Prosecutors offer new evidence against ex-dentist

Witness heard him say he killed his wife

“I killed my [expletive] wife for you.”

That’s what a bartender said he heard former Greensburg dentist Lawrence Rudolph yell during an argument with Lori Milliron at an Arizona restaurant bar in 2019, according to federal prosecutors in Colorado.

Mr. Rudolph, 67, is accused of murdering his wife, Bianca, with a shotgun during a biggame hunting expedition in Africa in 2016 so he could carry on his affair with Ms. Milliron, his longtime girlfriend and the former manager of his office in Greensburg.

Ms. Milliron has been charged with being an accessory after prosecutors say she lied during grand jury testimony about her relationship with Mr. Rudolph and the circumstances of Bianca’s death.

The FBI says Mr. Rudolph staged the shooting as an accident so he could collect $4.8 million in insurance and have Ms. Milliron move in with him at his Phoenix mansion, which she did a short time after the shooting.

His lawyer wants the cases separated, but the government says the pair should be tried together because the facts are largely the same.

To bolster that contention, the U.S. attorney’s office recounted new evidence that prosecutors said they learned after Ms. Milliron’s Jan. 5 testimony.

On Jan. 19, an employee at a restaurant in Arizona, where Mr. Rudolph and Ms. Milliron were regulars in the back bar, called the FBI and said the bartender had heard Mr. Rudolph confess to the murder during an argument with his “wife” in 2019.

The bartender had previously been afraid to come forward.

But agents talked to him and he said that during a break in songs in the bar, Mr. Rudolph had yelled “I killed my [expletive] wife for you” loud enough for him and a nearby family to overhear.

“The statement was so shocking that the bartender immediately told his colleagues,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Bryan Fields in court papers. “At the time, the staff did not know that Mr. Rudolph had been previously married; they assumed that Milliron was his wife.”

Employees later learned that Mr. Rudolph had been married previously and that his wife had purportedly died in an African hunting accident.

The grand jury considering charges against Mr. Rudolph was set to expire on Feb. 10. The day before, prosecutors

presented the new evidence from the bar to counter what Ms. Milliron had said on Jan. 5.

The grand jury then handed up a superseding indictment charging her with being an accessory, obstruction and perjury.

Mr. Fields said the government should be allowed to present a single trial.

“The factual connections between the two defendants’ charges are manifold and enmeshed,” he said. “The trial here will require a jury to consider whether Lawrence Rudolph murdered his wife to be with his mistress and whether that mistress, Lori Milliron, knew about the murder and took steps to prevent her lover from being indicted for it. The means by which Milliron accomplished that objective — obstruction and attendant perjury — are directly connected to concealing the murder and her role as raw motive for Rudolph’s appetite to carry it out.”

Mr. Rudolph had originally been charged by complaint in December following an FBI investigation. After prosecutors file a complaint in federal court, they have 30 days to bring an indictment.

After Mr. Rudolph’s arrest, Ms. Milliron listened to hours of testimony at his detention hearing, including testimony about their 20year relationship. A day later she testified before the grand jury and “intentionally lied to help him avoid indictment,” Mr. Fields said.

In addition to asking for a severance, Mr. Rudolph’s Miami lawyer, David Markus, argued that the case against Ms. Milliron should be dismissed altogether.

He said that Bianca Rudolph knew about her husband’s affair and that the government witnesses, including the bartender, aren’t credible.

“Once Ms. Milliron explains to the jury that the government’s witnesses do not know what they are talking about and that the Rudolphs had an open marriage, the case will very likely collapse,” he said.

He said Ms. Milliron did not demand that Mr. Rudolph leave his wife. But by indicting her as an accessory, he said, the government can keep her “credible” testimony from a jury.

“The government’s indictment of Ms. Milliron is intended not only to sideline her from a trial in which her first-hand knowledge is indispensable to the jury’s fair consideration of the evidence but also to infect the jury with improper innuendo concerning Dr. Rudolph’s guilt,” Mr. Markus said. “The obvious implication is that Ms. Milliron would not have had to commit perjury unless she had some reason to think Dr. Rudolph was guilty of murder and fraud.”

Mr. Fields said, however, that Ms. Milliron was charged because she knew about the murder and tried to help Mr. Rudolph get away with it “so that she could continue to live in romantic bliss in his mansion, on his vacations, and surrounded by the luxuries available to a multimillionaire.”

He also noted that Ms. Milliron is not the one asking for the dismissal. Mr. Rudolph, he said, has no standing to challenge his girlfriend’s charges.

Ms. Milliron is charged with nine counts. Prosecutors said she lied about cash payments Mr. Rudolph made to her, her affair with him and an ultimatum that the FBI said she gave him to sell his dental practice and leave Bianca.

That ultimatum was the motive to kill Bianca, prosecutors said.

The FBI said Mr. Rudolph shot her on Oct. 11, 2016, during a leopard-hunting trip in Zambia, then filed claims on life insurance policies held by various companies. One of those is in Denver, which is why the case is being prosecuted there.