Poisoned Dreams Read online

  Just a few days afterward, July 16 to be exact, Betsy had a morning call from Sandra. She told Betsy that she’d found a letter hidden in a picture frame in her house, a letter from a woman indicating that Bobby, while alive, had been having an affair. According to what Betsy told two women over lunch that day, the letter had Sandra quite upset. Betsy also told her lunch partners that she hadn’t believed the story, and that Sandra was, in Betsy’s opinion, a compulsive liar. Sandra has subsequently denied that she ever called Betsy that morning, and also has denied the existence of the suspect letter. Nonetheless, the following tale is from Sandra’s own lips, as later told to the police.

  Though she steadfastly denies that she called Betsy Bagwell on the morning of the sixteenth, she acknowledges that she did phone Betsy in the early afternoon, shortly after Betsy had returned home from her lunch date with the two women at Dallas Country Club. Sandra made this call from the Highland Park Presbyterian Church, where her car had stalled—once again—in the parking lot. By this time Betsy likely wondered why Sandra didn’t get her car fixed, or at least carry cab-fare money, but always one to help, went to Sandra’s aid. She picked Sandra up at the church and drove out to Dallas Love Field, where Sandra was to rent a car. Once the women arrived at the car rental agency, however, another snag reared its head. Sandra had forgotten her driver’s license, so couldn’t get a rental vehicle. By now Betsy was likely at her wit’s end as to what to do with this disorganized woman, but then drove Sandra back to the church parking lot where—shazam—Sandra’s car started at once as if by magic. Sandra says she then left Betsy at the church and went to Preston Center to shop. If the story is true, Sandra Bridewell was the last known person to talk to Betsy Bagwell.

  By eight o’clock that evening, Betsy was dead. Responding to a frantic call from John Bagwell, police combed the area for Betsy, and at 8:20 located her powder-blue Mercedes in the Love Field Terminal parking lot. The former cheerleader and current Junior Leaguer was slumped over the wheel with a .22-caliber pistol in her hand and a bullet hole through her right temple. There were traces of gunpowder, blood, and tissue on her hand, which led the medical examiner—lacking any concrete evidence of foul play—to rule Betsy’s death a suicide. Park Cities gossips—this time with probably a great deal more insight than the police—contend to this day that the medical examiner was full of bull.

  First of all (this from the grapevine), Betsy simply didn’t act in the short time before her death like a woman thinking about killing herself. That very day she’d kept her lunch date at Dallas Country Club, had eaten well, and hadn’t acted as though a thing was wrong. She’d even talked lightly with her dining partners about a couple of upcoming parties, and on her way home she’d dropped a dress off for alterations. Before she’d left to pick up Sandra at the church, she’d told her kids (who were out of school for the summer) not to pig out that afternoon because she was fixing dinner that evening, and to emphasize her point had left a chicken to thaw in the sink. All normal behavior. No panic in her manner, no streaks of depression. None of which, of course, proves that Betsy Bagwell didn’t kill herself. But there’s also the matter of the gun.

  The case is long closed, but even today policemen hem and haw and avert their gazes when the subject of the .22-caliber revolver comes up, the gun in Betsy’s hand when the law found her Mercedes. It wasn’t just any gun. It wasn’t your standard upper-class protection weapon, a pearl-handled Derringer or neat little James Bond Walther PPK. The pistol in Betsy Bagwell’s hand was in fact what the cops call a Saturday Night special, a two-dollar popgun. The cheap little piece was registered to an Oak Cliff man (Oak Cliff bears about the same relationship to Park Cities as the South Bronx to Midtown Manhattan, or Watts to Beverly Hills), and, on following up, the police learned that the gun’s registered owner was dead. His widow remembered the .22, said her husband had carried it in the glove compartment of his car, and also said that in the mid-seventies someone had stolen the pistol. It had never been recovered. Just what connection there could be between Betsy Bagwell, late of the Dallas Country Club and the Junior League, and a stolen handgun from Oak Cliff was something that the police didn’t know, and never followed up on. The ME had ruled Betsy’s death a suicide. Case closed. On to the next open file.

  Gossip. Rumor. Innuendo.

  Betsy’s death was, of course, big news, featured in the newspapers and chronicled on television, excitedly talked about in Park Cities clubs and at the Mansion on Turtle Creek. And for all her blossoming career and business acumen, Nancy Dillard Lyon was, after all, as subject to juicy gossip as anyone. On the day after Betsy died, Nancy couldn’t wait to get home from the office and tell her husband that the John Bagwell whose wife was dead was the brother of Nancy’s boss at Tramell Crow Partners. At the time Richard likely found the news that David Bagwell was related to the now famous doctor to be an interesting tidbit, but no more than that. He did, however, file the information away in the back of his mind, where, along with Bill Jr.’s carousing and Nancy’s cosignature on Bill Jr.’s note, it was to remain for several years.

  The beautiful and provocative Sandra Bridewell here drifts out of our story and (presumably) out of John Bagwell’s life forever, but in order to understand the significance to locals when the name of the Black Widow came up during Richard Lyon’s prosecution, it is necessary to look briefly at a later event in her life, one that eclipsed even the death of Betsy Bagwell in etching Sandra forever into Dallasites’ memories. The event involves her short-lived union with husband number three.

  After Bobby Bridewell died, and after Betsy was laid to rest, Sandra continued to live in the Bridewells’ Highland Park home. She supported herself on Bobby’s insurance money and what inheritance she’d gained after Bobby’s death, and two years later, her notoriety had faded into the background and her life seemed on an even keel. She dated often—aside from her obvious physical beauty and infectious charm and wit, her fame made her just the to-be-seen-with companion for many of Dallas’ more visible bachelors—but often told friends that none of her relationships was serious and that she wasn’t looking for another husband. Then, one hot July day in 1984, a muscular hunk named Alan Rehrig walked up to Sandra on her front lawn and introduced himself.

  Alan’s life was a pretty good tale in its own right. He was from Edmond, Oklahoma, a four-hour drive to the north of Dallas, and in his hometown he was sort of a local legend. A three-sport all-state athlete in high school, he’d gone to Oklahoma State University to play basketball, tried out for the football team as well, and had become the first OSU jock since 1940 to earn varsity letters in two sports. In addition to the more physical endeavors, Alan was a scratch golfer as well (two of his high school buddies are currently touring pros), and once through with college he moved to Phoenix and tried to make it on the PGA tour. His try for golfdom’s brass ring didn’t work out, however; Alan was never able to qualify for a single tournament. Disillusioned, he returned to Oklahoma and tried the oil business. That didn’t work out, either, so in the summer of 1984 he took a from-the-ground-up job with Nowlin Mortgage in Dallas at a starting salary of $24,000. At the time he met Sandra Bridewell, he was touring Highland Park in search of a garage apartment to rent. He never located a Park Cities place to live, but he did find Sandra.

  It is a tribute to Sandra’s allure that in spite of the age difference—Alan was twenty-nine, Sandra forty—the strapping he-man went quickly head over heels. His first date with Sandra was that very evening, and five months later the two were married in (where else?) the lobby of the Mansion on Turtle Creek.

  Alan’s courtship of, and eventual marriage to, Sandra, like everything else involving Sandra Bridewell, was seen from two different points of view. Alan’s buddies felt that the older woman used him as a “trophy husband,” while those on Sandra’s side felt Alan was after her money. Shortly before the wedding, Alan told a close friend that Sandra was pregnant. Since it is well documented that,
shortly after Bobby Bridewell’s death, Sandra had gone in for a hysterectomy, the question is whether she was lying to Alan, or if he was pulling his buddy’s leg.

  The contradictions continued on into the marriage. Within weeks after the wedding, according to Alan’s camp, Sandra broke the news that she’d gone to Baylor Hospital, where she’d miscarried. Sandra’s side counters that she told Alan from the beginning that she couldn’t have children. Even the couple’s financial problems (which were many) were subject to interpretation. Shortly after the wedding, the couple sold Sandra’s Highland Park home and moved into a Park Cities duplex, and the proceeds from the sale quickly disappeared. According to Sandra, Alan spent all of her money. In rebuttal, he pointed to a $20,000 bill run up on his American Express card, all by Sandra, which has never been paid. Whatever the truth, the marriage wasn’t made in heaven. After only six months the couple separated. They lived apart for half a year, but neither filed for divorce. Alan said he couldn’t afford a lawyer; Sandra told friends that she and Alan were planning to reconcile.

  On Alan Rehrig’s last day on earth, December 10, 1985, he said goodbye to friends and told them that he was headed for a mini-warehouse in Garland, a Dallas suburb, to help his estranged wife move some boxes they had stored. He drove away and never returned. Sandra maintains that Alan never showed up to keep their appointment, that she waited for several hours and finally went home.

  Alan’s body turned up two days later on an icy side street in Oklahoma City, a hundred and fifty miles to the north. He was in his car, shot twice with a .38. There has never been any explanation as to why he might have made the sudden out-of-state trip. For Sandra the total was now three husbands, three tragic deaths, and one strange suicide that might not have been a suicide at all.

  Sandra went to Edmond for Alan’s funeral, ordered the cheapest casket available, then never paid the funeral home. Eventually, Alan’s parents picked up the tab. An intense police investigation followed Alan’s murder, both by Oklahoma City and Dallas cops, with Sandra as the main suspect. Investigators found two statements made by witnesses very interesting. A close friend of Alan’s said that Sandra called him at six-fifteen on the evening of Alan’s disappearance, allegedly from the Garland mini-warehouse, and asked if the friend had seen her estranged husband, since he had never showed for his appointment. However, a second woman said that Sandra was at home shortly after six o’clock, a half-hour drive from the mini-warehouse, and that evening the woman and her husband took Sandra with them to a movie. The movie, White Nights, by the way, is the same picture that another friend of Sandra’s says that she and Sandra had seen the night before.

  Sandra retained a criminal lawyer and, on her attorney’s advice, completely clammed up about the matter. She refused to provide fingerprints or hair samples when requested, and refused to submit to a polygraph. Her declination of the lie-detector exam came after she’d taken such a test arranged by her own lawyer. According to a woman who accompanied Sandra to the test, she flunked two key questions.

  Lacking Sandra’s cooperation, the investigation eventually closed minus any concrete evidence that could lead to an indictment. As far as any charges go, Sandra has proven to be bulletproof. After Alan’s death, she deserted her beloved Park Cities and moved to California, where she remains to this day.

  When the screaming headlines involving Alan Rehrig’s murder came out in the paper, Nancy Lyon had been with Tramell Crow for three years and Richard was by then on his second job. Nancy’s problems with David Bagwell were still three years away. Nonetheless, Sandra Bridewell’s final encounter with notoriety was the hot Park Cities dinner-table topic for weeks on end, and John Bagwell’s connection to Sandra was something that Richard would long remember.

  12

  Richard likes to describe his business career in glowing terms. During his drawn-out trial testimony he would spend half of a day trotting out photos of mirror-walled skyscrapers whose construction he’d supervised, and point with pride at the multi-million-dollar budgets he’d controlled. Spectators and jurors alike were somewhat confused as to what Richard’s construction expertise or lack of same had to do with the charge that he’d poisoned his wife, but one thing was for sure. Richard had seen a lot of big buildings.

  He also portrayed his eighteen-month stay at Caroline Hunt Schoellkopf’s Rosewood Properties as somewhat of a power struggle, and said that he finally left Rosewood for greener pastures because the company’s promise of eventual equity ownership fell through. According to Richard, his services were much in demand elsewhere.

  “It’s all a lot of bullshit,” says a thirty-year veteran of the Dallas real estate wars. “All that project superintendent stuff. Look, at a smaller outfit the job means something, but in a big operation like Rosewood a project superintendent’s nothing but a glorified clerk. The contractor does the work, right? Then the architect inspects, and if the work’s up to snuff he sends his approval in to the main office at Rosewood. Then the project superintendent fills out a bunch of forms and puts in for the contractor’s draw, and if he fills in the right blanks the contractor gets paid. You really want to know what a project super’s for? Okay, look. There’s times at all these megabuck stores when for one reason or another, cash flow or whatever, they decide to slow-pay all the contractors. So then the project superintendent is the guy that sits and listens to the plumbers and electrical guys bitch about getting stiffed for their money, and you know why? Because the project superintendent makes the perfect foil. He’s the guy set up to take all the shit, because he doesn’t have the authority to pay the contractor to begin with, so while the project super gets the headaches, all the big shots can go do lunch over at the Mansion and not have to fuck with listening to the contractors bitch and moan. That’s what it’s all about, if you really want to know.”

  The real estate vet takes a slug of his bourbon and water and goes on. “You remember what he said on the stand about ownership in Rosewood Properties? It doesn’t work exactly the way he said. Rosewood is one of these outfits where damn near everybody gets to be a partner eventually. That way they can give the guy equity ownership, which he’s got no way to cash in, incidentally, in lieu of a raise. If Mr. Lyon left Rosewood because he didn’t make partner, then it’s likely that the next step they had in mind for him was that he was going to get his ass fired.”

  For whatever reason, Richard’s career at Rosewood ended in early 1984, and in order to insure that his son-in-law maintained steady employment, Big Daddy held another breakfast meeting. This time his omelet and fruit cup partner was a maverick real estate developer named Kenneth Hughes, and in the overall scheme of events leading up to Nancy’s death, Richard’s new job with Ken Hughes Industries would prove significant.

  Hughes was one of a dozen or so Dallas loners who hit home runs during the late seventies and early eighties without resorting to alliances with Rosewood, Tramell Crow, or any other conglomerate. This loosely knit group of overnight millionaires came along at just the right time, when federal deregulation of the savings and loan industry made megabuck financing easy to come by, and when the banks loosened credit in order to keep pace with the suddenly competitive S&L’s. By the time the eighties bumped to a close, most of the fast-money group was gone with the wind (along with a high percentage of Texas banks and S&L’s as well), either through the bankruptcy courts or absorption by the conglomerates, but during the time that they stayed in business they made noises heard from the Rio Grande to Chicago.

  Ken Hughes was barely forty years old when he took Big Daddy’s recommendation and hired Richard, and his Hughes Industries at the time was in the process of shooting office towers up into the sky like rockets. Several Hughes projects were out of town, most notably in Houston, and as a small company, Hughes Industries was to give the bright young Harvard grad a much freer rein than he’d had at Rosewood. Ken Hughes took a liking to the handsome kid of Lebanese descent—Hughes’ own stunning wife i
s Middle Eastern, and together with her sister, who is married to the former head of publicity at Neiman-Marcus, forms as comely a sibling duo as can be found anywhere—and Richard’s new job was, prestige-wise at least, quite a jump from what he’d been accustomed to at Rosewood Properties. Not only did he suddenly have virtual carte blanche on the company expense account, he had authority to make a few deals on his own, acted as liaison for the company with a number of banks, and was the company check signer on a forty-million-dollar office building constructed in Dallas’ upscale Preston Center. He took trips in the company airplane, did business in Houston and out of state, and pretty well set his own schedule. The job gave Richard a new visibility, and within months he was rubbing elbows with the big boys. It would be five years from Hughes Industries’ hiring of Richard until the company went down in flames, and many of the things that went on while he worked for Hughes would seal the fate of Richard’s marriage. For beginners, though, as Richard accepted Ken Hughes’ proposal over dinner one evening, he was in for a relatively short but heady ride.

  Just how much love flowed between Nancy and Richard during their seven-year stint in the fast lane is difficult to pin down. According to Richard, very little. Nancy was, he says, always hesitant in sex, never willing to experiment, seemingly only enduring what encounters the couple did have. Nancy, on the other hand, confided in those close to her that Richard was a sex maniac, always at her, never seeming to get enough, making her feel at times as though she were his virtual concubine. As in all fragile marriages, there were definitely two sides to the story.