told us, with the police investigation. their position was, i think dale is the easy guy, you know, the worst pieces of investigating i ve ever seen in my career. dale and his attorney told us despite a show of interviewing other suspects, the police quite clearly had made up their minds the very day she disappeared. police came to my house. i don t know the exact thing he said but he goes, did you kill your wife? i was stunned. the police didn t seem to want to believe what he told them about how happy he was that last evening, discussing new possibilities, a fresh start. around 9:00 pm, their daughter came into their bedroom to ask for help with her homework. when she came into our bedroom we were laying on top of our bed, cuddling. and the fact that he didn t report her missing until morning.
told a number of us that i just want you to know that i m very happy. but joy and misery come in pairs sometimes. as thanksgiving approached, chaos took over what had been a well-ordered life. it was a wednesday middle of october when things started piling up. ay horrendous day for her. because?ou she went to work that day and the county laid off 20 people that very day. including stephanie. in fact, stephanie s troubles and her secrets seemed to pile up like the snow. fs she was behaving a little bit strangely. little unpredictable? little bit, yeah. not far from silverthorne, someone robbed a bank. stephanie announced she was going out to clear her head. dale was in bed. she didn t come back. in the morning he called the silverthorne police. i got a phone call from dale
that threat from dale was years earlier, but stephanie had never forgotten how terrified she was. she told the story to her friend, jennifer, just before the murder. he strong armed her into a corner, choking her, threatening to hit her. he stopped short of hitting her, but he did. there was another time he threw her on the bed and put his neon her pregnant belly. how often would this happen? you know, there may be three of those two or three, i don t know, of those incidents that she talked about. then there was leah aiken, lifelong friend of dale. told the court his reaction of when she said she was in love with another man. he hoped that she would have a heart attack or get hit by a car. i told him to stop saying that. an ex-girlfriend from dale s past, woman named julie, who
it was just a little farther beyond that where the water gets calm. just over by that second bend there? yes, sir. she hadn t gone far. agent greg sadar, colorado bureau of investigation. how far from her house? rough guess off the top of my head 300, 350 yards. the news spread fast. today investigators say they found a body. that s a pretty bad day. your heart drops. let s find out what happened to her, along with humongous sadness. the county coroner broke the news to dale. they said dale, we need to tell you something. i m like, what? and i just went into convulsions. how did she get here? was it suicide, accident, or murder? there s a bridge just upstream from the place they found stephanie s body. dale told police she often liked to walk there. she could have been attacked on this bridge and shoved over.
that she is dead. she s probably unconscious at that point. but she is not dead. takes her to the river and dumps her in the river. the jury stayed out four hours. the court has reviewed the verdict. it was early, which is always worrying. dale bruner stood, awaited his fate. you re trying to maintain and not just melt under the so, you know, you prepare yourself to just breathe. just breathe. and then there it was. we, the jury, find the defendant, dale bruner, guilty of murder in the second degree. dale bruner was taken away in handcuffs and later was sentenced to 112 years in prison. is he appealing. it is a perfect storm.