The Double Life of Tony Bridges : Slayings: The Santa Paula auto dealer was a respected businessman by day who lived in the fast lane by night.

As a student at Santa Paula Union High School in the early 1960s, Tony Bridges would rise before dawn to deliver milk.

But after school the hard-working teen-ager could often be seen drag-racing in his apple red ’63 Chevy Impala with the legendary 409 V-8 muscle engine made famous by the Beach Boys’ hit tune of the time, “409.”

That was an early hint of what was to become the double life of Tony Bridges, a small-town boy imbued with the work ethic but ultimately drawn to living his life in the fast lane.

As a teen-ager, his interests focused on pretty girls and muscle cars. But later, as a millionaire businessman, his double-track existence expanded to drugs and out-call dancers. “He chose to live on the edge,” a relative said.

To be sure, he was the successful owner of an auto agency, Tony Bridges Chevrolet, and a respected member of Santa Paula’s business community.

But, unbeknown to many, his life had been careening out of control. Three busted marriages took their toll.

Cocaine replaced alcohol as his primary kick.

In the months before his naked body was discovered in December in an Oxnard farm field, a homicide victim, he dwelt more and more in the lonely, pain-racked world of the drug addict.

His dual life--a respected businessman in the conservative Santa Paula community during the day and apparently a restless individual who sought drugs and women at night--was becoming more pronounced.

In the end, at the relatively young age of 45, Bridges couldn’t handle the fast lane.

“Tony was a good businessman, a loving father, but an individual with an indulgence streak related to booze, drugs and women,” observed the relative, one of a handful who were interviewed and requested anonymity.

A Port Hueneme woman described him as seeming lonely and forlorn a few weeks before his death.

Living by himself in a rambling Spanish mission-style home on Santa Paula’s Say Road, he would sit on his bed and talk about his life, said Andrea Faiers, 21, who described herself as an out-call dancer who had been to Bridges’ residence several times.

Atop a bedside table was a large quantity of cocaine, she recalled.

“He would cry, ‘I really miss my wife,’ ” Faiers said.

She said he was referring to his third wife, Leticia, from whom he was divorced in 1987.

“He’d show me a picture of her and say, ‘She was everything to me.’ ”

Through her husband, Leticia, now a Camarillo resident, declined to be interviewed.

Frequently, Faiers said, Bridges would call her “to talk mostly about his life.”

Faiers said that shortly before Dec. 19 when his daughter, Lisa, reported him missing to police, he called and left a message that “he needed to get hold of me. It was urgent.

“I called his home phone and it kept ringing and ringing. No one answered. The next thing I knew, he was dead.”

Bridges’ body was found by a farm worker Dec. 26. On Jan. 7, Faiers’ closest friend, Veronica Lira, 26, was charged with murdering him.

Last month, Lira pleaded not guilty to the charge in Ventura County Municipal Court, about two weeks after she was arrested in connection with the slaying.

“She’s not a killer,” Faiers said of her friend.

Anthony Bridges was born Aug. 23, 1946, in Urbana, Mo., a hamlet in the southern part of the state near the picturesque Ozark Mountains.

His father, Alpha, whom everyone called Alfie, was a wealthy man who owned a number of businesses, including a bank and a Chevrolet dealership. He died last year. Mary, his wife, was a homemaker. She died a few years ago.

Tony was the baby of the family. His older brother, Lawrence, like Tony, was to follow in his father’s footsteps and prosper as an auto dealer. An older sister, Evelyn, lives in New York.

“Lawrence was Tony without the wild streak,” said the relative.

Lawrence Bridges, who has been running the Santa Paula Chevrolet dealership since his brother died, and who is the administrator of his brother’s estate, declined to be interviewed.

Like other Missourians who migrated to Santa Paula before and after World War II, Alfie Bridges moved his family to the small community in the Santa Clara Valley in the 1950s. They settled in a spacious single-story ranch home in the pretty McKevett School area.

While Bridges’ father continued to run his businesses in Missouri, he began putting down entrepreneurial roots in Santa Paula.

Local hangouts like Tia Babe’s, a Mexican food restaurant on Harvard Boulevard, once were owned by the Bridges family. Bridges’ cousins and other relatives still own other businesses in the Santa Paula-Ventura area.

“These were hard-knocks Missouri people,” one of the relatives said. He said they believed in the work ethic and being rewarded for their labor.

It was this ethic that the elder Bridges instilled in his children, including young Tony.

Indeed, while still in high school, Bridges not only delivered milk but also worked as a roustabout for Texaco in the nearby oil fields.

“He really busted his butt,” said another relative, recalling young Tony’s efforts. “He would not have had the benefits of family support if he hadn’t demonstrated a responsible work ethic.”

Whether or not Bridges also applied his energy to his high school studies, the results were those of an average student--mostly Cs and some Bs. An “A” student he was not.

After school, Bridges liked to cruise the streets of his small farm community with his best friend, Tom Hale. While Bridges powered around town in his ’63 Chevy, Hale roared with him in his own hot ’56 Chevy, their engines producing a cacophony of familiar sounds on a weekend night.

“I used to work on his car when he was in high school,” said Jim McCoy, a longtime Santa Paula resident and former mayor who owns McCoy’s Automotive. “He liked to drag-race.”

Hale, 45, who now works for an environmental consulting firm in Ventura, said he and Bridges had great times together.

“We had boats and cars,” he said. “We were always in competition with each other at (auto) rallies.”

Young Bridges eschewed college after his high school graduation. Instead, he decided to make his own fortune and plunged into the business world as a young man of 19.

That decision did not necessarily disappoint his father, who, sources said, was relatively satisfied that his son was building a solid business background for himself.

By that time, he had married his first wife, Barbara, a Fillmore High School graduate. The four-year marriage produced two daughters: Lisa Diane, who still resides in Santa Paula, and Leslie Ann, who attends a small liberal arts college in Virginia.

In 1967, Barbara Bridges filed for divorce, claiming extreme cruelty, according to Ventura County Superior Court records. For a time, she had worked at the Chevrolet agency in Santa Paula, and has been helping to run it after her former husband’s slaying. She declined to be interviewed.

After a stint in the family auto dealership in Missouri in the late 1960s, Bridges returned to Santa Paula in the early 1970s and opened Tony Bridges Chevrolet on Harvard Boulevard.

At about the same time, in 1971, he married his second wife, Pamela. In 1973, while she was pregnant with Bridges’ third child, Justin, she filed to dissolve their marriage, according to court papers.

In commenting on reports that Bridges was seeing a number of women in his later years, after his third divorce, Hale said that “he didn’t carouse” with other women when he was married.

“He was conservative,” Hale said.

As Tony Bridges Chevrolet prospered, so did Bridges’ reputation as a community benefactor. Although shunning publicity, he was active in supporting several local charities and the Chamber of Commerce.

But he never lost his flair for impetuous behavior, recalled Hale, who shared a Santa Paula condo and then a house with Bridges before Bridges married his third wife.

Bridges was a pilot who owned a Beechcraft Bonanza, which he kept at Santa Paula Airport. He loved to fly, Hale said.

“Sometimes we’d get in his plane and fly to Van Nuys Airport, have a cup of coffee and fly back,” he said.

According to his flight records, Bridges did a considerable amount of flying after receiving his pilot’s license in Springfield, Mo., in 1969. A favorite destination was San Felipe in Baja California, where he had a two-bedroom home near the water.

In November, 1982, Bridges even gave Leticia’s parents a bird’s-eye view of the Ronald Reagan ranch near Santa Barbara, according to flight records.

During this period, there were few signs of the trouble to come, friends said. Bridges was viewed as a good businessman and devoted family man who worked hard, sometimes seven days a week, to make his agency successful.

One of the anonymous relatives agreed.

“Tony was a good businessman,” said the relative, “a loving father, but. . . .”

The uncomfortable pause was telling. It told of a “community secret” that was surfacing in the 1980s. It had to do with what some were perceiving as Bridges’ deteriorating health problem.

From the time he was a child, Bridges had been bothered by asthma, but his health had been relatively good. During the last decade of his life, however, his health worsened.

Cocaine addiction was the problem.

Friends and relatives said he attempted to beat his habit by enrolling in a rehabilitation program. It didn’t work, they said.

Compounding his problem was a nerve condition in his neck, which caused him great pain, Hale said.

In time, some people saw that something was wrong.

“You just notice,” said McCoy, the auto business owner. “There are a lot of telltale signs. A loss of weight. The eyes.

“His employees were concerned in the last few years.”

Even a relative said it was obvious that the drug had been taking a toll on Bridges’ 5-foot-10, 170-pound frame.

“When I last saw Tony, I was shocked by his facial appearance,” said the relative, describing Bridges a year before he was found dead. “His sinus cavities appeared to have caved in. His nose was pressed into his face.”

Bridges’ deteriorating health may also have been a factor in a decision to circumvent Federal Aviation Administration rules requiring a pilot to take a physical examination every two years.

Bridges continued to fly his aircraft until May, 1989, according to flight records. But his medical certification expired in 1982 and was never renewed, according to FAA records.

“I knew he liked to party, but I didn’t know (drugs) had such a hold on him,” Hale said.

At his death, Bridges was a multimillionaire, according to his probate file in Superior Court. The value of his estate in terms of personal and real property was placed at more than $2 million.

His will, dated 1978, leaves his fortune to his three children. The court file shows that he was the sole shareholder in his auto agency. His brother, Lawrence, is the estate’s executor.

“Whoever killed him didn’t know. . . .” said an enraged relative in commenting on the county prosecutor’s statement that the motive for the slaying was robbery.

“Whoever killed him killed a millionaire for $300 and a Rolex watch.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. James Ellison said he is confident that police arrested the right person.

Lira, who grew up in Santa Paula and who has lived in Oxnard and Port Hueneme, faces a March 19 preliminary hearing.

“We don’t have any evidence against anyone else,” Ellison said.

The two .22-caliber bullets that pierced Bridges’ heart are believed to have been fired from Bridges’ derringer, which he often carried.

Ellison does not believe Bridges’ death was related to a drug deal gone sour.

Based on Lira’s statements, he said, the motive was robbery.

About $300 and Bridges’ gold watch were taken from his body before it was dumped, possibly from his 1989 Chevrolet Cavalier, into the farm field, authorities said.

The car was found in the La Colonia area of Oxnard, not far from where Bridges and a female companion were arrested in May, 1990. At that time, Bridges tested positive for being under the influence of cocaine, according to Oxnard Police Department records. However, he was never charged.

A second person who was arrested in connection with the Bridges slaying and then released, John Leivas, 20, of Oxnard, is expected to testify that Lira gave him Bridges’ watch as a present.

But Lira’s friend, Faiers, said that conversations she has had with Lira in the Ventura County Jail have persuaded her that Lira did not pull the trigger.

“She’s not a murderer,” Faiers said. “She said it was an accident.”

In a letter to Faiers, Lira expressed grief over what happened and suggested she did not act alone. She did not say in the letter who participated in the slaying.

“I know I did something wrong,” Lira wrote Faiers on Feb. 12. “That’s why I told police what I did. I took responsibility for what happened. . . . You asked me why I didn’t tell the police who was with me?

“If I did tell them, there’s no guarantee the charges against me would be lessened. Either way, I go to prison.”