Widow will face charges in Rudin slaying

Kim Smith

Monday, June 19, 2000 | 11:08 a.m.

The murder case against Margaret Rudin will go forward.

District Judge Joseph Bonaventure ruled Friday that prosecutors in the Rudin case have enough evidence to try her in the 1994 slaying of her husband, millionaire Ron Rudin.

Defense attorneys Jordan Savage and Will Ewing had argued the state had not met the legal threshold needed to try the 56-year-old woman for murder.

Rudin's trial is set for Oct. 30.

According to prosecutors, Rudin or an accomplice shot her husband in the head multiple times as he was sleeping on Dec. 18, 1994. They believe he was then decapitated, placed in a trunk and taken to Nelson's Landing on the Colorado River, where the trunk was set on fire.

Ron Rudin's remains were found by fishermen about a month later and identified through dental records and a distinctive diamond bracelet he wore.

Bonaventure, in his written decision, said Rudin had a motive to kill her husband because their marriage was failing and she stood to lose $6 million if he divorced her.

The judge also pointed out that evidence indicates Rudin had bugged her husband's real estate office for more than three years and acted suspiciously between the time her husband disappeared and his body was discovered.

Rudin hired a man to clean stains on the hallway carpeting of the Rudin house, remove a section of wall-to-wall carpeting under her husband's bed and store all of the bedroom furniture.

Authorities, Bonaventure said, also found a blood-splattered painting of Rudin that once hung above Ron Rudin's bed. Rudin had sent the portrait out to be cleaned.

Also on Friday Bonaventure denied Rudin's request to wear civilian clothing to all of her pretrial hearings, but said she could wear a sweater or shawl.

Savage and Ewing had argued that potential jurors watching the TV news might be prejudiced against Rudin if they were to see her wearing jail garb.

Bonaventure noted in his decision, however, that Rudin recently appeared on the TV show "Extra" in her jail uniform and apparently had not even tried to get permission to wear regular clothing.

Rudin gained national attention when she disappeared around the time she was indicted in April 1997. The case appeared on such television shows as "America's Most Wanted" and "Hard Copy."

Her time as a fugitive ended when she was arrested in Massachusetts in November.