An 86-year-old Missouri pastor who married five times is now under investigation by two separate police departments after the deaths of his first and second wives, originally ruled accidental, were reclassified as homicides.

Gresham, Oregon, police officially named John Bridges a suspect on July 29 in the death of his second wife, Astrid Bridges, who was found unresponsive outside her Oregon home in 1993. Detective Adam Wright of the Gresham Police Department told WDRB plainly: "We consider her husband at the time, John Bridges, to be a suspect in her murder."

Separately, the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky reclassified the 1972 death of Bridges' first wife, Joyce "Mable" Bridges, as a homicide. Louisville investigators have not yet named John Bridges a suspect but are asking the public for help.

Two wives found unresponsive, two decades apart, both by the same husband

Joyce "Mable" Bridges died in 1972 after John Bridges found her unresponsive at their Kentucky home. He brought her to the hospital, where she was declared dead. At the time, her death was ruled an accident. No police or emergency medical services were involved.

More than two decades later, in 1993, Astrid Bridges was found unresponsive outside her Oregon home, again by John Bridges. Neighbors believed she had fallen while cleaning gutters. That death, too, was ruled accidental.

Both rulings stood for years. Then, in 2015, authorities exhumed Joyce's body. A new autopsy determined she had died by homicide. Louisville Metro Police reclassified the case accordingly. The specific findings that led to the homicide determination have not been made public.

The Gresham Police Department's investigation into Astrid's death followed a similar path, what was once treated as an accident is now a murder case with John Bridges as the named suspect. Gresham officers traveled to Missouri, where Bridges currently lives, and served a search warrant at his residence.

Four of five wives are dead, and the fifth kicked him out

John Bridges married five times. Four of those wives are now dead. Beyond Joyce and Astrid, his third wife, Tama Jo Bridges, died in 2011. A coroner's report reviewed by NBC News listed her cause of death as hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, a natural cause. No criminal investigation was opened.

His fourth wife, Gail Hope Mizell, died in 2024 in Texas. Bridges' current wife told NBC News that Mizell died after being diagnosed with cancer. No criminal investigation has been opened into that death either.

The case carries echoes of other troubling allegations against clergy. A former youth pastor was recently charged in his wife's death after she fell from a cliff, a case that also began with what appeared to be an accident before investigators took a harder look.

Bridges' fifth and current wife, Janice Sue Grote, is 65 years old, 21 years his junior. She married him roughly five years ago. Grote is a massage therapist who once appeared on the cover of a Seventh-day Adventist Church magazine, which is how Bridges first contacted her.

After Gresham police served the search warrant at their Missouri home, Grote kicked Bridges out.

"I am not afraid of him, and I don't think he would come back to hurt me. But I don't want to sleep with a man who is under suspicion of murder. I don't want to be stupid."

Grote made those remarks to NBC News. She said she had no idea about the circumstances surrounding his former wives' deaths until Oregon detectives showed up at her door.

"It wasn't until the police came here from Oregon that I found out they might have been killed."

Grote acknowledged she had known Bridges was a widower multiple times before she married him but said the pattern did not alarm her at the time. "It wasn't a pattern with him. It didn't worry me," she said.

In another case that ended far more grimly, a former youth pastor charged in his wife's 2006 death died by suicide in jail, a reminder that delayed investigations into clergy can carry consequences no one anticipates.

Grote says Bridges hid the truth about his marriages

Grote's statements to NBC News paint a picture of a man who carefully managed what his wife knew about his past. She told the network that Bridges had not been forthcoming about his marital history.

"He didn't tell me the whole truth about his marriages."

She went further, offering a blunt assessment of her husband's credibility: "I've come to realize that the truth doesn't come easy for John."

Grote also expressed regret about ignoring her own instincts before the marriage.

"That's where I goofed. I should have listened to the Holy Spirit. I would not be in this position if I had listened to the Holy Spirit."

John Bridges has not made any public statement in response to being named a suspect. The Daily Mail reported reaching out to Bridges and police for comment but did not indicate receiving a response. It remains unclear whether Bridges has retained legal counsel or whether he is currently in custody. No charges have been reported.

The case also raises broader questions about accountability within religious institutions. A California pastor recently faced a second murder charge in the disappearance of a former congregant, another case where the trust afforded to clergy may have delayed scrutiny.

Decades of delay left two deaths unexamined

The most striking feature of this case is the timeline. Joyce "Mable" Bridges died in 1972. Her body was not exhumed until 2015, 43 years later. Only then did a new autopsy determine her death was a homicide. Astrid Bridges died in 1993, and it took more than 30 years for Gresham police to reclassify her case and name a suspect.

What prompted both departments to revisit these cases now has not been disclosed. Whether the Gresham Police Department and Louisville Metro Police Department are coordinating their investigations is also unclear. The two jurisdictions are separated by roughly 2,000 miles, and the deaths occurred 21 years apart.

The facts that are public, however, form a grim sequence: two wives found unresponsive, both times by the same man, both deaths initially written off as accidents, both now classified as homicides. A third wife died of natural causes. A fourth died of cancer. And the fifth, the only one still alive, says she had no idea any of it had happened until police knocked on her door.

Separate incidents involving high-profile murder investigations have shown how quickly public trust erodes when deaths once considered settled are reopened under darker circumstances.

Two police departments, two dead women, and decades of silence. If the system worked the way it should, an 86-year-old pastor would not be the subject of homicide investigations into deaths that happened when most of today's detectives were children, or not yet born.