Defense Claims Man Was Lying When He Said He Killed Wife

A secretly recorded 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 charge that Eric C. Bechler killed his wife for financial gain by bludgeoning her with a dumbbell, then dumped her body in the Pacific Ocean during a 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 swimmer has never been found.

Prosecutors said Thursday that two years after the disappearance, Bechler admitted to his new girlfriend that he had killed his wife, not knowing that she was wearing a recording device for investigators.

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

Barnett painted 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.”

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

Deputy Dist. Atty. Debora Lloyd said Bechler killed his wife to get the proceeds of her $2-million life insurance policy.

“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,” said Lloyd. After marrying Pegye, a wealthy physical therapist and business owner, “he became accustomed to . . . Armani suits. It was rags to riches.”

In court Thursday, Bechler, 33, appeared tense. He turned to look at the jurors as they came into the courtroom, but during the two-hour opening statements, he did not move except for few brief whispers with his attorney.

Bechler has said that his wife was the victim of a tragic accident about four miles off the Newport Beach coast. On the day of the accident, he said, he was on a body board tailing a rented motorboat steered by his wife when a wave pulled him under the water. When he resurfaced, 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 last year that Bechler had confessed to her that he killed his wife. She agreed to wear a hidden wire during a dinner with him at a restaurant.

Barnett said Bechler and New had played 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.

The trial is scheduled to continue Monday.