Man denies killing wife on safari, says woman accidentally shot

Lawrence and Bianca Rudolph shared a passion for big game hunting. In late September 2016, the couple traveled from their home in Phoenix to Zambia, the South African nation, where Bianca Rudolph was determined to add a leopard to her animal trophy collection.

They carried two guns for hunting: a Remington 375 rifle and a 12-gauge Browning shotgun.

After killing other animals during the two-week trip—but not a leopard—Bianca Rudolph never returned home.

She suffered a fatal shotgun blast in her hunting cabin at dawn as she was packing to return to Phoenix, federal prosecutors allege in court documents.

Now Lawrence Rudolph, 67, is charged with foreign murder and mail fraud in the death of his wife of 30 years.

He pleaded not guilty and testified in his own defense this week at his trial in Denver, KMGH, an affiliate of the CNN .

“I didn’t kill my wife. I couldn’t kill my wife. I would not kill my wife,” he told jurors.

Rudolph told investigators he heard the shot while in the bathroom and believed the shotgun accidentally went off as she was putting it in the case, court documents say. He found her bleeding on the floor of his cabin in Kafue National Park, he says.

But federal prosecutors allege Rudolph killed his wife for insurance money and to be with his girlfriend.

THE CNN contacted Rudolph’s attorney, David Markus, but received no response.

In a motion Markus filed in January listing his client’s assets, he said Rudolph had no financial motive to kill his wife. In the court document, he noted that Rudolph is worth millions, including a dental clinic near Pittsburgh valued at $10 million.

Colorado-based life insurance companies paid Rudolph more than $4.8 million after his wife’s death, according to court documents.

The rush to cremate his wife raised suspicions, investigators say

In court documents, investigators allege that Rudolph quickly sought to cremate his wife’s body in Zambia after the shooting.

Rudolph scheduled a cremation three days after his death, according to court documents. After reporting his death to the US Embassy in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, the consular chief “told the FBI he had a bad feeling about the situation, that he felt it was moving too fast,” wrote FBI Special Agent Donald Peterson in the criminal document. sworn statement.

As a result, the consular chief and two other embassy officials went to the funeral home where the body was to take pictures and preserve any potential evidence. When Rudolph discovered that embassy officials had taken pictures of his wife’s body, he was “livid,” Peterson wrote.

Rudolph initially told the consular chief that his wife may have died by suicide, but a Zambian police investigation determined it was an accidental discharge, Peterson wrote.

Zambian investigators concluded that the firearm was loaded from previous hunting activities and normal safety precautions were not taken, causing it to accidentally fire in the fatal incident, according to court documents.

The insurers’ investigators reached a similar conclusion and paid for the policies.

“The Zambian authorities and five insurers have determined that Bianca Rudolph died accidentally. Witnesses told the FBI that Rudolph did nothing to interfere with the investigation. No physical evidence supports the government’s assassination theory,” Markus wrote in the January motion.

Suspect wanted to be with girlfriend, prosecutors claim

But federal investigators say there is more to the story. Rudolph orchestrated his wife’s death as part of a scheme to defraud life insurance companies and allow him to live openly with his girlfriend, the FBI alleges.

Federal authorities became involved after a friend of the victim contacted the FBI and asked the agency to investigate the death because she suspected foul play. The friend said that Rudolph had been involved in extramarital affairs in the past and had a girlfriend at the time of his wife’s death.

Rudolph’s then-girlfriend, who was not identified in court documents, worked as a manager at his dental clinic near Pittsburgh and told a former employee she had been dating him for 15 to 20 years, Peterson wrote.

The former employee told the FBI his girlfriend told him she gave Rudolph a one-year ultimatum to sell his dental offices and leave his wife, court documents allege.

Three months after Bianca Rudolph’s death, his girlfriend moved in with him, Peterson wrote in court documents. An executive director of the community association for his subdivision told investigators that Rudolph and his girlfriend tried to buy another home in the same subdivision for $3.5 million.

Injuries do not reflect an accidental discharge, says FBI

Court documents also allege that evidence shows Bianca Rudolph’s injuries came from a shot fired from at least half a meter away.

“An FBI special agent performed tests to determine, by comparison with photographs of the death scene, the approximate position of the shotgun barrel within the soft case at the time of discharge, as well as the resulting firing patterns created when firing the shotgun, with the case about the pipe at various distances”, states the criminal complaint.

A forensic coroner determined that the patterns corresponding to the wound seen in the photographs of the body were created by a shot from a distance of between half a meter and a meter.

“At this distance, there is reason to believe that Bianca Rudolph was not killed by an accidental discharge, as stated,” the complaint states.

Bianca and Lawrence Rudolph moved from Pennsylvania to Arizona about four years before her death. Rudolph’s dental clinic remained in Pennsylvania, and he traveled to and from his home in Phoenix.

Federal authorities allege that his wife’s murder was premeditated so that “he could falsely claim that the death was the result of an accident.”

But Markus accused federal officials of relying on “shaky evidence.” Rudolph’s two sons are confident that their father didn’t kill their mother, Markus said, and have signed statements in their support.

If convicted of murder, Rudolph faces the maximum of life imprisonment or the death penalty.