i believe she built a fake little world where i was the bad guy. was stephanie ever worried dale might get violent? hardly, said the defense. why else would she ask the judge to delay the order until after their little family holiday? the judge said he had never seen someone have a restraining order but then have them say don t enact it yet, not until next week. why would she go away on a yoga retreat and decline this friend s offer to babysit? can i take care of the kids? she said no, they re fine with dale. that s because she knew that dale wasn t a threat to her. he wasn t a threat to those children. remember how the detective found the house unusually spotless two weeks after the murder? it was, turned out, family and friends who cleaned up. apparently because dale was paralyzed by grief. dale walks into his walk-in closet and half of the stuff is stephanie s. he comes out and he s just crying. he s like, i ve got to get this stuff out of here.
of the bruner house here in silverthorne, colorado. hardly a night to take a walk. certainly not an all-night walk. had she hurt herself or had someone else hurt her? it wasn t like stephanie roller-bruner to just disappear. seemed more likely a stranger might be involved or stephanie herself might have run off into despair and maybe hurt herself. stephanie s friends and family poured over those last few weeks, so full of change, secrecy, turmoil. were there clues? of course, some knew about stephanie s relationship with her new man and how upset she was about losing her job. still, she seemed to be holding the trouble at bay. six weeks before she disappeared, as dale recalled, she suggested a little family holiday. she said let s go to glenwood springs for the weekend, all classic, wonderful place. it was almost romantic, said dale, just like the old days.
noupsed she was going out to clear her head. and stephanie never came back. in the morning, he called the silverthorne police. i got a phone call from dale bruner and said i wanted to make a report that my wife was missing. veronica nicholas took the call. he said i got the kids up, got them ready for school, got them on the bus and then i thought i should probably call you guys. stephanie s car was in the driveway, said dale. when he called her cell phone, it went to voice mail. veronica called stephanie s best friend jennifer. i panicked. this is something that happens to other people, not to you. but it had happened. silverthorne police check local hotels and hospitals. her friends scoured the neighborhood. it seemed unbelievable that stephanie would not check in. a day became two, then three, and some private secrets were about to become very public, indeed. where was stephanie?
downstairs. it was stephanie. she crawled right back into bed with him. she had come home. wow! she said this was all a horrible mistake and she wanted to move back in. and i said, are you sure? she said don t worry. everything is fine. but now, just two days later, things were not fine. not at all. stephanie was missing and dale was down at the police department, telling officers where he thought his wife might have gone. i thought she would go somewhere with her wifi and be on the computer. my other guess was maybe she went to ron s house. i didn t know. the police interviewed the other man, of course. ron holthouse. i just want to ask you straight up again not accusing you do you know where stephanie is right now? i absolutely have no idea. ron admitted he and stephanie had a romantic relationship, but he denied they ever slept together. but we never ended up having sex.
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