Defense rests case: Rudin doesn’t testify

Kim Smith

Friday, April 20, 2001 | 11:02 a.m.

Jurors in the Margaret Rudin murder trial will go home without hearing from the woman prosecutors contend is a cold-blooded killer with a thirst for money and revenge.

Rudin's defense team rested Thursday after calling about a dozen witnesses over a four-day period. Margaret Rudin was not one of them.

Prosecutors will be given a chance to question rebuttal witnesses today and Monday.

Chief Deputy District Attorneys Chris Owens and Gary Guymon attempted to convince jurors that Rudin, 56, killed her husband to get her hands on her share of his $11 million estate and because she was upset about an affair he was having with an IRS agent.

Rudin learned of the affair, prosecutors told jurors, because she had been eavesdropping on his conversations at work through bugging devices she had bought and installed years before.

The state contends that Rudin shot her husband in the head four times as he slept on Dec. 18, 1994, and that she decapitated him and burned his remains in a trunk at Nelson's Landing.

Defense attorneys Thomas Pitaro and John Momot tried to convince jurors that not only was Ronald Rudin not killed in his bedroom, but that the physical evidence also disputes the idea that he was cremated at Nelson's Landing.

The longtime attorneys believe that if the state is wrong about its theory, enough reasonable doubt exists to acquit their client.

Another defense attorney, Michael Amador, used a different approach. He tried to convince jurors that the real estate developer was killed because he engaged in shady land deals.

The witnesses testified that Ronald Rudin split up his land in Lee Canyon on Mount Charleston by pretending to sell it to people who didn't exist or were unaware he was using their names.

Amador further suggested that by having Ronald Rudin killed, his trustees avoided paying capital gains taxes on the property when they sold it after his death.

The defense's final witness was a professor of real estate who spoke about the dangers involved in conducting business the way Ronald Rudin had. If Ronald Rudin had missed payments on the Lee Canyon land, the original owners would have had no recourse because the names on all of the official documents were bogus, he said.

Terrence Clauritie admitted under cross-examination, however, that Ronald Rudin did pay for the property and no one was bilked.

Rudin faces murder, accessory to murder and wiretapping charges.