August 9, 2022 • 43 mins
Avid big game hunter, Bianca Rudolph, is found unresponsive in a cabin in Zambia with a gunshot wound to her chest. Her husband of 34 years, Dr. Larry Rudolph, the only other person in the cabin at the time, claims to have been showering when he heard the gunshot. He claims accidental discharge, but investigators disagree.
In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard discuss the likelihood of Bianca Rudolph accidentally shooting herself, the complications of working a crime scene in the wilderness of Africa, the odd behaviors displayed by her husband at the time of her death, and the tip that lead authorities to an in-depth investigation, and eventual guilty verdict of her husband, Dr. Larry Rudolph.
Show Notes:
0:15 - Introducing the death of Dr. Larry Rudolph’s wife of 34 years, Bianca Rudolph
2:14 - While packing up following a two-week hunting trip in Zambia, Dr. Rudolph claims his wife accidentally shot herself
6:56 - Is it physically possible to shoot yourself while packing away a shotgun?
8:48 - Explanation of the type of gun that killed Bianca, and ruling out possible suicide
12:05 - Joe explains the injury sustained to Bianca’s body from multiple 30-caliber-sized projectiles
16:29 - Looking for evidence of powder distribution on Bianca’s body and clothing
19:32 - Smooth bore weapons vs rifled weapons
21:37 - Working a crime scene in the wilderness of one of the world’s largest game preserves and how bodies are back to the US from Africa
25:24 - Dr. Rudolph’s push to have Bianca’s body cremated within three days of her death and the steps taken by the consular chief in Zambia to document her injuries
27:49 - The tip that leads to an in-depth FBI investigation
29:57 - Events that lead authorities to conclude Bianca’s death was no accident
34:09 - Odd behavior displayed by Dr. Larry Rudolph in the moments after he heard the gunshot
38:21 - Joseph Scott describes what happens when a round passes through an intermediate target and the amount of blood that he would be expected to be present in that situation.
40:39 - When the body is assaulted by such an event, does it fall in a specific manner?
42:47 - Resolution in the case against Dr. Larry Rudolph
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. I don't have to
tell y'all it's a tough world out there. Many times
all you want to do is disconnect, and a lot
of us do different things. We fish, we can read.
(00:30):
But the guy I'm gonna tell you about today, Dr
Larry Rudolph. He and his wife Bianca. You know what
they did to disconnect. They like to go hunting. And
I'm not talking about bag in a white tail while
you're up in a deer stand somewhere. I'm talking about
hopping on a plane and go into some of the
most exotic locations in the world to go hunt big game.
(00:58):
This case that we're going to discuss today is that
of Zambia. This particular case took place in literally the
second largest national park in the world, and at the
end of the day, Dr Rudolph's wife Bianca wound up dead.
(01:22):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Bags. There's
no secret I like to get out on my boat
when I'm not recording podcasts or teaching my students. It's
just the way I relax. I like to just be
out on the water. Never been much of a hunter.
(01:45):
I don't necessarily have anything against it, but the amount
of money that it would take to do what doctor
Larry Rudolph did as a hobby is just astronomical. Jackie
Howard's joining me today executive producer of Crime Stories with
(02:06):
Nancy Grace. Jackie, I don't think I've ever really met
a big game hunter. I know a lot of hunters,
you know, growing up here in the South, But this guy,
he beats everything I've ever seen. Actually, Lawrence Rudolph and
his wife Bianca were very well known in the big
game hunting community. They went on these excursions often, and
in fact, in this hunt, Bianca was the only one hunting.
(02:30):
She wanted to add a leopard to her collection of
animal trophies. In this hunt, Bianca was carrying two guns,
a Remington three seventy five rifle and her Rowning twelve
games shot gun. The hunt lasted approximately two weeks, and
as they were packing up early in the morning around
five am to return home, a shot was heard from
(02:54):
the brown shotgun. Lawrence Rudolph said he was in the
bathroom and it think that the shotgun accidentally went off
as Bianca was putting it back in the case. He
says he found her bleeding on the floor. Now, as
investigators looked at this death, they had witnesses who said
(03:15):
they saw her packing up. Before we get into any
of the details, Joe about what happened, I'm curious, is
it possible for you to be packing a gun and
shoot yourself? When you are putting away your rifle inside
its case, the point is down, So how do you
(03:37):
shoot yourself packing a gun? I don't know that it's
even physically possible to accomplish this task. You would have
to be a contortionist, and not just a contortionist, but
if you are the person that is being struck by
the round, you'd have to be remarkably tall and would
(03:59):
rather link the arms. And what I mean by that
is that your body would have to be in such
a way that you could extend your arms to zip
the the case. And in this this case, she was
allegedly putting the twelve gate shotgun into a soft case.
Some people refer to it as a scabbard. It's not
(04:21):
like a hard case that many people have seen. You
know that you think about audio equipment comes in or
or other items that has almost looks like an instrument case.
This is a soft case. And you know, she was
not a very big woman. She's not, you know, really
really tall. Her arm length was pretty much average for
(04:42):
a woman her heights. She was just over five three
I think. And so in order to have this happen,
how exactly would the weapon itself discharge or actually, you know,
how how are you even get the mechanism within the
weapon to start the firing process, which means that that
(05:03):
firing pen would have had to have been initiated and
the pen driven forward slammed into the primer of a
seated round that's in there, in this case, a twelve
gage round of double locked buckshot, and driving that into
her chest, which is apparently where it wound up. It
seems like it defies all the laws of physics. And
(05:25):
one interesting little aside here is that it has been
put forth that the round passed not just out of
the end of the muzzle, but it passed through the
end of the soft case and then into her body,
which again makes this all the more suspicious. So let's
(05:50):
play Devil's advocate a little here, Joe, is it possible?
You know, we've all seen TV shows, and you know
I say this all the time, and I probably shouldn't,
but it's the fact we watch things and it's thrown
out there in a lot of places that, oh I
dropped the gun, oh I knocked the gun over and
it fired. Is that actually possible? Well, yeah, I guess
(06:14):
that it has occurred over the years. I think there's
any number of cases where you can go back and
say that there was some kind of weapon malfunction where
the firing pin would be driven forward and the weapon
does in fact discharge. However, please understand that is the
exception and not the norm. You know, I gotta tell you,
(06:35):
just from my own personal experience, I've actually been involved
in suicide investigations where family members have implored me, have
implored me to ask the medical exam or change the
ruling and call it an accidental discharge. And you know why.
The person is, you know, cleaning the weapon or they
(06:56):
dropped the weapon. And these people in many of these
cases own the weapon, and they have experience and weapons,
and so it's dubious at best, I think in many
of these circumstances. And you know, this goes back to
one of the central essential premise in everything that we
do is medical legal death investigators, you know, with our
five manners of death, you know, homicide is the king
(07:20):
of the hill. And the reason it is is because
our working assumption is that all deaths are homicides until
proven otherwise. And so you have to go down this
kind of intellectual checklist, if you will, all right, and
and kind of tick the boxes and eliminate everything else
(07:40):
and see what kind of appears. So let's tick off
a box here, Joe. First off, you have to rule
out that it's not a possible suicide because to be
able to shoot yourself with a long gun, with shotgun
or rival, you're gonna have to kind be a little
bit of a cartortionist or able to use your feet
(08:05):
just like you would your hands. Yeah, yeah, you will.
And you know, and I've I've had people that you know,
have actually pulled triggers with their toes. I've had people
that have really Yeah, it's yes, yeah, it is. It is. Listen,
if if somebody is suicidal to that point, they'll they'll
find a way to do it. If their only means
(08:26):
is to is to self inflict, it's it's much more
difficult to actuate to trigger. And what I'm talking about,
what has to happen with a self inflicted shotgun woman,
or any kind of long arm, is that you have
to place the butt. That's the end of the weapon,
the non working end of the weapon. Okay, the non
business end, as they say. You have to kind of
(08:47):
brace it somehow, either on the floor, and the individual
gets over the weapon and places it, you know, into
their chest. I've had them place it under their chin.
I've had people place it in, you know, in the
center of their forehead and reach down with their thumb
perhaps and depress the trigger. But a lot of this
(09:08):
is going to be depended upon the barrel length. Now,
you know, if you're talking about a Remington twelve gate shotgun,
which in this case, in Bianca's case, this is set
up for hunting, all right. This is not like a
tactical shotgun where you see cops and military folks and
people that have them for home defense, where the barrel
is shorter, where you can swing around a corner and
not get caught up on anything. And those barrels tend
(09:30):
to be a lot a lot shorter. This is not
what we're talking about. We're talking about something that is
going to give you a level of accuracy when you're
firing it. And I gotta tell you, if you're going
out to uh To to hunt a big cat like
this a leopard, first off, I'm gonna be terrified personally,
but I want to make sure that I'm as accurate
as I possibly can be. And so that's the type
(09:52):
of weapon we're talking about. The muzzle of this weapon,
the barrel rather is very long. And so how how
do you how do you you do this with a
weapon like this if it is in fact a suicide
and it's very difficult. Generally I will have males that
will do it because their arms tend to be longer,
they have more height, they can kind of mend over
(10:12):
and manipulate the weapon. When you have a lady that
is her size and she's kind of diminutive, you know,
how do you arrive at that at that position? And again,
why why would you why would you choose to self
inflict around into your body in with a weapon that
(10:35):
is partially encased. So I think that you know, from
jump Street, we can kind of rule out suicide here.
And of course there's a lot of other stuff that
goes into suicide investigation, like you know, suicidal ideation, people vocalizing,
you know, I don't want to go on anymore. I'm depressed.
I've got all these other issues, previous attempts, and there
was nothing here to indicate that that was the case.
(10:57):
With Bianca's death line, Rudolph initially told the consular chief
in Zambia as they conducted their investigation that she may
have died by suicide, but the investigation then ruled as
an accidental discharge. What would have her body sustained? Well,
(11:18):
you know, the ammunition that we're talking about is buckshot.
It's it's double locked buckshot. And so imagine if you will,
And you know, our listeners and body backs are really
good at this sort of thing because they love forensics,
and I'm sure that some are familiar with this, but
just imagine, if you will, an object that is just
smaller than a standard marble. Okay, everybody got that in
(11:41):
your in your mind's eye, and to think about multiple
those loaded into a single cartridge. Now, those those marbles
that I'm referring to are about about thirty caliber in size,
so it's it's rather substantial. You know, if you've got
that vision of a marble and give me you're saying
(12:04):
that that thirty caliber is about the size of a
standard marble. Is that where it's a little bit smaller
than a standard marble. So it's not I'm just trying
to give folks an understanding that it's it is about
that size. Approximating it is the closest thing I can
really come to. We're talking about buckshot, and the reason
it's called buckshot is that you go out and you
(12:25):
hunt a buck with it. You can kill a buck, deer,
a big animal like that. I can only assume that
that's the reason they purpose this, you know, because I
gotta tell you, I got no experience with big game hunting.
I've always associated say, for instance, the other weapon that
they're carrying, you know, which is a large bore three
caliber round that is a large boar. You use this
(12:46):
to hunt things like a rhinoceros or a hippopotamus or
something like that. Potentially because they've bagged those kinds of animals.
You would think that that you would want that, but no,
she was gonna use shotguns. So with that idea in mind,
when this weapon, this single round of buckshot, is discharged,
(13:09):
you've got not just a single little marble, if you
will we'll just use that term projectile coming out to
end that that that that weapon. You've gotten multiple of
these thirty caliber size projectiles coming out of the end
of that muzzle, and well what happens, Well, what happens
(13:29):
is is that remember, shotguns are what are called smooth bore.
That means that there's no rifling in it. It doesn't
twist at all, all right, when it comes out of
that muzzle, all right, comes out in a little cup.
It's called a shot cup. It kind of deploys like
it looks almost like a flower pedal when it opens
up out of the end of that that weapon. And
(13:50):
these little bitty projectiles come out of the end of
this thing and they slam into the target. Well, because
they're not rifled, they're not staying with pinpoint accuracy going
down range. They're beginning to spread, all right, And as
they spread, they get wider and wider apart. So whatever
(14:10):
target that they wind up impacting is going to be
kind of the initial impression that the investigators will give
in order to determine range of fire. So, if you've
got a pattern that has just begun to spread, let's
say it's only you've got multiple of these little pellets
(14:31):
that are hitting the body and say they're only I
don't know, they're no more than well, let's just say
you could you could throw a you could put a
quarter over the size of it. You know that that
round when it came out of the came out of
the end of that muzzle is has not spread at all.
But now when you start to step back and that
pattern begins to get broader and broader and broader, you
(14:55):
know that there's a greater distance between the end of
the muzzle and your target area. And in her case,
one of the things that was witnessed, which is a
fascinating story in and of itself. So what you just
told me, Joe, or taught me Joe, is that the
difference with a shotgun and the type of ammunition that
it uses, there's not going to be any stipling to
(15:18):
be able to look for. Well, yeah, that that's that's
pretty much the case. You're you're not going to have
it as prominently patterned in this particular case. And a
lot of that, because we believe she was, would be
evidenced with the clothing. And you know, one of the
big questions that you would ask is where the clothes
(15:39):
preserved in any way, Is there any way to examine
those because if if you do have powder that comes
out of the end of this barrel, let's just think
about it just for a second. I want everybody to
kind of get an idea. As a matter of fact,
one of the things I teach my students, if you
want to understand about powder distribution on a target area,
go into your bathroom at home and get a little
bit of baby powders, some talcoum, all right, and put it,
(16:02):
put it in the palm of your hand, and then
walk up to your bathroom mirror and gently blow it
onto the bathroom mirror. All right. Now, the closer you
are to that bathroom mirror, you'll get a bigger deposit
on the mirror itself. But the further you move back away,
I mean, everybody's seeing baby powder just kind of you know,
puffs up in the air and then it just kind
(16:22):
of drifts down, kind of the same with powder coming
out of the end of the gun, out of the
end of the weapon. The closer you are, the closer
you are to that target area, you're gonna get a
deposition of this powder that kind of sticks to this
area and it's kind of embedded into the skin. The
further back you are, it's gonna drift down. That's just
that's the dynamic of it. You know, powder, that powder itself,
(16:45):
whether it's talcoum powder or or unburned gunpowder or whatever
it is, it doesn't have it doesn't have the best
aerodynamic characteristics. It's not like a projectile, like a lead
projectile that holds onto that energy. You know, is it
blast out of the end of that muzzle. It's containing energy,
all right, because it's solid, it's moving forward, and it
(17:07):
slams into a target with powder. It doesn't do that.
That's why, you know, when Nancy and I talked about
these things on her show, you begin to look look
out beyond about eighteen inches, and you know there's some disagreement,
you know, because it's not real exacting. Some people say
from eighteen inches out to you know, roughly, you're gonna
(17:29):
begin to get this drift where we'll begin to kind
of fall away. Anything within eighteen inches though, you'll have
powder distribution. So that's one of the big questions, and
that's that's one of the things you know that that
comes into play in death investigation is that you're not
necessarily always gonna have a witness that's gonna be able
to give you, you know, the straight story on this,
and all you have left behind is a physical evidence,
(17:52):
and that that's powerful physical evidence, isn't it When you
think about it, you know what what's going to be
left behind, what's going to be distributed on that harget area.
And if you don't have that with a clothing or
a body, you've got big trouble as an investigator. Well,
I should have taken better notes, Professor Morgan, because what
I actually meant to say was you would not have striations.
(18:17):
Although stippling was a great answer, and he told me
a lot, But what I meant to say was you're
not gonna have striations on buckshot. No, no, you're not.
And that's that's an excellent point, because you know, most
people out there, and I'm glad that most people don't
know this about firearms. It's it's geeky people like me,
forensic scientists that study these sorts of things. You know.
One of the things that we look for when we
(18:39):
have a rifled weapon, which means that we've got all
of these twists in the barrel. They imprint themselves on
the exterior of this projectile that's going down the barrel
as it's twisting and spinning in the barrel. That's why earlier,
you know, when I'm talking about this twelve gage browning um,
it's a smooth bore web. And it's like if you
(19:01):
look down, if you shine a light into the muzzle
of that weapon, and you can catch a glimpse from
where the weapon kind of breaks open. You never look
in the end of a muzzle of a weapon. You
look down. If you can look down, shine a light
down in that muzzle where the project the live round
is actually seated in there, you can actually see how
(19:23):
smooth it is compared to say, for instance, if you're
talking about a hunting rifle, and the reason it's called
rifle is it's rifled. It's it's got these these twisting
the barrel. And so when you examine when farms examiners
examine projectiles out of shotgun, it's a bit more I'm
(19:45):
not going to use terms subjective, but there's not as
much evidence that's left behind on these little balls that
come out of the end of that smooth barrel that
you can specifically tied back to that particular weapon as
much as you will with like a rifled weapon, where
it will leave a specific ballistic signature on that surface.
(20:24):
You know, I've only covered one other homicide in my
career off the continent of Africa, and that was the
Oscar of the story Is case out of South Africa. Now,
they were a bit more sophisticated down there with their
crime scene investigation, but still it was in some people's
minds lacking. But in the case of Bianca Rudolph, she's
(20:48):
literally in the wilderness. She she is. Her death actually
occurred on the property of one of the world's largest
game preserves. I can't even begin to fathom that. And
you talk about isolation. For me, I think about what
would I do if I was absent all the resources
that I need to work a crumb scene in that
(21:09):
environment you talked about isolated. I don't even know if
that begins to describe a Jackie. An investigation was not
immediately pushed in the death of Bianca Rudolph, as it
was thought to be an accidental death. But as always,
when there is an American death outside our country, the
consulate in that area is notified. Now Rudolph's body was
(21:36):
sent to the funeral home, and Lawrence Rudolph was pushing
for cremation, saying that the time and the distance that
it would not be possible to return Bianca's body to
the US. But we know that Bianca and Lawrence Rudolph
(21:58):
shipped animals back to the US all the time, So
why then could her body not be transported back to
the US. Yeah, that's a fallacy. Of course, it could
be the body is is preserved. There's an embalming that
takes place, the bodies are prepped and they're sent back
(22:20):
over You know, I myself have have actually I've done autopsies,
participated in autopsies that have come back literally from Africa.
I know of three missionaries over the course of my
career that I did that autopsies on are assisted with
them at the family's request when they got back to
the US. And fascinatingly, in one of the most bizarre
(22:43):
cases I've ever been involved in, I actually had a
body that showed up in New Orleans when I was
working down there, packed in charcoal. I've never seen anything
like it. It was absolutely bizarre, but interestingly enough, the
body was very well preserved. Yet it's possible to embalm
a body and send that body back to the US.
(23:05):
I don't understand what this idea of. You know, we
have to cremate the body and get the body back
to the husband and have the body transported back to
the US in this manner. I mean, this is you know,
the twenty one century that we live in now, and
this is completely possible to do. So. I don't understand
(23:25):
the rush. It's mind mind boggling. But as an investigator,
I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you if I
have family members that are push, push, push for cremations
like this, it's gonna make alarms go off in my head.
Remember what what I've already said. You know, every death
and I don't care how old the person is, I
(23:46):
don't care how much disease they might have. As an investigator,
I get one shot at this. My premise that I
put forward is that every death, and I mean every
death is a homicide until I can prove otherwise. Well,
the constant ler chief in Zambia obviously thought the same
way that you did, Joe, because the consular chief and
(24:06):
two other embassy officials went to the funeral home to
take photographs and preserve any evidence, because the push was
on for her to be cremated within three days. And
we found out later that when Lawrence Rudolph found out
that photos were taken of his wife, he was livid.
So what's the possibility that those photos could have shown us? Oh,
(24:31):
it's it's remarkable. In a tip of the cat to
the consulate down there. The gentleman that actually got involved
in this, he's a US He's a US government employee,
works for the State Department. But in addition to that,
this guy is a former marine. All Right, you've heard
the old adage, you know there are no such things
(24:52):
as X marines or a former marine. Well, he's a
former marine, and he he thought that this was super
bizarre self, so he decides to break out the camera,
and not just break out the camera, he broke out
the tape measure and he actually did many of the
things that we do in the morgue, you know, when
(25:14):
he went to the to the funeral home where the
body was, he began taking scale photographs of these injuries
that she had sustained, took measurements of the defects, and
had voluminous notes apparently. And guess what he did when
he he had acquired all of this stuff, he turned
(25:36):
it over the FBI, because you know, he's looking at
this from the perspective of somebody that knows his way
around weapons, all right, Like I said, he's a four Marine.
He's had exposure to firearms, trust me, and so he's
looking at this, he's thinking this, this just this stinks.
I don't I don't like the way this looks. I
don't like what we're being told. I don't like the
(25:57):
speed at which this is happening. You know, you you're heelf.
Jackie had mentioned three days, wanted it done in three days.
Why the rush, I don't understand. And so it made
it made his senses start to tingle there for a moment,
and he decided to step back and do his own examination.
And thank goodness he did, because you know, that's the
only examination that was done on her remains. In combination
(26:19):
to the Consular General's suspicions, is a friend of Bianca
Rudolph's asked the FBI to investigate, and that kicked off
an in depth inquiry. She says, according to the friend,
Lawrence Rudolf had been having a long term affair with
(26:42):
an office manager. The couple owned more than one dental practice,
actually millionaires, yet he was having a long term affair,
according to the friend, and that is why she thought
that Bianca was killed. You've already got this level of suspicion,
that is, you know, this rising up here, and you're
beginning to think, well, what in what in the world?
(27:04):
You know, first of all, wise he wanted the body
cremated so quickly. And I'm sure that when Bianca's friend
heard about this, she's thinking, wait, hang on, this is
She's not a neaphight. She's not just somebody that has
been handed a weapon and you know, thrown out in
the bush of of Africa and told to go and
(27:25):
kill a leopard. This is somebody that is learned when
it comes to stalking big game. This is somebody that's probably,
you know, compared to me, somebody that's fearless out there,
that knows what they're doing. How how does she wind
up shot? And so when her friend hears about all
of this, it's quite you know, it's quite fascinating, you
(27:46):
know that that they would they would be in such
a rush to do this. And so her friend automatically
contacts the FBI and says, look, there's just something not
right here. He's in a foreign country. My friend is dead.
He's had an ongoing affair, which you know, from a
family dynamic standpoint, you know, my understanding is that Bianca
(28:07):
was aware of the affair um and that they had
been living this kind of open marriage for a while,
but she didn't divorce him, and so this is something
that has been allowed within the context of their marriage
to go on and on and on for quite some time.
This case is a forensic Schmorgus board because you can't
(28:27):
do a full autopsy on a body that doesn't exist anymore.
Investigators had to rely on the photos and the recollections
of people there and what was seen by the consular General.
Then you throw in the investigation that started in the US,
which had to become a computer investigation in that they
(28:53):
started looking back for documents and proof of the affair.
And this long time activity in putting all of this together,
how did they come up with the idea that Lawrence
Rudolph killed his wife. Well, you know, one of the
(29:13):
things that that kind of drew them in was the
fact that Lawrence had apparently taken out multiple insurance policies
on Bianca, and we're talking about millions and millions of
dollars from a variety of sources of these policies that
have been taken out and pretty quickly. I think after
(29:34):
her her demise, he was putting forth paperwork to get
these checks processed and get them into his hands, and
there didn't seem to be as well. I think that
one of the things that raised the suspicion of investigator
state side was that they began to look at this
(29:55):
and think, well, he it's really kind of an inappropriate
amount of reef our time for grieving because you know,
upon his arrival back in the US, first off, there
was a delay in actually telling his children that their
mom had passed. I think that it had been several
days before they were ever even notified. But another level
(30:19):
of suspicion here is the fact that he decided to
take a trip with this mistress out of the country
in very short order. And again, you know, that's that's
gonna make alarm bells for investigators go off. But there
was also one other piece that you got to go
back to Zambia to look at. Now, they didn't do
a matter of fact, they did a poor job relative
(30:41):
to the scene and the body and all these sorts
of things. But what did happen There was a farms
examiner in Zambia that worked for the government over there,
and they did get their hands on that shotgun. And
one of the things that they did, and this force,
this information went back to the FBI, was that their
(31:04):
farms examiner over there conducted what's referred to as a
drop test. And just so our listeners know, with a
drop test, what you will do is that the intent
is to this weapon. That is, essentially, if you will,
for lack of a better term, it's cocked. That means
it's in the ready position. You don't have to have
(31:26):
a live around in it, but it's cocked and it's
in the ready position. So let's just say that you
take this weapon and you hold it at two ft okay,
and then you drop it on the butt that means
the back, the back portion of it where it seeds
into the shoulder, and you crack upen the weapon after
(31:46):
it's been dropped from that height, and you check to
see if the firing pen is still not actuated. Then
you go up to three ft drop it again, see
if see if it's still there in in in place
and hasn't been actuallyitd then up to fore feet and
that's what they did. This progressive test and the drop
test revealed that this weapon didn't malfunction. That that you know,
(32:09):
after this this testing was conducted, that it was proven
to them at least in order to actuate that firing pin,
you have to pull that trigger. You have to pull
the trigger. And there's no amount of dropping that could
have taken place in that bedroom where she was shot
in order for the thing to accidentally discharge into her chest.
(32:52):
Just imagine you're in the bathroom. You've had a long
two weeks out in this wilderness, hunting doing that thing
that you you you love the most, apparently, and all
of a sudden, in this tiny two room cabin, you
hear the report of a weapon. The sound of this
(33:13):
thing being discharged. It would have been almost like being
sealed up in an oil drum and somebody banging on
the outside of with a hammer. That's how loud it
would have been. And that's and that's the case. That's
what Dr. Rudolph said. He was in the bathroom and
he heard the shot, but other people heard the shot too.
There were people in a cabin. It's early in the morning,
(33:35):
by five thirty am. This is when hunters get up
and they get moving, they're eating breakfast, they're ready to go.
And people from down the way heard the shot as well,
and they came running to the cabin. Here's the point
that I find absolutely fascinating about this. Dr Rudolph says
he was in the bathroom, in the shower, getting ready
(33:58):
to go home, to travel home from their trip. Doesn't
it stand to reason that if you all of a
sudden here this big boom, that there's a shot, that
you're not going to take the time to get completely
dressed to your shoes to go find out what this
big noises in your cabin what he did? Yeah, Yeah,
(34:20):
you're you're you're hopping out of the shower, all right,
You're hopping out of the shower. This is like a
grenade going off inside of the room immediately adjacent to you.
You're gonna want to find out, and you're not gonna
take time throw your clothes on like you're going to
dinner or something or going going to breakfast. You're gonna
hop out with a towel on and this is you know,
(34:43):
this is the mother of your children. Here you walk in,
she's faced down on the floor. There's weapon laying there
about three ft away. According to what he said, and
your first instinct, and this is this is not a
person that's never seen blood before, all right. Now, granted
he's not an m D. He's a dentist, but you know,
(35:03):
let's face it, he's had experience with with you know,
horrible things he's seen. And plus it's his wife. Immediately
you would think that, you know, he's gonna be there
in a towel, he's gonna be doing chess compressions, all
these sorts of things. And that's what he had told
in one part of his story. But you know, as
(35:24):
I mentioned, when this the sound of this weapon being
discharged traveled out, you know, from from this cabin, there
was an area that's not very far away. It's like
the area where people the kind of commons area where
everybody gathers, and there were people in that commons area
eating breakfast at five thirty in the morning. They heard
(35:45):
the shot as well. And one of these individuals, who
is one of the local guides, went running to the cabin.
What didn't marry up with Dr. Rudolph's statement relative to
you know, he was in the shower. And this sort
of thing is when this gentleman came up from the
(36:06):
breakfast area, he he saw Dr. Rudolph. Dr Rudolph was
fully closed, he had shoes on, you know that. You know, okay, well,
they're getting ready to leave that. You know, they have
to blast out of there and go catch plane and
get back to the US. But you know, which is it, Doc,
Were you in the shower or are you fully clothed?
(36:27):
And again, this is one of the things that we
look for in investigations, inconsistencies versus consistencies with stories. That's
why many times that when people are questioned, they're asked
to repeat the story numerous times and to see if
if it maintains continuity. In this case, it it really
really didn't. It's quite a tell. You know, when she
(36:49):
would have been observed on the floor there and you know,
I'd like to go back to this idea of of
this injury she sustained. There would have been blood everywhere
and one other point here that I didn't touch on earlier.
That's quite fascinating. Remember, it is being put forth that
(37:10):
when she was shot, this weapon was already encased or
partially in case. Remember the story is that she was
placing this twelve gates shotgun into the scabbard or into
the soft case and it discharged. Well, folks might not
realize this, but when a weapon discharges like this and
(37:36):
it passes through what we call the round, passes through
what we refer to as an intermediate target. One of
the other things that would have been witnessed in this area.
First off, the end of the scabbard would have been
blown out, because you're talking about twelve gags round. You
would have seen bits of fabric. You would have seen
upon the exterior of the case if its actual leather,
(37:58):
if it's vinyl or pleather or whatever it is this
thing's made out of. That debris would have passed into
the body as well, and you could see that around
the injury. Was any of that stuff seen and and
did it get destroyed? And attempts to resuscitate her, because
allegedly Dr. Rudolph says that he did try to resuscitate her,
(38:21):
and this would have been quite the messy affair. He
would have been absolutely covered in blood. When you're talking
about a shotgun wound to the chest, her chest would
have been opened up, particularly at this range, it would
have been a gaping injury more than likely. And so
I understand that when you're giving chest compressions, which you know,
(38:42):
any right thinking person would be doing, if you're trying
to resuscitate somebody, for every little defect or whole, you know,
the little injuries in the body, you're going to have
blood issuing forth up out of that area. And if
the person still has what's referred to any kind of
agonal respirations or pulse, that means they're in kind of
(39:04):
the process of dying, the body will be pushing blood
out of those areas as well. So you're gonna be covered.
Your hands will be covered, your arms will be covered.
If you're wearing clothing, your clothing will be covered in blood.
It would just be an absolute mess. Bianca was found
lying face down next to a dresser. Does is that logical, Joe,
(39:31):
if she shot in the chest, that she would fall forward?
I mean, does that you understand why I'm asking that? Yeah,
you know, I think I think a lot of and
there's been any number of cases over the years, you know,
where people have asked well, do people fall in specific manners?
Do they fall categorically in one position? If there is
(39:52):
a self inflicted gunshot wound versus an accidental gunshot wound
versus a homicide, and there is nothing, I mean, there
is nothing out there that dictates that you will fall
in a specific position. So when somebody has found face down,
for instance, in this position, that just happens to be
the position in which gravity dictated their resting point, because
(40:16):
the body is so insulted by this event that has
taken place. It's not like you're you're purposing to go
down on your hands and knees and fall fall forward.
It's whatever gravity dictates what will happen. And one other
thing too that you know, we can kind of dispel
as well. Um, and again I go back to you know,
(40:37):
I'm always kind of picking on Hollywood, but you know,
we see these these programs and whatnot where people are
shot with weapons, say, for instance, a shotgun blast in particular,
and people get blown back two and three feet. That
doesn't happen. The body essentially absorbs that energy, and you
know people will many times drop uh down approximating the
(40:58):
last location where they were ending alive. They're not going
to be blown back two or three feet. That's it's
not like you're getting hit with a car here, you know,
big blunt object. That just doesn't happen. Many people will
be be driven slightly, but there's not enough energy over
enough contact surfaces the body to drive somebody back through
(41:21):
the air. That's just not gonna happen. But the entry
will still be ghastly. Ultimately, Lawrence Rudolph is charged with
foreign murder in the death of his wife Bianca, and
there has been a resolution. Joe, Yeah, there has been
just recently. Dr Rudolph was in fact found guilty, not
(41:42):
just found guilty of of this foreign murder, which is
an interesting point in and of itself from a legal standpoint.
But you know what, one of the things that people
are always asking, you know, they're always asking when somebody commits, uh, homicide, well,
what's the motive vation? Is it greed? Is it passion?
(42:03):
You know, is it lust? Is it anger on? In
this case, apparently, you know, it comes down to to greed.
He was he was found guilty also of insurance fraud.
And this is this is kind of fascinating because this
is a federal case, as opposed to state charge. Remember
this event took place in Zambia. But what the Feds
(42:24):
were able to do is that, even though his practice
is located in Pennsylvania, he was charged federally in the
district court in Colorado, and that's where his trial was
held because that's where the company that he defrauded was headquartered.
So now he's in prison. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(42:48):
this is body Backs.
Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. I don't have to
tell y'all it's a tough world out there. Many times
all you want to do is disconnect, and a lot
of us do different things. We fish, we can read.
(00:30):
But the guy I'm gonna tell you about today, Dr
Larry Rudolph. He and his wife Bianca. You know what
they did to disconnect. They like to go hunting. And
I'm not talking about bag in a white tail while
you're up in a deer stand somewhere. I'm talking about
hopping on a plane and go into some of the
most exotic locations in the world to go hunt big game.
(00:58):
This case that we're going to discuss today is that
of Zambia. This particular case took place in literally the
second largest national park in the world, and at the
end of the day, Dr Rudolph's wife Bianca wound up dead.
(01:22):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Bags. There's
no secret I like to get out on my boat
when I'm not recording podcasts or teaching my students. It's
just the way I relax. I like to just be
out on the water. Never been much of a hunter.
(01:45):
I don't necessarily have anything against it, but the amount
of money that it would take to do what doctor
Larry Rudolph did as a hobby is just astronomical. Jackie
Howard's joining me today executive producer of Crime Stories with
(02:06):
Nancy Grace. Jackie, I don't think I've ever really met
a big game hunter. I know a lot of hunters,
you know, growing up here in the South, But this guy,
he beats everything I've ever seen. Actually, Lawrence Rudolph and
his wife Bianca were very well known in the big
game hunting community. They went on these excursions often, and
in fact, in this hunt, Bianca was the only one hunting.
(02:30):
She wanted to add a leopard to her collection of
animal trophies. In this hunt, Bianca was carrying two guns,
a Remington three seventy five rifle and her Rowning twelve
games shot gun. The hunt lasted approximately two weeks, and
as they were packing up early in the morning around
five am to return home, a shot was heard from
(02:54):
the brown shotgun. Lawrence Rudolph said he was in the
bathroom and it think that the shotgun accidentally went off
as Bianca was putting it back in the case. He
says he found her bleeding on the floor. Now, as
investigators looked at this death, they had witnesses who said
(03:15):
they saw her packing up. Before we get into any
of the details, Joe about what happened, I'm curious, is
it possible for you to be packing a gun and
shoot yourself? When you are putting away your rifle inside
its case, the point is down, So how do you
(03:37):
shoot yourself packing a gun? I don't know that it's
even physically possible to accomplish this task. You would have
to be a contortionist, and not just a contortionist, but
if you are the person that is being struck by
the round, you'd have to be remarkably tall and would
(03:59):
rather link the arms. And what I mean by that
is that your body would have to be in such
a way that you could extend your arms to zip
the the case. And in this this case, she was
allegedly putting the twelve gate shotgun into a soft case.
Some people refer to it as a scabbard. It's not
(04:21):
like a hard case that many people have seen. You
know that you think about audio equipment comes in or
or other items that has almost looks like an instrument case.
This is a soft case. And you know, she was
not a very big woman. She's not, you know, really
really tall. Her arm length was pretty much average for
(04:42):
a woman her heights. She was just over five three
I think. And so in order to have this happen,
how exactly would the weapon itself discharge or actually, you know,
how how are you even get the mechanism within the
weapon to start the firing process, which means that that
(05:03):
firing pen would have had to have been initiated and
the pen driven forward slammed into the primer of a
seated round that's in there, in this case, a twelve
gage round of double locked buckshot, and driving that into
her chest, which is apparently where it wound up. It
seems like it defies all the laws of physics. And
(05:25):
one interesting little aside here is that it has been
put forth that the round passed not just out of
the end of the muzzle, but it passed through the
end of the soft case and then into her body,
which again makes this all the more suspicious. So let's
(05:50):
play Devil's advocate a little here, Joe, is it possible?
You know, we've all seen TV shows, and you know
I say this all the time, and I probably shouldn't,
but it's the fact we watch things and it's thrown
out there in a lot of places that, oh I
dropped the gun, oh I knocked the gun over and
it fired. Is that actually possible? Well, yeah, I guess
(06:14):
that it has occurred over the years. I think there's
any number of cases where you can go back and
say that there was some kind of weapon malfunction where
the firing pin would be driven forward and the weapon
does in fact discharge. However, please understand that is the
exception and not the norm. You know, I gotta tell you,
(06:35):
just from my own personal experience, I've actually been involved
in suicide investigations where family members have implored me, have
implored me to ask the medical exam or change the
ruling and call it an accidental discharge. And you know why.
The person is, you know, cleaning the weapon or they
(06:56):
dropped the weapon. And these people in many of these
cases own the weapon, and they have experience and weapons,
and so it's dubious at best, I think in many
of these circumstances. And you know, this goes back to
one of the central essential premise in everything that we
do is medical legal death investigators, you know, with our
five manners of death, you know, homicide is the king
(07:20):
of the hill. And the reason it is is because
our working assumption is that all deaths are homicides until
proven otherwise. And so you have to go down this
kind of intellectual checklist, if you will, all right, and
and kind of tick the boxes and eliminate everything else
(07:40):
and see what kind of appears. So let's tick off
a box here, Joe. First off, you have to rule
out that it's not a possible suicide because to be
able to shoot yourself with a long gun, with shotgun
or rival, you're gonna have to kind be a little
bit of a cartortionist or able to use your feet
(08:05):
just like you would your hands. Yeah, yeah, you will.
And you know, and I've I've had people that you know,
have actually pulled triggers with their toes. I've had people
that have really Yeah, it's yes, yeah, it is. It is. Listen,
if if somebody is suicidal to that point, they'll they'll
find a way to do it. If their only means
(08:26):
is to is to self inflict, it's it's much more
difficult to actuate to trigger. And what I'm talking about,
what has to happen with a self inflicted shotgun woman,
or any kind of long arm, is that you have
to place the butt. That's the end of the weapon,
the non working end of the weapon. Okay, the non
business end, as they say. You have to kind of
(08:47):
brace it somehow, either on the floor, and the individual
gets over the weapon and places it, you know, into
their chest. I've had them place it under their chin.
I've had people place it in, you know, in the
center of their forehead and reach down with their thumb
perhaps and depress the trigger. But a lot of this
(09:08):
is going to be depended upon the barrel length. Now,
you know, if you're talking about a Remington twelve gate shotgun,
which in this case, in Bianca's case, this is set
up for hunting, all right. This is not like a
tactical shotgun where you see cops and military folks and
people that have them for home defense, where the barrel
is shorter, where you can swing around a corner and
not get caught up on anything. And those barrels tend
(09:30):
to be a lot a lot shorter. This is not
what we're talking about. We're talking about something that is
going to give you a level of accuracy when you're
firing it. And I gotta tell you, if you're going
out to uh To to hunt a big cat like
this a leopard, first off, I'm gonna be terrified personally,
but I want to make sure that I'm as accurate
as I possibly can be. And so that's the type
(09:52):
of weapon we're talking about. The muzzle of this weapon,
the barrel rather is very long. And so how how
do you how do you you do this with a
weapon like this if it is in fact a suicide
and it's very difficult. Generally I will have males that
will do it because their arms tend to be longer,
they have more height, they can kind of mend over
(10:12):
and manipulate the weapon. When you have a lady that
is her size and she's kind of diminutive, you know,
how do you arrive at that at that position? And again,
why why would you why would you choose to self
inflict around into your body in with a weapon that
(10:35):
is partially encased. So I think that you know, from
jump Street, we can kind of rule out suicide here.
And of course there's a lot of other stuff that
goes into suicide investigation, like you know, suicidal ideation, people vocalizing,
you know, I don't want to go on anymore. I'm depressed.
I've got all these other issues, previous attempts, and there
was nothing here to indicate that that was the case.
(10:57):
With Bianca's death line, Rudolph initially told the consular chief
in Zambia as they conducted their investigation that she may
have died by suicide, but the investigation then ruled as
an accidental discharge. What would have her body sustained? Well,
(11:18):
you know, the ammunition that we're talking about is buckshot.
It's it's double locked buckshot. And so imagine if you will,
And you know, our listeners and body backs are really
good at this sort of thing because they love forensics,
and I'm sure that some are familiar with this, but
just imagine, if you will, an object that is just
smaller than a standard marble. Okay, everybody got that in
(11:41):
your in your mind's eye, and to think about multiple
those loaded into a single cartridge. Now, those those marbles
that I'm referring to are about about thirty caliber in size,
so it's it's rather substantial. You know, if you've got
that vision of a marble and give me you're saying
(12:04):
that that thirty caliber is about the size of a
standard marble. Is that where it's a little bit smaller
than a standard marble. So it's not I'm just trying
to give folks an understanding that it's it is about
that size. Approximating it is the closest thing I can
really come to. We're talking about buckshot, and the reason
it's called buckshot is that you go out and you
(12:25):
hunt a buck with it. You can kill a buck, deer,
a big animal like that. I can only assume that
that's the reason they purpose this, you know, because I
gotta tell you, I got no experience with big game hunting.
I've always associated say, for instance, the other weapon that
they're carrying, you know, which is a large bore three
caliber round that is a large boar. You use this
(12:46):
to hunt things like a rhinoceros or a hippopotamus or
something like that. Potentially because they've bagged those kinds of animals.
You would think that that you would want that, but no,
she was gonna use shotguns. So with that idea in mind,
when this weapon, this single round of buckshot, is discharged,
(13:09):
you've got not just a single little marble, if you
will we'll just use that term projectile coming out to
end that that that that weapon. You've gotten multiple of
these thirty caliber size projectiles coming out of the end
of that muzzle, and well what happens, Well, what happens
(13:29):
is is that remember, shotguns are what are called smooth bore.
That means that there's no rifling in it. It doesn't
twist at all, all right, when it comes out of
that muzzle, all right, comes out in a little cup.
It's called a shot cup. It kind of deploys like
it looks almost like a flower pedal when it opens
up out of the end of that that weapon. And
(13:50):
these little bitty projectiles come out of the end of
this thing and they slam into the target. Well, because
they're not rifled, they're not staying with pinpoint accuracy going
down range. They're beginning to spread, all right, And as
they spread, they get wider and wider apart. So whatever
(14:10):
target that they wind up impacting is going to be
kind of the initial impression that the investigators will give
in order to determine range of fire. So, if you've
got a pattern that has just begun to spread, let's
say it's only you've got multiple of these little pellets
(14:31):
that are hitting the body and say they're only I
don't know, they're no more than well, let's just say
you could you could throw a you could put a
quarter over the size of it. You know that that
round when it came out of the came out of
the end of that muzzle is has not spread at all.
But now when you start to step back and that
pattern begins to get broader and broader and broader, you
(14:55):
know that there's a greater distance between the end of
the muzzle and your target area. And in her case,
one of the things that was witnessed, which is a
fascinating story in and of itself. So what you just
told me, Joe, or taught me Joe, is that the
difference with a shotgun and the type of ammunition that
it uses, there's not going to be any stipling to
(15:18):
be able to look for. Well, yeah, that that's that's
pretty much the case. You're you're not going to have
it as prominently patterned in this particular case. And a
lot of that, because we believe she was, would be
evidenced with the clothing. And you know, one of the
big questions that you would ask is where the clothes
(15:39):
preserved in any way, Is there any way to examine
those because if if you do have powder that comes
out of the end of this barrel, let's just think
about it just for a second. I want everybody to
kind of get an idea. As a matter of fact,
one of the things I teach my students, if you
want to understand about powder distribution on a target area,
go into your bathroom at home and get a little
bit of baby powders, some talcoum, all right, and put it,
(16:02):
put it in the palm of your hand, and then
walk up to your bathroom mirror and gently blow it
onto the bathroom mirror. All right. Now, the closer you
are to that bathroom mirror, you'll get a bigger deposit
on the mirror itself. But the further you move back away,
I mean, everybody's seeing baby powder just kind of you know,
puffs up in the air and then it just kind
(16:22):
of drifts down, kind of the same with powder coming
out of the end of the gun, out of the
end of the weapon. The closer you are, the closer
you are to that target area, you're gonna get a
deposition of this powder that kind of sticks to this
area and it's kind of embedded into the skin. The
further back you are, it's gonna drift down. That's just
that's the dynamic of it. You know, powder, that powder itself,
(16:45):
whether it's talcoum powder or or unburned gunpowder or whatever
it is, it doesn't have it doesn't have the best
aerodynamic characteristics. It's not like a projectile, like a lead
projectile that holds onto that energy. You know, is it
blast out of the end of that muzzle. It's containing energy,
all right, because it's solid, it's moving forward, and it
(17:07):
slams into a target with powder. It doesn't do that.
That's why, you know, when Nancy and I talked about
these things on her show, you begin to look look
out beyond about eighteen inches, and you know there's some disagreement,
you know, because it's not real exacting. Some people say
from eighteen inches out to you know, roughly, you're gonna
(17:29):
begin to get this drift where we'll begin to kind
of fall away. Anything within eighteen inches though, you'll have
powder distribution. So that's one of the big questions, and
that's that's one of the things you know that that
comes into play in death investigation is that you're not
necessarily always gonna have a witness that's gonna be able
to give you, you know, the straight story on this,
and all you have left behind is a physical evidence,
(17:52):
and that that's powerful physical evidence, isn't it When you
think about it, you know what what's going to be
left behind, what's going to be distributed on that harget area.
And if you don't have that with a clothing or
a body, you've got big trouble as an investigator. Well,
I should have taken better notes, Professor Morgan, because what
I actually meant to say was you would not have striations.
(18:17):
Although stippling was a great answer, and he told me
a lot, But what I meant to say was you're
not gonna have striations on buckshot. No, no, you're not.
And that's that's an excellent point, because you know, most
people out there, and I'm glad that most people don't
know this about firearms. It's it's geeky people like me,
forensic scientists that study these sorts of things. You know.
One of the things that we look for when we
(18:39):
have a rifled weapon, which means that we've got all
of these twists in the barrel. They imprint themselves on
the exterior of this projectile that's going down the barrel
as it's twisting and spinning in the barrel. That's why earlier,
you know, when I'm talking about this twelve gage browning um,
it's a smooth bore web. And it's like if you
(19:01):
look down, if you shine a light into the muzzle
of that weapon, and you can catch a glimpse from
where the weapon kind of breaks open. You never look
in the end of a muzzle of a weapon. You
look down. If you can look down, shine a light
down in that muzzle where the project the live round
is actually seated in there, you can actually see how
(19:23):
smooth it is compared to say, for instance, if you're
talking about a hunting rifle, and the reason it's called
rifle is it's rifled. It's it's got these these twisting
the barrel. And so when you examine when farms examiners
examine projectiles out of shotgun, it's a bit more I'm
(19:45):
not going to use terms subjective, but there's not as
much evidence that's left behind on these little balls that
come out of the end of that smooth barrel that
you can specifically tied back to that particular weapon as
much as you will with like a rifled weapon, where
it will leave a specific ballistic signature on that surface.
(20:24):
You know, I've only covered one other homicide in my
career off the continent of Africa, and that was the
Oscar of the story Is case out of South Africa. Now,
they were a bit more sophisticated down there with their
crime scene investigation, but still it was in some people's
minds lacking. But in the case of Bianca Rudolph, she's
(20:48):
literally in the wilderness. She she is. Her death actually
occurred on the property of one of the world's largest
game preserves. I can't even begin to fathom that. And
you talk about isolation. For me, I think about what
would I do if I was absent all the resources
that I need to work a crumb scene in that
(21:09):
environment you talked about isolated. I don't even know if
that begins to describe a Jackie. An investigation was not
immediately pushed in the death of Bianca Rudolph, as it
was thought to be an accidental death. But as always,
when there is an American death outside our country, the
consulate in that area is notified. Now Rudolph's body was
(21:36):
sent to the funeral home, and Lawrence Rudolph was pushing
for cremation, saying that the time and the distance that
it would not be possible to return Bianca's body to
the US. But we know that Bianca and Lawrence Rudolph
(21:58):
shipped animals back to the US all the time, So
why then could her body not be transported back to
the US. Yeah, that's a fallacy. Of course, it could
be the body is is preserved. There's an embalming that
takes place, the bodies are prepped and they're sent back
(22:20):
over You know, I myself have have actually I've done autopsies,
participated in autopsies that have come back literally from Africa.
I know of three missionaries over the course of my
career that I did that autopsies on are assisted with
them at the family's request when they got back to
the US. And fascinatingly, in one of the most bizarre
(22:43):
cases I've ever been involved in, I actually had a
body that showed up in New Orleans when I was
working down there, packed in charcoal. I've never seen anything
like it. It was absolutely bizarre, but interestingly enough, the
body was very well preserved. Yet it's possible to embalm
a body and send that body back to the US.
(23:05):
I don't understand what this idea of. You know, we
have to cremate the body and get the body back
to the husband and have the body transported back to
the US in this manner. I mean, this is you know,
the twenty one century that we live in now, and
this is completely possible to do. So. I don't understand
(23:25):
the rush. It's mind mind boggling. But as an investigator,
I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you if I
have family members that are push, push, push for cremations
like this, it's gonna make alarms go off in my head.
Remember what what I've already said. You know, every death
and I don't care how old the person is, I
(23:46):
don't care how much disease they might have. As an investigator,
I get one shot at this. My premise that I
put forward is that every death, and I mean every
death is a homicide until I can prove otherwise. Well,
the constant ler chief in Zambia obviously thought the same
way that you did, Joe, because the consular chief and
(24:06):
two other embassy officials went to the funeral home to
take photographs and preserve any evidence, because the push was
on for her to be cremated within three days. And
we found out later that when Lawrence Rudolph found out
that photos were taken of his wife, he was livid.
So what's the possibility that those photos could have shown us? Oh,
(24:31):
it's it's remarkable. In a tip of the cat to
the consulate down there. The gentleman that actually got involved
in this, he's a US He's a US government employee,
works for the State Department. But in addition to that,
this guy is a former marine. All Right, you've heard
the old adage, you know there are no such things
(24:52):
as X marines or a former marine. Well, he's a
former marine, and he he thought that this was super
bizarre self, so he decides to break out the camera,
and not just break out the camera, he broke out
the tape measure and he actually did many of the
things that we do in the morgue, you know, when
(25:14):
he went to the to the funeral home where the
body was, he began taking scale photographs of these injuries
that she had sustained, took measurements of the defects, and
had voluminous notes apparently. And guess what he did when
he he had acquired all of this stuff, he turned
(25:36):
it over the FBI, because you know, he's looking at
this from the perspective of somebody that knows his way
around weapons, all right, Like I said, he's a four Marine.
He's had exposure to firearms, trust me, and so he's
looking at this, he's thinking this, this just this stinks.
I don't I don't like the way this looks. I
don't like what we're being told. I don't like the
(25:57):
speed at which this is happening. You know, you you're heelf.
Jackie had mentioned three days, wanted it done in three days.
Why the rush, I don't understand. And so it made
it made his senses start to tingle there for a moment,
and he decided to step back and do his own examination.
And thank goodness he did, because you know, that's the
only examination that was done on her remains. In combination
(26:19):
to the Consular General's suspicions, is a friend of Bianca
Rudolph's asked the FBI to investigate, and that kicked off
an in depth inquiry. She says, according to the friend,
Lawrence Rudolf had been having a long term affair with
(26:42):
an office manager. The couple owned more than one dental practice,
actually millionaires, yet he was having a long term affair,
according to the friend, and that is why she thought
that Bianca was killed. You've already got this level of suspicion,
that is, you know, this rising up here, and you're
beginning to think, well, what in what in the world?
(27:04):
You know, first of all, wise he wanted the body
cremated so quickly. And I'm sure that when Bianca's friend
heard about this, she's thinking, wait, hang on, this is
She's not a neaphight. She's not just somebody that has
been handed a weapon and you know, thrown out in
the bush of of Africa and told to go and
(27:25):
kill a leopard. This is somebody that is learned when
it comes to stalking big game. This is somebody that's probably,
you know, compared to me, somebody that's fearless out there,
that knows what they're doing. How how does she wind
up shot? And so when her friend hears about all
of this, it's quite you know, it's quite fascinating, you
(27:46):
know that that they would they would be in such
a rush to do this. And so her friend automatically
contacts the FBI and says, look, there's just something not
right here. He's in a foreign country. My friend is dead.
He's had an ongoing affair, which you know, from a
family dynamic standpoint, you know, my understanding is that Bianca
(28:07):
was aware of the affair um and that they had
been living this kind of open marriage for a while,
but she didn't divorce him, and so this is something
that has been allowed within the context of their marriage
to go on and on and on for quite some time.
This case is a forensic Schmorgus board because you can't
(28:27):
do a full autopsy on a body that doesn't exist anymore.
Investigators had to rely on the photos and the recollections
of people there and what was seen by the consular General.
Then you throw in the investigation that started in the US,
which had to become a computer investigation in that they
(28:53):
started looking back for documents and proof of the affair.
And this long time activity in putting all of this together,
how did they come up with the idea that Lawrence
Rudolph killed his wife. Well, you know, one of the
(29:13):
things that that kind of drew them in was the
fact that Lawrence had apparently taken out multiple insurance policies
on Bianca, and we're talking about millions and millions of
dollars from a variety of sources of these policies that
have been taken out and pretty quickly. I think after
(29:34):
her her demise, he was putting forth paperwork to get
these checks processed and get them into his hands, and
there didn't seem to be as well. I think that
one of the things that raised the suspicion of investigator
state side was that they began to look at this
(29:55):
and think, well, he it's really kind of an inappropriate
amount of reef our time for grieving because you know,
upon his arrival back in the US, first off, there
was a delay in actually telling his children that their
mom had passed. I think that it had been several
days before they were ever even notified. But another level
(30:19):
of suspicion here is the fact that he decided to
take a trip with this mistress out of the country
in very short order. And again, you know, that's that's
gonna make alarm bells for investigators go off. But there
was also one other piece that you got to go
back to Zambia to look at. Now, they didn't do
a matter of fact, they did a poor job relative
(30:41):
to the scene and the body and all these sorts
of things. But what did happen There was a farms
examiner in Zambia that worked for the government over there,
and they did get their hands on that shotgun. And
one of the things that they did, and this force,
this information went back to the FBI, was that their
(31:04):
farms examiner over there conducted what's referred to as a
drop test. And just so our listeners know, with a
drop test, what you will do is that the intent
is to this weapon. That is, essentially, if you will,
for lack of a better term, it's cocked. That means
it's in the ready position. You don't have to have
(31:26):
a live around in it, but it's cocked and it's
in the ready position. So let's just say that you
take this weapon and you hold it at two ft okay,
and then you drop it on the butt that means
the back, the back portion of it where it seeds
into the shoulder, and you crack upen the weapon after
(31:46):
it's been dropped from that height, and you check to
see if the firing pen is still not actuated. Then
you go up to three ft drop it again, see
if see if it's still there in in in place
and hasn't been actuallyitd then up to fore feet and
that's what they did. This progressive test and the drop
test revealed that this weapon didn't malfunction. That that you know,
(32:09):
after this this testing was conducted, that it was proven
to them at least in order to actuate that firing pin,
you have to pull that trigger. You have to pull
the trigger. And there's no amount of dropping that could
have taken place in that bedroom where she was shot
in order for the thing to accidentally discharge into her chest.
(32:52):
Just imagine you're in the bathroom. You've had a long
two weeks out in this wilderness, hunting doing that thing
that you you you love the most, apparently, and all
of a sudden, in this tiny two room cabin, you
hear the report of a weapon. The sound of this
(33:13):
thing being discharged. It would have been almost like being
sealed up in an oil drum and somebody banging on
the outside of with a hammer. That's how loud it
would have been. And that's and that's the case. That's
what Dr. Rudolph said. He was in the bathroom and
he heard the shot, but other people heard the shot too.
There were people in a cabin. It's early in the morning,
(33:35):
by five thirty am. This is when hunters get up
and they get moving, they're eating breakfast, they're ready to go.
And people from down the way heard the shot as well,
and they came running to the cabin. Here's the point
that I find absolutely fascinating about this. Dr Rudolph says
he was in the bathroom, in the shower, getting ready
(33:58):
to go home, to travel home from their trip. Doesn't
it stand to reason that if you all of a
sudden here this big boom, that there's a shot, that
you're not going to take the time to get completely
dressed to your shoes to go find out what this
big noises in your cabin what he did? Yeah, Yeah,
(34:20):
you're you're you're hopping out of the shower, all right,
You're hopping out of the shower. This is like a
grenade going off inside of the room immediately adjacent to you.
You're gonna want to find out, and you're not gonna
take time throw your clothes on like you're going to
dinner or something or going going to breakfast. You're gonna
hop out with a towel on and this is you know,
(34:43):
this is the mother of your children. Here you walk in,
she's faced down on the floor. There's weapon laying there
about three ft away. According to what he said, and
your first instinct, and this is this is not a
person that's never seen blood before, all right. Now, granted
he's not an m D. He's a dentist, but you know,
(35:03):
let's face it, he's had experience with with you know,
horrible things he's seen. And plus it's his wife. Immediately
you would think that, you know, he's gonna be there
in a towel, he's gonna be doing chess compressions, all
these sorts of things. And that's what he had told
in one part of his story. But you know, as
(35:24):
I mentioned, when this the sound of this weapon being
discharged traveled out, you know, from from this cabin, there
was an area that's not very far away. It's like
the area where people the kind of commons area where
everybody gathers, and there were people in that commons area
eating breakfast at five thirty in the morning. They heard
(35:45):
the shot as well. And one of these individuals, who
is one of the local guides, went running to the cabin.
What didn't marry up with Dr. Rudolph's statement relative to
you know, he was in the shower. And this sort
of thing is when this gentleman came up from the
(36:06):
breakfast area, he he saw Dr. Rudolph. Dr Rudolph was
fully closed, he had shoes on, you know that. You know, okay, well,
they're getting ready to leave that. You know, they have
to blast out of there and go catch plane and
get back to the US. But you know, which is it, Doc,
Were you in the shower or are you fully clothed?
(36:27):
And again, this is one of the things that we
look for in investigations, inconsistencies versus consistencies with stories. That's
why many times that when people are questioned, they're asked
to repeat the story numerous times and to see if
if it maintains continuity. In this case, it it really
really didn't. It's quite a tell. You know, when she
(36:49):
would have been observed on the floor there and you know,
I'd like to go back to this idea of of
this injury she sustained. There would have been blood everywhere
and one other point here that I didn't touch on earlier.
That's quite fascinating. Remember, it is being put forth that
(37:10):
when she was shot, this weapon was already encased or
partially in case. Remember the story is that she was
placing this twelve gates shotgun into the scabbard or into
the soft case and it discharged. Well, folks might not
realize this, but when a weapon discharges like this and
(37:36):
it passes through what we call the round, passes through
what we refer to as an intermediate target. One of
the other things that would have been witnessed in this area.
First off, the end of the scabbard would have been
blown out, because you're talking about twelve gags round. You
would have seen bits of fabric. You would have seen
upon the exterior of the case if its actual leather,
(37:58):
if it's vinyl or pleather or whatever it is this
thing's made out of. That debris would have passed into
the body as well, and you could see that around
the injury. Was any of that stuff seen and and
did it get destroyed? And attempts to resuscitate her, because
allegedly Dr. Rudolph says that he did try to resuscitate her,
(38:21):
and this would have been quite the messy affair. He
would have been absolutely covered in blood. When you're talking
about a shotgun wound to the chest, her chest would
have been opened up, particularly at this range, it would
have been a gaping injury more than likely. And so
I understand that when you're giving chest compressions, which you know,
(38:42):
any right thinking person would be doing, if you're trying
to resuscitate somebody, for every little defect or whole, you know,
the little injuries in the body, you're going to have
blood issuing forth up out of that area. And if
the person still has what's referred to any kind of
agonal respirations or pulse, that means they're in kind of
(39:04):
the process of dying, the body will be pushing blood
out of those areas as well. So you're gonna be covered.
Your hands will be covered, your arms will be covered.
If you're wearing clothing, your clothing will be covered in blood.
It would just be an absolute mess. Bianca was found
lying face down next to a dresser. Does is that logical, Joe,
(39:31):
if she shot in the chest, that she would fall forward?
I mean, does that you understand why I'm asking that? Yeah,
you know, I think I think a lot of and
there's been any number of cases over the years, you know,
where people have asked well, do people fall in specific manners?
Do they fall categorically in one position? If there is
(39:52):
a self inflicted gunshot wound versus an accidental gunshot wound
versus a homicide, and there is nothing, I mean, there
is nothing out there that dictates that you will fall
in a specific position. So when somebody has found face down,
for instance, in this position, that just happens to be
the position in which gravity dictated their resting point, because
(40:16):
the body is so insulted by this event that has
taken place. It's not like you're you're purposing to go
down on your hands and knees and fall fall forward.
It's whatever gravity dictates what will happen. And one other
thing too that you know, we can kind of dispel
as well. Um, and again I go back to you know,
(40:37):
I'm always kind of picking on Hollywood, but you know,
we see these these programs and whatnot where people are
shot with weapons, say, for instance, a shotgun blast in particular,
and people get blown back two and three feet. That
doesn't happen. The body essentially absorbs that energy, and you
know people will many times drop uh down approximating the
(40:58):
last location where they were ending alive. They're not going
to be blown back two or three feet. That's it's
not like you're getting hit with a car here, you know,
big blunt object. That just doesn't happen. Many people will
be be driven slightly, but there's not enough energy over
enough contact surfaces the body to drive somebody back through
(41:21):
the air. That's just not gonna happen. But the entry
will still be ghastly. Ultimately, Lawrence Rudolph is charged with
foreign murder in the death of his wife Bianca, and
there has been a resolution. Joe, Yeah, there has been
just recently. Dr Rudolph was in fact found guilty, not
(41:42):
just found guilty of of this foreign murder, which is
an interesting point in and of itself from a legal standpoint.
But you know what, one of the things that people
are always asking, you know, they're always asking when somebody commits, uh, homicide, well,
what's the motive vation? Is it greed? Is it passion?
(42:03):
You know, is it lust? Is it anger on? In
this case, apparently, you know, it comes down to to greed.
He was he was found guilty also of insurance fraud.
And this is this is kind of fascinating because this
is a federal case, as opposed to state charge. Remember
this event took place in Zambia. But what the Feds
(42:24):
were able to do is that, even though his practice
is located in Pennsylvania, he was charged federally in the
district court in Colorado, and that's where his trial was
held because that's where the company that he defrauded was headquartered.
So now he's in prison. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(42:48):
this is body Backs.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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