Bridget Smith Michaels (Jaclyn Smith) is the main villainess of the 1998 TV film Before He Wakes. She was the wife of Lee Smith, and the two had a son named Mark. Bridget also had a habit of illegally obtaining money by any means necessary, including manipulation and forgery. When Lee began to uncover her crimes, Bridget shot and killed Lee while he slept in their bed, later claiming it to be an accident. Lee's parents, however, had suspicions about Bridget and cut off contact with her once they realized the law couldn't help them.
Bridget moved away after that and started a relationship with high school basketball coach Ron Michaels, which soon led to marriage. After Bridget was fired from her banking job due to stealing money, she got a job at a TV studio selling ads and began forging checks to pay for the lavish lifestyle she wanted. Like Lee, Ron began to unearth Bridget's greedy secret, doing so when he discovered a box of unpaid and overdue bills under their bed. Ron's parents and his ex-wife Joanne advised Ron to leave Bridget, but he felt he had to stay with her for Mark's sake. Ron did, however, begin to pull away from Bridget, a sentiment aided by Ron catching Bridget in the act of cheating. To stop Ron from ending her life of leisure, the evil Bridget forged Ron''s name on a loan check to the bank before killing her husband in the same fashion as Lee.
Bridget claimed that Ron's death resulted from her accidentally causing the pistol he kept under his pillow to fire, but Joanne refused to believe that and began investigating her past, which is how she was able to find out about Lee. At one point, Bridget confronted Joanne at the mall, taunting her failed marriage with Ron and warning her to stay away. The initially skeptical detectives, however, caught on to Bridget's lies when they realized that her recounting of Ron's death did not match up with the forensics. They were further convinced when cassette tapes Ron made shortly before he died were found, where he discussed his suspicions about Bridget. Bridget was arrested and put on trial, where she got support from her church friends. But in the end, the manipulative Bridget was found guilty of murdering Ron and eventually sentenced to life in prison.
Trivia[]
- Jaclyn Smith later appeared as the evil Susan Delzio in an episode of Law & Order: SVU.