Many of Byron Case's supporters have raised the possibility that Justin Bruton killed Anastasia, and have been doing so ever since Case's conviction for the crime. Byron Case had spoken of Justin's suicidal tendencies early on in an interview with the Jackson County Sheriff's Department.¹ Justin's suicide, barely two days after Anastasia's murder,² even though it did not raise any questions of his culpability at trial, has apparently given Case's supporters license to cast suspicion upon him.

But what evidence do they have that would make Bruton a likely suspect? Byron Case himself stated that he did not believe Justin to be homicidal.³ Both of Case's most important witnesses, Abraham Kneisley and Tara McDowell, both stated that Justin was acting normally when they saw him an hour after the alleged argument between him and Anastasia.⁴,5 By their testimony, Justin Bruton was showing no signs of anger or any other clues that he might be homicidal.

There is also the matter of the timing. According to testimony, Justin called Anastasia's home and spoke to her sister at about 9:30,⁶ drove to Tara McDowell's apartment where he and Case spoke to her for about 15-10 minutes⁷ before dropping Case off at his home some time between 10 and 10:30,⁸,9 then called and spoke to Anastasia's father, alerting him that Anastasia was missing.¹⁰ Having spent more than two hours since the time that Anastasia had allegedly exited from his car, Justin would have had to drive back to the area of Lincoln Cemetery and killed Anastasia, while Anastasia's father would be driving through the same area searching for her after Justin's call.

The problem is twofold: First, by all accounts in defense testimony, Justin had not been acting in any way homicidal that night,¹¹,12 and Case stated categorically that Justin just was not the kind of person who got physically angry. Second, if we assume the testimony of Case and his friends about the events of the night to be true, Justin would have had no opportunity to kill Anastasia, based on the timeframe.

Anastasia's time of death is estimated from available evidenct as having been between 7:30 and 10:00 PM,¹³ which further reduces the likelihood of Justin having returned to kill her nearly to the point of absolute impossibility.

The only other possibility that could name Justin as the killer is a scenario in which both Byron Case and Kelly Moffett actually witnessed Justin commit the murder. Byron Case had no rational reason to protect his dead friend, and while he did attempt to muddy the waters about Justin's possible guilt,¹⁴ Case declined to implicate Justin Bruton of the crime when given a direct opportunity.¹⁵

Did Kelly Moffett name Justin as the killer? Yes,¹⁶ but only briefly and in sudden panic that she might be implicated herself for accusing Case, and it should be noted that she quickly retracted that story.¹⁷,18

Was Justin implicated by anyone else? Oddly, the testimony of one of Case's defense witnesses seemed to indirectly implicate Justin Bruton. Abraham Kneisley testified that Justin had only a couple of months before the murder approached him about trying to obtain a weapon.¹⁹ It was pointed out during cross-examination that Kneisley had interviewed with police a little more than a week after the murder and had never bothered to mention that fact, waiting until the trial to reveal it.²⁰

Had Justin Bruton killed Anastasia, and had Byron Case and Kelly Moffett witnessed it, then both would have been guilty of obstruction, and possibly of Accessory to Murder, but that would have still cost Case a considerably lesser sentence than Murder One. He had many opportunities to directly implicate Justin, and had no motivation to protect Justin while on trial himself for murder, so we must accept that Justin could not have killed Anastasia with Byron Case and Kelly Moffett there to witness the crime. If Case did witness the murder and consistently lied to police about it, then he was a fool to do so and allow himself to become implicated, and even more foolish to remain silent after having been accused.

Assuming that either of these scenarios could have occured, it still creates two important conundrums:

1. Forensic evidence indicates that Anastasia was surprised by her killer (an issue that will be discussed at greater length in the next section), and for Justin to have done so would have required Anastasia to become involved with something else, turn her back to Justin and to completely ignore his actions as he retrieved his rifle or shotgun from its hiding place (probably opening the trunk of his car) and walked up to her without interrupting her concentration. Without Anastasia having someone else with whom to argue, it it is unlikely that she would have turned her attention away from Justin so completely and for long enough for him to have surprised her and to have killed her in the manner in which she was murdered.
2. Justin would have had to completely dispose of the murder weapon that same night and then bought a new shotgun the following morning (fewer than 12 hours later) in order to commit suicide²¹ the night after that.

Justin's suicide barely more than 48 hours after Anastasia's murder raises suspicion among Case's supporters, who feel it might point to his possible guilt over her murder. Jackson County Prosecutor Therese Crayon had felt also that it pointed to Justin's personal sense of guilt, but not that it meant his guilt in the crime.²²

The theory that Justin Bruton was the guilty party is less unbelievable than the Random Stranger theory, but only slightly less unbelievable, and still not within the realm of plausibility.