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
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 soles 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. the ultimate cause of death, hypothermia and drowning. we knew at that point she had been murdered.
him about it and say can he leave or get help and i think this would go really bad, 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 weighed in. when they have attempted to leave a relationship ar has left, it s by far the most dachls time for a victim. what was the trigger that according to the prosecution set dale off? the answer may lie in the unfinished email she was writing to ron just before she was murdered, and although dale denied he knew what she was doing i honestly had no idea. i had no idea. the prosecutor said he must have seen it. begging for another meeting because he couldn t except the
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 coming? no, not until she told me she was in love with somebody. helplessly in love, she told
stephanie announced she was going out to clear her head and then didn t come 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 is missing. it was a records clerk named veronica nicholas who 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, stephan stephanie s friends scoured her 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. indeed