BRECKENRIDGE — Investigators laid out the evidence Wednesday that led them to believe photographer Dale Bruner killed his wife and helped them eliminate two other suspects.
Stephanie Roller Bruner’s body was discovered in the Blue River in November of 2010, three days after Bruner reported her missing from their home in Silverthorne. She’d died of a combination of strangulation, blunt force trauma, hypothermia and drowning.
A grand jury indicted Bruner on charges of second-degree murder, first-degree assault and tampering with evidence.
Testimony in court over the last week has indicated the Bruners’ marriage was falling apart in 2010. Roller Bruner had taken out a restraining order against her husband, filed for divorce and was seeing another man.
Along with Bruner, that man, Ron Holthaus, and his wife, Cindy Bragg Holthaus, at the time were among investigators top suspects.
But Holthaus and his wife each offered an alibi for the other — both saying they were at home in bed the night Roller Bruner disappeared — and computer records and their journals appeared to support their story, according to investigators who testified Wednesday.
They said suspects were eliminated if they were found not to have motive, ability or opportunity.
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