lawyer said he wanted to arrange an interview again with kobi. >> reporter: kobi laker, eric's bestves the bechler marriage was great. now he had a different story. >> eric's told me on several occasions that he was sick and tired of his wife. he would tell me that he just couldn't take it anymore. he was tired of it. >> reporter: about seven months before pegye vanished, kobi says he and eric had a conversation that kobi describes as haunting him ever since. >> eric asked me about what he thought -- what i thought of the idea of him killing his wife. and i was pretty shocked and i didn't know what to say. he told me subsequently that he was thinking of taking her out to the ocean and dumping her into a barrel. >> he said that when he saw that there was a boating accident and eric's wife was missing, he knew right then and there, he saw it on tv, he knew that he'd killed his wife. and he lied to us, he said, because he panicked. and he was afraid. and he didn't know what to do. >> reporter: detectives convinced kobi to wear a wire and to meet eric at a restaurant in orange county. e

. >> they met with the improbably named kobi laker, eric's best friend, and kobi backed upper eric. >fic marriage, there was no problems whatsoever. >> but if the marriage seemed solid, there were questions about pegye. at least according to linda bechler, eric's mother. linda said pegye told her something in confidence just before she disappeared. >> she stopped me on the stairway as i was leaving, and said -- she came up and said, i have to talk to you. she said, i'm afraid i'm going to jail. >> according to court documents, about a year before pegye disappeared, the couple sold their physical therapy business to another company, but they stayed on as employees. then just four months before pegye vanished, the bechlers were fired amid allegations they had overbilled medicare for more than $1 million. so when linda heard pegye had vanished -- >> i started thinking about how disturbed she was, about going to jail. >> and she wondered if pegye had somehow staged her own disappearance. pegye's friend, glenda, said no way. was pegye bechler capable of committing white collar crime, medic