Two women were found dead by their husband two decades and half a country apart. Now, following a reexamination of the evidence, those incidents have been reclassified as murders and the suspect spouse is under renewed scrutiny.
Gresham Police detectives have been in contact with their counterparts from the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky. Both departments are investigating their cases with strikingly similar narratives.
Kentucky Homicide
The first incident was a 50-year-old death. Joyce “Mable” Bridges was found unresponsive in 1972 by her husband, John Bridges. She was taken to a hospital where she was later pronounced dead. Mable was then moved to a funeral home with no police or emergency services involvement.
Decades later, in 2015, Louisville detectives exhumed her body for an autopsy. It was learned she died of homicide.
Gresham Homicide
In the 1990s John Bridges had remarried and moved to East Multnomah County. His new wife, Astrid Bridges, was found dead by him in 1993 outside their home on Overlook Court in Southwest Gresham. Responding officers and detectives collected physical evidence at the scene, interviewed her family, and spoke with neighbors…