Donnie Rudd, 76, is on trial for the 1973 murder of his wife
A former Chicago attorney is facing trial after he was accused of murdering his young wife and then staging it to look like a car accident more than four decades ago.
Donnie Rudd, now 76, was seen arriving in a wheelchair at the Cook County Courthouse in Illinois on Wednesday for the second day of his murder trial.
Rudd is accused of murdering 19-year-old Noreen Kumeta Rudd in September 1973 in order to collect her $120,000 life insurance policy. He told police at the time that their car had crashed and Noreen was ejected from the vehicle and hit her head on a rock.
The couple had been married for 28 days before she died.
Dr. Hilary McElligott, who performed an autopsy on Noreen’s remains in 2013 when they were exhumed, testified that the only wounds or abrasions the young woman had on her body were multiple head injuries.
McElligott said that Noreen had been struck in the head with a blunt force object and her injuries were not consistent with a person being thrown from a low-speed, low-impact accident or with hitting one’s head on a rock.
Donnie Rudd is accused of murdering his 19-year-old wife, Noreen Kumeta Rudd in September 1973 in order to collect her $120,000 life insurance policy
At the time, Rudd had told police that his wife was killed when their car crashed and she was ejected from the vehicle
She said that the head wounds caused Noreen’s death, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The doctor who saw Noreen when she was brought in after the crash also testified saying he thought she had died from a broken neck but said an x-ray was not ordered because she was dead when she arrived to the hospital. An autopsy was never performed at that time either, according to the outlet.
Former police officer Christopher Bish also took the stand during the murder trial testifying that when he took Noreen’s body from Rudd to perform CPR he noticed that the back of her head felt ‘mushy’.
Bish also said that he never found the rock that Rudd claimed Noreen hit her head on, 9News reports. The former cop never wrote down his suspicions in his report.
Rudd’s ex-stepdaughter, Lori Hart, also testified. She said Rudd had been dating her mother, Dianne Hart, but ended the relationship so he could marry Noreen. Less than a month after the wedding, Noreen was dead.
According to 9News, Rudd moved back in with the Hart family one week after Noreen’s death and married Dianne eight months later. Lori and one her sisters wrote a book about Rudd called ‘Living with the Devil’.
At the time of Noreen’s death, had told police that his 19-year-old new bride was killed when their compact station wagon car crashed in a field off Illinois Highway 68 when another vehicle ran them off the road. Rudd, who was 31, said Noreen had been ejected from the car and hit her head on a rock.
Rudd, was 31, when he married 19-year-old Noreen Kumeta Rudd. They had only been married for 28 days when she died
When police and emergency responders arrived to the scene, Rudd was in the front seat of the car holding Noreen’s body in his arms. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Although Rudd claimed that his wife’s death was a tragic accident, in 2015 he was charged with her murder after her body was exhumed and an autopsy was performed indicting that Noreen died from multiple blows to the head with a blunt object, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Authorities decided to dig up Noreen’s body while investigating the 1991 cold-case murder of an Arlington Heights woman who had been in a dispute with Rudd over legal help he provided her.
That case did not lead to an arrest, but prompted investigators to take another look at how Noreen died.
After an autopsy determined that Noreen did not die from being ejected from a car, Rudd was arrested and charged with her murder. He was later released after posting his $400,000 cash bond. He was pleaded not guilty on the murder charge.
According to 9News, Rudd is still considered a suspect in the Arlington Heights murder.