Anthropologist testifies about charred remains

Kim Smith

Tuesday, April 3, 2001 | 10:46 a.m.

In a somewhat surreal moment, the jury in the Margaret Rudin trial this morning watched as a retired UNLV anthropologist displayed several plastic bags filled with charred bone fragments.

Richard Brooks told jurors that he and his wife, Sheila, also an anthropologist, were asked to go to Nelson's Landing in February 1995 by detectives who hoped to find additional remains belonging to Ronald Rudin.

Found within a burned spot at the location, said Brooks, were pieces of a femur, hands, feet, vertebra, a pelvic bone and ribs.

The pieces had apparently been missed by members of the Clark County coroner's office, who visited the scene a month earlier.

Brooks said he later gave some of the remains to DNA experts, who were expected to testify later today that they belong to Ronald Rudin. Defense attorney Michael Amador suggested in his opening statement that the spot where the remains were found is a popular place to release cremated loved ones.

Chief Deputy District Attorneys Chris Owens and Gary Guymon maintain Rudin, 56, shot her husband to death to get her share of his estate, estimated to be worth between $8 million and $11 million.

They are hoping to prove that Rudin and at least one accomplice shot him four times in the head as he slept Dec. 18, 1994.

After he was shot to death, prosecutors allege Ronald Rudin, 64, was decapitated, placed inside a trunk and cremated near Lake Mohave, 45 minutes south of Las Vegas.

Ronald Rudin's skull and some of the charred remains were found in January 1995 by fishermen, who notified the authorities.

On Monday DNA expert Megan Clement testified that blood found on various items throughout Ronald Rudin's bedroom likely came from one source.

The blood on a set of box springs and an electrical cover plate were compared to a handkerchief prosecutors believe Ronald Rudin used whenever he cut himself shaving.

Clement said that only one in 702 million white males would have the same genetic makeup as the person who used the handkerchief and bled on the other items.

A manual laborer testified earlier in the trial that he saw brownish-red spots, which he believed to be blood, on the portrait, which hung above Ronald Rudin's bed.

However, experts weren't able to obtain enough DNA from the portrait to compare it to the blood found on Ronald Rudin's handkerchief. Nor were they able to say the DNA they obtained came from blood.