The husband of Texas mom Suzanne Simpson urgently messaged his business partner to “haul ass” to his home to help hide a rifle, a day before he reported his wife missing.
“If you’re in Bandera, can you haul ass to meet me at your house?” Brad Simpson allegedly texted James Vallee Cotter on the morning of Oct. 8, according to an arrest affidavit viewed by KENS5. “I don’t have much time.”
In a follow-up message, Simpson, 53, attempted to downplay the frantic tone he had minutes earlier.
“Sorry for the urgency but you’re all I got especially now… social media is destroying me,” the property tycoon wrote.
Cotter, 65, agreed to help his partner and allegedly took the AK-47 from Simpson and stowed the firearm inside a wall in his home.
Suzanne Simpson, 51, was last seen on Oct. 6, the same day her and her husband got into a shouting match.
The mother of four had called her own mom at around 9 p.m., an hour before she was last seen, to tell her Brad had physically hurt her, including injuring her arm and back.
The violence was “alcohol-related,” Suzanne’s mother Barbara Clark suggested at a vigil for her daughter.
A neighbor reportedly saw the couple fighting outside their San Antonio home before hearing screams in a wooded area between 10 and 11 p.m., according to KSAT.
Brad Simpson reported his wife missing on Oct. 9.
He was arrested the same day and charged with assault causing bodily injury – family violence and unlawful restraint.
Officials, having viewed a previously recorded video of Simpson’s gun vault, searched the home and discovered the gun was missing from the location it was seen in the footage.
A search of Cotter’s home on Oct. 21 recovered the gun, with the help of an ATF K-9 team that pinpointed its location.
Authorities believe a string, attached to the gun’s sight, was intended to allow for easy retrieval of the gun from “out of the void” in the wall, according to the outlet.
Cotter was arrested and charged with a third-degree felony of tampering with evidence with intent to impair an investigation.
Simpson was handed additional charges of prohibited weapons and tampering/fabricating evidence following the discovery of the gun that came from China, KENS5 reported.
He also is facing a federal gun charge for illegal possession of a short-barreled rifle.
Simpson is being held on bonds totaling $3 million and is due back in court on Nov. 23.
He has not been charged with his wife’s disappearance, but officials are have searched landfills, wooded areas and her home for her body and collecting evidence.