Dateline: Secrets Uncovered: What happened to Pegye Bechler?
Rachel Acosta
Updated on January 08, 2026
In July 1997, Pegye Jann Bechler was killed under baffling conditions while she was at an ocean side in Southern California, praising her 38th birthday celebration and her fifth wedding commemoration.
Despite the fact that the homicide was arranged as a mishap, it was subsequently found that Pegye’s significant other, Eric Bechler, was the man behind the wrongdoing. He plotted her homicide to get his hands on a $2 million life coverage strategy. 90 days after his better half’s passing, he moved in with his sweetheart, Tina New.
Pegye’s body was rarely recuperated, however Eric later admitted that he had beaten her with two dumbells and afterward tossed her into the ocean.
The chilling homicide story will be itemized in Oxygen’s actual wrongdoing series Dateline: Mysteries Uncovered, planned to air on February 1. The authority summation for the episode peruses:
“A California couple’s heartfelt escape on a boat turns terrible when the youthful spouse and mother is adrift out in the ocean; the case goes cold for quite a long time until a model with a checkered past goes secret to track down reality.”
Trigger admonition: This article contains notices of homicide. Attentiveness is encouraged.
Bechler was born in New Mexico to Glenn and June Marshall. She was their fourth youngster and was likewise a kid wonder. Despite the fact that she was determined to have scoliosis early in life, she succeeded in swimming and turned into a specialist swimmer. She was great at different games too.
As a youngster, she would need to wear a back support constantly to assist herself with scoliosis.
In 1991, while going to a volleyball match-up with her companion, Pegye met Eric Bechler and the two hit off right away.
Pegye moved to California in the wake of finishing her tutoring and went into business in exercise based recuperation – something she checked out, attributable to her involvement in scoliosis.
She wedded Eric a year subsequent to meeting him. The couple had three youngsters together.
Eric had at first organized the passing of Pegye as a mishap. He let police know that Pegye dropped out of a speedboat when a rebel wave hit both of them.
The spouse expressed that the two of them fell inside the water and after he figured out how to swim back to somewhere safe, he understood that Pegye was no place to be seen.
Despite the fact that Eric’s variant of the story was clear as a precious stone, specialists smelled unfairness, as they didn’t really accept that that Pegye might have fallen into the water from the boat in the manner that Eric had depicted. In any case, because of absence of any strong proof, they couldn’t nail down Eric as the culprit.
Eric met Tina a couple of months after he killed Pegye. The agents detected that Tina could be of help in the examination. They inquired as to whether she knew anything.
It was right now that she admitted that Eric portrayed his entire arrangement to her, saying that he was the person who killed his better half. Eric admitted that it was all important for his arrangement to lease a boat and put her to bed while the boat was away from the shore. He likewise confessed to hitting his significant other with two free weights, stuffing her inside a sack, and tossing her in the ocean.
In February 2001, Eric was indicted for first-degree murder regarding Pegye Bechler’s homicide and was condemned to life detainment with no chance of parole.