Bruner found guilty for murder of Newton native Derek Moore

JOPLIN, Mo. — Derek Moore’s mother told Jeffrey Bruner following his conviction on first-degree murder charges Thursday that his decision to kill her son a year and a half ago created a common subset of victims in both families.

“I guess I am a victim,” Darcy Moore Kane told Bruner during the punishment phase of his trial. “But, to me, the true victims in this mess you’ve created are the children.”

Bruner’s 16-year-old daughter and 20-year-old son lose their father to a life behind bars, while Derek Moore’s 7-year-old boy in Iowa must grow up without the benefit of his father’s attentions.

“Elijah was the love of his life, and Derek was the love of Elijah’s life,” Moore Kane told the court.

A jury of eight women and four men deliberated a little more than three hours before finding Bruner, 41, guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. It was given options of convicting him of second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter instead, but it decided prosecutors had proved the element of deliberation required in first-degree murder.

The conviction carries a mandatory term of life without parole in Missouri. That left just the penalty for armed criminal action to be decided in the punishment phase of the three-day trial in Joplin. Jurors recommended a five-year term on that count, and the defendant was taken into custody at the conclusion of the trial. Formal sentencing will be conducted May 18.

Moore’s mother and brother had asked jurors to give Bruner a second life sentence, while friends and family of the defendant asked for a more forgiving term.

“I know there’s a lot of hurting people in all of this,” said Michael Shubert, a friend of the defendant. “So I would just ask you to do what’s in your heart.”

Several of Bruner’s friends told jurors how out of character the defendant’s crime was for him. Shubert said he had never seen him show anger. A supervisor at the plant where he worked in Joplin called him “extremely reliable” and “level-headed,” and a former co-worker referred to him as “a good man who in a split-second did a bad thing.”

“I think Jeffrey’s biggest sin — his problem — is he loved his wife too much,” said Fred Reamsnider, a minister at a church Bruner attended in Springfield.

The defense had argued that his wife’s infidelities drove the defendant to a point where he snapped during a confrontation with her and the 37-year-old assistant football coach at Missouri Southern State University outside the movie theater where they had gone on a date.

A psychologist testified that he believes Bruner suffered an abnormal reaction to a life-threatening situation known as acute stress disorder that caused him not to be able to recall much of what happened when he confronted Moore and his wife. Bruner told the court that he remembers the gun in his hand and two shots being fired. He testified that he did not recall anything else until the point where he reached his vehicle after the shooting.

Dr. Erik Mitchell, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy, testified that six of the seven rounds fired struck Moore, one in his shoulder, three in the back and two in a forearm and hand. A shot that passed through his spinal cord would have caused instant paralysis and dropped him to his hands and knees as eyewitnesses described, Mitchell said.

The trajectory of a shot that entered his left forearm and exited the palm of his hand was consistent with being fired while he was in such a position. Coarse scrapings found on the hand were consistent with the hand having been in contact with concrete or pavement. Another shot that tore into the front of the same forearm appeared to have been a ricochet off the pavement while the arm was in contact with the ground, Mitchell told the court.
During closing arguments Thursday, Assistant Prosecutor Kimberly Fisher characterized Bruner's inability to recall the last five shots or kicking the defendant in the head at least twice after emptying the gun as selective memory loss.

"Anything and everything that can't help him, he conveniently can't remember," Fisher said.
She pointed out that the defendant claimed Moore made a statement that no other witness recalls hearing: "I'm not from here, m---f---. I'll slit your throat within two hours." While that was the threat the psychologist believes brought on Bruner's acute stress disorder, no witness reported hearing Moore say it.

“There’s no life-threatening situation other than the defendant’s self-serving statements,” Fisher told the jury.

To further call into question the defense claim that Bruner suffered a dissociative moment that diminished his ability to deliberate on what he was doing, the state called moviegoer Kevin Demery as a rebuttal witness on Thursday.

Demery told the jury that he heard Bruner say as Moore and his wife were walking away: “If I can’t have you, no one can.” Demery said Bruner then pulled out the gun and started shooting.

Defense attorney Ross Rhoades tried to discredit Demery’s testimony by pointing out on cross-examination that Demery failed to tell an investigator with the Joplin Police Department that he heard Bruner make that statement when he was interviewed by the investigator in December 2013.

Rhoades asked jurors in closing arguments if killing Moore was his client’s intent when he went to the theater, why he first approached his wife and attempted to reason with her about what she was doing. The defense claimed he armed himself merely as a precaution after seeing how large a man Moore was in the photo and fearing a physical altercation with him.

“The decision apparently wasn’t to go kill Derek Moore,” Rhoades said. “It was to get his wife back.”

But prosecutors emphasized the significance of the defendant having taken two fully loaded handguns and an extra clip with him to the theater parking lot. That’s 37 bullets he brought to the scene of the crime, Fisher said.

“That is not a precaution,” she said. “That is a death intent on Mr. Moore.”

Sealed divorce

Jeffrey and Dawn Michelle Bruner obtained a divorce last summer in Jasper County Circuit Court, and she now goes by her maiden name of Hale. The divorce case does not appear in electronic court records because the file was ordered sealed by a judge.