Rudin trial begins with diary excerpt

Kim Smith

Friday, March 2, 2001 | 11:11 a.m.

Margaret Rudin kicked off the start of her own murder trial this morning.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Owens quoted an excerpt from Rudin's diary in which she realizes she has complete control over every segment of a production called "Margaret's Life."

What Rudin didn't realize, Owens said, was that the man she married around the time she wrote her story would rewrite a critical scene in her production.

Rudin didn't know that Ronald Rudin suspected he would die a violent death and directed his attorneys to investigate his death and cut his murderer out of his will if that murderer turned out to be one of his beneficiaries.

That directive is just one of the reasons Margaret Rudin is now on trial in the December 1994 death of Ronald Rudin, her fifth husband.

Rudin, 56, is suspected of shooting Ronald Rudin in the head numerous times as he slept on Dec. 18, 1994. She is then believed to have decapitated him and burned his remains near Nelson's Landing in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

His remains were found Jan. 21, 1995, by three fishermen.

Using a wide-screen TV and computer images, Owens painstakingly took the jurors through the evidence he believes shows Rudin killed her husband to get her hands on his $11 million fortune.

Rudin shut her eyes when images of her husband's bullet-riddled skull flashed on the screen and stared at the desk when the charred remains were shown.

Owens said 70 people will take the stand for the state.

Rudin's attorney, Michael Amador, told the Sun prior to trial that he intends to prove that Ronald Rudin was a shady businessman whose death was plotted by his other beneficiaries and trustees, Sharron Cooper and Harold Boscutti.

While Margaret Rudin was to receive 60 percent of Ronald Rudin's estate, the other two were to receive 20 percent each, Amador said.

Just one day after Ronald Rudin was reported missing, Amador said, the trustees stole $15,000 from his real estate office, claiming it was theirs. They then proceeded to take control of all of Ronald Rudin's money, leaving Margaret Rudin nearly penniless and unable to successfully fight a civil lawsuit they brought against her.

Margaret Rudin ended up with about $600,000 of her husband's $11 million estate and the vast majority of it went to her civil attorneys and to pay off debts, Amador said.

The former prosecutor said the forensic evidence presented by the state will be attacked heavily. Among one of the assertions that will be disputed is that the blood left splattered in Ronald Rudin's bedroom is his, Amador said.

That blood came from Ronald Rudin's third wife, whose death police ruled was a suicide, Amador said. In reality, there is no evidence that Ronald Rudin died in his bedroom, he said.

Rudin began bugging her husband's office because she wanted to protect herself if the IRS ever discovered he was evading taxes and engaging in fraudulent real estate deals, Amador said. Amador dismissed Ron Rudin's affairs with other women as being a possible motive in the case, saying Margaret Rudin was used to them.

Amador last week gave a preview of his defense.

"I will give you the whole story, which will give you the best of Margaret Rudin and the worst, but it will be honest," Amador said.

Although a grand jury began meeting in the Rudin case in 1995, an indictment against Margaret Rudin was not returned until April 1997. When officers arrived to arrest her, they discovered she was nowhere to be found.

Phoenix police picked her up in September 1998 after she was featured on America's Most Wanted, but released her when she provided them identification under a different name. No photos were readily available at that point.

Rudin's final arrest happened in November 1999, again after she was featured on America's Most Wanted.

Police staked out the apartment where they believed she was living in Revere, Mass., and borrowed a pizza delivery shirt and pizza box to get inside and make the arrest.

The trial is expected to last four to six weeks.