Verdict reached in Rudin trial

Kim Smith

Wednesday, May 2, 2001 | 11:38 a.m.

A verdict was reached this morning in the murder trial of Margaret Rudin.

Jurors were expected to tell District Judge Joseph Bonaventure today whether they found Rudin guilty of murder or accessory to murder or not guilty of either. She also faced an illegal wiretapping charge.

The wiretapping charge carries a one- to six-year sentence, and the murder charge, a sentence of 20 years to life. The accessory to murder charge is punishable by probation or a one- to five-year sentence.

Bonaventure will render her sentence, because she opted not to allow the jury to do so.

Many had speculated that Bonaventure would soon have to declare a mistrial. The jurors had seemed hopelessly deadlocked, and notes from the jury indicated a great deal of acrimony between the foreman and Juror 11.

Had the jury hung, it would have guaranteed that the prosecutors would either try Rudin again in connection with the December 1994 death of her husband or enter plea negotiations with her attorneys.

The trial was beset by problems from the beginning.

Although the jurors didn't know it, defense attorney Tom Pitaro joined the case two weeks before the trial began in order to help an ill-prepared defense attorney Michael Amador. John Momot joined him a week into the trial.

As a result, the two men struggled to catch up as the prosecutors pushed their case.

Jurors sat through Amador's three-hour opening statement and endless cross-examinations. They were herded out of the courtroom time after time so the attorneys and judge could battle over issues that are typically handled before the trial. They were subjected to days-long breaks as the defense struggled to catch up.

The frustrations didn't end when the evidence was through being presented nine weeks into the trial. Notes given to the judge by the jury foreman indicate even deliberations turned nasty.

Juror 11 didn't believe the state had proven its case against Rudin, and she ended up being the only one to hold that point of view. As deliberations dragged on, allegation after allegation of misconduct was lodged against her, but Bonaventure kept her on the panel.

With the verdict, it appears Juror 11 changed her mind or the other 11 changed theirs. Unless they decide to talk to the media, no one may know what happened in the final hours of deliberations.

At one point, though, 11 people believed Rudin guilty of murder and Juror 11 did not.

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 contended that Rudin shot her husband in the head four times as he slept on Dec. 18, 1994. His decapitated and burned remains were found a month later at Lake Mohave.

Rudin wasn't indicted until April 1997. It was then that authorities learned a gun found by divers in Lake Mead in July 1996 was the murder weapon and it had been reported missing by Ronald Rudin in 1988.

She was arrested living under an assumed name in Revere, Mass., in November 1999 after having spent time in Phoenix and Mexico.

Owens and Guymon put witness after witness on the stand to discuss the malice with which Rudin spoke about her husband, her overwhelming interest in his money following his disappearance and Ronald Rudin's own suspicions of his wife.

In a directive added to his trust, Ronald Rudin urged his trustees to investigate his death -- if it was violent -- and to cut the responsible party out of his will.

Prosecutors also reminded jurors during closing arguments about how Rudin changed her husband's bedroom into an office before anyone knew he was dead.

Pitaro and Momot tried to convince jurors that not only was Ronald Rudin, 62, 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 said that if the jury believes the state is wrong about its theory, enough reasonable doubt exists to acquit their client.

Pitaro used an analogy in his closing argument. He compared Rudin to Goldilocks -- pointing out that detectives would have found fault with her no matter what she had done after her husband's disappearance.

The detectives thought it odd she didn't cry when informed of her husband's death, but they would have said she feigned her tears if she had cried, Pitaro said.

It was the trustees who began seizing Ronald Rudin's assets within days of his death, not Margaret Rudin, Pitaro said. She only acted when she realized they were going to take away from her what was rightfully hers.

"Is it unreasonable, morbid and bizarre for Margaret to try to stay alive (financially)?" Pitaro asked the jurors.

She changed the bedroom because she knew instinctively that her husband was dead and couldn't bear to sleep in his bedroom, Pitaro said.

Pitaro also scoffed at the notion that jurors are supposed to believe a manual laborer saw bloody carpeting and a bloody portrait in Ronald Rudin's bedroom a few weeks after his disappearance. He noted that a missing person's detective didn't see those things within days of the disappearance.

"Either Detective (Frank) Janise is a liar, a dumbbell, a fool, blind -- or Augustine Lovato didn't see what he said he saw," Pitaro said.

Even one of the state's own witnesses, criminalist Mike Perkins, said "maybe" the minute traces of blood on the walls and ceiling came from a shooting instead of something more mundane, such as bloody sneezes.

"The state wants you take 'maybe it is, maybe it isn't' and turn that into proof beyond a reasonable doubt," Pitaro said.

Amador had a different defense. He tried to convince jurors that the real estate developer was killed because he engaged in shady land deals.

Amador said to convict Rudin of murder would be a travesty of justice.

"If she can't trust you as independent judges of the facts in this case, then there is nothing left for us to trust in anymore," Amador said.

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