Just five days before Christmas, pregnant mom Ronna Bremer disappeared from her Ozark, Missouri home in 1988. Two years later, her skull was found in a crevice in the woods, but the mystery of her death would never be solved. 

Now, more than 30 years later, Cold Justice is taking on the complicated case as prosecutor Kelly Siegler and homicide detective Terri Hook work with the Christian County Sheriff’s Office to untangle conflicting witness accounts and re-examine the possible suspects, who are all members of the same family.

As Hooks said, “Somebody needs to get justice for her.”

Joel told police he originally planned to wait outside his workplace until they opened the next day to get his paycheck, but he got too cold and returned home, where he fell asleep in the living room with his two children. According to Joel’s account, he didn’t realize that Ronna was missing until the next morning.

Two years later, someone found a skull—later confirmed to be Ronna’s—hidden in a crevice not far from David Gray’s property, but the rest of her remains were never found.

New witness comes forward

For years, the case went cold until a new witness came forward in 2001. He told detectives that David had allegedly confessed to killing a woman by choking her to death in his car.

“Apparently he didn’t choke her long enough,” the unidentified witness said in an interview. “He was laughing, telling me, uh, he ‘had to choke the b—h twice.’ You know, she wouldn’t die.” 

The man also admitted that his girlfriend had been the one to find the skull, but said she was too scared to come forward, so she’d mailed it anonymously to detectives in a neighboring county.

Joel Bremer’s past conviction

At the time of her disappearance those who knew Ronna, including her family and coworkers, told investigators that they believed Joel had been violent in the marriage. 

Years after his wife disappeared, he also served time in prison for molesting the couple’s daughter.

“It’s not only heartbreaking,” Siegler said of the conviction, “it makes you also wonder about his capacity for violence and deception.”

Questioning witnesses

After getting a briefing on the case, the Cold Justice team got to work retracing the steps both Ronna and Joel supposedly took that night according to witness accounts.

As Siegler remarked: “The problem with a case like this is that it’s impossible to know what’s really true when everybody involved has some reason to want to lie.”

They concluded it likely took two people to dispose of Ronna’s pregnant body on the hillside. 

They also spoke to the couple’s daughter Samantha Freye, without cameras. Although she was just three years old at the time, she remembered a vehicle pulling up to the house that night and her mom saying “there he is” in an apparent reference to her dad, before Ronna headed outside.

The team also re-interviewed the witness who came forward in 2001. Although more than twenty years had passed, the man’s story didn’t change and he described the alleged confession as the “most heinous thing I believe I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Simpson also told the team he remembered going to Ronna and Joel’s duplex that night while looking for his brother-in-law, but said David dropped him off at home before they ever found Joel. 

Confronting the suspects

Hooks and Det. Winston Collins of the Christian County Sheriff’s Office had their own conversation with Joel. Despite some minor inconsistencies, he stuck to his story about what happened that night and insisted he was telling the truth, insisting to investigators, “I have not lied to you at all.” 

Yet, the detectives still felt the story didn’t “make much sense.”

Meanwhile, Siegler and Det. Kevin Turpin confronted David at his home. He insisted he never found Joel that night or went to the duplex to talk to Ronna, contrary to Simpson’s account. He said he never knew that Ronna’s skull was discovered near his house and told them he didn’t kill her or ever confess to doing so.

“It’s a lot of hearsay,” he said. “People saying this and that.”

By the episode’s end, the team felt they had a strong case against both Joel and David. The detectives with the Christian County Sheriff’s Office met with the prosecutor, who told them she planned to look into filing charges for both men.