BERNIE TIEDI : ABUSED and CONTROLLED KEPT MAN OR MURDEROUS CON ARTIST?

BERNHARDT "BERNIE" TIEDE

1958 - ALIVE

I'm always searching for Kept Men I can elect as Mantress of the Month and profile here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot.  This man, Bernie Tiede, is of interest to us because his story is so unusual.  Suspected by some of being homosexual, his Keeper a much older woman, the definition of Kept goes slippy-slidy.  Was he actually her companion/care-giver without a monthly paycheck with husband privileges?  Did he earn all those vacations and first class dinners and accommodations by being on call 24/7?  Was he an emotionally and psychologically abused partner who no longer knew who he was? Was he punished more than a woman who had done the same might be?

He did confess to her murder...

This high school graduate learned the funeral business as an assistant and moved to the small but proud town of Carthage, Texas, to take a job as a mortician there.  As the film "Bernie" which came out in 2011 reveals, this creative and talented man, who had the artistic touch as a mortician, and who was active in local theater, musicals, and his church, was well loved.  Bernie was so beloved due to his patience and generosity that many locals who were interviewed said that the wealthy Marjorie Nugent  was simply so mean, cheap, greedy, demanding, and unappreciative, that she deserved what she got.  Bernie is, however, serving life in prison.

The story goes that when Nugent's oil man/banker husband died, it was Bernie's funeral home who produced the beautiful funeral. At that point he took pity on the friendless, possibly despised, local woman. If you count compassion and patience as love, bit by bit the frosty woman thawed due to his care and consideration.

Thought by some to be "light in his loafers" (homosexual) Bernie was about 38 to Marjorie's 81 years at the time of her death; So a vast age difference there. Would that in itself mean they were not in love or lovers? Bernie was said to keep the company with a "lot of blue hairs."  Even if he were not homosexual, speculation about any sexuality between he and Marjorie is just that. Some women are still sexual into their elderly years.

Was he Kept? Rarely does a person who does not need to work for a living do "nothing."  (Think of all those housewives!) Though he was excellent at his job, especially "sales," Marjorie either weaned Bernie from his job or demanded at some point in their friendship that he work as her personal assistant. I have yet to read that he earned a paycheck. Couple-like, he traveled with her and lived the good life, which was held against him in court.

At this moment I'm thinking of the actresses who marry their agents. How do we separate what's business and what's personal? How many hours do you put in when you're a stay at home wife and mother? There's the stereotype of Mistresses or Mantress as doing a lot of waiting around, a lot of preening poolside, as they sip on cocktails and work on their beauty or amuse themselves with shopping. If there is anything they do for all this, the stereotype is that it's all about sex. You know from this Blog that's not all it.

Did Marjorie bully her husband?  Why do I doubt it?  Marjorie may have assumed that people only wanted her for her money. She may have tested Bernie. She was said to be controlling, emotionally and verbally abusive, and exactly as other people had found her to be. In the end, after Bernie shot her four times with a rifle, in what might have been a disassociated state, he stuffed her body in her freezer, and then faked that she was alive. 

That he was a funeral director and knew how to preserve a body for a presentation and casketing certainly makes us think twice about that.

Marjorie Nugent was widowed in 1990. In 1991, she changed her will in Bernie's favor.  He was to receive ten million. This left nothing to her family. By 1993 Bernie was with her full time, on call 24/7, to be a kind of "Your Wish Is My Command" genie.  After she died, well, he hadn't quite inherited the money, because no one knew she had died yet. Still, he went on a spending spree. What he spent on, however, was not just for himself.  He gifted a church thousands and made many a local's wishes come true.

He believed in God and in heavenly reward.

Because he was so beloved in Carthage, Bernie Tiedi's murder trial had to go to another county.

He served 16 years and then was let out and lived in the garage apartment of the film-maker; the film was part of the reason he got this second chance. The other reason was that Danny "Buck" Davidson, the Panola County, Texas, District Attorney, who had gone after Bernie Tiedi, had come to think that maybe he'd been too hard on Bernie, the model prisoner.

But instead of having his sentence commuted, or perhaps do another four years,  Bernie went back to prison for life.

While much of this post is depending on the film, which is considered to be a dark comedy and does have its funny moments, I read around Bernie and will present the alternative view this month.

I also plan to  post about MEN who have been ABUSED BY WOMEN. And by the way, I've just learned that horribly abused women who kill their husbands get much longer sentences than men who kill their wives in this country - the United States.

Missy

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