INTERNATIONAL MATCH GOES AWRY
Russian bride says American dream became nightmare
By Sue Lindsay, Rocky Mountain News
December 18, 2004
She left Russia five years ago to begin a new life with the American husband she met through an international dating service.
A practicing psychiatrist, she looked forward to living in the United States free from the heavy-handed government and police she feared in her homeland.
But she wound up trading the oppression of Russian society for a private prison in a suburban American home in Arvada, where she says she was physically, verbally and sexually abused for three years.
In February, her former husband, Marvin Dale Bredemeier, was convicted of six counts of sexual assault. The woman is not named in this story because she is a victim of sexual assault.
Two months later Bredemeier was charged with trying to have her killed while he was jailed in Jefferson County on the sexual assault conviction.
Bredemeier, sentenced to 37 years to life in the rape case, denies all of the allegations.
He contends his wife concocted the rape charges as part of an immigration scam so she could divorce him and remain in the country.
"I did not do this crime. I have not lied. I have told the truth," he said.
He told a jury this week that he never intended to have his wife murdered but was distraught over a court order keeping him from seeing his son for two years.
"I'm devastated. I'm heart-broken," he said.
The jury in the case deliberated all day Friday without reaching a verdict and will start again Monday.
Bredemeier's former wife said her safety depends on his remaining in jail.
"Since being abused by Dale, almost every day of my life has been a struggle," she said.
"I lived with him 3 1/2 years. I can't stress how dangerous this person is, especially if someone has done something to him. I fear the day he is released from prison."
Lonely search
When she met Bredemeier, though, she thought her dreams were about to come true.
About seven years ago, the woman, now 31, placed an ad in an international dating magazine hoping to find a partner and build a family.
"I was looking to improve my life, to give my children more chances than I had," she said.
At the time, she was making about $100 a month working as a psychiatrist in a hospital in southern Russia near Volgograd.
Her home was a room in old military quarters where she shared a kitchen and bathroom with 12 families. The toilet amounted to a hole in the floor.
Then 24 and considered an "old bride" by Moscow standards, medical school and work consumed her life. She met few eligible men and yearned for love.
"It was depressing, actually," she said. "I started to feel like something was wrong with me. Why is no one interested in me?"
A close friend's sister had married a wonderful American she met through a dating service. So she sent in pictures.
First in a suit, not smiling.
Then in a suit, smiling.
Then in a swim suit, which she hated.
Bredemeier, 41, was among those who responded to her ad.
He told family and friends that he was frustrated with trying to meet women. Those he met in bars already had their "2.3 children" and didn't want any more, his father, Marvin Bredemeier Sr., said.
"Dale wanted a family," he said.
'Soul mate' to 'chattel'
The two exchanged letters and pictures, and eventually began speaking by phone almost daily.
He told her he was a computer technician with an international company. In fact, he was a pizza delivery man by day and bug exterminator by night.
An eager suitor, Bredemeier proposed marriage even before the two met face-to-face.
"He was telling me that I'm a beautiful and talented woman, that he wants to have a family with me, that he loves me," she said. "He told me he feels it in his heart and his soul, that I'm his soul mate."
Finally, in September 1998, Bredemeier went to Russia to meet the woman for the first time.
During a seven-day visit, he asked her parents for her hand in marriage and formally proposed, giving her a diamond ring she said she later learned was a Zircon. She accepted.
"I wanted to believe in him. I was lonely. If you're missing something, wanting something, you fall for it," she explained of her hasty decision.
"I wanted to feel that way. It was something I was missing and something I found and I was happy with it. It was exciting for me to finally make my dream come true."
By that time, she had been wooed by older, richer men. She knew Bredemeier wasn't rich by the care he took in spending the $700 he brought with him on the trip.
"I didn't care how much money he had," she said. "It was more important to me that he only had so much and was willing to spend it all on me."
The two waited another nine months as her immigration papers were completed. She arrived in the United States in May 1999. Bredemeier, dressed in a black suit and tie, met her with a big bouquet of red roses.
She dreamed of a wedding in a beautiful white gown and veil, but Bredemeier convinced her to get married a month later while they were visiting his parents in Kansas City.
At the time, Bredemeier had $20 in his pocket, which he used to pay for the license. His brother paid for the rings, his parents for the church.
Bredemeier's parents said they had doubts about the relationship before their son brought his bride home, but came to love her as one of their own.
"We tried to talk him out of it at first. I asked him, 'Can't you find a wife, if not in Colorado, maybe somewhere in America?' " Bredemeier Sr. said. "But we thought a great deal of (her). We told her parents we would love her like our own daughter."
Although she described her husband as caring and sweet at first, she said his temper and unusual sexual demands soon surfaced.
"Once she was here, he turned from treating her as his dream bride to treating her like chattel," said prosecutor Doug Cohen.
"She was extremely vulnerable," he said. "She was from a foreign culture, came from halfway across the world, and had no friends, family, no support system here. He took advantage of that."
Unplanned pregnancy
Bredemeier's parents, however, portray her as a gold-digger.
"She wanted the American dream, the big house, the nice car, the salary," Bredemeier Sr. said. "Dale was working night and day to give her that. But it wasn't enough."
She had confided in her husband a traumatic experience in Russia in which an attacker grabbed her by the neck, threw her to the ground and nearly raped her before she was able to fight him off and escape.
After they had been married two months, she said her husband began wanting to incorporate the "raping game" into their sexual encounters, asking her to relive the experience.
She reluctantly agreed, but said the encounters became more and more forceful.
In September 1999, she learned she was pregnant. It was not planned, she said, and her husband wanted her to abort.
She persuaded him to let her continue the pregnancy, but said his behavior changed. He became verbally and physically abusive, flying off the handle at "virtually nothing" and threatening to deport her when he became angry.
"He was mad at me no matter what I do," she said.
Bredemeier became obsessed with Internet porn sites during her pregnancy, she said, some of which depicted violent rape scenes, bestiality and other deviant sex acts. He began having phone sex with other women.
After their son was born in 2000, she said he demanded sex using the increasingly violent "raping game." This continued for more than a year.
Gradually, she worked to become more independent of her husband, she said. She learned how to drive a car and got a job in a King Soopers pharmacy. She returned to school to become a pharmacist.
Meanwhile, her relationship with her husband worsened. She said he threatened to kick her out of the house, take their son away from her, burn her passport and have her deported. Sometimes he locked her out of the house for hours in snow and rain.
Trapped and isolated
When she tried to reconcile with him, he told her things would be OK if she would "comply, obey and listen to him, do what he said," she told police.
But, she said, he became more violent, kicking her, throwing things at her, grabbing her by the wrist and twisting it until she fell.
She said he forced her to watch Internet porn sites depicting violent rapes and then wanted to enact them with her, sometimes employing a kitchen knife to frighten her.
The sex acts became more and more violent, she said, deteriorating into demeaning acts of rape that continued even after she told him to stop and let her go.
"I wish I had the strength to leave before I did," she said. "I was too afraid of him to leave. I did believe I might be deported and have to leave my son here."
She said she felt trapped and isolated. She was living in a new country with no family and friends, struggling to express herself in a new language.
Fearful of police because of her experiences in Russia, she refused to ask for help.
"When you grow up in Russia, you don't call the police," she said. "I feel intimidated by police. There they will not help you."
Anyway, she thought, who would believe her?
"He is American citizen. I thought that police would believe him over me."
Eventually, she confided in her sister-in-law, who called police on Sept. 28, 2002, following another sexual assault. Two days later she obtained a restraining order against him.
During a taped phone call with his wife Oct. 9, 2002, Bredemeier said he loved her but blamed her for their problems.
"You're being rebellious, you're getting mouthy with me, you don't want to cooperate," he told her.
But he also promised not to rape her again.
Murder for hire
Bredemeier was charged Oct. 18, 2002, with multiple counts of sexual assault against his wife.
He denied the charges, saying his wife consented to the sex acts and that they planned to start an Internet pornography business.
Bredemeier's attorney argued that his wife concocted the charges so she could get out of the marriage without being sent back to Russia.
But the jury didn't buy it.
Bredemeier was convicted in February.
Two months later he was charged with trying to arrange his wife's murder from jail.
An informant told police Bredemeier first asked him to kill his wife. Then he asked him to kidnap his wife and force her to recant her testimony before shooting her in the head.
Bredemeier said "someone could kick down a door and stick a gun in her mouth, and then later made the statement that he could shoot her in the head," Arvada Police Detective Russell Boatright said.
Bredemeier told the informant that it was his wife's fault that he was going to prison.
"He asked me if I could kill her and make her disappear," the informant told the jury.
Bredemeier offered to pay $2,000 by transferring the title of a 1987 Plymouth, he said.
Defense attorney Maureen O'Brien countered that the car was worth only $300 and that Bredemeier had no money to hire a killer.
In a taped conversation with the informant, Bredemeier doesn't initiate statements about wanting his wife killed, but he doesn't object when the informant tells him the plan is going forward and Bredemeier talks about his son being cared for by his parents once his ex-wife is dead.
"They'll shoot her flat out," the informant told him.
"Oh, my God, they killed her. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom," Bredemeier replied on the tape, making a shooting motion at his head.
'Just trying to stay alive'
In his defense, Bredemeier said he was afraid the inmate would beat him up and went along with what he said so he wouldn't become angry.
"I was just trying to stay alive," Bredemeier said. "You don't know what it's like in that cellblock when you got people coming down on you."
But prosecutors contend that using other inmates to retaliate against his wife is nothing new for Bredemeier.
Two other inmates told police Bredemeier also solicited them to plant drugs in his wife's car so she would be arrested and deported back to Russia before his first trial took place.
Bredemeier denies the accounts given by all three inmates.
"I did want her deported, but I wouldn't go planting drugs," he said.
O'Brien contends they lied to get her client in trouble because they mistakenly believed he was in on child sex assault charges.
"They tormented him," the defense attorney said. "A couple of them decided to make his life a living hell."
O'Brien said they helped entrap him to get concessions in their own cases, a charge prosecutors deny.
"This guy's really gotten the shaft," O'Brien said. "He may not have been a saint, but I really don't think he deserves life in prison."
Bredemeier's ex-wife said she hopes the sentence in the earlier case will be sufficient to protect her and her son.
"I wanted to be safe and for my son to be safe. The longer he is locked up, the better off my family will be."
