Bonaventure to decide if Rudin murder case will go forward

Kim Smith

Friday, May 26, 2000 | 11:36 a.m.

District Judge Joseph Bonaventure will decide in two weeks whether the murder case against Margaret Rudin should go forward.

Bonaventure heard approximately 40 minutes worth of arguments from both sides in the case this morning.

Deputy Public Defenders Will Ewing and Jordan Savage believe that prosecutors don't have enough evidence to tie Rudin to the December 1994 slaying of her husband, Ron Rudin.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Owens believes Rudin had the means, motive and opportunity to kill the Realtor and acted highly suspicious in the days between his disappearance and the discovery of his body at Nelson's Landing in Southern Nevada.

Prosecutors believe Rudin or an accomplice shot her husband in the head as he was sleeping on Dec. 18, 1994. They believe he was then decapitated, placed in a trunk and taken to the Lake Mead area where the trunk was set on fire.

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

This morning, Owens told Bonaventure that Ron Rudin was shot with a .22 caliber pistol that had been equipped with a silencer and reported missing six years before the murder.

Margaret Rudin had unique access to that gun, Owens said. He also pointed out that before her husband's body was found, she hired a day laborer to clean the carpeting in the master bedroom where the homicide is believed to have taken place.

Rudin had the bedroom remodeled into an office before her husband's body was found, too, Owens said. In addition, a portrait of Margaret Rudin that hung in the master bedroom was later found at a frame shop and tests showed it had human blood on it.