Girlfriend of wealthy dentist who murdered his wife on African safari gets 17-year jail term

‘Despite everything you have done you will never take my soul. This might be difficult to understand... because you don’t have one’

The girlfriend of a wealthy dentist convicted of murdering his wife on an African safari was sentenced on Friday to 17 years in prison.

She was found guilty of being an accessory to the crime during a hearing where relatives of the slain woman told her she had destroyed their family.

Ana Rudolph, daughter of 57-year-old victim Bianca Rudolph, said Lori Milliron, 65, had “plotted to eliminate” her mother.

“Lori, you have taken my parents,” Ms Rudolph said directly to Milliron, but “despite everything you have done you will never take my soul. This might be difficult to understand... because you don’t have one”.

“Lori Milliron encouraged Lawrence Rudolph to kill his wife for her. She told him to divorce Bianca Rudolph. When he said he couldn’t afford to do that, Milliron responded by helping Rudolph procure propofol – a lethal anesthetic drug that could be used as a poison – before he took the trip where he did what she had wanted: get rid of Bianca,” the federal prosecutors argued in their motion.

Milliron was convicted last year of perjury, being an accessory to a murder after the fact and obstructing a grand jury in a case that’s garnered national attention.

She was charged alongside Lawrence “Larry” Rudolph, a US dentist who was convicted last year of fatally shooting his wife while on a 2016 hunting trip in Zambia. His sentencing, originally set for this week, has been postponed.

John Dill, an attorney for Milliron, said the prison sentence was longer than what is typically doled out for such charges, calling it “excessive” and vowing to appeal. Mr Dill argued that the convictions were merely based on Milliron’s perjury charges and do not implicate her in the execution of the crime.

“We believe the sentence is excessive and bears no reasonable relationship to the two counts of perjury before the grand jury that formed the basis of the charges of obstruction and accessory after the fact,” Mr Dill told CNN. “The answers she gave before the grand jury were not false... Ms Milliron had no involvement in the death of Bianca Rudolph and she sympathizes with the family as victims of that tragedy.”

Defense attorneys for Pittsburgh dentist Lawrence "Larry" Rudolph head into federal courthouse with the dentist's children for the afternoon session of the trial, Wednesday, 13 July 2022, in Denver (AP)

Standing in front of the judge on Friday, Milliron insisted she was innocent of the crimes, but said she was “sympathetic” to the Rudolph family.

Judge William J Martínez argued that the long sentence was deserved because evidence pointed to Milliron “encouraging” the crime. Mr Martínez added that Milliron seemed “unrepentant” in part because he judged her emotionally unmoved when she was shown graphic images and listened to wrenching testimony during the trial.

After Bianca Rudolph’s death in 2016, Lawrence Rudolph claimed his wife accidentally shot herself while packing to leave Zambia for the US. Later, Rudolph collected millions in accidental death insurance payments. After an FBI investigation, however, authorities charged Rudolph in 2021 with her murder.

He was found guilty in wife’s death in August, last year.

A jury of six men and as many women reached the verdict for Rudolph following a three-week trial and a day and a half of deliberations.

Rudolph, 67, was charged with foreign murder in the 2016 death of Bianca Rudolph in Zambia as well as mail fraud for cashing in $4.8m in life insurance claims in what prosecutors described as a premeditated crime. Some of the money was paid out of Colorado so he was tried in Denver federal court.

He faces a maximum term of life in prison or the death penalty.

Additional reporting by agencies