Second murder charge against Rundle tossed

Erica D. Johnson

Tuesday, April 22, 2003 | 9:52 a.m.

A District Court judge on Monday tossed out a murder charge against the Las Vegas man accused of killing his 87-year-old mother and cashing in on her Social Security checks.

District Judge Kathy Hardcastle dismissed a murder charge against William Rundle in the death of Willa Rundle, who has been missing since 1997. Her body was never found.

Rundle, 57, still faces a murder charge in the death of his wife, Shirley, 63, whom prosecutors say Rundle killed with a baseball bat before dumping her body off a remote California highway.

Hardcastle said there was insufficient evidence to warrant the murder charge in the death of Rundle's mother because prosecutors are still unsure of how the woman died.

"There could be enough evidence to support a death by criminal means, but there is not enough evidence to show Mr. Rundle did it," she said.

An accessory-after-the-fact charge could be warranted against Rundle, who told police his wife had killed his mother by upping her dose of morphine, the judge said.

Prosecutors will have to re-evaluate the case to determine whether Rundle is still eligible for the death penalty in his wife's slaying, Chief Deputy District Attorney David Schwartz said.

A grand jury indicted Rundle on the additional murder charge in January.

The indictment alleged he killed Willa Rundle and had more than $70,000 in her Social Security payments directly deposited into the checking account he shared with Shirley.

Rundle still faces theft and robbery charges in the case concerning Willa Rundle and a robbery with the use of a deadly weapon charge in the case of Shirley Rundle.

He is scheduled to stand trial on May 5.

Deputy Public Defenders Curtis Brown and Nancy Lemcke had argued that the state failed to prove that Willa Rundle was dead and that her alleged death was as a result of criminal means, as opposed to natural causes.

Prosecutors had maintained that there was enough circumstantial evidence to prove Rundle was the killer.