Police in Oregon and Kentucky are now treating the decades-old deaths of a retired Seventh-day Adventist pastor's two wives as homicides, and the 86-year-old former clergyman is the named suspect in one case and the focus of the other.

John Thomas Bridges, a retired pastor living in Sheldon, Missouri, was identified last month by the Gresham, Oregon, Police Department as a suspect in the July 2, 1993, death of his second wife, Astrid Bridges. She was 45 when she died. Her death had been ruled accidental for more than three decades before detectives re-examined the evidence and reclassified it as a homicide.

Separately, the Louisville Metro Police Department's Cold Case Unit announced on July 24 that the 1972 death of Bridges' first wife, Joyce "Mable" Bridges, is now classified as a homicide and under active investigation. Louisville police have not named Bridges as a suspect in that case, but the parallel is difficult to ignore: two wives, two deaths originally treated as unremarkable, and one husband at the center of both.

Mable Bridges died in 1972, and no one called the police

Mable Bridges was found unresponsive on July 5, 1972, at her home on the 3800 block of Bent Oak Court in Louisville, Kentucky. Her husband reported finding her. She was transported to Pewee Valley Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

What happened next, or rather, what did not happen, raises serious questions about how her death was handled at the time. No police responded. No emergency medical personnel were involved. Her body was taken directly to a funeral home. For more than four decades, that was the end of the story.

Then, in 2015, Mable Bridges' body was exhumed and an autopsy was performed. That autopsy determined her death was a homicide. The source does not specify who initiated the exhumation or what specific findings led to the homicide determination, and those gaps remain unanswered more than a decade later.

Louisville Metro Police posted on their official Facebook page on July 24:

"Mable's homicide is actively being investigated by LMPD Homicide's Cold Case Unit. They are desirous to interview anyone who has information related to this investigation or knew the Bridges family."

Cold cases that stretch back half a century present enormous obstacles, witnesses die, memories fade, physical evidence degrades. But the reclassification itself tells investigators something definitive: whatever happened to Mable Bridges on that July day in 1972, it was not natural and it was not an accident. Cases like this one, where decades-old deaths are reopened after new evidence emerges, have produced results in other jurisdictions, sometimes after even longer delays.

Astrid Bridges' 1993 death sat untouched for 33 years

Twenty-one years after Mable Bridges died, Astrid Bridges, John Bridges' second wife, died on July 2, 1993, in Gresham, Oregon. She was 45 years old. Her death was ruled accidental at the time. The original cause of death listed in 1993 has not been publicly disclosed.

For more than three decades, the case collected dust. Gresham Police Chief Travis Gullberg explained in a July 9 statement why the department was only now able to revisit it. He pointed to a voter-approved Police and Fire levy, the hiring of additional detectives through the department's work with the Gresham Police Officer's Association, and reduced ongoing crime from the patrol division's Ceasefire initiative.

In plain terms: the department said it finally had the manpower. That is a sobering admission. A woman died under circumstances that investigators now call homicide, and the case went unworked for a generation because the police department lacked resources.

On July 30, Gresham Police released an update confirming that detectives had traveled to Bridges' current home in Sheldon, Missouri, where they conducted interviews and served a search warrant. The department did not disclose what items were sought or recovered.

Gresham Detective Adam Wright, speaking to Portland NBC affiliate KGW in a July 29 report, struck a measured tone:

"We're not going to rush to judgement; we're going to complete the investigative steps and follow all of the evidence wherever it leads."

But other investigators were less cautious in describing where the evidence points. KGW reported that investigators believe the evidence "points pretty heavily" toward Bridges in the Astrid Bridges case. Lead Detective Tyson Conroy expressed confidence in the outcome: "While cold case homicides present unique challenges, I am confident we will be able to get justice for Astrid."

Despite that confidence, criminal charges are described as "not imminent." Bridges has not been arrested or charged in either his first or second wife's death. The investigation into similar cases, such as a former youth pastor charged in his wife's suspicious death, shows how long the gap between suspicion and formal charges can stretch in cases involving clergy.

Two states, two dead wives, and a 54-year gap

The timeline alone demands attention. In 1972, Bridges' first wife died in Louisville under circumstances so poorly documented that no police officer or paramedic was ever called. In 1993, his second wife died in Gresham under circumstances originally labeled accidental. Both deaths have now been reclassified as homicides by separate law enforcement agencies in different states.

Gresham investigators have been in contact with Louisville Metro Police detectives. That coordination suggests both departments see value in examining the two cases side by side, even if Louisville has not formally named Bridges as a suspect in Mable's death.

Bridges is 86 years old and living in Sheldon, Missouri, a small town in the southwestern corner of the state. Whether he has retained legal counsel or responded publicly to either investigation is unknown. Cold case investigations involving elderly suspects named decades after the alleged crime raise practical questions about the pace of justice, and whether charges, if they come, will arrive in time to matter.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has not been implicated in any wrongdoing; Bridges' pastoral role is referenced only as his former occupation. But the fact that a man who spent his career in a position of moral authority is now at the center of two homicide investigations, spanning two states and more than half a century, underscores how thoroughly the original investigations failed.

Unanswered questions pile up faster than answers

Significant gaps remain in the public record. What specific evidence led Gresham detectives to reclassify Astrid Bridges' death? What did the 2015 autopsy on Mable Bridges reveal? Who requested the exhumation, and why did it take 43 years? Did one investigation trigger the other? None of these questions have been publicly answered.

The 1972 case is especially troubling. A woman was found unresponsive by her husband, taken to a hospital, pronounced dead, and sent to a funeral home, with no law enforcement involvement at any stage. That sequence of events would raise red flags today. In 1972, it apparently raised none. Advances in forensic science and cold case methodology have since cracked cases that sat dormant for decades, but they cannot undo the investigative failures that let evidence slip away in the first place.

Gresham's chief credited a voter-approved levy and new hires for making the reopened investigation possible. That explanation is honest, but it also means the department is acknowledging that a potential homicide went uninvestigated for 33 years because of staffing shortages. Astrid Bridges deserved better. So did Mable Bridges.

Justice delayed this long is barely justice at all, but for two women whose deaths were waved away as accidents, it may be the only kind left.