Man still seeks justice for 1986 death of brother

The brother of a Garland County man who was brutally gunned down after arriving home at his cottage exactly 29 years ago today still hopes for justice, but it appears the passage of time may have forever halted his quest.

According to news accounts at the time, Ewell W. Bridges, 49, was shot and killed on the night of March 24, 1986, at his residence on Wilson Lake Lane, with bullets striking him in the back and neck and grazing one arm. Reportedly, with his dying breath, he told the neighbor who found him that it was his own wife, Frankie S. Bridges, 43, who had killed him.

Charged with first-degree murder after an investigation by the Garland County Sheriff's Department, Frankie Bridges went to trial June 2-4, 1987, in Garland County Circuit Court, and after deliberating for two hours, the six-man, six-woman jury was unable to reach a verdict in the case. A mistrial was declared and she walked away free, but the victim's brother, T.K. Bridges, of Huntsville, Ala., had always hoped that new evidence could be found to retry the case and finally bring him some closure in his brother's death.

T.K. Bridges told The Sentinel-Record on Wednesday that he firmly believes Frankie Bridges killed his brother, even though she was never convicted. "The evidence was there. It just wasn't placed into the court record. I still don't understand why all the evidence wasn't presented."

He contacted Garland County Prosecuting Attorney Terri Harris, who researched the situation to see if a new trial could be attempted, but what she found was not what he had hoped. Harris said Wednesday that she discovered that after the mistrial, the sheriff's department had conducted a subsequent investigation but was unable to produce sufficient new evidence to get a conviction. Based on that, then-Prosecuting Attorney Carl Crow filed a motion to dismiss the charge without prejudice on Sept. 18, 1987, which was granted by then Judge Walter G. Wright on Sept. 26, 1987.

Harris said under the "Speedy Trial" law, prosecutors would have had 18 months to refile the charge, which was not done. "Once a case has been filed, there is a time limit to take the case to trial," she said, noting that the argument that there is no statute of limitations on murder "goes out the window at that point."

She said regardless of any new evidence that might be presented, "you are out of luck" because of the "Speedy Trial" law. "They apparently did address it back then and conducted a supplemental investigation and still didn't have enough to retry it."

Harris noted retrying the case would be "difficult on a variety of fronts," even without the time limit having expired, because the lead investigator, Ed Smith, is now deceased and it would be hard to find many of the witnesses and investigative files from the case from three decades ago.

"There's just a whole host of problems you would have," she said, noting, "You can't use prior testimony from the first trial when a mistrial is declared. If we could do something legally, we absolutely would, but our hands are tied."

T.K. Bridges alleges his brother was planning to divorce his wife, saying she was the beneficiary of his $256,000 life insurance policy, which she collected shortly after the trial. He said he had considered filing a wrongful-death lawsuit against her, but was first told only the victim's daughter could file such a suit and only later learned he could also have filed as the brother. Since then, the statute of limitations to file a civil suit has passed.

"There was just a lot of misinformation at the time," he said.

Something that added "salt to the wound," he said, was that Frankie Bridges also collected half the money from their parents' estate. He noted both their parents had died before his brother was killed, but because Frankie Bridges was still married to his brother at the time of his death she collected his half of the estate.

He said their mother was a schoolteacher and their father was a county agent and he and his brother were the only children. "My father worked hard beginning in 1923 to develop something. He always bought savings bonds to help finance the war. That's how he felt about it. He would take everything he had to buy them because he wanted to help the war effort," he said. "For a person to come in and kill a man and then share in the reward for all that hard work for all those years. It's not right."

He said his brother was also a hard worker who started on the production line at Reynold's Metals Co., working at the plant in Muscle Shoals, Ala., and had eventually worked his way up to supervisor. He married Frankie in 1961 and they had two daughters. Ewell Bridges had filed for divorce in 1971 and Frankie Bridges filed in 1982, but they ended up reconciling both times.

"It was a very volatile marriage," he said, noting his brother told him his wife had attacked him on more than one occasion, once in his sleep. He noted that on the divorce document his brother had filed he had indicated he was "in fear for his life" from her.

He said Ewell Bridges was transferred to the Reynolds Metals plant at Jones Mill after downsizing at the Alabama plant, but his wife and children had stayed in Alabama. "He was just living in Hot Springs. Going to work every day," he said.

At her trial, according to news accounts, Frankie Bridges claimed she was spending the night at her cousin's house in Muscle Shoals at the time of the shooting and her cousin and her daughter, then 15, both testified, but T.K. Bridges said there were discrepancies in the timeline and inconsistencies in their testimony that he believed allowed her time to drive to Hot Springs, kill his brother and get back.

The neighbor had testified he found the victim "sprawled out in his cottage after hearing gunshots." He said Ewell Bridges' last words were "Frankie shot me." The neighbor's wife testified she also heard the victim accuse his wife of the shooting, according to a story in the June 4, 1987, edition of The Sentinel-Record.

The neighbor also testified he saw Frankie Bridges leaving the victim's cottage after the shooting, but admitted under cross he did not see her directly but saw her "half-running down the driveway" and recognized her profile, the story states.

Her defense attorneys had argued the victim walked in on a burglary in progress and got shot by the burglar.

"I'm not sure what my recourse would be now," T.K. Bridges said, noting he "always knew" who was responsible for the death. "No one told me they had dismissed the case. I don't see how they could have done that."

He said he hasn't had any contact with his former sister-in-law or either of his nieces since his brother's death, noting one niece lives in Arizona and the other in California. "They never tried to find out who killed their father. They all know what happened."

He said he remembered that Smith had investigated the possibility there was an accessory to the murder and noted, "Maybe that would be a way to go at it. That person was never charged so the statute of limitations would still be in place. I don't know what evidence (Smith) had about that."

He said the situation was "very frustrating," but he isn't giving up hope of one day finally getting some justice.

Local on 05/24/2015

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