Dale Bradley

Dale Bradley is a criminal from Utah, convicted in the kidnapping and murder of Bryan Ruff. It is also strongly suspected he murdered his second wife Crystal.

Bryan Ruff disappeared on the night of December 10, 1991 from the remote mountain shack where he worked as a security guard.

Co-worker Dale Bradley was considered a person of interest in the case because his first wife had admitted to having an affair with Bryan.

Dale and Bryan both worked as security guards for Kennecott, one of the biggest copper producers in the State of Utah. The area they monitored was one of Kennecott's remote land holdings.

Investigators questioned Bradley about the disappearance, but he wasn't considered a strong suspect at the time.

Bradley's first wife told investigators that Dale had cleaned his car from top to bottom the day after Bryan's disappearance.

Dale Bradley agreed to let investigators look at the car. There wasn't anything of interest as evidence, so investigators took pictures of the car interior and exterior, as well as the trunk.

The trunk of the car was metal inside and out, and painted with a red chrome paint.

One of the investigators scraped off some of the paint as evidence, since there wasn't much to go on.

Two years later in July of 1993, hikers discovered a body hidden in a shallow grave at Five Mile Point.

The body had badly decomposed to a near skeletal state. It was impossible to conduct any kind of forensic tests on the body. The snow and thaw of two Utah winters had rendered the body clean.

Near the body was a pair of work boots and a wallet, which identified the victim as Bryan Ruff. He had been shot in the back. The murder weapon has never been recovered.

Nothing found at the grave site was considered of consequence at the time, and the case went cold.

Then in April of 2005, Bradley's second wife Crystal was found stabbed to death outside their home.

While questioning Dale, the detective noticed he had been a person of interest in Bryan Ruff's disappearance years earlier.

Investigators reopened the case. They didn't have much evidence, but they believed it was enough to make a case in court.

Investigators retrieved the paint sample from the Ruff disappearance file. Coincidentally, one of the work boots at the grave site had a red scuff mark on the underside. Authorities now suspected the scuff mark was paint. They wondered if Bryan Ruff had been inside the trunk of Dale's car.

They were unable to recover Dale's car, which had been sold and later scraped by new owners. They did find a car of the same make and year, however.

State labs were sent three samples of red chrome paint taken from the identical car, from Dale's car, and from the underside of Bryan Ruff's boots. All three were identical.

The prosecution's case was considerably weak, but the motive and evidence of the paint sample would have to be enough.

Prosecutors told the jury they believed Dale Bradley had gone to abduct Bryan Ruff from work that December night in 1991. He'd probably forced Bryan inside the trunk at gun point. Bryan would have kicked hard at the trunk in an attempt to escape, which made the paint indent in his boot.

The drive to the grave site at Five Mile Point was over half an hour from the Kennecott shack.

Once there, prosecutors speculated that Dale Bradley made Bryan Ruff remove his work boots, making escape impossible.

He then walked Bryan to the shallow grave he'd dug earlier that day, keeping his gun at Bryan's back. Possibly, he'd made Bryan lie down in the grave. Then he shot him in the back and head.

Jurors found the prosecution's case convincing.

Dale Bradley was convicted for the murder of Bryan Ruff on April 17, 2007. He was sentenced for kidnapping and manslaughter, and given two consecutive prison sentences of two to twenty years each.

Dale Bradley has yet to be convicted in the death of his second wife Crystal.