CHICAGO _ Donnie Rudd walked a free man for nearly 45 years after his wife's mysterious death.
But now that justice has caught up with him in the form of a first-degree murder conviction, Rudd is likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars, whatever the outcome of his sentencing hearing, now underway in Cook County court.
Two sisters of Noreen Kumeta Rudd, the Carpentersville woman who was 19 when she died in what was first thought to be a car crash exactly 45 years ago Friday, gave statements in court Thursday. It's possible Rudd, who did not testify in his own defense, will speak.
"Noreen deserved a happy life," said Noreen's sister Karen Mezera. "I cannot tell you how shocked I was at the betrayal of Donnie Rudd. ... The length and level of deceit was inconceivable.
"Donnie Rudd will get earthly justice today for so brutally and viciously taking the life of our beautiful sister," she said.
For nearly half a century, Rudd's version of his wife Noreen's demise _ that his teenage bride died when their car was run off the road and crashed in a field in Barrington Hills in 1973 _ stuck.
It stuck even though the couple had been married less than a month and Rudd, then a lawyer and school board member, had been living with another woman until just before the wedding. It stuck even though Rudd had money woes and stood to inherit a large sum from her life insurance.
And it stuck even though, in the ensuing years, Rudd would also be suspected in the slaying of Arlington Heights resident Loretta Tabak-Bodtke. He has not been charged in that death but is under investigation, police have said.
That probe was what prompted authorities eventually to take a fresh look at Noreen Rudd's death, leading to Donnie Rudd's arrest in Texas. He had relocated there from the Chicago area after he was disbarred amid investigations by the Illinois attorney disciplinary agency of misconduct complaints. Among the unhappy clients who had at least threatened to alert the agency about Rudd was Tabak-Bodtke.
Rudd was finally charged in 2015 with murder in his second wife's death. After nearly a year in jail he posted $400,000 in cash and was free on bail. He was taken back into custody after a jury convicted him earlier this summer.
Rudd has chosen to be sentenced under 1973 guidelines, meaning his minimum sentence will be 14 years. There is no maximum, but he will be eligible for credits that could reduce his sentence by half. His lawyer said Rudd, now 76, has cancer. He used a wheelchair during his trial.
Before the sentencing hearing got underway Thursday morning, Rudd's attorney, Tim Grace, argued for a new trial on the basis that statements Rudd made during a police interrogation in Texas should not have been admissible.
Judge Marc Martin denied the request, along with Grace's objection to testimony by Arlington Heights police detectives about the killing of Tabak-Bodtke in 1991.
So Thursday afternoon, four detectives, two retired, took the stand to talk about the investigation. They said Rudd, who was Tabak-Bodtke's lawyer, had repeatedly promised her a $450,000 settlement in a business dispute but had not come up with the money. The day before she died, Rudd had given Tabak-Bodtke a check for $9,300, her husband told investigators. They said Thursday that a search of Rudd's home after the slaying turned up what appeared to be ripped-up pieces of the same check.
A number of firearms were also found in Rudd's home, but none was consistent with the one police think was used to kill Tabak-Bodtke.
Besides Noreen's sisters, among those present for Thursday's proceedings were Tabak-Bodtke's daughter and two former stepdaughters of Rudd, Lori Hart and Cindy Mulligan. The sisters wrote a book about him after his arrest called "Living With the Devil."
Back in 1973, Rudd was romantically involved with Lori's and Cindy's mother, Dianne Hart, and was living with the three of them and two other Hart siblings. But according to testimony, he arrived home one day and announced he was marrying Noreen, who worked with him at Quaker Oats in Barrington.
Weeks later, police found Rudd's Ford Pinto wagon in a field in Barrington Hills, with Rudd cradling his bride in the car. According to testimony, he told police that the couple had visited her mother in Carpentersville and were on their way back to their Hoffman Estates home when someone ran them off the road. Rudd said his wife was ejected from the Pinto and hit her head on a rock and that he carried her back to the car.
Less than a year later, Rudd married Dianne Hart, the third of his five wives.
Decades after Noreen Rudd's death, investigators were granted a court order to exhume her remains. Experts testified at Rudd's trial that her wounds were caused by blows to the head, not a car crash injury, though the defense had its own witness who sought to refute that finding.
