Criminal - The Hunt

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

In 2016, the FBI attaché in Pretoria, South Africa, got a phone call from a woman asking the FBI to investigate the death of her friend, Bianca Rudolph. Bianca had died on a hunting trip in Zambia’s Kafue National Park, but her friend didn’t think it was an accident. Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there! Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, members-only merch, and more. Learn more and sign up here. Listen back through our archives at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Do you want to be a more empowered citizen but don't know where to start? It's time to sharpen your civic vision and ignite the spark for a brighter future. I'm Mila Atmos and on my weekly podcast, Future Hindsight, I bring you conversations to translate today's most urgent issues into clear, actionable ways to make impact. With so much at stake in our democracy, join us at futurehindsight.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Botox Cosmetic, adipotulinum toxin A, FDA approved for over 20

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You'll get to hear seven brand new stories, most of which will probably make you laugh. I'll even try to come and say hi at the merch table. Get your tickets while they last at thisiscriminal.com slash live. This episode contains descriptions of violence. Please use discretion. Very early in the morning on October 11th, 2016, an American couple, Bianca and Lawrence Rudolph, were getting ready to fly home to the United States. They'd been in Africa at a hunting camp near Zambia's Kufui National Park for two weeks.

It's the biggest park in Zambia, with elephants, hippos, zebras, lions, and leopards. A park official has said that 60% of safari hunting in the country is supported by Americans. And Bianca and Lawrence Rudolph had come to Zambia to hunt. She was an avid hunter, and she knew how to handle firearms. Bianca Rudolph's friend, Betsy Wonke. She was kind of my mentor in a way, because she had traveled all over and she had gotten animals that I was hoping to get at some point. But she was very confident with a firearm and being out in the woods and hunting, which I loved. I loved that about her.

Bianca Rudolph's goal in Zambia was to shoot a leopard. This was going to be her hunt. And that's what a lot of times we'll do that as couples. The husband will hunt something and the wife kind of stays back. And then after he gets his quarry, then she can go after hers. That's kind of the way it goes with a lot of couples. So this was her hunt, and she was very excited about it. By the end of the trip, she hadn't shot a leopard, but she had shot some other animals. That morning, on the last day of the trip, their hunting guide and game scout were in the dining hall of the camp, tallying the number of animals, when they heard a gunshot coming from the Rudolph's cabin. The game scout said that he and the hunting guide started running towards the cabin.

They opened the door and saw Bianca Rudolph on the ground, shot in the chest. Lawrence Rudolph said that he was in the cabin's bathroom when he heard the gunshot. He said he came out of the bathroom and found his wife on the floor. He said he tried to resuscitate her. When officers from the Zambian police service arrived, they interviewed Lawrence Rudolph, the hunting guide, and the game scout. Lawrence Rudolph told the police that he thought the shotgun may have been left loaded from the day before, and that it went off while Bianca was trying to pack it up and put it away in its case. The same day, at approximately 4.30 p.m.,

Lawrence Rudolph called the U.S. Embassy in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. He told the embassy's consular section chief that his wife had died. He wanted to discuss having her body cremated. The consular chief and Lawrence Rudolph talked again the next day. Cremation isn't popular in Zambia, and the embassy helped Lawrence Rudolph find a funeral home that would do it, Ambassador St. Anne's, and they discussed arrangements to have Bianca's body moved there. The consular chief was told that the funeral home would need to see the report from the pathologist

before they would accept Bianca's body for cremation. But then, he said that approximately one hour later, he got a call that the cremation had already been scheduled for the next day. The consular chief felt like everything was moving very quickly, and as he told the FBI, he had a bad feeling about the situation. He went to the funeral home to check things out. When he viewed Bianca Rudolph's body, he didn't see the burns or tissue damage he expected to see.

He'd been a Marine for 20 years. He believed that the gun would have had to have been farther away from her when she was shot. He estimated between six and a half to eight feet. He took photographs and measured the wound on her chest. And Larry Rudolph got really mad at that, and he called him and started

threatening him with his job. Reporter Carol McKinley. The consular chief described Lawrence Rudolph as livid, but when he suggested that Lawrence Rudolph come to the embassy to talk, Rudolph declined. They did meet in person the next day at the funeral home. According to the consular chief, Lawrence Rudolph asked questions about who would be able to access information about his wife's death, including police reports. When the consular chief asked about the gun,

Lawrence Rudolph said he didn't have it, but expected it to be given back to him by the Zambian police service. When the consular chief asked what kind of gun it was, Lawrence Rudolph said he didn't know. He said it was an antique. He said that it was possible that it wasn't an accidental shooting, but that his wife may have died by suicide. Bianca was about my height, so 5'4", right in there somewhere. Betsy Warnke.

And trying to shoot yourself, even accidentally, in the chest with a shotgun or rifle is impossible. You have to use your toes to do it. It just doesn't go off. So she could not have pulled the trigger. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. We'll be right back. therapist and host of the podcast, Where Should We Begin, which delves into the multiple layers of relationships, mostly romantic. But in this special series, I focus on our relationships with

our colleagues, business partners, and managers. Listen in as I talk to co-workers facing their own challenges with one another and get the real work done. Tune into How's Work, a special series from Where Should We Begin, sponsored by Klaviyo. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you?

And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Betsy Wonke says that people loved Bianca Rudolph and described her as warm, loving, a good friend who loved a good joke. She had this smile that was just mischievous. You knew that she wanted to do something fun. So we got along the instant we met. But she was also very smart. She had a backbone,

which I can't say about everybody I meet. There was no, you know, beating around the bush. If she needed to tell you something, we had a conversation and it was always fun. It was always great. If there was a problem, we fixed it. So, you know, that's what I loved about Bianca, too, is that she was very decisive. Bianca met Lawrence Rudolph at the University of Pittsburgh. He was in dental school, and she was an undergrad. They got married in 1982. Well, Larry Rudolph and Bianca Rudolph,

you know, they started off as bona fide sweethearts. Reporter Carol McKinley. They loved each other. They started a family. He was a successful dentist. He was a guy who was on the up and up. He also loved to hunt. And he was the president of a national organization for big game hunting. That was what he was most proud of. In fact, I've talked to a friend who

said that his home was full of trophies and not just, you know, it wouldn't be a bighorn sheep, it would be a rhino, it would be a lion, a panther. You know, they were trying to get a leopard. It was an elusive leopard that Bianca wanted to shoot, and they would take their animals to taxidermists. This person who had seen the room where all of their stuffed animals were said it was like being in the jungle and was actually kind of creepy. There were so many of them staring down from the walls. Five days after the funeral service, on October 27, 2016, the FBI's legal attache in Pretoria, South Africa, received a phone call.

A woman who identified herself as a friend of Bianca's said that she suspected foul play because Lawrence Rudolph and Bianca had had fights about money. She said he was having an affair. The woman also said that she didn't think Bianca would have wanted to be cremated because she was Catholic. She said she'd heard Bianca express disapproval of cremation. According to an FBI affidavit, the woman who called the FBI said, quote, Larry is never going to divorce her because he doesn't want to lose his money, and she's never going to divorce him because of her Catholicism.

Four days after that phone call to the FBI, and about 20 days after his wife's death, Lawrence Rudolph initiated a claim on a life insurance policy. A week later, he initiated claims on six more life and accidental death policies for Bianca Rudolph. A few days later, two more. His total payout from nine insurance policies covering his wife's death was more than $4.8 million. Several of the insurance companies hired a private investigation company to perform due diligence.

It was called Diligence International, and they reviewed the death certificate and documents arranging the cremation. They interviewed Lawrence Rudolph, who told them that he and his wife had always planned to be cremated. And also, he said it would have been, quote, challenging to transport his wife's body home to the United States. At the same time, the FBI was following up on the claims of the woman who'd called in

to say that Bianca would not have wanted to be cremated. They asked around about the Rudolphs' marriage, and witnesses confirmed that Lawrence Rudolph was having an affair. They also determined that in spite of Lawrence Rudolph's claim that he needed to cremate his wife's body because it would be, quote, challenging to transport at home, he in fact had a lot of experience transporting large animals he'd killed on his hunting trips. A Process One FBI agent describes as, quote,

cumbersome, expensive, and time-consuming, but one that Lawrence Rudolph, quote, frequently arranged. They also spoke with the wife of the hunting guide, who told them that she personally witnessed Lawrence Rudolph pay an official to speed up the cremation scheduling. And basically, he thought he got away with it. Zarina Galu is a Zambian journalist. You know, investigations in Zambia are very weak. The chances of corruption are high. So, yeah, that would have been a move on his part.

I honestly don't think that he thought that he would get caught. What do you think about Americans with a lot of money coming into Zambia and trying to get a trophy hunt? Do people in Zambia roll their eyes a bit at this whole thing? I wouldn't say roll their eyes because it's not something unusual. It's a very big tourism thing here, and it does derive a lot of money. It's also a very political industry because just because of the amounts of money involved. And most of the hunters that come to hunt game are from the US. a conversation about, you know, game hunting and having more scrutiny of who comes in and, you know, having a little bit more of a background check. But this didn't happen at all. We contacted the Zambia police service, but didn't hear back.

A Zambian police officer and forensic ballistics expert did a ballistics exam on the gun, including dropping it onto cement. It did not misfire during the drop test. According to an FBI affidavit, the Zambian police determined that, quote, only one round was in the shotgun when Bianca Rudolph was shot, and the shotgun was in a soft-sided gun case that was partially zipped when the gun was fired.

According to a summary of the investigative findings prepared by the Zambian police, quote, findings further suggested that the firearm was loaded from the previous hunting activities, and the normal safety precautions at the time of packing the firearm were not taken into consideration, causing the firearm to accidentally fire. The shotgun was returned to Lawrence Rudolph, and he flew home to the United States. We'll be right back. answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average U.S. company deploys more than 100 apps, and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make

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and biology-based approach. Sign up for your trial today at Noom.com. Someone had called me in and said, Bianca got shot and passed away. And I just, the first words out of my mouth were, Larry did it. Betsy Wanke. And I, I honest to God believed it. I didn't know any of the circumstances. I didn't know what had happened or anything, but I knew that, that Larry had done it.

The FBI investigated Lawrence Rudolph for nearly five years. They talked with a former employee who said that Lawrence Rudolph had been in a very long affair, an approximately 15 to 20 year relationship, with a woman who had worked for him, a woman named Lori Milliron. The former employee told the FBI that Lori Milliron had given Lawrence Rudolph a one-year ultimatum to leave Bianca. The FBI thought that the ultimatum could be a motive, in addition to the insurance money. He was very wealthy, but he spent it as fast as he made it. I know that his girlfriend, she wanted to go places and do things, and it all cost money.

He had several dental practices that were very successful, and everybody liked Larry. Everybody trusted him. So he had a very successful practice. But I don't know. Was it for the money or was it for the power? Or was Lori, his girlfriend, kind of pushing him to do that? I don't know. FBI investigators found that Lawrence Rudolph and Lori Milliron had gone to Mexico seven times before Bianca's death, and then again a few months after. They learned that three months after Bianca Rudolph's death, Lori Milliron had moved in with Lawrence Rudolph.

The FBI conducted tests to try to reconstruct what might have happened in the cabin in Zambia. Fifteen volunteers of different heights, with different arm lengths, were given a shotgun and asked to try to hold its barrel to their chests, and then to try to reach the trigger. None of them could. The FBI worked with a medical examiner in Colorado who reviewed all of the evidence, including the photos of Bianca

Rudolph that the consular chief had taken before she was cremated in Lusaka. And the medical examiner determined it would be, quote, physically impossible for Bianca to have fired the gun. A bartender came forward and said that he overheard Lawrence Rudolph and Lori Milliron talking in his Arizona restaurant, and heard Lawrence Rudolph say, I killed my effing wife for you. The bartender later said, There's no doubt in my mind that he said it. It was crystal clear. But he's also said he doesn't know the context.

He didn't hear what was said right before it, because music was playing in the restaurant. Lori Milliron has disputed this. Lawrence Rudolph has said that what he actually said was, quote, now they're saying I killed my effing wife for you. The FBI spoke with former colleagues and acquaintances of Lawrence Rudolph, who said he had offered them money to have someone killed. In December of 2021, Lawrence Rudolph was arrested and charged with murder of a U.S. national in a foreign country,

and mail fraud, because his process for filing his insurance claims took place by mail. He pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer said, This is an outrageous prosecution against Dr. Larry Rudolph, a man who loved his wife of 34 years and did not kill her. Lori Milliron was called to testify before the grand jury investigating Bianca Rudolph's death in January of 2022.

According to the Department of Justice, quote, she lied and otherwise obstructed that investigation to help Rudolph avoid prosecution. She was charged with perjury, being an accessory to murder after the fact, and obstructing a grand jury. She and Lawrence Rudolph were tried at the same time, in a Colorado federal court, because much of the insurance money was paid out in Colorado. Reporter Carol McKinley attended the trial for the Denver Gazette. They were within 15 yards of each other, inside the courtroom at all times.

I was always looking at the two to see if they gave each other cues, you know, any kind of look between the two of them to show that they were still in love with each other and in cahoots with each other to get off. But they didn't really look at each other. There wasn't a lot of emotion, so that was strange. Lawrence Rudolph testified in his own defense. And that was a huge day in the courtroom. That is a decision that I'm told Rudolph made himself. And when Larry Rudolph took the stand, I watched the jury, and they were not buying what he had to say. First thing out of

his mouth was, I did not kill my wife. I would not kill my wife. I almost thought of Dr. Seuss when I heard him say that. He told the jury that he and Bianca had had an open marriage. And I think he thought that he was going to be able to win them over. The prosecution presented evidence that the gun was too long for Bianca Rudolph to have fired it into her own chest. They did so many forensic and ballistic tests on this and decided that the prosecution did anyway, that she couldn't have killed herself. She literally could not have wrapped her arms around that shotgun to kill herself. It just didn't make any sense. And he got rid of the gun in a real strange way. In fact, this shotgun he left to be taken away in the trash in two pieces, in two cases.

According to Carol McKinley, he testified that he'd wanted to leave the shotgun in Zambia, but because his hunting guide didn't have the proper permit, he had to take it home to Arizona. He put it in a cardboard box and eventually paid someone in cash to come take it away. The prosecution says so that it couldn't be tracked. Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Fields said, quote, putting it in the dump kind of looks like you're hiding evidence.

Lawrence Rudolph replied, The Rudolph's hunting guide testified. He said that mistakes can happen with guns, and, quote, Carol McKinley reported that Lawrence Rudolph was asked how he spent the insurance money, and he told the jury he'd bought an Aston Martin for $280,000 and a second car worth $130,000. After a day and a half of deliberation, the jury reached a verdict. When the jury walked in, those of us on the row in the media, on the front row, we sat. You know, we were not allowed to take notes with a computer. We could only bring in a pad and papers. We were writing furiously. We looked up. They came in, and they looked at the prosecution. They did not look at

Larry Rudolph, and that was the first clue that we got that they were going to find him guilty, and they did. They found him guilty on all counts. At the sentencing, Bianca Rudolph's brother said that Lawrence Rudolph would die, quote, alone and unmourned, and said, quote, even Judas would be afraid to be in your company. When he was sentenced to life in prison, the judge actually acquiesced and let him go to a medical facility for his heart problems. And it's kind of like Bianca Rudolph's brother said, wherever you go, don't let the door hit you because we don't ever want to breathe the same air

or be in the same room with you ever again. Lawrence Rudolph was also sentenced to a concurrent sentence of 20 years for defrauding multiple life insurance companies and was ordered to pay more than $4.8 million in restitution, plus a fine of $2 million. Lori Milliron was sentenced to 17 years in prison. The FBI declined our request for an interview, pending the appeals process. What did you think when you heard that Larry had been convicted and sentenced to life in prison? We had a party. We had a party. Because we all knew he had done it. And nobody wanted him to get away with it.

Because everyone loved Bianca. Betsy Warnke. I miss Bianca so much. And I really want everyone to know what a wonderful person she was. And how much she has missed. He was a well-known dentist. He had lots of friends. Carol McKinley. It just doesn't make any sense.

You can't make this stuff up. Ten years before Bianca Rudolph's death in 2006, Lawrence Rudolph was in Zambia, in the same hunting camp where Bianca died. According to Lawrence Rudolph, he went fishing, and when he reached down into the water, quote, a crocodile came out and grabbed me and pulled me in, rolled me over. He said that based on the tears on the back of his pants, a guide said it could have been a 10-foot crocodile. Lawrence Rudolph lost part of his thumb. When he returned to the United States, he filed disability insurance claims on the basis that the injury to his thumb impacted his ability to practice dentistry.

This incident, which prosecutors called the crocodile incident, came up after Lawrence Rudolph was charged with killing his wife. According to court documents, prosecutors believe there was no crocodile attack, and that Lawrence Rudolph intentionally shot off the tip of his thumb with a shotgun in order to defraud his insurance companies. He was paid $3.5 million. Prosecutors alleged that Lawrence Rudolph's knowledge of the remote hunting camp, along with the, quote, limited resources available to local law enforcement, plus the inherent expense and difficulty insurance companies face trying to investigate something that happened in a rural part of Zambia, served two purposes.

First, it made it possible for Lawrence Rudolph to defraud his insurers in 2006. And second, made it more likely that he intentionally chose the exact same hunting camp to, quote, kill his wife in 2016 as part of his plan to avoid detection and defraud insurers once more. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris.

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And you'll get bonus episodes with me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spohr, too. To learn more, go to thisiscriminal.com slash plus. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. The number one selling product of its kind with over 20 years of research and innovation.

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