Las Vegas Black Widow Margaret Rudin 79 Says She S Ready To Rebuild Her Life

But for the woman dubbed Las Vegas’ “black widow,” the real story is a botched trial, crooked cops and a 20-year prison and parole stint that ended only when her murder conviction was dramatically overturned in May. Now free after two decades inside the Florence McClure Correctional Center for Women in North Las Vegas, Margaret Rudin, 79, says she plans to write a series of books about her time inside and will move to Mexico for a fresh start once she gets a passport. Her new life will be dramatically different from her prison existence, where she claims she was treated as less than human and repeatedly fell off her bunk before being isolated to recover – only sustained by her dream of proving her innocence. He said: “You think about your children, your grandchildren and you think, I don’t want them to believe this [I’m a killer]. “So I kept fighting, I made every appeal I could, hoping that some great lawyer would come along, take it on, work on it and eventually win.” Margaret Rudin, 79, served nearly 20 years to life in prison after shooting her millionaire husband Ron Rudin to death. Ron Rudin was a real estate developer worth at least $8 million at the time of his death. His burnt body was found shot 4 times Rudin holds her parole letter. She claims she was treated as less than human in prison and repeatedly fell from her top bunk before being put in solitary confinement to recover – only sustained by her dream of proving her innocence Four times married and divorced when she moved to Las Vegas from Chicago in 1987, Rudin had lived “an unconventional life” before moving west and had a nomadic childhood that took her to 15 states in 15 years. When she arrived in Nevada with her two children Michael and Kristina, she was ready to settle down. Rudin was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years. Paroled after serving nearly 20 years in 2020. Above, Rudin at the time of her release Enter Ronald Rudin, a wealthy real estate agent who has also been married four times – including to a woman who died under mysterious circumstances that were later officially ruled a suicide. The couple married after just six weeks and had a marriage that was variously described as “passionate” and “tumultuous” in reports at the time of Ron’s murder. Rudin describes a marriage destroyed by her husband’s alcoholism and demands for attention, and said she found solace in running an antique shop. The pair had met during a Sunday service in July 1987 at the First Church of Religious Science in Las Vegas, with Rudin telling DailyMail.com his cowboy boots had caught her eye. He said: “He wasn’t a very religious person but he was very committed to going to church for whatever reason. “I had told one of my friends as a joke that the next man I married would wear cowboy boots because a lot of people at the time wore cowboy boots. “One day at church, my friend started pointing. I said, what do you have? He said, “there’s a very handsome man on the other side of the stalls and he keeps looking at you and he wears cowboy boots.” He came to us as soon as the service was over and ignored my friend. He said you were going to lunch with me at the Las Vegas Country Club, which I thought was a proud way to ask me to go without asking my boyfriend too. “Six weeks later, we got married because he kept pushing and pushing. It was because he had a drinking problem and had hidden it as much as he could.’ Despite their differences, the marriage continued until December 18, 1994, when Ron disappeared. Margaret says she spent much of their last day at her antique shop, but came home when Ron told her he wanted to see a movie. Once home, he said he changed his mind so he went to the grocery store where he asked her to get him ice cream. Returning a second time, she noticed his car was gone, so she returned to the store where she later walked in to say hello. He said: “That was it. The last time I saw him. As he left my shop.’ When he failed to return that night, Rudin reported her husband missing – only to be fended off by the police. Rudin told DailyMail.com that her husband’s shady business dealings included buying and selling real estate on fictitious titles Ron’s charred remains were found in the Nevada desert in the charred remains of an antique log (above). The trunk turned out to be bought by Margaret Rudin claims that the two inexperienced police officers assigned to the case planned to frame her for her husband’s murder from the beginning. He is photographed being escorted by the police in 1999 At first, he assumed she would come home. She said: “He was really unpredictable. He was very selfish. But I thought I’d call the police and I did and they said, “This is Vegas. Men keep leaving but coming back. We don’t even get a report for 48 hours.’ “I guess it’s true – almost everyone at the time had a weakness: drinking too much, playing too much. They probably still do.” A little over a month later, on January 21, 1995, Ron’s body was found: dumped near Nelson’s Landing in the Eldorado Mountains. An autopsy later revealed that she had been shot in the head, decapitated and burned. He was identified by a diamond ID tag spelling out his first name that one of his ex-wives had bought for him. A .22 caliber handgun pulled from Lake Mead a year later was believed to be the murder weapon after it was traced to Ron who had reported him missing in 1988. Rudin says she found out he was dead from a brief newspaper report published the next day, but police didn’t contact her until two days after the discovery. She says that when they arrived, she was still in her nightgown and had to ask them to let her get dressed. Rudin also told how officers told her nephew that Ron’s body had been burned, but they had no sense that she was a suspect. That all changed as the investigation progressed, with Rudin telling DailyMail.com that the two inexperienced cops assigned to the case planned to pin her down from the start – despite Ron’s dodgy business dealings that Rudin says he was buying and sold properties with fictitious titles. He said: “It was a fiasco, the whole thing. In court, they said there was blood on the wall – the police officers who were there said there was no blood. They looked under the bed. “They said with the amount of blood a human body has, there would be a scene, there would be bloodstains and things like that.” She denies ever trying to hide a blood-stained mattress in her shop, as prosecutors and a handyman named Augustine Lobato said at her trial, saying, “There was never a mattress there. They can call it what they want, but there was never a mattress there.’ Rudin and her defense attorney, Michael Amador, during her trial in 2001. Rudin’s conviction was thrown out due to Amador’s lack of defense in 2001 Rudin is pictured with her current attorney Greg Mullanax. “I kept fighting, I made every appeal I could, hoping that some great lawyer would come along, take it on, work on it, and finally win,” Rudin says. Rudin says that as the investigation progressed, a Mexican artisan who worked in her shop warned her that the murder would be pinned on her and offered to smuggle her across the border. Fearing the worst, she agreed and spent 18 months in Mexico – first in Morelia, then Mazatlan and finally Guadalajara where she lived in an American expatriate community and met Bostonian Joseph Ludergan, now 85. When her mother, who also lived in Boston, became ill, he offered to smuggle her across the border to Massachusetts. Although she was able to evade the cops for a year, she was finally tracked down at Ludergan’s apartment after a postman – who had recognized her from her 13 appearances on America’s Most Wanted – alerted the police. Margaret Rudin was arrested after her case was featured 13 times on America’s Most Wanted He was reportedly arrested after ordering a Domino’s pizza – but said it had been delivered and the couple had eaten it before officers arrived. She described how she hid in the apartment’s bathroom while Ludergan answered the door for police and was confronted by a highway patrolman. Rudin said: “The highway patrolman came into the bathroom with me and said, ‘Are you Margaret Rudin?’ I said, ‘You know I am or you wouldn’t be here.’ From Boston, she was extradited to Las Vegas, where she was tried in March 2001. From the three-hour opening statement onward, her defense, led by attorney Michael Amador, was a farce. During the 10-week trial, prosecutors claimed Rudin was motivated by the prospect of inheriting Ron’s millions and her anger over his alleged affair. The defence, widely described as incompetent in contemporary newspapers, told the court Ron was a victim of his business dealings and alleged links to the mafia. Rudin was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years. The initial appeal failed because her defense team failed to file timely documents. Then, in 2003, an appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court was dismissed – despite defense attorney Craig Creel pointing out 27 different errors during the original trial and describing it as “the single worst example of a criminal trial I’ve ever seen.” Attorney Greg Mullanax, who took on the case in September 2014, said the Supreme Court’s conclusion noted that any of the errors would have given rise to an injustice, but denied Rudin’s statements…