The husband of a missing Texas mother and real estate agent was charged with murder on Thursday.
Brad Simpson, 53, was already being held in the Bexar County Jail on charges of prohibited weapons, evidence tampering, unlawful restraint and bodily injury to a family member. His total bond adds up to $5 million.
Suzanne Clark Simpson, a 51-year-old real estate agent and mother of four, was reported missing on October 7. A neighbor told police he saw the couple having a physical altercation outside their home in Olmos Park the previous day. The fight happened after they returned home from a party at The Argyle in San Antonio.
The neighbor said Suzanne Simpson was trying to get away from her husband, but he kept pulling her back down. He said he also heard screams from a wooded area near the home.
The couple had been married for 22 years.
Brad Simpson was initially arrested two days after his wife was reported missing.
Suzanne Simpson's body has not been located yet. Officials have conducted several searches for her, including one lasting several days at a southeast Bexar County landfill.
James Valle Cotter, a business associate of Brad, Simpson, is also facing charges of tampering with evidence with the intent to impair an investigation and possession of prohibited weapons. He was initially being held at Bexar County Jail on a $1 million bond, but it was later lowered to $100,000.
Prosecutors and Cotter's defense attorney agreed to the bond modification, which includes the conditions that Cotter can have no contact with Brad Simpson, cannot possess a firearm and must wear a GPS tracking device if he posts bond.
Paul F. Rothstein, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, previously spoke with Newsweek about the difficulties prosecutors may face in making a case against a defendant when a body has not been located.
"It's very difficult, but it depends on whether the prosecutors can construct a story that compellingly suggests motive to kill the wife on the part of the husband, and compellingly suggests that it was done, even without a body," Rothstein said.
Rothstein said it can be challenging to convict someone of murder when that key piece of evidence is missing, but not impossible.
"The cases in which there is no body have usually not gone forward to trial, either because the prosecutors back off, or if they have gone forward to trial and the defendant gets off, it's because the jury feels the case has not been made," Rothstein said. "So these are very, very rare cases where there is a conviction of murder when there's been no body, but they are not unheard of."
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