Dateline NBC - Secrets in the Snow

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

In this Dateline classic, after Stephanie Bruner goes missing in the Colorado mountains, three suspects and a love triangle complicate the investigation. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC on October 5, 2012.

I'm here asking for help. It was like hearing a ghost, a voice from beyond the grave. There's no way I can go back. Can she help solve her own murder? So surreal. This is something that happens to other people, not to you. She was a dancer who married a dashing photographer. They seemed a perfect family. Till the bone-chilling night, she went missing.

You could see the body underneath the snow. Where was her husband that night? My attorney said, you don't know the tidal wave that's coming towards you, do you? Seems like it's always the husband, right? Isn't that what police say? This time, they weren't so sure. It's a whodunit. I have three viable suspects.

Three possible suspects? Turns out this victim also had a boyfriend, and he had a wife. Everyone starts getting questioned. Husband, boyfriend, jealous spouse. I said something like, I hope she rots in hell. So what did happen on that snowy night? See what you think. Because the most important clue of all may be the victim's own voice.

I knew there was a line to draw. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Tonight, secrets in the snow. Here's Keith Morrison. It was cold the night it happened. So very cold. A night to be inside by a fireplace, tucked under a quilt. Not outside in the frigid dark.

Not way up here, 9,000 feet up in the Colorado Mountains. Snow thick already that late November night. And with the wind chill, 24 below. I don't know enough to know exactly what happened. I'm still trying to figure it out. What in God's name was his wife doing, walking out into the brutal cold? And more to the point, what happened to her? This middle-class married mother of three, where did she go?

Without a word to him or her friends? You can't imagine that this is happening to you and to your friend. She was just plain missing. Yes, she was. And it was terrifying, dreadful in the end. And his events were about to prove a shocking lesson on what can dwell hidden beneath a person's public skin. So this is really a secret thing as far as you know. A lot of it, sure. Everybody has secrets, of course. Stephanie Roller Bruner's secrets lived as she did in a skier's paradise.

Tall pines, heart-pounding slopes, soaring peaks, Silverthorne, Colorado. And the happy way she got here was the sort of thing you might expect to read in perhaps a romance novel. Instant attraction, yeah. They met at the top of a mountain. Dale Bruner, a professional photographer, was taking and selling photographs of visiting skiers. A person has to make a living, and for Dale, skiers were it. I love taking wildlife photos and scenics, and people say, well, why don't you sell more of your work that way?

I said, well, buffalo don't carry credit cards, you know. Anyway, it was up there on the mountain he spotted this young woman seemed to be conducting some sort of forestry service survey. I skied up to her, and I said, what are you doing, writing parking tickets? And she looked up at me and smiled. And then she took off her big ski goggles. I was stunned, and I'm like, wow, she's beautiful.

They moved in together right away, and when they got married a few years later, they eloped. They jetted off to Fiji. It was so Stephanie, said her friend. Yeah, they kind of just went off and did it. They made their home in Silverthorne, where Dale's photo business grew and grew.

When things were really rolling, I had several operations in different states around the country, around 25 photographers working. Stephanie got a job in county government, environmental planning department. Look, look at the camera. They raised their three young children. Awesome children, the best. How about a smile? And life for the Bruner family was... It was fantastic. We traveled, we vacationed. But it was in her spare moments and hours that Stephanie was truly transformed.

A ballroom dancer. Dancing was probably to her what photography is to me. Our guest star, Bill. It was her passion, said her old friend Bill. He knows flamenco. Stephanie loved to dance. I mean, dance was her life. She was alive when she danced.

Hardly surprising then that Stephanie and Jennifer were very close too. We started a ballroom dance program together at my dance studio, and pretty soon she had me doing backflips with men and partnering and just all kinds of fun things. But it was dance that led off the whole cascade of trouble in the fall of 2010. There's an annual fundraiser here in Silverthorne called Dancing with the Mountain Stars, local worthies paired with ballroom pros. Did you go? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I went to, well, three years of them. The last one, I did not go to the last one. Had a wedding to shoot. So he missed the chance to watch Stephanie teach those lead-footed businessmen the foxtrot and the tango and so on, which means he also missed what happened that night. She coached a number of couples, and in the process, she met a man named Ron. Ron Holthaus, a local married physical therapist. She started working with him and got to know him and saw how funny and animated he was

and how that made her feel. She really did call it a true love moment. He seemed to feel the same thing about her? Well, yeah, they really clicked together. So they did. Oh, boy, did they ever. And Stephanie was dancing on air. Her whole world upended.

She didn't realize that there could be love like that. A secret from her family, of course, but she told her friends she'd found her soulmate. It was almost odd how she 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. Horrendous day for her. Because? Well, 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. She was behaving a little bit strangely. A little unpredictable. A little bit, yeah. It was Thanksgiving week, that cold, dark night. Not far away from peaceful Silverthorne, someone robbed a bank. A very rare thing around here. Dale was in bed, he said, when Stephanie announced she was going out to clear her head,

and then didn't come back. Come morning, Dale called the Silverthorne police. I got a phone call from Dale Bruner and just 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, I got them ready for school, and I got them on the bus, and then I thought I should probably call you guys. Stephanie's car was in the driveway, said Dale. And when he called her cell phone, it went to voicemail.

Veronica called Stephanie's best friend, Jennifer. I panicked. This is something that happens to other people, not to you. Oh, but it had happened. As the Silverthorne police checked local hotels and hospitals, Stephanie's friends scoured her neighborhood. It just seemed unbelievable that Stephanie would not check in. The day became two and then three, and some private secrets were about to become very public indeed.

So where was Stephanie? Police had a lot of questions for her husband, Dale. They also wanted to talk to that other man in her life, her boyfriend Ron. And when we come back, they do. I just want to ask straight up again, not accusing you. Do you know where Stephanie is right now? All night the bitter cold pried at the windows and licked under the door frames 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. It seemed more likely that it might be a stranger that might be involved or that Stephanie herself might have just run off in despair and maybe hurt herself. Stephanie's friends and family poured over those last few weeks, so full of change and secrecy, turmoil. Were there clues?

Of course, some knew about Stephanie's relationship with that 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 says, let's go to Glenwood Springs for the weekend. Old classic, wonderful place. And 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 goes, I've met this other person. And she even said, it's not that I don't love you, but I think I love, I think I've met my soulmate again. And 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 during the phone call feeling really annoyed, like, why are you calling me to try and sway me to your side? But then by the time the phone call ended, I remember thinking, yeah, what is Steph doing? He begged Stephanie's friend, Jennifer, do something. You've got to talk some sense into her. You know, you've got to make her see that she needs to stay with me. You had no inkling that this was coming? No, not until she told me that she was in love with somebody helplessly in love she told him

fell for her other man that night dancing with the mountain stars i go back to the day that i asked steph if i should shoot that wedding or not and i didn't go to that event with her. I wasn't going to be dancing with her on a big important night for her. It was a curiously old-fashioned affair, apparently. Stephanie told her friends her feelings were not so much physical as pure and emotional. But she made it clear to Dale that even though she still loved him, she had no choice but to follow these powerful feelings and make a life for that new man. They said, if this is what you want, this is what you want. They would share the children, of course. Dale at the family house, Stephanie in a rented condo.

The weekend before she disappeared, he helped her move out. Why in heaven sent me to do that? She asked me to help. Isn't that what you do? I didn't fall out of love with her. I still loved her. And then, middle of the night, her very first night away, Dale says he woke up to a commotion 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 that she wanted to move back in. And I said, are you sure?

She said, don't worry, everything's 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 Wi-Fi and be on the computer. And my other guess was maybe she went to, you know, Ron's house. I didn't know.

The police interviewed the other man, of course, Ron Holthaus. I just want to ask straight up again, not accusing you, do you know where Stephanie is right now? I absolutely have no idea. Yes, Ron admitted he and Stephanie had a romantic relationship, but he denied they ever slept together. But we never ended up having sex. And then Ron told them something very interesting,

that he had ended the affair. It was the night she moved into the condo, he told them. He said to Stephanie, it was over. I said, I'm going to move to Florida with my wife. We're going to try to go back to Naples and make this work. Do you have any reason to believe that anything bad may have happened to her? That would be my worst fear. But Thanksgiving Day came and went.

No Stephanie. An overstretched local police force called in the Colorado Bureau of Investigations, which is why Agent Greg Sadar was standing beside the shallow Blue River, staring at what looked like a lump of snow on some rocks. There was several inches of snow on top of her, and you could see the body underneath the snow. It was Stephanie, all right. But how did she get here? Coming up, the autopsy finding that surprised everyone. Had Stephanie been murdered? It's a whodunit. I had at least three viable suspects. Any one of whom had potential motive?

Absolutely. When Dateline continues. It was perplexing, almost, that a thing so awful could happen in the midst of such beauty. Here in the frigid, rushing water of the Blue River, three and a half days after she disappeared, they found Stephanie Roller Bruner, nude but for a tie-dyed shirt that still clung to her body. She had come to rest against a tumble of snow-covered rocks. It was just a little bit farther beyond that where the water gets calm where we located her remains. Just over by that second bend there? Yes, sir.

She hadn't gone far. Agent Greg Sadar of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. How far from her house? A rough guess off the top of my head, 350 yards. The news spread fast. Today, investigators say that they have found a body. Man, that was 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.

And I'm like, what? And I just went into convulsions. But 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 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? Well, that certainly means that she did not walk to where we had found her without shoes. And just in case there was any lingering doubt, the autopsy also revealed she'd taken a blow to the head, and then she'd been strangled, but was still alive when she was thrown into the freezing water, the ultimate cause of death, hypothermia and drowning. Well, we knew at that point she'd been murdered.

First murder in Silverthorne in decades. But who would do such a thing? Why? It was just hours before Stephanie took her walk in this virtually crime-free community that somebody robbed that nearby bank. So, did the robber later encounter Stephanie and then assault and kill her? This is where a predator could have been hiding out. There was any number of opportunities at that point. Still, it was so cold, perhaps too cold for a lurking predator. This is one of those very few cases where it's a whodunit, if you will, and where you've got at least three viable suspects. Any one of whom had potential motive.

Absolutely. It was Ron Holthaus, the other man who had just suddenly dumped Stephanie. There was Cindy, Ron's wife, who, if she knew about the affair, could have wanted revenge. And then there was Dale, Dale Bruner, the husband. And any one of them thought the detective was certainly physically capable of committing the crime. Her husband, six foot, 200 pound, very athletic guy. And Mr. Holthaus, a big, strong guy. His wife was actually a very physically fit woman. So she'd be outgunned by any one of them?

I would believe so, yes, sir. They took Ron in for questioning several times, and again and again he insisted it wasn't him. I screwed up my marriage. I made a mess of my life. He admitted that in the last hours of Stephanie's life, he met her here in this clothing store parking lot around dinner time, and it wasn't a happy meeting. I was actually trying to tell her that it was over. He'd earlier sent her a breakup email, he said. She insisted on seeing him in person. She wasn't taking it well at all. And then she said, asked me again one more time, like, but we can make it work. I said, no, we cannot make this work. She was still interested in having a relationship with him.

And didn't want to let him go. Correct. And I'm sure that he was motivated to not let his wife find out about that. Which begs the question, where was Ron Holthaus later that Monday evening when Stephanie went for her walk? You're saying to me you were at home. You never went out on Monday night. Correct. The detectives called in Ron's wife, Cindy.

It would not be unheard of for a woman to be very upset to find that her husband has been seeing another woman and want to go to significant lengths by eliminating that temptation. Her alibi? She was home, sleeping, right next to Ron. So their alibis were each other. sitting out and looking at him all night. If you were to get up and leave, would you go looking? I think I would have, yeah. So their alibis were each other. Detectives kept prodding. How much do you owe your husband?

I'm committed. Is he doing anything for you? Within reason. Would I lie for him? No. Because you know what? If he makes a bid, he's got to win. For almost a month, detectives went back and forth

between Ron and Cindy and Stephanie's husband, Dale, who by that time had been advised by a friend, better get a lawyer. So I called, and my attorney said, you don't know the onslaught, the tidal wave that's coming towards you, do you? You have no idea. I said, and my attorney said, you don't know the onslaught, the tidal wave that's coming towards you, do you? You have no idea.

I said, apparently not. Oh, yes. And what a tidal wave it was. Three potential suspects, the husband, Dale, the boyfriend, Ron, and Ron's wife, Cindy. When we returned, police narrowed their focus just one, after a very strange discovery. Every trace of her had been scrubbed from the house. It's horrible. I mean, it's... I don't even know how to explain having a microscope go into your world.

It's surreal. There are few secrets in a person's life that can escape the attention of a determined homicide detective. Everything comes out. Absolutely everything. And Dale and Stephanie, it turned out, have their share of secrets. Like the weird thing, one chilly morning six weeks before Stephanie was murdered, as Stephanie told her friend Jennifer. She heard spanking and she told me she counted at least eight spanks before she got up the stairs and down the hall to the kitchen. Well, my boy was acting out far beyond, you know, the norm.

And I said, come on. That was a Wednesday morning. Stephanie was furious about the spanking and stormed off to work, and that very day was laid off from her county job. And then, still upset with Dale, Stephanie went to see a judge and filed a restraining order against him, sought advice from her friend Bill. Honestly, I was a little bit surprised.

I had never detected any major problems in their relationship. But, and this was distinctly odd, she asked the court to delay implementing the order until the following Monday. And then she went home and, said Dale, suggested that family holiday. We had a wonderful weekend at the Hotel Colorado in the hot springs, swimming with the kids. But then, back in town, is when Stephanie revealed, one, that she was in love with another man,

and two, her restraining order was about to be served. She told me that, you know, the sheriff's department was going to come to the house and I'm going to have to leave. So he did. After which, said Dale, they calmed down and 10 days later went back to ask the judge to rescind his order. The court recorded the session. I'm never going to spank again. This potentially could crush my entire world. And I'm so sorry to you. And I will make it up in any and every way I possibly can. She wanted to leave, but she felt like the restraining order was too much, that Dale didn't deserve that, and that maybe she had

overreacted. And so they talked about it like adults. And eventually they signed divorce papers, and Dale even helped Stephanie move into her condo, where, as you know, the very night she moved in, her new love Ron told her the affair was over. They weren't going to be together, not then, not ever. He was staying with his wife. Two days later, she was dead. And Ron and his wife and Dale were all under suspicion. They said I was a person of interest. I didn't think I had any worries. But Agent Sadar wasn't so sure. As his investigation

continued, he became convinced that Ron Holthaus and his wife Cindy had been telling him the truth. I feel awful. I really feel awful. But he kept encountering suspicious things about Dale. Why had Dale waited until morning to report his wife missing? And why, while Dale's friends and family scoured the town looking for her, why didn't he take part at all? It was kind of this mounting series of things that we started to be concerned about. And it was Dale, said Sadar, who had motive and opportunity. For one thing, the place they found her body,

Dale could certainly have carried her that far. We were struck by how close it is to this house and how accessible it was, even under those snowy conditions. And when Dale was still talking before he lawyered up, his demeanor seemed odd to the detective. One of their meetings at a local restaurant was recorded. Well, what happened to her then? Well, that's what I'm talking to you about.

Very, very probative. He wanted to know what we had learned from the autopsy, where we were going with the investigation. I'm a little wigged out when you said there was no other clothes on her. I have some concerns. I'm being very open and honest with you. What the hell happened to her? I mean, that's what I'd like to find out.

He was nervous, but not outwardly sad. And then, two weeks after the murder, when Detective Sater got a search warrant, a house that had been cluttered at the time of the murder was now spotless. What did you find this time? Nothing. There was nothing to find. There were no signs of blood, no evidence of any struggle,

nor, in fact, was there any sign that Stephanie had ever lived there. There wasn't a single photograph of her. Every trace of her had been scrubbed from the house. It also seemed suspicious, said the detective, that Dale changed his story a bit. First time he called the police, he said they'd had an argument before she left to go out walking. Later, he said there was no argument. Was there an argument?

No, there was no argument. It was few weeks of Stephanie's murder, the state ramped up the pressure on Dale. Social services sent the Bruner children to live with Stephanie's brother in California. I'm in a fight with Mike Tyson with no gloves. And then they're going to take my kids away too? Dale wasn't completely alone, mind you. Some family stayed around, reported back to Stephanie's sister Ramona that Dale was truly grieving. We kept asking, what is Dale acting like? What is he saying? Unless he's some kind of actor that deserves some kind of Oscar performance, this guy really seems distraught.

And Stephanie's friend Bill even moved in for two months to help out, console Dale. We were just trying to hold Dale together. He was having a very difficult time. Did you ever either confront him or say, come on, tell us what happened? Looked every one of us in the eye and said, I had nothing to do with this. I'm innocent.

Dale, can you talk at all about the investigators only focusing on you? I hope they're investigating someone else. Didn't look like it. It was summer 2011, nine months after Stephanie's murder, when it happened. I was coming back from one of my photo shoots, and a little unmarked car with a light on it flashed and a siren went, and they have guns drawn on me. Dale Bruner was charged with second-degree murder in the death of his wife.

He pleaded not guilty, posted bond, and was offered a plea deal by the DA's office. Why'd you turn it down? Because innocent people don't play. Besides, now, said Dale, it was time to fight back. Coming up, probing questions and provocative answers. It's a very intimate crime. It's the sort of crime that husbands commit. Or should I say boyfriends? When Dateline continues. Two winters pass here in the Colorado Rockies between the untimely demise of Stephanie Roller Bruner and the district attorney's effort to pin the blame on Stephanie's husband, Dale. And he fumed in silence about the allegations against him.

The lies are really tough to take. You're like, you know, you just can't believe it. You're like, really? Waiting for trial, he continued to live here, all alone now, in the family house by the Blue River, working with his attorney in the effort to clear his name. Robert Bernhardt was that attorney, a man not at all impressed, he told us, with the police investigation. Their position was, I think, Dale's the easy guy, you know, the worst pieces of investigating that I've ever seen in my career.

Dale and his attorney told us that despite a show of interviewing other suspects, the police quite clearly had made up their minds the very day she disappeared. The police came to my house. I don't know what the exact first thing he said, but he goes, did you kill your wife? And I was just 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, when around 9 p.m. their daughter came into the bedroom to ask for help with her homework. When she came into our room, we were laying on top of our bed, cuddling. Nor, he said, did the cops seem to want to believe his explanation for not reporting Stephanie missing until morning, more than nine hours after she walked out into that frigid night.

Why would he? If he was aware of the fact that she was having an affair, he probably assumed that she went to her boyfriend. The last thing I was going to do is make waves. Just do what you got to do. They made such a big deal of the fact that Dale didn't join the search for Stephanie, even though... I called the police, and they told me, stay home in case she comes home. So by the time Dale's trial began in the summer of 2012,

he and his attorney were ready for evidence that they knew was only circumstantial. Questions like this. Even the way she was beaten on her head and strangled the way she was strangled is a very intimate crime. It's the sort of crime that husbands commit when their wives are about to leave them. Or should I say boyfriends?

Or boyfriends. Yeah, well, there you go. That was the point his lawyers wanted to make in court, that police and prosecutors had unfairly brushed off the possibility that Stephanie's new soulmate or his wife had anything to do with it. That would be Ron Holthaus. When everybody found out that Stephanie was missing, did any police officers come and visit you at work or at your home that day?

No, they did not. And didn't Ron's wife, Cindy, have a motive? And I said something like, I don't know where she is, but I hope she rots in hell. And I'm very sorry I said that. Of course, Dale and his attorney knew the prosecution would make a big deal of that restraining order Stephanie took out after Dale spanked their son. But her decision to ask for that order, said Dale, sprang from her own confusion, the affair, the chaos in her life. I believe she built a fake little world where I was the bad guy. But was Stephanie ever worried that 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, well, don't enact it yet. Not till next week. And 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. And that's because she knew that Dale wasn't a threat to her.

He wasn't a threat to those children. And remember how the detective found the house unusually spotless two weeks after the murder? It was, it 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. And he comes out, and he's just crying, and he's just like, I've got to get this stuff out of here.

So, it's clearly a rush to judgment, a sloppy investigation, said the defense, by detectives who bought the Holt House'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 Bernhardt confronted CBI agent Greg Sader. 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'd have had to answer 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. You strangled her and then threw her body in the river. That's so not true. The theme of the prosecution was that you were an abuser. And that it was a... It's beyond so not true.

It's just not true. They painted quite a picture, though. Oh, yes. They certainly did. With the help of a woman whose message, in a way, came back from the grave. Coming up, Stephanie speaks. I'm here asking for help. And so does another voice from the past.

He had a look on his face that I'd never seen or recognized before. What secrets will she reveal? I'm sitting across from a man who may be telling me a true story, who may also be living with the knowledge that he hit his wife on the head and strangled her and put her in the river, and that's where she died, and you have to live with that secret for the rest of your life. Fortunately, I don't have to live with that. That I don't have to live with. What Dale Bruner would have to live with

would depend on the outcome of his trial, of course, and whether or not then-prosecutor Mark Hurlburt could persuade the jury, without the benefit of physical evidence, that Dale killed the love of his life in a fit of blind rage. I think Dale Bruner strangles her, believes that she is dead, takes her to the river and dumps her in the river. So, what did happen on the night of the murder? The prosecutor called a child

to start the story. Dale and Stephanie's eldest daughter, the girl who walked into her parents' bedroom around 9 p.m. At 10 years old, she could say what happened with specifics. Out of the view of the media, she told the court she heard her parents

arguing, not cuddling, as Dale claimed. After which, remember, Dale claimed Stephanie went for a walk to clear her head. But at temperatures well below freezing? You gotta be kidding, said the prosecutor. His wife goes for a walk and he wouldn't call anybody until eight or nine hours later, ten hours later. That just doesn't make any sense. Which, by itself, didn't mean Dale was guilty. This was where some of those secrets began to spill out.

The terrifying secrets of a fatally troubled marriage. Like the one Stephanie told this friend after that spanking incident when she applied for a restraining order. Did she express fear to you at the time? Yes, she did. And she looked at me and she said, he just sees red. He gets so mad that he goes into a red zone and he doesn't even know what he does.

And so, said this friend. She was afraid to get a restraining order against Dale because he had already threatened to harm or kill her. 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 and there was another time he threw her on the bed and put his knee on her pregnant belly how often would this happen you know there may be three of those in two or three I don't know of those incidents that she talked about and there was Leah Aiken lifelong friend of Dale's who told the court about Dale's reaction when Stephanie told him she was in love with another man. He just wanted her dead, you know? Maybe she would have a heart attack or get hit by a car. I kept telling him to stop talking like that. But did Dale really mean that?

Could he be truly violent? Consider this woman, said the prosecutor, an ex-girlfriend from Dale's past, a woman named Jody, who told the jury and us the strange tale of what happened one night when she lived with Dale 20 years ago. He hadn't come home for dinner one night and had said he would be home. You called him on it? He came home, we argued about it, And he became very angry, yelling at me. He pushed me down onto the floor and put his hands around my neck and said,

if you ever say or do that again, I'll kill you. He had a look on his face that I'd never seen or recognized before. I was the most scared I've ever been in my life. And even though that was a long time ago, said the prosecutor, it told a terrible tale, which, sadly, is as old as time. Dale, he said, was a man sometimes overcome by rage, and his M.O. was to go for the throat. She was strangled so hard, such force, that it broke a bone in her neck. And then the prosecutor introduced his bombshell, Stephanie herself on tape. Six weeks before her murder,

Stephanie begged a judge for that restraining order. And now in court, her recorded plea was a voice from the grave. He has threatened my life years ago, but, you know, with a hand on my throat, didn't squeeze it, screaming in my face, I will kill you if you leave. I've never forgotten. Her sister was sitting in the courtroom, listening, and was overcome. And that was when we lost it, because it was feelings of, oh my God, and she was crying. It was as if Stephanie was testifying in her own murder trial. I would so love to talk to him about it and say, can you leave or can you get help? And I just think that 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 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 email 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. The prosecutor said Dale must have seen her writing it, an email 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 at that and hit her with something. Then he strangles her, believes 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 verdicts. It was kind of early, which is always worrying. Dale Bruner stood, awaited his fate. You're just trying to maintain and not just melt. So 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. He's appealing. It is a perfect storm. I'm going down with the ship. Stephanie's friend Jennifer was driving when the verdict came in. I was in my car, yeah, parked on the side of the road, crying like a baby. And like others who knew Stephanie, she wishes now she'd taken her friend's secrets more seriously. I beat myself up over it every day about how I should have done this or should have done that.

An almost good marriage with one deadly flaw. A lot of Stephanie's close friends and family didn't even know what was going on, and I knew of a couple of events over the years, and let's say it was only two. Yeah. It only took three, and she's dead. And so, say her friends, take some advice.

Heed the warning. Don't hide the secret. That's why I'm talking about it now. And hopefully just one woman would have the courage to stand up and say, I'm being abused, I'm living in fear, I'm living with secrets, and I need to stand up and be bold. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.