Authorities Find Slain Car Dealer’s Automobile : Homicide: Officials say they uncovered evidence inside the vehicle that could be linked to the shooting of Tony Bridges.

Ventura County sheriff’s investigators have found the car of slain Santa Paula auto dealer Tony Bridges and uncovered evidence inside the vehicle that could be connected to the homicide, Lt. Joe Harwell said Monday.

Meanwhile, The Times has learned that Bridges was almost certainly naked when he was shot to death. Powder burns from two .22-caliber bullets were discovered on the skin of his upper right arm and upper right back, an informed source said.

It was unlikely that powder residue would have reached the skin if the victim had been clothed when he was shot in the shoulder and back, the source said.

Bridges’ nude body was discovered Thursday in a field in the unincorporated area of El Rio, a short distance north of where his auto was found. Authorities said the body could have been in the field for about a week.

Bridges, 45, had been arrested by Oxnard police in May, 1990, on suspicion of being under the influence of cocaine. But Harwell said investigators have not concluded that the homicide was drug-related.

“We haven’t focused on any one person” or any particular motive, Harwell said.

Harwell, chief of the sheriff’s major crime unit, declined to specify the evidence found in Bridges’ white 1989 Chevrolet Cavalier. “There has been evidence retrieved from the car, but I can’t tell you what it is,” he said.

Harwell also declined to characterize the importance of the evidence taken from the car’s interior.

“Something which seems very minor today could be crucially important tomorrow if it fits in with some other information we get,” he said.

Harwell said Bridges’ car was found late Friday by deputies on Hayes Avenue in the La Colonia area of Oxnard. He said deputies believe that the car had been there for several days.

Over the weekend, a sheriff’s criminology expert and other technicians began searching the car for clues. The examination continued on Monday at the sheriff’s crime lab in Ventura.

Finding Bridges’ auto was not necessarily a break in itself, Harwell said. “I knew it would turn up,” he said.

Harwell declined to provide additional details about how Bridges was slain.

But a source said two .22-caliber high-velocity bullets penetrated the chest cavity, with one or both bullets lodging in the heart. The bullets were fired at close range, probably from less than two feet, the source said.

Separately, Santa Paula Police Chief Walter H. Adair said there were reports in his community about four or five years ago that Bridges was using cocaine. As a result, Adair said he visited the auto dealer. Adair said he had known Bridges for years.

“I confronted him with it,” Adair said Monday. “He told me he did not” use cocaine, he said. Adair recalled Bridges telling him that he had “a nervous disease which affected his face and which required surgery.” Bridges said the disease could cause him extreme pain, Adair said.

Bridges suggested that the condition, which affected sinus passages, could be misconstrued as being a result of cocaine use, Adair said. But Bridges, he said, emphasized that was not the case.

Oxnard Police Department records of May 15, 1990, show that Bridges and a female companion were arrested at 1:15 a.m. at 3rd Street and Rose Avenue in La Colonia--not far from where Bridges’ car was found Friday night.

At that time, Bridges tested positive for being under the influence of cocaine, said Jim Ivler, the Police Department’s records chief.

Bridges was booked on suspicion of being under the influence of a narcotic and for carrying an unregistered weapon, Ivler said. The weapon was a derringer, Ivler said.

On June 6, 1990, Assistant Dist. Atty. Rebecca Day decided not to file charges against Bridges, according to Ventura County district attorney’s records.

Day said on Monday that she could not recall the case. “I’m sure it was rejected because we couldn’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said.

Santa Paula leaders said Bridges was a civic activist who supported local charities and the Chamber of Commerce, of which he was a member. They said he shunned publicity and was friendly among people that he knew.

Fellow workers at his Chevrolet agency, which he owned since 1972, said he was a good employer.

A native of Springfield, Mo., Bridges moved to Santa Paula as a youth and attended area schools.

Memorial services were scheduled for today at St. Sebastian Church in Santa Paula. Burial will be in Urbana, Mo.

Bridges, who was divorced, is survived by two daughters, Lisa and Leslie, both of Santa Paula; a son, Justin, of Ventura; a brother, Lawrence, of Urbana, Mo., and a sister, Evelyn Kamien, of New York City.

The family requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children, Los Angeles, said Gary Collins, director of the Pierce Brothers Stetler Mortuary of Santa Paula.