Who is Larry Rudolph?
Lawrence “Larry” Rudolph met Bianca Rudolph when he was in dental school at University of Pittsburgh. They wed on Sept. 4, 1982, and had two children, son Julian Rudolph and daughter Anabianca Rudolph.
Larry built a successful practice in Pittsburgh, starring in his own commercials in which he assured patients that trips to the dentists didn’t have to be scary.
“We lived in the suburbs,” Julian said in the Hulu docuseries Trophy Wife: Murder on Safari. “My parents got along, they seemed to love each other.”
Larry and Bianca were also avid big-game hunters who traveled frequently to Africa.
When did Larry Rudolph start dating Lori Milliron?
Lori Milliron went to work at Larry’s practice as a hygienist in 2002.
“He started asking me out immediately,” Lori said in Trophy Wife. “I was reluctant, but after a little while I slowly got to know him.”
They started traveling together, Lori said, and “we fell in love, 100 percent.”
She later helped Larry start his Three Rivers Dental Group empire.
In 2014, Larry and Bianca moved to Phoenix, but Lori, as she explained in the series, continued to manage his practice in Pittsburgh, “working seven days a week.”
Who Killed Bianca Rudolph?
Bianca and Larry were getting ready to return home after a hunting trip in Zambia’s Kafue National Park. At around 5 a.m. on Oct. 11, 2016, authorities got a call reporting that a woman had accidentally shot herself while packing her firearm.
Larry told police he had been in the shower and emerged to find his wife lying in a pool of blood, her shotgun lying next to her, according to Senior Investigations Officer Musuwa Musese.
When he questioned Larry, Musese said in the series, he could see “something fishy had happened.” Moreover, the officer said, the hunters’ firearms were cleared at night, so there shouldn’t have been any shells in Bianca’s gun.
But two days after Bianca’s death, local police ruled it an accident and her body was cremated.
“He was not detained,” Musese said. “I was shocked. He was just a free person.”
What evidence led the FBI to suspect Bianca Rudolph was murdered?
Just weeks after Bianca died, the FBI got a call from a friend of Bianca’s who insisted they investigate further—and more calls followed.
Usually such tipsters “lack a level of specificity,” Special Agent Donald Peterson said in the series, but these were different.
He and Special Agent Scott Dahlstrom detailed how they conducted a “reach study” to figure out whether it was possible for a woman of Bianca’s size to pull the trigger of her 12-gauge shotgun in a way that matched her wound. One tester managed it, Dahlstrom said, but she was “a gymnast with super-flexible shoulders.”
They also did a pattern test using the same type of weapon, soft-cover gun case and ammunition, Peterson said, and determined that the “6-centimeter defect” to Bianca’s heart could only have been caused if the gun was fired from at least 2 feet away.
An investigation into Larry’s finances found that Bianca was “over-insured,” Peterson said, with nine different insurance policies from seven different companies resulting in a $4.8 million payout upon her death.
More than five years after Bianca’s death, Larry was arrested Dec. 21, 2021, in Mexico when he and Lori touched down to spend the holidays in Cabo.
Did Larry Rudolph confess to killing his wife?
A tip from Brian Lovelace, a bartender at Phoenix restaurant Steak 44, was considered a big bombshell at Larry’s 2022 murder trial.
Lori and Larry were regulars, Lovelace recounted in Trophy Wife, and one night in the spring of 2020 he heard Larry yell during a break in the music, “I killed my f--king wife for you.”
While the prosecution painted the comment as a confession, Larry’s attorney David Markus countered during the trial that his client had just found out he was under investigation and what he had actually said was, “They’re saying I killed my f--king wife for you.”
What happened during Larry Rudolph’s murder trial?
“Not only did the Zambians clear Larry, the life insurance companies cleared Larry,” Markus said in Trophy Wife. “I thought this was a total bulls--t case, they don’t have enough evidence, and I thought we were going to win.”
The attorney said in his opening statement that the prosecution had gone with “speculation over science” and “fiction over fact.”
When prosecutors noted Larry’s seeming rush to have Bianca cremated, Markus recalled in the docuseries, he presented Bianca’s will, which stated her wish to be cremated. As for the nearly $5 million in insurance payouts, Markus said that Larry put that money in a trust for his kids and “it just sat there.”
Larry was worth millions already and, the lawyer said, “affairs aren’t evidence of murder.”
What did Larry Rudolph say on the witness stand at his murder trial?
Testifying in his own defense, Larry denied killing Bianca or confessing to murder. He said he and Lori had been having a heated conversation in the restaurant and the FBI investigation was top of mind.
Larry also testified that he and Bianca had been in an open marriage since 2000 and were “reasonably happy” with the arrangement.
It was a circumstantial case, the jury foreperson (identified as Amanda) said in Trophy Wife, “until he got on the stand.”
In August 2022, Larry was found guilty of foreign murder and mail fraud for filing false insurance claims.
Why was Lori Milliron charged in connection with Bianca Rudolph’s murder?
Three Rivers Dental manager Anna Grimley told the FBI that Lori relayed to her that she’d given Larry an ultimatum: He had a year to “get rid of Bianca,” Grimley remembered in the series, adding, “Looking back, I didn’t put anything together.”
Lori said in Trophy Wife, “There was no ultimatum. Why would I wait 15 years to give him an ultimatum? It just didn’t make sense.”
According to federal prosecutors, Lori lied during her grand jury testimony in January 2022 when she said that she thought Larry gave her cash to be generous before Bianca’s death, not mentioning that she was his mistress.
Lori was charged with five counts of perjury and a count apiece of obstruction of justice and accessory after the fact, prosecutors alleging that Larry’s comment at the steakhouse was basically a confession, so she knew he had killed Bianca.
Lori, who was tried alongside Larry, was acquitted of three counts of perjury, but found guilty of everything else.
"I'm not violent," she said in the series. "I didn't kill anybody. I didn't hurt anybody. But they really wanted to put me in jail."
Where are Larry Rudolph and Lori Milliron now?
Larry, now 70, was sentenced in August 2023 to life in prison, as well as a concurrent 20-year sentence for defrauding multiple life insurance companies, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Colorado, where the insurance payments originated.
He’s serving his time at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., per the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
“This result shows that no matter how much money, prestige, or power you have, you will be held accountable for your crimes,” U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan said in a statement at the time. “The fact that justice arrived today is no accident.”
Lori, 67, was sentenced in June 2023 to 17 years and, per the Bureau of Prisons, is at the Federal Correctional Institution Marianna, in Florida.
They are both appealing their convictions.
In a recorded jailhouse call played in Trophy Wife, Lori and Larry both said they were sorry, and he told her, “You didn’t do anything. You didn’t need this.”
When Lori said she hoped “it’s not goodbye,” he said it was.
The series noted that the two no longer speak.
Where are Larry Rudolph and Bianca Rudolph’s kids?
Facing Lori in court at her sentencing, Anabianca told her, per the Associated Press, “Lori, you have taken my parents, but despite everything you have done you will never take my soul. This might be difficult to understand…because you don't have one.”
Julian told ABC News in December 2023 that he “very rarely” took his father’s calls from prison.
In the wake of their mother’s death, Anabianca was working at her father’s dental practice in Pittsburgh—Three Rivers remains open—and Julian lived in Miami, where he was building his own law practice as a personal injury attorney and got engaged.
Though he had “unanswered questions,” Julian said, he believed his father was innocent until the murder trial.
"Every day going into that courtroom,” he said, “I saw something new that broke my heart.”