entertained and happy. >> although what the money harold was after was in a trust for haley, it won't bring her mom back. everyone who knew toni wants to make sure haley never forgets her. >> she came into the office and her mom's lab coat was hanging behind the door. and i said, haley, would you like your mama's work coke? she said, miss tammy, i would like that a lot. so i put it on her and she went , it smells like my mommy. stephanie roller bruner: i'm here, asking for help. hello, i'm craig melvin, and this is "dateline." hello. i'm craig melvin. this is dateline.

>> i am here. asking for help. >> it was like hearing a ghost. a voice from beyond the grave. >> there is no way i can go back. >> can she help solve her own murder? >> it's so surreal. something that happens to other people and not to you. >> she was a dancer who married a photographer. they seemed the perfect family until the bone-chilling night she went missing. >> you can see the body under the snow. >> where was her husband? >> he said you don't know the tidal wave coming. >> seems it's always the husband except this time, they weren't so sure. >> it's a whodunit. i have three viable suspects. >> it turns out the victim had a boyfriend and he had a wife. >> everyone starts getting

question. >> boyfriend. husband. jealous spouse. >> what did happen that snowing night? see what you think because the most important clue of all may be the victim in own voice. >> i knew there was a line to draw. >> hello, and welcome to dateline. stephanie roller bruner and her husband appear to have the picture perfect family. they were in the rockies where they ran a thriving photography business. then, one frigid night, dale said his wife walked out of the house and never return. investigators discovered the grieving husband, who is not the only man in her life. there were three potential suspects. police needed to focus on stephanie's life to figure out

who may have caused her death. here is keith morrison with secrets in the snow. >> it was cold. a night to be inside by a fireplace, tucked under a quilt. not outside in the frigid dark. not way up., 9000 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 what happened. still trying to figure it out. >> what was his wife doing walking out into the cold? what happened to her? this middle-class married mother of three, where did she go? without a word to him or her friends. >> can't imagine it's happening to you and to your friend. >> she was just missing.

>> yes, she was, and it was terrifying. dreadful in the end. as events were about to prove, shocking lesson awoke and well hidden beneath a person's public skin. it's really a secret. >> a lot of that. sure. >> everybody has secrets. stephanie roller bruner's seekers lived as she died in a ski or's paradise. they met at the top of the mountain. dale bruner, professional photographer was taking and selling photographs of ski years. for dale, ski years it. >> i love taking wild fight photos. people would say why don't you work that we. us at buffalo carry credit cards. >> it was up on the mountain he spotted this young woman who seemed to be conducting forestry service survey. >> i skied up to her and i said what you're doing? writing parking tickets? she looked up and smiled. >> then she took off her ski

goggles. >> i was stunned. she was beautiful. >> they moved in and when they got married a few years later, they eloped. they chatted up to fiji. it was so stephanie, said her friend. >> they went off and did it. >> they made their home where dale's photo business group. >> when things were growing, i had several operations around the country. around 25 photographers working. >> stephanie got a job and can't -- government. they raised their three young children. >> awesome children. the best. >> and life for the family was? >> it was fantastic. we traveled. we vacationed. >> it was in her spare moments that stephanie was transformed. a ballroom dancer. >> dancing was to her what

photography is to me. >> it was her passion set her old friend, bill. >> stephanie loved to dance. it was her life. >> hardly surprising that stephanie and jennifer were close. >> we started a ballroom dance program together. pretty soon she had me doing back flips. >> but, it was dance that led off the whole cascade of trouble. in the fall of 2010. annual fundraiser called dancing with the mountain stars. local were these paired with pros. did you go? >> oh, yeah, absolutely. the last one i did not go. >> had a wedding to shoe. 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. >> ronald holthaus, local married physical therapist. >> she started working with him and got to know him. she did call it a truelove moment. >> nt seem to feel the same? >> they really clicked together. >> stephanie was dancing on air. >> she didn't realize there could be love like that. >> a secret from her family, but she told her friends she found her soulmate. >> it was almost odd how she told a number of us that i want you to know i am very happy. >> joy and misery, and peers as thanksgiving approach, ks took over what had been a well ordered life. it was wednesday, middle of october, when things started piling up. >> a her rent to stay for her.

>> she went to work that day in the county laid off 20 people that day. >> including stephanie. her troubles and her secrets seemed to pile up like the snow. >> she was behaving a little strangely. >> a little unpredictable? >> yeah. >> it was thanksgiving week. not far away from peaceful fill silver thorn, someone robbed a bank. dale was in bed when stephanie announced she was going out to clear her head, then, did not come back. one morning, dale called the police. >> i got a phone call from dale bruner and said i want to make a report that my wife is missing. >> it was a record's clerk named veronica who took the call. >> he said i got the kids up and got them ready for school and put them on the bus. then i thought i should call you guys.

>> stephanie's car was in the driveway said dale and when he called her cell phone and went to voicemail. veronica called stephanie's best friend. >> i panic. this happens to other people and not to you. >> it had happened. is the silverthorne police checked police and hospitals, her friend scoured the neighborhood. >> it seemed unbelievable that stephanie would not check in. >> it became two and then three and some private secrets were about to become public indeed. >> where was stephanie? police had a lot of questions for her husband. they also wanted to talk to the other man in her life, her boyfriend, ron. coming up. >> i just want to west straight up again, not accusing you, do you know where stephanie is? s? some things should stand the test of time. long-lasting eylea hd could significantly improve your vision. more people on eylea hd

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arexvy is number one in rsv vaccine shots. keith morrison: 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. all night pride the wind is and looked under the door frame so the bruner house, hardly a night to take a walk. certainly not an all-night walk. had she heard herself? or had someone else hurt her? it wasn't like stephanie roller bruner to just disappear. >> seemed more likely it might be a stranger that might be involved or stephanie herself might've just run off in

despair and maybe heard herself. >> stephanie's friends and family poured over the last few weeks, so full of change and secrecy and turmoil. for their clues? some nova stephanie's relationship with that new man. how upset she was about losing her job. she seemed to be holding the traveler bay, six weeks before she disappeared, she suggested a family holiday. >> she said less go to glenwood springs for the weekend. a 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 wanted to force. i said you don't love me anymore? c said i met another person. it's not that i don't love you but i think i met my soulmate again. >> dales world came crashing

down. >> i called her brother. i called her sisters. i called her mom and said you know what's going on? >> he talked to her sister. >> i remember feeling annoyed. why are you calling me to try to sway me to your side? by the time the phone call ended, i remember thinking, what is she doing? >> he picked stephanie's friend jennifer to do something. >> you got to talk some sense into her. you got to make her see she needs to stay with me. >> you had no idea this was coming? >> not until she told me she was in love with somebody. >> fell for her out there man that night dancing with the mountain stars. >> i go back to the day if i asked if i should shoot that wedding and did not go to that event with there. i wasn't going to be dancing on a big important night for her. >> it was an old-fashioned of there. stephanie told her friends that her feelings were not so much physical as pure and emotion.

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 with that new man. >> i said if this is what you want, it's what you want. >> they would share the children. dale and a family house and she in a rented condo. he helped her move out. why did you do that? >> she asked me to help. i didn't fall out of love with there. the middle of the night, her first night away, dale said he woke up to a commotion downstairs. it was stephanie. she crawled right back into bed with him. >> she had come home. she said it was all a horrible mistake and she wanted to move back in. >> i said, are you sure? she said everything is fine. >> two days later, things were not fine. not at all. stephanie is missing and dale

was at the police department telling officers where he thought his wife might've gone. >> i thought she would go summer weather wi-fi and be on the computer. my other guess she went to run's house. >> the police interviewed the other man. ron holthaus. >> i just want to ask straight up, not accusing you, do you know where stephanie is right now? >> i absolutely have no idea. >> he admitted he and stephanie had a romantic relationship, but he denied they ever slept together. >> but we never ended up having sex. >> then round told them something interesting. he had ended the affair. it was the night she moved into the condo. he said to stephanie, it was over. >> i said i'm going to move to florida or with my wife. were trying to go to naples and make this work. >> have any reason to believe anything bad may have happened to her?

>> that would be my worst fear. >> thanksgiving day came and went and no stephanie. overstretch local police force called in the colorado bureau of investigations. greg was the agent who answered the call and he was standing beside the shallow blue river, staring at what looked like a lump of snow and some rocks. >> there were several inches of snow on top of her. you could see the body underneath the snow. >> it was stephanie all right. how did she get here? here?

keith morrison: 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, 3 and 1/2 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. keith morrison: just over by that second bend there. yes, sir. keith morrison: 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-- 300, 350 yards. keith morrison: the news spread fast. today, investigators say that they have found a body. yeah, that was a pretty bad day. your heart drops. let's find out what happened to her,

along with humongous sadness. keith morrison: the county coroner broke the news to dale. dale bruner: they said, dale, we need to tell you something. and i'm like, what? and i just went into convulsions. keith morrison: 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. keith morrison: 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. keith morrison: until four days after thanksgiving, when the autopsy revealed a curious detail-- one that seemed to rule out suicide. greg sadar: 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. keith morrison: 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 had been murdered. keith morrison: first murder in silverthorne in decades. but who would do such a thing? and 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? greg sadar: this is where a predator could have been hiding out. there was any number of opportunities at that point. keith morrison: 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-- i had at least three viable suspects. any one of whom had potential motive. absolutely. there 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 is 6', 200 pounds-- 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. keith morrison: they took ron in for questioning several times, and again and again, he insisted it wasn't him. 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. he had earlier sent her a breakup email, he said. she insisted on seeing him in person. she wasn't taking it well at all. 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. keith morrison: which begged the question, where was ron holthaus later that monday evening when stephanie went for her walk? 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. keith morrison: her alibi-- she was home sleeping right next to ron. so their alibis were each other. detectives kept prodding. 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. dale bruner: so i called and my attorney said, you don't know that onslaught-- the tidal wave that's coming towards you, do you? you have no idea. i said, apparently not. keith morrison: oh, yes. and what a tidal wave it was. craig melvin: "dateline" returns after the break. protect against rsv with arexvy. arexvy is a vaccine used to prevent lower respiratory disease from rsv in people 60 years and older. arexvy does not protect everyone and is not for those with severe allergic reactions to its ingredients. those with weakened immune systems may have a lower response to the vaccine. the most common side effects are injection site pain, fatigue, muscle pain, headache, and joint pain. arexvy is number one in rsv vaccine shots. rsv? make it arexvy. billy: one second, grandma. this guy is going to buy my car. okay? arexvy is number one in rsv vaccine shots. grandma: you need carvana... entering plate number...

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tripped on job site debris or anything else? call the barnes firm now. lost time from work, medical bills, or if you could get fired for being injured. injured on a job site? call us now. ♪ call 1-800 eight million ♪ i'm jessica layton with a look at what's happening starting with political news. a spokesperson for the trump campaign told nbc news that it was hacked by an iranian group in june. according to the campaign, the timing of the hack coincided with trump's pick up a vice presidential nominee. congrats to the u.s. women's soccer team winning gold beating brazil in the final. the match ended with a score of

1-0 earning women soccer their first gold medal since the 2012 games in london. now let's get you back to dateline. investigators zeroed in on three people of interest-- stephanie's boyfriend, ron, who just broke up with her, ron's wife, cindy, and stephanie's husband, dale bruner. and as detectives dug deeper into the bruner marriage, ugly secrets emerged that would put dale at the very top of the suspect list. here again is keith morrison with "secrets in the snow." it's horrible. i don't even know how to explain having a microscope go into your world. it's surreal. keith morrison: there are few secrets in a person's life that can escape the attention of a determined

homicide detective. greg sadar: everything comes out. absolutely everything. keith morrison: and dale and stephanie, it turned out, have their share of secrets. but the weird thing-- one chilly morning six weeks before stephanie was murdered, as stephanie told her friend, jennifer-- jennifer voxakis: 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 the norm. and i said, come on. keith morrison: 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. keith morrison: 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. dale bruner: we had a wonderful weekend at the hotel colorado and the hot springs, swimming with the kids. keith morrison: 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 the sheriff's department was going to come to the house and i'm going to have to leave. keith morrison: 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. dale bruner: 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. keith morrison: 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. 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. keith morrison: 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. greg sadar: yeah, we were struck by how close it is to the house and how accessible it was, even under those snowy conditions. yeah. 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. very probative. he wanted to know what we had learned from the autopsy, where we were going with the investigation.

he was nervous, but not outwardly sad. keith morrison: and then, two weeks after the murder, when detective sadar 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. keith morrison: there were no signs of blood, no evidence of any struggle, nor, in fact, was there any sign that stephanie had ever lived there. greg sadar: there wasn't a single photograph of her. every trace of her had been scrubbed from the house. keith morrison: 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. within a 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. dale bruner: i'm in a fight with mike tyson with no gloves and then they're taking my kids away, too. keith morrison: dale wasn't completely alone, mind you. some family stayed around, reported back to stephanie's sister, ramona, that dale was truly grieving. ramona roller: 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. keith morrison: and stephanie's friend, bill, even moved in for two months to help out-- console dale. bill nielsen: 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. reporter: dale, can you talk at all about the investigators only focusing on you? i hope they're investigating someone else. keith morrison: didn't look like it.

it was summer, 2011-- nine months after stephanie's murder when it happened. dale bruner: 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. keith morrison: 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 did you turn it down? because innocent people don't plea. keith morrison: besides, now, said dale, it was time to fight back. craig melvin: "dateline" returns after the break. [music playing] protect against rsv with arexvy. arexvy is a vaccine used to prevent lower respiratory disease from rsv in people 60 years and older. arexvy does not protect everyone and is not for those with severe allergic reactions to its ingredients. those with weakened immune systems may have a lower response to the vaccine. the most common side effects are injection site pain,

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keith morrison: two winters passed 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. dale bruner: the lies are really tough to take. you're like-- you just can't believe it. like, really. keith morrison: 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 the attorney-- a man not at all impressed, he told us, with the police investigation. robert bernhardt: 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. keith morrison: 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. keith morrison: 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 9:00 pm, 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. keith morrison: 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 was make waves. just do what you've got to do.

keith morrison: 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. keith morrison: so by the time dale's trial began, he and his attorney were ready for evidence that was, they knew, only circumstantial. questions like this. beaten the way she was beaten on her head and strangled the way she was strangled-- that's 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. 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 soul mate or his wife had anything to do with it. that would be ron holthaus. robert bernhardt: 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.

keith morrison: 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. keith morrison: 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. keith morrison: 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 'til next week. keith morrison: 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. keith morrison: and 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. and he comes out and he's just crying. he's just like, i've got to get this stuff out of here. keith morrison: so it's clearly a rush to judgment-- a sloppy investigation, said the defense, by detectives who bought the holthauses' 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 sadar. robert bernhardt: you had no direct evidence of mr. bruner assaulting his wife. correct. no direct evidence of mr. bruner murdering her.

keith morrison: 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. keith morrison: oh, yes. they certainly did, with the help of a woman whose message, in a way, came back from the grave. craig melvin: "dateline" returns after the break. [music playing] protect against rsv with arexvy. arexvy is a vaccine used to prevent lower respiratory disease from rsv

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keith morrison: 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 then strangled her and put her in the river, and that's where she died. and you have to live with that secret. well, fortunately, i don't have to live with that. that, i don't have to live with. keith morrison: what dale bruner would have to live with would depend on the outcome of his trial, of course, and whether or not the prosecutor, mark hurlbert, would persuade the jury without the benefit of physical evidence that dale killed the love of his life

in a fit of blind rage. mark hurlbert: i think dale bruner strangles her, believes that she is dead, takes her to the river, and dumps her in the river. keith morrison: 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 9:00 pm. and at 10 years old, she could say what happened with specifics. keith morrison: 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've got to be kidding, said the prosecutor. his wife goes for a walk and he wouldn't call anybody until eight or nine hours later? 10 hours later? that just doesn't make any sense. keith morrison: 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. 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. keith morrison: and so, said this friend-- woman 1: she was afraid to get a restraining order against dale because he had already threatened to harm or kill her. keith morrison: 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. jennifer voxakis: he strong armed her into a corner, choking her, threatening to hit her. keith morrison: yeah. 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 were maybe three of those-- two or three, i don't know, of those incidents that she talked about. keith morrison: then 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. leah aiken: he just wanted her dead, you know? maybe she would have a heart attack or get hit by a car, and i kept telling him to stop talking like that. keith morrison: 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 jodi 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. jodi eberhart: 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. keith morrison: 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 mo was to go for the throat. mark hurlbert: she was strangled so hard-- such force that it broke a bone in her neck. keith morrison: and then the prosecutor introduced his bombshell. stephanie herself on tape. six weeks before her murder, stephanie begged the judge for that restraining order. and now in court, her recorded plea was a voice from the grave. stephanie roller bruner: 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--

that i've never forgotten. keith morrison: 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's crying. keith morrison: it was as if stephanie was testifying in her own murder trial. stephanie roller bruner: i would so love to talk to him about it and say can he leave or can he 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. keith morrison: 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.

keith morrison: 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. keith morrison: 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. keith morrison: the jury stayed out four hours. the court has reviewed the verdicts. it was kind of early, which is always worrying. keith morrison: dale bruner stood, awaited his fate. dale bruner: you're just trying to maintain and not just melt on the-- you know, so you prepare

yourself to just breathe. just breathe. keith morrison: and then there it was. we, the jury, find the defendant, dale bruner, guilty of murder in the second degree. keith morrison: dale bruner was also convicted of two counts of sexual assault and sentenced to a total of 112 years in prison. an appeals court vacated the sexual assault convictions, and in 2018, bruner's sentence was reduced to 48 years. dale bruner: it is a perfect storm. i'm going down with the ship. keith morrison: 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. keith morrison: and like others who knew stephanie, she wishes now she had 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.

keith morrison: an almost good marriage with one deadly flaw. bill nielsen: 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. keith morrison: yeah. it only took three, and she's dead. keith morrison: and so, say her friends, take some advice. heed the warning. don't hide the secret. jennifer voxakis: 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 this edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. [music playing] . i'm craig melvin. and i'm natalie morales. and this is "dateline."