weekend, all classic, wonderful place. it was almost romantic, said dale, just like the old days. but when they got back, she gave him the news. she goes, i want a divorce. i said, you don t love me anymore? she said i met this other person. she even said it s not that i don t love you, but i think i love i think i met my soulmate again. just like that, dale s world came crashing down. i called her brother. i called her sisters. i called her mom. i said do you know what s going on? do you know what s happening? he talked to her sister, ramona. i remember feeling really annoyed. why are you calling me to try to sway me to your side? by the time the phone call ended i remember thinking, yeah, what is steph doing? he begged stephanie s friend, jennifer, do something. you have to talk to some sense in to her. you ve got to make her see that she needs to stay with me. you had no inkling this was
clearly a rush to judgment, sloppy investigation, said the defense. by detectives who bought the holthouse s alibi too easily, who failed to consider that the murder might have been committed by whoever robbed the nearby bank just before stephanie disappeared. attorney burnhart confronted agent sadar. you had no direct evidence of mr. bruner assaulting his wife? correct, no direct evidence of mr. bruner murdering her. of course, had dale taken the stand, he would have had to have answered to some stubbornly uncomfortable facts and this question that hung over the defense table like a cloud. you loved your wife. you loved her a lot. but in that moment of extreme rage when she was leaving you, you killed her. strangled her and then threw her body in the river. so not true. the theme of the prosecution was that you were an abuser and that it was
all night the bitter cold licked the windows and came in under the door frames. 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 mo of like 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? 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 glennwood springs for the
so i m here, asking for help. and i m going to end up getting a divorce because there s no way i can go back. only she did. finally, this domestic violence expert weighed in. when a victim is attempting to leave a relationship or has left a relationship, it is by far the most dangerous time for a victim. but what was the trigger that, according to the prosecution, set dale off? the answer, he said, may lie in an unfinished e-mail stephanie was writing to the other man, ron, just before she was murdered. and though dale denied he knew what she was doing i honestly didn t know. i had no idea. prosecutor said dale must have seen her writing it, begging ron for another meeting because she couldn t accept the idea that her new love was leaving her. i think dale bruner got angry
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 was one of our early fears. or that she just simply committed suicide, jumped in the water, hit her head and that was that? that was also another legitimate consideration. so, thus the puzzle? it is. until four days after thanksgiving, when the autopsy revealed a curious detail. one that seemed to rule out suicide. there was no wounds at all to the souls of her feet. what did that mean? that certainly means that she did not walk to where we had found her without shoes. just in case there was any lingering doubt, the autopsy also revealed she had taken a blow to the head and then she had been strangled but was still alive when she was thrown into the freezing water.