Robert Riggs:
Sandra Bridewell has fallen from grace in Dallas Society. Shunned by neighbors and most friends in the posh Highland Park community that is home to oil and real estate barons.
Her connection to three mysterious shooting deaths and the stories about them label Sandra, The Black Widow.
She flees to the West Coast to escape her scandalous reputation.
True Crime author John Leake unveils in his book The Meaning of Malice: The Black Widow of Highland Park how Sandra Bridewell tries to reinvent herself eventually as a missionary.
John Leake:
D magazine. It's our local glossy monthly magazine about events and gossip and events in Dallas. D magazine in May of 1987. Did a cover story on the Black Widow. So by then she's given that moniker the Black Widow. That D magazine cover story which was published a year after Sandra left Dallas was a sensation.
Robert Riggs:
The story would have gone viral, but this was the preinternet age.
But someone started pumping out copies of the story on their fax machine to wherever Sandra Bridewell showed up in the Bay Area of California.
John Leake:
Belvedere is an upscale affluent community just on the north side of the Golden Gate. The San Francisco Yacht Club is actually in Belvedere on the north side of the Golden Gate. Sandra has taken up residence in Belvedere and an apartment next door to the Yacht Club, she's ingratiated herself with this influential society in Marin County. These D Magazine copies start showing up at the homes and offices of prominent people. And the signal is clear. Be very, very careful with this lady.
Robert Riggs:
But all these wealthy men are loaning her money.
John Leake:
Yeah, she's gotten back into the borrowing money from married men
Robert Riggs:
10s of 1000s of dollars.
John Leake:
The two men that came forward and their wives were fully cognizant of this and even supportive of the husband's decision to come forward. said that one can remember this is 1986. Okay, so $1 went a lot further back then. They one guy said that she'd gotten about 30k out of them 30,000 The other guy, she'd gotten $76,000 out of them. And they claimed that these, she asked for this money as a loan. After they loaned her the money. She then said, well, thank you for your generosity. I think I'll be moving on my married way. And then when when the men then said, Well, no, wait a minute that that. What are you talking about? That was alone? She said, I don't know what you're talking about. Why don't you discuss this with your wife? Okay, these two guys concluded they didn't want to be pushed around like this. So they told their wives what had happened. The wives, forgave them, let's say or decided that they were going to stand by their husbands even though their husbands had made these indiscreet decisions with Sandra. So those were two civil cases that added to the fact pattern. This is what she does. She befriends let's say married men. She borrows money from them and then she doesn't pay them back now. I believe those two guys that came forward are tip or the tip of the iceberg.
Robert Riggs:
And it's a classic romance scam. Yeah. So where to then they're figuring out who she is out there?
John Leake:
So now we're getting into, you know, a time of AI I call it the section of my book I titled it wandering spirit. She becomes a wanderer, a drifter, she she leaves the Bay Area. She turns up in Tucson, Arizona. And then through the very excellent reporting of an investigative journalist in Dallas named Glenna Whitley, you know, now, we're getting into this era of Sandra wandering around, but a kind of heightened awareness. So Glenna, starts getting calls from people from different parts of the country saying, I've encountered this woman. She's in Tucson for a while she then circles back to the Bay Area, she goes to the South Bay to Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley. She lives there for a while. And then in the early 90s. she changes her persona. She seduces a married man in the Bay Area. She claims she's pregnant. He is trying to figure out a way to manage this with his wife. His wife says, Well, okay, you've severed the relationship with her. But you know, I don't trust that you'll stay away from her. So what he the arrangement he makes with Sandra is he moves her to Boston And he rents an apartment on Boston's Beacon Hill. And that's the arrangement she's going to be on the other side of the country. Okay. At that point, I found evidence that Sandra develops an interest in religion. Okay, so now she's crossed the threshold of 50. Or getting into the early 90s. Yeah, 1994. She's 50 years old. And she develops an interest in Christian the Christian religion. Now, she'd already demonstrated an early interest in this when she was a member of the Highland Park Presbyterian church congregation. But now she really gets into it. She actually received some ministerial training, and starts introducing herself as a minister. And as a missionary. And this is a whole nother chapter in the story of Sandra's adventures as an apparent ministering Christian missionary.
Robert Riggs:
And she says she was a missionary in India, China,
John Leake:
She would, people would occasionally encounter Sandra, on an aircraft, you know, in an airport, just random encounters in a coffee shop, wherever and she she proclaimed to be a Christian missionary in the United States, in between missions. So she claimed she was often in Africa or India, or in the Third World, doing the work of the Lord as a missionary, looking after the needy, the undernourished, the, you know, the needy, like, like, like Christ, Himself, tending to the sick and the poor. And people found this very compelling. And she knew the Bible very well. I mean,
Robert Riggs:
And she meets a man at a church conference in Colorado. Now she's changed her name now she's Camille, which was the name of her mother, first name ever mother, but she marries this person, whirlwind romance, and then he's left holding the bag for money,
right. So this is her fourth husband and and I, I think that he was a man that was genuinely seeking spiritual renewal, his his, his first marriage had not worked out. And so he attends. It's called the Wagner ministerial training institution. And they had the seminar and Colorado Springs. And so he's doing this sort of ministerial apostolic training at this institute. And he meets this woman who introduces herself as Camille and He's genuinely moved by her apparent embrace of the Holy Spirit. I mean, she, first of all, her knowledge of particularly in the new A testament is just astonishing. And she seems to be as he perceived her sort of burning with the Spirit of God. And so he marries her. And the way he describes it as soon as they married I mean on their wedding night, she seems to her personality seems to undergo a radical change the the sort of sweet Christian lady turns into very quickly what he perceived to be in his own words, these aren't mine, like a witch, and he quickly comes to wit's end. She's taken out a bunch of credit cards in his name. She's never there. She's doing all of this traveling to Tony resorts and spends all of his money and steals his gold coin collection steals his car. I mean, he it's like he just doesn't know what hit him. Now, what I think is astonishing about this story is he had traveled to Colorado Springs from San Antonio, His home is San Antonio, Texas. He's never heard anything about this woman. So it's a huge shock to him to discover, you know, you're not this lady's first rodeo. He gets the wedding an old excuse me, the marriage an old and and and escapes from this thing. He's dead broke.
Robert Riggs:
Yes, she sticks him with what $150,000 I think I charges on his credit card.
John Leake:
Correct. And he was very proud of his gold coin collection. She she decided to take that along with his Ford Explorer, and was none of that property was was ever seen again.
So then there's an encounter on a flight with a missionary. And she's Camille, now. Sandra. Bridewell is claiming she's back from a mission overseas. Where did Where does this lead? Now
she lands in San Francisco. She you know, it's it's funny, she off oftentimes circles back to the Bay Area. This lady whom she's sitting with him, she's sitting on the plane. She lives in Santa Rosa, which is north, just north of Marin County. And Sandra is talking to the lady. She says, I'm headed back to San Francisco after my last mission. And the lady and she says, Well, where do you live? And the lady says, I live in Santa Rosa. And Sandra says, Oh, really, I'm on my way to Santa Rosa. So, but GWAS turns out, I don't have a place to stay. I'm meeting with some people in Santa Rosa, but I haven't yet organized accommodation. So that quickly lands her in a church congregation in Santa Rosa. She meets an elderly man, he's really, at the end of his life. He's on dialysis. I mean, he's not in good shape. But Sandra makes the case that she could be a caretaker of this elderly man. His wife who's initially grateful for the for the home care, quickly realizes there's something strange about this woman, she seems to be trying to ingratiate herself with my husband who has an estate and who's at the end of his life. That turns into a rupture with the elderly man's wife. But by then, he's already been pretty charmed by Sandra, a conflict develops. The Santa Rosa, sheriff's department gets involved. They report Sandra to protective services or some sort of Adult Protective agency. And they tell her, you know, you're gonna have to back off from this family. She's not arrested for anything, but it's an important moment in terms of law enforcement. Sheriff's deputy writes an incident report saying law enforcement should keep an eye on this lady. He says I don't think she's a minister or missionary. I think that she is con artist who seeks elderly people within a state in order to ingratiate herself and to obtain access to the estate. So I have that incident report. Sandra then disappears. Okay, so this is California, right? She turns up again, a few years later in North Carolina. She's introducing herself to elderly people as can mele Bowers. So now she's really changed her name.
Robert Riggs:
And does she at this point, resemble like a bag lady she's carrying around. She does foxes.
JOHN LEAKE
She's She's, um, her circumstances have obviously diminished considerably from when she was a socialite in Highland Park. She looks. First of all, she's very thin, but in a kind of fascinating way it almost adds to her saintly appearance she almost looks like an acetic saint. The way she's presenting herself but yes, people observe. She seems to be carrying around sort of tattered bags and worn out old suitcase and but she says I'm a Christian missionary, and I'm in between missions to Africa. And I could use a place to stay in the interim. So she ingratiate herself. With an elderly lady in Southport, North Carolina, a lady named Sue Moseley.
Robert Riggs:
Moseley was an affluent elderly woman who lived alone and had serious health problems. The Good Samaritan took in Bridewell, who professed to be an itinerant minister and missionary who quoted the Bible chapter and verse.
Bridewell, who used the alias Camille Powers, helped with the shopping and cooking. Once she has won Moseleyâs trust, she stole her identity.
Bridewell got caught trying to transfer Moseleyâs monthly social security check to her bank account.
Jayne Todd, a North Carolina Sheriffâs detective who investigated case said Bridewell was a psychopath who moved in on the elderly Ms. Moseley like a predator.
The detective said quote, âAll that business about being a good Christian and a missionary tending to the needy of the world. That was just a lie. No doubt she was the evilest person Iâve ever encounteredâ end quote.
Robert Riggs:
In 2007, Sandra Bridewell finally had a day of reckoning with the criminal justice system in the case of the elderly Ms. Moseley.
While awaiting trial on federal charges of aggravated identity theft, John Leake interviewed Bridewell behind bars.
John Leake:
The voluptuous smoldering femme fatale had been replaced by a slightly gaunt looking and hurt her demeanor was very dignified. She had this erect posture, she made direct eye contact. And I kind of had this dignity about her, which, which I found I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I found it very interesting. And but clearly, she either through her own wits or her attorney, you know, told her don't talk to anybody about any of this. I could not get her to tell me anything.
Robert Riggs:
Bridewell, aka Sandra Camille Powers pleaded guilty to federal charges of aggravated identity theft in 2008. She served two years in a federal prison.
While behind bars, she became a prison pen pal with a North Carolina minister.
John Leake:
A church minister or pastor in a rural county of North Carolina for some reason, has taken a fancy to Camille Powers as heeps is still calling her. He persuades the prison system that upon being released from federal federal sentence, he will look after her she can work for his church and his charity. During her probationary period where she has to remain in North Carolina, she then charges very large Victoria's Secret lingerie purchase on the pastor's credit card guy. And but he's too embarrassed by this to actually he told the sheriff's deputy but he stopped short of filing a formal report with a statement.
Robert Riggs:
In the wake of the federal identity theft conviction, Oklahoma City prosecutors reopened the homicide investigation of Alah Rehrig, Bridewellâs third husband.
The grand jury declined to indict her.
Bridewell then turned up in Vermont, offering to bail a farmer who was in financial trouble by purchasing his herd of fleece-bearing Alpacas.
John Leake:
And she says she's interested in purchasing his alpaca herd. She says that she has experience in animal husbandry because her first husband was a thoroughbred racehorse breeder. And she would likes rural living like living on a farm likes animals. So she answers the Craigslist ad, a whirlwind romance ensues. And it's yet another saga. In this story, he, like others in the internet age begins to think, well, there's something odd about this woman, he does a Google search for her alias and she gets this he gets this hit and he realizes she's done time and a federal pen in North Carolina. And the story unfolds from there.
Robert Riggs:
but she she tells him she's had, she's pregnant. Correct back to the same old story she
she says by the way, I'm pregnant. Now, he doesn't know her age. He assumes her to be in his. He assumes that she's in her 50s. She looks like she still looks like an attractive woman. But he nevertheless, his parents are both doctors. He thinks she's too old to get pregnant. Now unbeknownst to him. At the time she claims to be pregnant. She's actually in her late 60s. I think she's 66. So eat later upon discovering her true age. He realizes that that's rather absurd claim.
Robert Riggs:
The Vermont farmer cut off the relationship, and Sandra Bridewell faded away.
There was a recent sighting of her at the Boston Logan Airport.
Leake obtained a heavily censored FBI report that raises questions if Bridewell had allegedly been involved in cocaine smuggling, international arms trafficking, and with an accomplice in the murder of her third husband.
Robert Riggs:
Now 80 years old, Sandra Bridewell, once a celebrated Dallas socialite, continues to be a figure shrouded in mystery and intrigue. A woman of many facesâmurder suspect, seductress, romance scammer, saintly missionary, and convicted identity thiefâshe endures in the public imagination as a mysterious princess of darkness.
This is Robert Riggs Reporting.
