Missouri man charged four decades later with murder of pregnant wife

Thanks to advancements in DNA technology, a cold case in Missouri may be coming to a close. Last week, a man was arrested and charged with the murder of his pregnant wife, who was last seen in 1988.

Key Takeaways:

In 1988, Ronna Bremer was seven months pregnant when her husband, Joel Bremer, reported her missing.
She was declared dead in 1997. A skull anonymously sent to authorities was determined to be hers in 2001.
The case went cold for many years until DNA technology tied Joel Bremer to the crime.
Bremer was arrested on July 31 and faces two counts of second-degree murder for killing Ronna and her preborn baby.

The Details:

Joel Lake Bremer was arrested on July 31 and charged with two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of his wife, Ronna Bremer, and her preborn child.

Ronna was 22 years old and seven months pregnant when Joel reported her missing in 1988. According to news reports, Joel filed for divorce in 1990, as Ronna had not yet been declared dead at that time; in 1991, the Green County Sheriff’s Office received a human skull from an anonymous sender. That skull was not confirmed to be Ronna's until 2001, though she was declared dead in 1997.

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The case went cold several times over the course of 37 years because investigators had little to go on.

“There just wasn’t a whole lot of information at the time or any tangible evidence to put their hands on to move forward with the investigation,” Sheriff Brad Cole of the Christian County Sheriff’s Office told KY3. “It was, I mean, for lack of a better term, it was just a missing person case that nobody had any information about.”

In November 2024, evidence was sent to a DNA testing lab, while investigators worked through interviews regarding the case. Eventually, the DNA connected Joel Bremer to the crime. U.S. Marshalls arrested Bremer on July 31, and he is currently being held on a $200,000 bond.

READ: 'Absolutely egregious': Man kills pregnant woman in front of their son

The Big Picture:

Sadly, as these allegations reveal, pregnant women have long faced the threat of violence, especially at the hands of their partners.

According to research published by the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in January 2025, between 2005 and 2022, of 20,421 maternal deaths, 1,407 were due to homicide. Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have stated that pregnant women in the U.S. are more likely to be murdered than to die from obstetric causes.

Hooman Azad, MD, MPH, a fourth-year resident in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at New York’s Columbia University Irving Medical Center, has explained:

“Many people are surprised when they hear that violence is the leading cause of death in pregnancy. Right now, the definition of maternal mortality does not include death by homicide. I’m not sure this is correct — being pregnant or postpartum significantly increases the risk of death by homicide, and more pregnant women die of violence than any individual medical cause.
Part of the reason violence is not recognized as the leading cause of death during pregnancy is because we don’t include homicide and suicide in the definition of maternal mortality."

The Bottom Line:

Both preborn children and their mothers deserve protection from violence. When society as a whole disregards the life of the preborn as expendable, it doesn't take much for that disregard to extend to other lives. All human life is precious and worth protecting.

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