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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE BLACK WIDOW: SANDRA BRIDEWELL

By Glenna Whitley |

When he met the beautiful woman from Dallas in Sonoma County, California. Dennis Kuba was instantly smitten. The forty-two-year-old attorney, who is separated from his wife, thought the dark-haired Sandra Bridewell was “captivating.” A week later, to Kuba’s delight, a friend invited them both to a dinner party.

“It was a remarkable evening,” Kuba says, remembering the party last August. “There was an incredible attraction there. You really do get the feeling there’s no one else in the room but her.” In a way, he felt protective of this woman who told him she had been twice widowed and was raising her three children on her own. A gourmet cook, she knew a great deal about art, travel, literature. Dennis Kuba and Sandra Bridewell began dating that night, starting a relationship he describes as “very intense and very involved.”

But that was before Kuba had loaned the seemingly wealthy woman more than $24,000, which he claims she now refuses to repay. And that was before he met another man from California, Tom Finney, who filed suit against Sandra Bridewell on March 24, alleging that he loaned her $61,500 and also has not been repaid. That was before Kuba was given a May 1987 D Magazine article about Sandra Bridewell called “The Black Widow.”

Kuba has since discovered that Bridewell actually had three husbands, and is still under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Oklahoma City Police Department for the 1985 murder of the last. Alan Rehrig. Rehrig, then thirty, was found shot in the head and the side in his Ford Bronco, which was found parked by a power station in Oklahoma City.

“It was chilling.” Kuba says about the revelations. He is now preparing his own suit against Bridewell, alleging fraud and misrepresentation.

The rumors, innuendo, and controversy that drove Sandra Bridewell from Dallas seem to have pursued the forty-five-year-old woman to the exclusive, close-knit Marin County community in California where she now lives. And she seems to have inspired many of the same feelings she evoked in Dallas: fierce loyalty from friends who say there must be some explanation for the troubles that follow her everywhere, and fear from those who say she has betrayed their trust. She may have also sparked another investigation; one source says the FBI is now looking into allegations of “illicit banking practices” involving Bridewell.

Copies of the D Magazine story, detailing the deaths of Bridewell’s three husbands as well as the suspicious suicide of her best friend Betsy Bagwell,. have been anonymously mailed to hundreds of people who know the mysterious widow. One of Bridewell’s acquaintances says the story simply appeared in his FAX machine one afternoon. He doesn’t know who sent it. Another says he has received two anonymous letters about Bridewell, warning him that she is dangerous and under investigation.

“There is a silent conspiracy in Marin County,” says one well-connected woman who met Bridewell at a black-lie event and became good friends with her. She asked that her real name not be used; we’ll call her Donna.

“They know about this article,” Donna says. “They’ve been warned about her. People aren’t talking much about it, though. Even in weird California, this is too weird to be believed.”

Donna says she couldn’t believe the story when she read it. Bridewell had told her little about the past. She had said both her husbands died of cancer, and had never mentioned the third. (Actually, Bridewell’s first husband, a dentist named David Stegall, shot himself in the head. The second, hotel developer Bobby Bridewell, died of cancer.)

Then Donna received a warning from an FBI agent that made her hands break out in a sweat. “He said to me, ’Have you read that article? If you took Betsy Bagwell and put her in California, you are Betsy Bagwell.’” Bagwell died under mysterious circumstances, and Bridewell was the last to see her alive. The implication, Donna felt, was that she could be in danger. That was enough; she began keeping her distance, rarely returning Bridewell’s phone calls. “I feel guilty.” she says. “She’s probably the nicest friend I’ve had in a long, long time. She is kind and wonderful and supportive. I feel sick just talking about it. On one hand, I believe it; on the other hand, I don’t. What if all this is coincidence? She could spend her life being shut out by weird coincidences and gossip.”

Another woman, who is well known in San Francisco social circles, agrees. “A lot of it is circumstantial,” she says. “She has a veil of mystery about her. but I found that appealing. She has been totally kind to me and my family. I still think she’s beautiful and kind and caring. If this can be proven, I’m terribly saddened by it.” Still, the stories make her wonder.

At first, it seemed that Bridewell would rebuild her life far away from the trouble and suspicions in Dallas. She moved in early 1987 to Tiburon, California, and then to Belvedere, where she rented an expensive house next to a yacht club, filling it with costly, museum-quality antiques and fur-nishings. She enrolled her daughters in the exclusive Branson School in nearby Ross, and did volunteer work in the library and for a small ballet company.

In September 1987, Bridewell, who dropped the name Rehrig when she moved to California, signed a settlement in a dispute over the life insurance benefits from Alan Rehrig’s estate. Rehrig’s mother. Gloria Rehrig of Edmond, Oklahoma, had filed suit to prevent Bridewell from receiving the life insurance money, alleging that Bridewell had caused her son’s death. The settlement gave Bridewell $220,000 from the policy and prohibited Mrs. Rehrig from discussing the case with the press. One of her relatives, Winifred Smith, says that Mrs. Rehrig signed the settlement because she ran out of funds to pursue the litigation.

According to one source, Bridewell at one point was engaged to marry David Whitehead, one of the attorneys who represented her in the litigation against Mrs. Rehrig. But the marriage plans were dropped. White-head declined to comment.

Friends say that despite the broken engagement, Bridewell never seemed to lack “male companionship. She frequently attended society events and was mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicles coverage of this winter’s Mardi Gras Ball to benefit a children’s hospital. One man who frequently attends charity functions and other society events says that Bridewell “glommed” onto him at one such affair.

“She asked me if I knew any rich men she could meet.” says the man. (He asked to remain anonymous, saying that he was “absolutely afraid” of Bridewell.) “I told her that most of them were married, but she said she didn’t care. She wanted to know how much they were worth and what their relationships with their wives was like. I knew there was something weird about her. It seemed strange that she had pulled up roots and moved to California. She never gave much of an explanation.”

Bridewell began dating a newly divorced real estate developer in the summer of 1988. “She seemed like a nice Southern belle.” says the developer. They went to a debutante ball, on picnics, bike riding. But he broke off the relationship after a month or so. “I stopped dating her because there was something about her that bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

The developer says he and Bridewell never discussed money, though she led him to believe she had real estate holdings in Dallas. “I’m into her for big bucks: I once loaned her five dollars,” the developer says.

But money seemed to be the focus of Bridewell’s relationship with Dennis Kuba, who is described by friends as a sophisticated, worldly man. Almost immediately after they began dating, Bridewell indicated that she had short-term financial difficulties. Could he help her out? Bridewell offered him a painting she said was worth $50,000 as collateral. “I asked her if I needed collateral,” Kuba says. “She said no.” Kuba says Bridewell promised to pay interest on the loan, which was to be repaid in November 1988, and asked him not to tell anyone she was having financial trouble.

Without asking her to sign a promissory note, Kuba loaned Bridewell $5,000 in car-ly September, using a line of credit to get $4,500 of that amount. Shortly afterward, he> says, she called with an urgent request. She needed money for her son’s tuition at Menlo College in Menlo Park, California. At first he said no, but he soon relented. “They were going to kick her son out if she didn’t pay it.” Kuba says. “The woman seemed so vulnerable.” On September 7, Kuba borrowed another $8,500 and gave her a cashier’s check. Again, he says, she promised to pay him back in November.

The next emergency wasn’t far behind. Bridewell was three months behind in the rent on her Belvedere home, which was $3,000 a month. “I was staggered,” Kuba says. “My mortgage is not over $2,000 a month.” But he agreed to loan her $2,500 to rent a new place in Ross by her daughters’ school. He used his MasterCard to get the cash, which he deposited into an account at West America Bank on October 14. The account was used by The Branson School Parents Association for money from an annual textbook sale. Bridewell, as a volunteer, had signature power on the account.

Five days later, Bridewell called Kuba from the airport; one of her daughters had taken ill in Washington, D.C., where she had gone to look at colleges. Could he loan her $500 to cover the check she had written for the plane ticket? Kuba was by now beginning to worry, but he agreed to loan her the money, putting it on his American Express. He also gave her the credit card number to cover her hotel expenses in Washington. The bill for a week at a pricey hotel came to $1,900. And he also bought her a $500 return airplane ticket.

After her return, Kuba says Bridewell told him a Dallas finance company was trying to repossess her Alfa Romeo. She wanted to sell it, but couldn’t until it was fixed. So Kuba loaned her another $450 for car repairs. It seemed that every time he picked up the phone, it was Bridewell in urgent need of money: on October 27, she called needing $2,000 for her automobile insurance and phone bill, which he gave her. At one point, Kuba says, she asked him to buy a white Jeep Cherokee for her to use. He declined.

When November came, no money was forthcoming to pay back the loans, Kuba says. “I was pretty well disenchanted.” he says. “She was calling and canceling dates at the last minute.” But he didn’t want to upset her and run the risk of getting none of the money back. In mid-November, she called with yet another request. She was moving to Ross and needed to rent a mini-van for a week. “She had no picture driver’s license or a credit card,” he says. “I rented it for her.”

She kept the van six weeks, running up a $2,100 bill on his credit card, Kuba says. In late November, Kuba told her he needed the money, which by then totaled $24,000, by December 31. “The second I get it, you’ll get it,” she told him.

They met shortly after Christmas and exchanged gifts-he gave her a pair of earrings and she gave him a white silk scarf-and every time he brought up the loans, she assured Kuba he would be repaid. But he has not heard from her since he wrote several letters detailing what she owes him. And he doesn’t know what to say to his friends, who wonder how he could be so naive and gullible.

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” Kuba says. “I feel incredibly victimized. It was honey this, and I love you that, stringing me along as far as she could. This whole thing was a tissue of lies. But it never occurred to me she wasn’t what she seemed. She had museum-quality antiques. She’s extremely attractive and seems very vulnerable. She had all the right trappings, a beautiful, smooth package.”

In January, Kuba discovered he wasn’t the only one who had loaned Bridewell money. He was contacted by Tom Finney, a forty-five-year-old California insurance executive. Finney and his wife had met Bridewell at a dinner party at her home in Belvedere that summer. “She seemed a solid, strong individual,” Finney says.

During another dinner party. Bridewell, offended by a friend, stormed out. When Finney called her to apologize for the group, he says, Bridewell asked if they could gel together when he was in San Francisco. “She said she needed to ask me about a matter,” Finney says. She began calling him, and he met with her in November when he was in San Francisco for a visit. Bridewell confided that she needed $10,000, claiming she couldn’t pay her bills because a Dallas savings and loan investigation had frozen her trust fund assets. Finney says he agreed to a loan at the going interest rate, to be paid back by the end of the year, and took the money out of his retirement account. He, too, thought a promissory note was unnecessary. “I felt sorry for her,” he says. “I knew banks were under scrutiny in Dallas. And the way she carries herself and the nice antiques in the house.. .There was no way she didn’t have money.”

But the requests for money kept coming, he says: $61,500 in all. He took the money from his retirement account and, like Kuba, deposited it into the West America account.

Finney’s wife discovered the payments in late December. Though he promised her he was not having an affair with Bridewell, she was furious and demanded that he get the money back.

Finney says he called Bridewell on December 30. “She said, ’I don’t owe you this money. I think you gave it to me.’ ” Finney says. “She said, If you want to divorce your wife, you can come live with me and enjoy your money.’”

Finney says he felt like “the whole building was torn out from under me. Where all the money has gone I have no idea.” Together, he and Kuba had loaned their attractive friend about $85,000 in just three months. He is suing Bridewell for fraud and misrepresentation, asking for interest, compensation for loss of investment property, and punitive damages, and is planning to file suit against West America Bank as well, alleging collusion. He says that under banking rules, the institution should not have put money from his retirement fund into an account that was in neither his nor Bridewell’s name. Finney says he is cooperating with the FBI in its investigation of Bridewell. A bank official says he is not aware of any suit involving Finney.

In recent weeks, Finney says, he has talked to at least one other victim of Sandra Bridewell-a man who says he loaned $200,000 to her. The man declined to be interviewed for this story.

Richard Fitzgerald, the headmaster of The Branson School, denies that Bridewell had access to school funds. The textbook fund is handled by the parents’ association. “I prefer not to comment beyond that.” Fitzgerald says. “It’s a private matter. She has two delightful children and we’re happy they’re at the school.”

Meanwhile, the investigation into Alan Rehrig’s death is still open, according to Ron Mitchell, a detective with the Oklahoma City Police Department. Sandra Bridewell is still their only suspect. Detective Mitchell was contacted by “Unsolved Mysteries,” the NBC network television show, which was interested in filming the Bridewell story, but according to Julie Klabin, a segment associate producer, the attempt stalled about a year ago. “Basically. Mrs. Bridewell wouldn’t cooperate with us.” Klabin says. “She said it was too emotional for her. She wanted to get on with her life.”

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