Business partner of missing Texas mom’s husband arrested on suspicion of evidence tampering: officials

The business partner of still-missing Texas mom Suzanne Clark Simpson’s husband has been arrested on suspicion of evidence tampering — two weeks after her husband was jailed for alleged domestic violence.

James Valle Cotter, 65, was arrested at his home Monday on a third-degree felony charge of tampering with evidence with intent to impair an investigation, the Texas Department of Public Safety announced.

Cotter allegedly attempted to dispose of a weapon for Simpson’s husband, Brad Simpson, which may have been linked to her Oct. 6 disappearance, sources told MySanAntonio.

Cotter is also charged with possession of a prohibited weapon, and is being held on $500,000 bond, according to jail records.

Suzanne Clark Simpson, 51, vanished after she and her husband allegedly got into a shouting match after she returned home from a party at the Argyle, a private club in Alamo Heights.

Just an hour before she disappeared, Simpson supposedly told her mother that Brad had been physically abusing her. 

“She called me up and told me the things that Brad had done to her physically,” Simpson’s mother, Barbara Clark, said at a vigil earlier this month.

The violence was “alcohol-related,” Clark suggested.

A neighbor also told police he saw the couple fighting outside their Olmos Park home between 10 and 11 p.m.

Brad Simpson, 53, was arrested on Oct. 9 and charged with causing bodily injury – family violence and unlawful restraint, both misdemeanors.

He is being held on a $2 million bond.

Brad and James Valle Cotter are former business partners, the Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed.

Brad was an executive for Cotter & Sons — a holding company run by Cotter’s father, real estate tycoon James F. Cotter — from 2007 to 2017, MySanAntonio reported.

Brad and James Valle Cotter were both named as defendants in a civil case over Premier Facilities Solutions, a janitorial company that Brad created with Cotter’s support, the outlet revealed.

When other Cotter & Sons executives decided to sell the company to the National Building Service, Brad and Cotter promised to exclusively employ the buyer’s services at Cotter & Sons facilities.

Cotter & Sons, however, cut ties with NBS, which resulted in a lawsuit. During the proceedings, Cotter & Sons execs accused Brad of bribery — and said the exclusivity agreement was based on a promise that neither he nor James Valle Cotter were qualified to make.

The legal battle ultimately cost Cotter & Sons $1 million in damages, and several of its subsidiaries that Brad Simpson managed filed for bankruptcy, MySanAntonio said.

As of Wednesday morning, the search of Suzanne Clark Simpson remains ongoing.

The same neighbor who witnessed Simpson and her husband fighting also claimed that the pair went into the woods, where he heard “two or three screams.”

An hour later, Brad allegedly left the house in his pickup truck and did not return for two or three hours, the neighbor said.

Simpson’s mother previously admitted that she did not believe her daughter was still alive.

“I don’t think she is because I have not heard from her,” the heartbroken mom explained.