Woman accused of murdering husband heading back to Nevada jail

Robert Macy

Thursday, March 16, 2000 | 9:05 a.m.

A woman charged with killing her millionaire husband is returning here under heavy guard to face murder charges while the man she lived with is charged with harboring a fugitive.

More than two years after being indicted in her husband's murder, Margaret Rudin began the 2,750-mile journey from Framingham, Mass., to Las Vegas on Wednesday with tight security. Rudin had eluded authorities until she was arrested last November.

The man she lived with in Massachusetts, Joseph Lundergan, was charged Wednesday with harboring a fugitive and faces a possible seven-year prison term if convicted.

Police said they decided to charge him after he gave a series of news interviews that officials said indicated he knew more about Rudin's past than he originally let on.

Considered a high escape risk, Rudin will be shackled with ankle and wrist chains as she travels by van to Nashville, Tenn., then on to Las Vegas on a prison bus.

The trip should take at least four days, according to John Zierdt, president of Nashville-based TransCor America Inc., though police are tightlipped.

"They won't say when she will arrive here for security reasons," Metro detective Jimmy Vaccarro said. "We won't know she's here until they book her into the jail."

Rudin, 56, is charged with killing her husband, Ron Rudin, as he lay in bed on Dec. 18, 1994. Mrs. Rudin reported him missing and a month later a fisherman discovered his burned, bullet-ridden and decapitated body near Lake Mohave in southern Nevada.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said they did not want to pay to fly two detectives to Massachusetts to return the fugitive, and Zierdt said security would be an issue if the trip were made by air.

"We provide a more secure way to move them than flying," Zierdt said. Airlines will not allow transported prisoners to wear shackles for safety reasons, while TransCor keeps prisoners shackled the entire trip.

"We consider her a higher-than-normal security risk," Zierdt said.

The company has 65 vans that pick up prisoners across the nation, routing them into Nashville, where they are transferred to prison buses with barred, tinted windows that carry five armed guards. The company transports about 70,000 prisoners a year, he said.

Mrs. Rudin was indicted in 1997 but authorities could not find her until she was featured on the television show "America's Most Wanted." Using a tip from a viewer, authorities located her post office box in Revere, Mass., and a postal worker recognized her photo.

State police in November staked out an apartment she had shared for about a year with Lundergan, a retired firefighter. Police borrowed a pizza delivery shirt and pizza box to make their way into the apartment and arrest her.

Mrs. Rudin had left Nevada three weeks before her indictment, but her attorney, Robert George, said she left to visit her daughter in Illinois, and didn't know she was about to be charged.

Rudin faces charges of murder, accessory to murder and unauthorized use of a bugging device. The last charge stems from prosecutors' belief that she bugged her husband's office.

Rudin denies killing her husband, whose real estate holdings were worth about $11 million. She says he was involved in fraudulent real estate deals, gun running, drug trafficking and tax evasion, and was killed by one of his business associates.

On March 6, State Appeals Court Justice Charlotte Perretta ordered Rudin returned to Nevada, confirming a decision in February by a Middlesex, Mass., Superior Court judge.