and, and the flight attendants had to meet this, this
criteria for beauty.
You know, there was one slight flaw.
A tooth didn't look just white enough,
they didn't make the grade. Yeah.
- This is, this is the early era of, of, of jet travel.
And there was this, I mean, now we just take for granted
that jet travel is kind of a beat down,
but in those days it was new, it was glamorous.
And I think Braniff
and Pan Am had kind of deals with Hilton.
Hilton Hotels,
was very aggressively building properties in places
like Acapulco, Mexico.
One of the things that the Spanish traces, um,
if you signed a one year lease at the trace,
you were invited for the annual Acapulco
Bash in which you would be flown down on Braniff.
And so they were really cultivating this era
of glamor and sex appeal.
- So Sandra Bridewell must have thought,
she's hit the jackpot.
She's living there, she's in the midst of all of this.
What she's around 22 years old
and here's this up and coming dentist.
- Yeah. And so
what becomes evident pretty quickly is she had very
unrealistic expectations of how much a dentist could earn,
uh, compared to a guy working in oil, gas,
real estate or banking.
I mean, remember, dentistry isn't scalable.
I mean, you can only spend so many hours in a dental chair
or working on a dental chair.
And so one of the first things that she does,
they purchase a house in Greenway Parks,
which is immediately adjacent to the Park cities.
Also a very beautiful neighborhood.
She hires John Aston Perkins to be her interior designer.
Now, he was a Yale trained art historian
and interior designer who was the designer of Ross Perot.
Clint Murson, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys.
So quite quickly, David realizes while this interior design
projects antiques, tapestries original oil paintings is,
um, it's, it's, it's outstripping my income.
- Yeah. In a chapter in your book, the Meaning of Malice,
that chapter is titled A Black Belt in
Home Decorating .
- Yes. That, that Clint Marcus
and Sr said of his first wife.
She has a black belt and shopping.
Apparently Clint's first wife would go to Neiman Marcus
and literally buy every single dress
and her size, every single she'd just clean out the joint.
And of course, Clint Murchison
possessed an enormous oil fortune so he could afford it.
I borrowed that phrase, not shopping,
although Sandra had a black belt and shopping as well.
But home decorating was her thing,
and she had a black belt in it for sure.
- And Murchison was the original owner
of the Dallas Cowboys.
Correct. Back ball at oil money.
- Correct. So it was, you know, I think of this era,
I think in 1974 you had the Israeli, um, uh,
Arab Israeli war and the oil embargo.
So, so oil in between 74
and 1980, it shot up
to over a hundred dollars per barrel.
So these independent oil
and gas companies in Dallas were suddenly if, if
provided they add good leases at the time, you know,
were coining money.
And it's interesting because this was an era of stagflation
in the United States as a whole.
So Dallas really was standing out
as a bright spot in the American economy.
And, and with America's team, the Dallas Cowboys,
these mediagenic players with Neiman Marcus, some
of these kind of keytones of Dallas glamor,
it attracted these Hollywood producers
to come up with this TV series Dallas.
And the first episode was shot in 1978,
and this is the same year in which Sandra Bridewell marries
her second husband, Bobby Bridewell, after a few years
after her first husband, apparently David Stegel,
the dentist, apparently committed suicide.
- So at that point, we're talking, um, beginning of 1975,
she has driven this young husband
to the brink of bankruptcy.
He's in debt, he's in trouble.
And then suddenly she's phones a friend
and says, something terrible has happened to David.
- Yes. Before she called the police.
I mean, this was something I pieced together after the fact.
But it all hangs together.
It's something has happened to David.
And the story she told is,
I was sleeping in a different room,
the implication being we were estranged.
And I got up the next morning around seven o'clock,
I went into the master bedroom.
And already upon entering the room,
I could see he was lying in a pool of blood.
It, it frightened me.
So we now know, or I discovered, she didn't call the police.
She called some friends, a prominent dentist who knew David.
I believe she called maybe another medical man as well. And
- They, what they rush over in to sea, in the bedroom,
in the bed dead before the police have even
- Correct, which I, I, I can only speculate about
what she was doing there, but,
but I believe she was putting a layer of insulation
between her and the police.
In other words, when the police arrive, she's sort of
beside herself with, with emotion.
And these men who are sort of coming there
to assist, establish her social bonafides.
These are serious guys.
These are medical guys, prominent people in the community.
I believe when law enforcement arrived, they perceived, wow,
this is a socially integrated woman.
And already straight off the bat, you see a lack
of serious inquiry, a lack of serious examination
of what's gone on here.
They survey the death scene in the marital bed.
Apparently at the time it sort of looked like suicide,
like he'd shot himself in bed.
The medical examiner did not perform an autopsy.
He only performed an external examination.
And I ultimately obtained the external examination report.
And then later I obtained the death scene photos.
They tell a different story than that of suicide.
The, the, the first thing I noticed,
just reading the external exam report
was on his forearm, nowhere near
where the radial artery comes up into the wrist
where you take the pulse,
but like the forearm proper, where the muscle and,
and a lot of fascia tissue is.
The medical examiner describes these relatively superficial
incisions as
- If he was trying to commit suicide,
- Cut his wrist suicide as if he was, as if he was trying
to commit suicide with some kind of cutting instrument.
And the implication is, well,
that didn't work these incisions to his right forearm.
So he then took this pistol,
22 caliber target pistol
and shot himself in the head.
So the first question I asked was,
and I spoke, some
of his old dental buddies were still alive.
You know, why would he slash himself on the forearm?
I mean, the medical examiner notes that it,
it didn't incise any major blood vessel.
He knew David knew that.
I mean, he studied a year
of anatomy at the Baylor School of Dentistry.
He knew this would have no lethal effect.
It would be painful, it would be upsetting
and distressing to cut oneself on the forearm.
But he knew that it would have no lethal effect.
So why did he do this
before shooting himself in the head?
And then when I looked at the, the, the death scene photos,
you can see from the bloodstain pattern, he never moved
his right arm never moved.
So it's not like he climbs into bed
with a razor slashes himself, thinks to himself, you know,
oh no, I'm not bleeding out.
I'm gonna have to go find a pistol.
The bloodstain shows he got into bed with a loaded
and cocked pistol was lying there
and, and never moved.
So in other words, if you follow the logic of this,
I'm gonna get into bed with a pistol ready to go,
the cartridge chambered, but
before I shoot myself in the head, I'm gonna slash myself
to no lethal effect on the right forearm.
I just found that strange.
And then, but then when I got the photos
and I started looking closely at the photos, um,
the first thing you notice is he's been tucked in.
So the, the way the,
the bedding is tucked along the backside of his legs,
the backside of his buttocks,
someone has smoothed out the
comforter on the right side of the bed
and then tucked him in.
The comforter is drawn up over his left hand
lying outstretched, left hand lying on the weapon.
The comforter is drawn up over that.
Now it's impossible to shoot yourself in the left side
of the head with the pistol.
The hand then falls on the bed,
and then to then draw the covers up. That's impossible.
- And you tracked down the origin of the pistol, the,
- The, the gun revolver.
Yeah. The gun belonged to one of David's close friends who
lived in a big fancy house just north
of Preston Center in Dallas.
David's medical offices were impressed and center.
Um, Sandra was very close with this man's wife
I know from multiple witnesses.
Sandra was always hanging around over at the house.
The ladies both had a love of champagne.
They would hang around at the pool,
drink champagne into the evening.
The pistol was found
or was known to be in a dr, a dresser
in the back house, apartment over the garage.
I do not believe that David went into the back house,
apartment over the garage and stole the pistol.
I believe the totality
of circumstances indicates that she did.
- And David was the father of their three children.
But the people that came to console her, you talked to them
and they were kind of bothered.
She had a cheerful demeanor.
And she leaves without even taking
the portraits of her children.
- You're referencing his dental office.
So David had worked all of these years
to become a reconstructive dentist.
Um, and in his office, he had
three portraits of his chil of his three children by, um,
Giddings, the famous studio photographer.
And when Sandra sold his dental practice to, uh,
interestingly enough, a female dentist in Dallas,
the female dentist said, God, these giddings portraits
of your three beautiful children, that they're,
they're beautiful, like come by and get them any time.
And she just thought it was notable
that Sandra never came by to get the photos.
- A year after burying her first husband,
who suspicious death with a handgun was ruled a suicide.
Sandra struck up a relationship with a very wealthy,
high profile restaurateur.
- She goes on the hunt,
and probably the most interesting, uh, relationship
that she had, um, in, in the year
after David died of a purported suicide was, was
with Norman Brinker, who was a famous entrepreneur.
He was an Olympic equestrian,
I believe it was the 1952 Olympics in Seoul, Korea.
A a real man in full, a man about town, um, handsome Rich.
He da Norman Brinker is famous
for starting this whole new style
of dining in the United States.
It's somewhere between fast food
and really formal, there's a categorical name for this, um,
casual dining chains that are affordable
for middle class families.
But you nevertheless took your family and sat down
and had proper service.
So Steak and Ale was an early norm. Brinker.
And then ultimately he, I think he was involved in Chili's,
TGI, Fridays, you know, multiple casual dining chains.
And, and he made a great fortune.
Norm Brinker is really one of the great restaurateurs
of all time in, in terms of, um, his portfolio, Sandra, and,
and encountered Norm.
And as he perceived it at the time,
it was a fortuitous encounter at a car wash.
And he found her very charming.
He invited her out on a date, and they had a brief romance
or, uh, a fairly high profile.
They were, they were spotted about town.
Sadly, for Sandra, it was not to last.
- So now she goes on the hunt for other wealthy men.
Is she doing that at this point,
at the church she's attending,
or is it some other social function?
But is she, is she even showing up in their offices?
- So, church, St.
Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, um, I
and I have taken pains
to protect the identity for the family.
She did seduce a church warden at St.
Michael, a married man, a very wealthy man,
and was able to extract how to put it, well,
I'll just jump to it.
She persuaded him to co-sign a loan.
He thought he was just guaranteeing the loan that so
that she could get the loan and service the loan herself.
She didn't pay a penny of the loan.
Um, and when he countersued her,
or it was a cross action suit, he was sued by the lender
for non-performance.
He then did a cross action suit against Sandra
for non-performance of the loan, at which point she revealed
with the court reporter present
that the loan arrangement had come about following the
commencement of an intimate relationship, .
And as she began to speak with the court
reporter typing away about the details
of their intimate relationship, his attorney
waved the whole thing off
and said, we'll, settle the matter.
Let's just forget it.
We'll petition the court to dismiss this with prejudice.
And it's an interesting moment in Sandra's career
because she realized if you're a married man
and you're a high profile guy,
and particularly if your public image is that
of a church warden, you are going to take great pains
to avoid exposure.
- What was about her that made her so alluring?
You know, I, I read how you, I've read
how she would touch men on the
arm as she told them something.
Would you describe her? She was apparently
a striking brunette.
But what was this other aura that just sort of exuded sex?
- I think, and I remember, I,
I encountered Sandra multiple times in my early
teenage years.
I lived down the street from her.
Um, and I even as a 13
and 14-year-old boy, remember this smoldering.
Now, I I wouldn't have described it in these terms at the
time, I didn't know, I didn't know what I was looking at.
But 13, 14, it's at a time
of awakening sexuality.
I, I remember even then thinking there's something
mesmerizing about this woman.
She had these big brown eyes that would just
hold you in her gaze and whatever you were saying.
And I mean, look, I was 13 or 14.
I was probably talking about a BMX bike or something.
She would hold you with this gaze as,
as though it was the most
fascinating thing she'd ever heard.
And she had this lustrous brown hair.
And what I remember
and what other men have have admired was this, this, uh,
white skin, this, this milky white skin that
contrasted with her raven hair and brown eyes.
So she was, she was devastating,
particularly if you were a man who had not
had this kind of attention from a woman like that, you know,
for a long time, if ever,
- Sandra Bridewell will have a devastating effect on men
and women in the years to come.
In part two of our three episode series Beneath the Charm
Unveiling the Black Widow, John Lee,
explores more mysterious shooting deaths than Sandra
Bridewell Social Web.
It's a tale of intrigue and sorrow.
You will not want to miss.