In the fall of 2016, a dentist from Pennsylvania, USA – Lawrence Rudolph, and his wife Bianca, went to Zambia to indulge in their common passion – hunting large animals.
Their goal is to add a leopard to their trophy collection. Instead, however, the victim is someone else – Bianca herself. She was fatally shot with a rifle at their hunting lodge in Kafue National Park while packing to go home.
To this day, Rudolph, now 67, maintains that it was an accident and he did not kill his wife. However, the jurors who found him guilty in the recently concluded trial decided otherwise.
The dentist was accused of intentionally killing his wife and of fraud, targeting his wife’s life insurance money. He managed to collect more than 4.8 million dollars from the insurers, the indictment claims. And as usually happens in such cases, another woman is also involved.
“I did not kill my wife, I could not,” Rudolph declared to the jury, but the prosecution’s evidence clearly weighed more in the eyes of the jurors.
The incident — or the killing — occurred in September 2016. The couple brought Remington and Browning rifles to the safari. The fatal shot came from the Browning, and Rudolph told investigators he was in the bathroom when he heard rumbles. He says the weapon accidentally went off while Bianca was holstering it. Lawrence finds her bleeding on the floor with a wound to her chest.
The lawsuit is being filed in Denver, Colorado, where the insurance companies affected by the fraud are headquartered.
Federal prosecutors in the city believe the case was staged for the money and so Lawrence could be with his mistress.
Things probably would have remained without consequences for Larry, but after Bianca’s death, her friend turns to the FBI with a request to investigate the case. She explains that the dentist was having an extramarital affair at the time of the incident.
She was with Lori Milliron, the manager of his dental practice near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who even bragged to others that she had been dating Larry for 15 to 20 years, witnesses later testified in court. Milliron moved in with Rudolph three months after Bianca’s death.
The deceased wife’s relative also claimed that Larry yelled at Bianca often and the two fought over money.
The fact that Larry quickly cremated his wife’s body in Zambia is also suspicious for the investigators – the ritual was scheduled three days after her death. After reporting her death to the U.S. Embassy in Lusaka, the consul later told the FBI he had “a bad feeling about the situation, which he felt happened too quickly,” according to the case documents.
The consul and two other embassy officials go to the funeral home where the body is kept. They want to photograph it and preserve potential evidence. When the grieving husband found out they were taking pictures, he was “furious”, the consul claimed.
Rudolph explains to him that his wife’s death was the result of suicide, but according to the Zambian authorities’ investigation, it was an accidental gunshot. The insurers’ investigation came to the same conclusion, and the companies paid Bianca’s life insurance policies.
However, the forensic examination indicated that Bianca’s wounds were from a gunshot from at least 60 centimeters to 1 meter, which according to criminologists means that she did not die from an accidental gunshot.
According to the investigation, the shooting was planned in advance so that Larry could claim it was an accident. The whole incident was staged so that the husband could cheat the insurers and live openly with his mistress.
According to the defense of the lawyer of the accused – David Marcus, Rudolph had no reason to kill his wife for money, since his dental practice was valued at 10 million dollars. The defense plans to appeal their client’s conviction.
At the trial, Laurie Milliron and her lover were charged and found guilty of accessory and obstruction of justice. She also claimed that Larry and his wife were in an open marriage. According to Larry himself, an open marriage came about because he was not able to satisfy Bianca enough.
Lori Milliron, 64, told Rolling Stone that the trial was a “witch hunt.” “It’s scary, they usually discriminate against the poor. And now they discriminated against Larry because he’s rich and he’s traveled the world,” she told the magazine before jurors reached their verdict.
And their decision for the dentist could mean life in prison or even the death sentence.
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