The Suzanne Simpson Case: What the Court Records Say About Brad Simpson's No-Body Murder Trial

The party was at The Argyle, a private club in Olmos Park — a tiny, wealthy town almost entirely surrounded by San Antonio. Suzanne Clark Simpson, a 51-year-old mother of four, left with her five-year-old daughter, stopped at an H-E-B, and was home by about 9:25 p.m. on Sunday, October 6, 2024.

Ten minutes earlier, she had called her mother to say her husband had assaulted her. It was the last call anyone can place her making. By the next morning she was gone, and she has never been seen again.

Her husband, Brad Simpson, is charged with her murder. There is no body, no confirmed crime scene, and no recovered weapon. What there is, according to court records, is a 72-hour trail of trash bags, cement, bleach, a blue tarp, and a burn pit — and a wife who, months before she vanished, told her banker where to look for her if she ever disappeared.

This is a case file built from what has actually been filed in court. Brad Simpson has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent unless and until a jury says otherwise.

The disappearance

Olmos Park is the kind of place where a missing-persons report makes the whole city stop. Suzanne was reported missing on October 7, 2024. Police, volunteers, and search teams combed wooded areas, rural properties, and eventually a Boerne-area landfill. Nothing.

Within days, the framing shifted from missing to homicide. Brad Simpson was arrested on October 9, 2024, initially on family-violence-related counts. On December 3, 2024, a Bexar County grand jury indicted him for murder and a stack of related felonies. He has been held in the Bexar County Jail on $2 million bond ever since.

What the arrest warrant affidavit describes

The most detailed public account of the state's theory comes from the arrest warrant affidavit, portions of which were reported by San Antonio newsrooms after the records were released. According to that affidavit, this is how investigators say the hours around Suzanne's disappearance unfolded. None of it has yet been tested by cross-examination.

The night of October 6

• 9:15 p.m. — Suzanne calls her mother, says Brad assaulted her; the call lasts about eight minutes.
• 9:25 p.m. — She arrives home from the party with her young daughter.
• After 10 p.m. — A neighbor reports hearing loud arguing and seeing a physical struggle; the neighbor says Suzanne broke free and ran, with Brad pursuing her toward a wooded area, then heard screams.
• 10:22 p.m. — Suzanne's phone pings for the last time at the Simpson home.
• Around 11 p.m. — Her phone is shut down; the affidavit notes Simpson's AT&T account was accessed as the line was suspended.

October 7: the cleanup the state alleges

The affidavit lays out a day of surveillance footage and purchases. Investigators say Brad Simpson:

• Dropped his daughter at school with white trash bags and an ice chest visible in his truck bed;
• Was recorded at a Whataburger in Boerne around 9 a.m., his truck bed now holding trash bags, a gray trash can, an ice chest, and a "large bulky item wrapped and secured in a blue tarp," weighed down by a firewood rack;
• Bought, at a Home Depot in Boerne, two bags of Quikrete cement, a bucket with a lid, heavy-duty trash bags, Clorox bleach, and insect repellent — paying in cash;
• Asked a stranger for directions to the nearest dump, then traveled to a Kendall County solid-waste site;
• Later appeared on camera with the trash bags gone but the tarp, rack, and can still in the truck; then, at a subsequent stop, with the tarp gone too;
• Cleaned his truck at a car wash that afternoon;
• Turned his phone on and off repeatedly throughout the day.

October 8–9: the texts and the search

Two days after Suzanne vanished, the affidavit says Brad texted his business partner, James Vallee "Val" Cotter: "If you're in Bandera can you haul ass and meet me at your house?" followed by "I don't have much time…" and an instruction to move "all that shit into the pump house, especially the gun." Cotter, per the affidavit, replied that he was on his way and later texted, "Get over here!! I won't tell anyone… You're my brother."

When search warrants were executed, investigators reported finding a wall indentation at the bottom of a stairway in the Olmos Park home, trash bags matching those seen on video, and — at a Bandera County property — a burn site containing a burnt laptop and three phones. Forensic analysis, the affidavit says, recovered two notes Simpson created the day before his arrest, titled "This next life" and "Last will and testament," apologizing for assaulting his wife in August 2023 and again on October 6.

The physical evidence

Among the items investigators described: dried cement splashes in the truck's rear compartment and bed, a Clorox bottle in the back seat, and truck stains that tested positive — for Brad Simpson's own blood. In later reporting on the evidence, investigators were also said to have identified Suzanne's DNA on a saw capable of cutting metal recovered during the investigation.

The warning: "look for me in a lake"

The most haunting piece of the file is not physical. In an October 23 interview with the Texas Rangers, Suzanne's personal banker said Suzanne had confided in August that Brad was physically abusing her and regularly took her phone. And she had left an instruction that reads very differently now than it must have then: if she ever went missing, the banker should "look for her in a lake."

Her five-year-old daughter, separately, told a school counselor that she saw her dad push and hit her mom on October 6, and that he turned off her mother's phone because they were fighting.

Those statements are the heart of a legal battle that has to be resolved before a jury ever hears the case — because Suzanne cannot take the stand.

The legal fight #1: a murder case with no body

Texas, like every U.S. state, allows a murder conviction without a body. Prosecutors don't have to produce a corpse; they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim is dead and that the defendant caused the death — a burden usually carried entirely by circumstantial evidence. We break down how these prosecutions actually work in our explainer on no-body murder convictions.

It is rarer than a body-in-hand case, but far from unprecedented. A San Diego jury convicted Larry Millete of murdering his wife Maya five years after she vanished, with no body, no crime scene, and no weapon. In Virginia, Naresh Bhatt goes to trial this fall for the alleged murder of his wife Mamta, whose body has also never been found. The Simpson case now joins that hard category — and the absence of a body is exactly why the state's chain of circumstantial evidence, and Suzanne's own words, matter so much.

The legal fight #2: "forfeiture by wrongdoing"

Here is the pretrial issue that has helped push the trial into 2027. Ordinarily, the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment — as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Crawford v. Washington (2004) — bars prosecutors from using a witness's out-of-court "testimonial" statements unless the defendant gets to cross-examine that witness. Suzanne obviously cannot be cross-examined.

The workaround the state is invoking is forfeiture by wrongdoing: the principle that a defendant loses the right to object to a missing witness's statements when it was the defendant's own misconduct that made the witness unavailable. In plain terms — you cannot silence a witness and then complain that she never testified.

But there is a catch, and it is the whole ballgame. In Giles v. California (2008), the Supreme Court held that forfeiture by wrongdoing applies only when the defendant acted with the intent to prevent the witness from testifying — not merely because his wrongdoing had that effect. So to get Suzanne's statements in front of the jury, Bexar County prosecutors will likely have to persuade the court that Brad Simpson killed his wife at least in part to keep her from reporting or testifying about his alleged abuse. Domestic-violence homicides are precisely where courts have wrestled with this, and it is why prosecutors want the forfeiture hearing held before trial rather than mid-trial.

If they win it, the jury hears the "look for me in a lake" warning and the abuse disclosures. If they lose it, a central part of the state's narrative may never reach the box.

The co-defendant: James Cotter and the hidden gun

Brad Simpson is not the only person charged. His business partner James "Val" Cotter was indicted in Bexar County in December 2024 on charges including tampering with evidence and possession of a prohibited weapon, tied to allegations that he hid an illegally modified AK-style rifle for Simpson in the days after Suzanne vanished — the "gun" referenced in the texts. Cotter posted bond and was released, and in October 2025 a judge agreed to remove his GPS monitor. He has not been charged in Suzanne's death, and he is presumed innocent of the charges he does face.

Where the case stands now

The case has been reset again and again through 2026. Presiding Judge Joel Perez of the 437th Criminal District Court told the court an outside judge was reviewing the "extensive" evidence, and the defense has moved to challenge the murder indictment. At an August 31, 2026 status conference, prosecutors said they expected to wrap discovery within about 30 days and were preparing a protective order over certain materials; the judge targeted early 2027 for trial, leaving room for an earlier date if both sides are ready.

Date	What happened
Oct 6, 2024	Suzanne Clark Simpson last seen; calls her mother reporting an assault
Oct 7, 2024	Reported missing; alleged cleanup and disposal captured on surveillance
Oct 9, 2024	Brad Simpson arrested on family-violence-related charges
Dec 3, 2024	Grand jury indicts Simpson for murder + related felonies; Cotter indicted
2025–2026	Repeated resets; gag order; defense challenges; evidence review
Aug 31, 2026	Status conference — trial targeted early 2027; forfeiture-by-wrongdoing issue pending
Early 2027	Murder trial (targeted)

Dates in this case have moved repeatedly — treat every setting as tentative and check our true-crime court dates tracker for changes.

Why this case file matters

Strip away the affluent-enclave details and the Simpson case is a clean study in two of the hardest questions in criminal law: Can the state prove a murder when there is no body? And can a victim speak from beyond her own disappearance — through a banker, a mother, a five-year-old — when the law says the accused normally has the right to confront her?

The answers will be litigated in a Bexar County courtroom sometime in 2027. Until then, the record is what it is: an indictment, an affidavit, and a warning that Suzanne Simpson gave long before anyone needed it. Brad Simpson is charged, not convicted, and remains presumed innocent — a distinction we explain in charged vs. convicted — and nothing in the state's file has yet survived a defense cross-examination.

Case status as of this writing: Brad Simpson has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent of all charges unless and until proven guilty; his trial is targeted for early 2027 in Bexar County's 437th Criminal District Court. James Cotter has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and is presumed innocent. This article is based on the indictment, the arrest warrant affidavit as reported from released court records, and open-court proceedings. Suzanne Clark Simpson's remains have not been found. Featured image: the Bexar County Courthouse in San Antonio — photograph by Lily Thomas, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Simpson's case is pending in Bexar County's 437th Criminal District Court, not the historic courthouse pictured.