A Pennsylvania dentist has been charged with murdering his wife during a 2016 African hunting safari as part of an insurance scam and to get out of his marriage to be with his long-term mistress.
Dr. Lawrence Rudolph, 67, was charged in Colorado on charges of foreign murder and wire fraud, for allegedly shooting dead his wife Bianca during a trip to Zambia.
In the criminal complaint filed against him that was unsealed last week, an FBI agent describes how he had been having an affair for years beforehand, and had seven life insurance policies against his wife which were adjusted in the months before her death.
The pair were avid hunters and had flown to Zambia in October 2016 so that Bianca could kill a leopard. At around 5am on October 11, gamekeepers and scouts heard a gunshot coming from their cabin.
When they got there, they found Bianca lying on the ground with a gunshot wound to the chest.
Her husband claimed he was in the bathroom at the time and that she had accidentally shot with a Browning 12 gauge shot gun herself while packing up her gun for a day’s hunting.
Zambian Police believed him, ruling the death an accident and allowing him to travel back to America, where the FBI agent says he quickly resumed his relations with an unnamed ‘girlfriend’, who he’d been having an affair with for years.
The FBI was notified of the case in 2016 after one of Bianca’s friends called them to say she was suspicious about Bianca’s death.
Bianca and Lawrence, or Larry, had been married since 1982 and while they enjoyed hunting together, the friend said he was prone to affairs.
They were unhappy but would not get a divorce, the friend said, telling the agent: ‘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.’
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