Gunman in 1991 Kennecott security guard killing admits guilt, seeks parole

SALT LAKE CITY — Dale Bradley Jr. no longer denies that he shot and killed Bryan Ruff in 1991.

“I got my gun out of my car and shot him, and it was over,” Bradley told the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole on Tuesday,

But he maintains his innocence in the unsolved killing of his wife, Crystal Bradley, whose body was discovered outside a building near their Wellington, Carbon County, residence on April 30, 2005, just a few months before Bradley was arrested in connection with Ruff’s death.

“Not a charge I’ve been charged with and I didn’t do it, and I’m not going to admit to something I didn’t do,” he said.

For Bradley, who had consistently maintained that he didn’t remember what happened in 1991 and who was convicted on an Alford plea — meaning he pleaded guilty to manslaughter while maintaining his innocence but acknowledged that prosecutors likely had enough evidence to convict him — his confession on Tuesday to killing Ruff was new.

But it still wasn’t enough to convince Ruff’s widow, Jennifer Ryan Ruff Campbell, that he has changed or that he should be released from prison.

“I don’t hold hate in my heart, but I will say justice has not been served in this situation,” she told the board.

On the night of Dec. 10, 1991, Ruff, 22, was working as a security guard at Kennecott Corp. when he went missing. His car was found locked in the parking lot, his lunch sitting half-eaten in his guard shack. It wasn’t until July 1993 that campers found Ruff’s body — still wearing his tattered guard uniform — in a shallow grave at Five Mile Pass near Fairfield, Utah County. He had been shot five times in the back.

Bradley, who was one of Ruff’s co-workers in 1991, was arrested 14 years later in 2005. In 2007 he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and kidnapping and was ordered to serve two consecutive terms of two to 20 years in prison. He claimed that he went into a diabetic coma that produced amnesia on that day and didn’t remember what happened.

It was also discovered during this time that Ruff was having an affair with Bradley’s first wife, Kristi.

In 2005, after Bradley’s second wife, Crystal Bradley, was stabbed to death and it was learned that Dale Bradley was a suspect, a cold case detective with the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office, Todd Park, was asked to take another look at the Ruff homicide.

On Tuesday, Dale Bradley went before a member of the parole board for the first time. The first issue board vice chairman Blake Hills brought up was a recently written confession by Bradley that said he allowed anger and jealousy to consume him in the heat of the moment, and he shot Ruff.

“So you acknowledge that you committed this crime?” Hills asked.

“Yes sir.”

When Campbell addressed the board, she immediately began crying as she recounted what had happened over the past 30-plus years.

“My nightmare started over 33 years ago. I was 20 years old. I was five months pregnant,” she told the board. “The loss impacted me for the rest of my life.”

When she later found out about Ruff’s affair, she said it was another blow that “took me years” to come to terms with. She said the nightmares only continued for the 18 months her husband’s body remained missing and then waited for more than a decade before an arrest was made. Now, she says she recently “spiraled back into a nightmare of hell” in anticipation of Tuesday’s hearing.

“He will not take responsibility and he will not own up to what he did,” Campbell said tearfully. “You cannot be rehabilitated if you will not take responsibility.”

Campbell said it’s easy for Bradley to be an exemplary inmate when he’s in a controlled environment.

“Eighteen years of good behavior will never be justice for what he took,” she said.

Campbell acknowledged that she “forgives” Bradley, noting that she’s had to do a lot of forgiving because of “everything over this situation.” However, she does not believe Bradley should be released from prison.