Defense Says Man Lied About Killing His Wife

A secretly taped talk between a Newport Beach man and his girlfriend about his wife’s death was the focal point of opening statements in his murder trial Thursday.

Prosecutors allege that Eric C. Bechler killed his wife for financial gain by bludgeoning her with a dumbbell, then dumped her body in the Pacific during a July 1997 wedding anniversary boat trip.

Coast Guard rescuers spent 15 hours searching for Pegye Bechler after her disappearance, but the body of the 38-year-old triathlete was not found.

Prosecutors said Thursday that two years after her disappearance, Bechler, not knowing that she was wearing a police wire to record him, admitted to his new girlfriend that he had killed his wife.

But defense attorney John Barnett said Bechler was tricked into suggestive statements about the disappearance of his wife because he wanted to appease his girlfriend, Tina New.

Barnett portrayed New as a volatile and drug-addled woman with a penchant for “bad boys.”

“It was an accident, pure and simple,” Barnett said. Bechler made incriminating statements “but it wasn’t true. . . . So why did he say it? Because he wanted to please Tina New.”

Bechler “let his libido control his thinking,” Barnett said.

New, an actress, has appeared in TV series and sexually explicit videos. Last August she sued former NBA star Dennis Rodman for $10 million, claiming he sexually assaulted her in his Newport Beach home.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Debora Lloyd said Bechler killed his wife to collect on her $2-million life insurance policy. She described him as a spendthrift who spent money “like crazy,” emptying all the family’s bank accounts, even the $100 in an account belonging to their 9-month-old son.

“Pegye Bechler died so that [Eric] could maintain the lifestyle he had become accustomed to,” Lloyd said.

Before meeting his wife, Bechler “had one pair of shorts to his name,” Lloyd said. After marrying Pegye, a wealthy physical therapist and business owner, “he became accustomed to . . . Armani suits. It was rags to riches.”

In court Thursday, Eric Bechler, 33, appeared tense. He turned to look at the jury as it came into the courtroom, but during the two-hour opening statements, he did not move except to whisper to his attorney a few times.

Bechler has said his wife was the victim of a tragic accident about four miles off Newport Beach. On the day of the accident, he said he was on a bodyboard tailing a rented motorboat steered by his wife when a wave pulled him underwater. When he resurfaced, he said, his wife was gone.

About three months after his wife’s disappearance, Bechler began a relationship with New. The relationship was troubled, and Bechler has been convicted of assaulting her, according to police.

New told detectives in 1999 that Bechler had confessed to her that he killed his wife. She agreed to wear a hidden microphone during a dinner with him at an El Torito restaurant.

Barnett said Bechler and New had been playing a fantasy game in which Bechler falsely admitted to killing his wife. New was “unwilling or unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy,” Barnett said.

During their conversation at the restaurant, New became more and more volatile, Barnett said, adding that Bechler “would agree to anything to shut her up.”

“Not because he’d killed his wife but” to appease New, Barnett said. “The statements to her were made [because] he wanted to continue the relationship. . . . They were not true.”

The trial is scheduled to continue Monday.