Prosecutors consider jealousy as possible motive in slaying

Kim Smith

Monday, Jan. 8, 2001 | 11:16 a.m.

For years prosecutors have maintained that Margaret Rudin killed her husband to get her hands on his millions. Seven boxes found last month have provided prosecutors with another possible motive: jealousy.

According to court documents filed late Friday, contained within the boxes are diaries and handwritten notes that portray Rudin as a woman obsessed with a philandering husband who was worth as much as $10 million.

One diary entry even details an earlier murder attempt by Rudin.

With Rudin's trial just seven weeks away, prosecutors hope to convince District Judge Joseph Bonaventure to allow as much of the recently discovered materials into evidence as possible.

Rudin is scheduled to go to trial on Feb. 26.

Police believe Rudin, 56, and an unknown accomplice shot Ronald Rudin to death in his bed, decapitated him and burned his remains in a trunk in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

Ronald Rudin, a 64-year-old real estate developer, was last seen alive in December 1994. His remains were found the following month by fishermen.

Despite becoming a suspect immediately, Rudin wasn't indicted until April 1997. She spent more than two years as a fugitive before being arrested in November 1999 in Massachusetts.

Police became suspicious of Rudin when she had her husband's bed and carpeting removed before investigators even began to suspect he was dead. A worker also reported cleaning stains in the bedroom and hallway of the home.

A forensic expert found evidence of Ronald Rudin's blood having been splattered all over the bedroom, according to court documents. A portrait from the bedroom was also found -- in a local shop having blood cleaned from it.

And, in what police don't believe is a coincidence, investigators also learned that Rudin had allegedly tried to shoot her husband in their bedroom six years before he died.

Prosecutors now have proof of that incident.

Last month a former friend of Rudin's, the same woman who led police to Rudin's hiding spot, supplied investigators with the boxes. She says Rudin mailed them to her while a fugitive.

Inside the boxes was a diary in which Rudin described trying to shoot her husband in February 1988. She wrote that she confronted him after eavesdropping on a phone conversation and hearing him arrange a tryst with another woman.

There were also handwritten notes in the boxes, the court filings say. The notes appear to detail intimate conversations Rudin overheard after bugging her husband's office.

The final note, written one month before Ronald Rudin died, details the time and place of another illicit rendezvous.

Prosecutors hope to convince Bonaventure that Rudin's jurors should know about the diaries, the notes and the earlier shooting incident -- all of which, they argue, show motive and premeditation.

According to the court documents filed Friday, "the shooting death of Ron Rudin was not an isolated occurrence, where the opportunity just happened to arise. It was the culmination of years of obsessive behavior and ill will by the defendant. The 1988 shooting incident was one step in a gradual plan that ended in murder."