Trophy Wife: Murder on Safari

The case the series covers

Larry Rudolph ran a multimillion-dollar dental practice in the Pittsburgh area, and he and his wife Bianca were avid big game hunters who traveled widely.⁸ In October 2016 the couple hunted at Kafue National Park in Zambia. On the final day of the trip, October 11, Bianca died of a shotgun blast to the chest; Rudolph said she was packing a gun in the cabin bedroom when it discharged while he was in the bathroom. Zambian authorities ruled the death an accident.⁹

Suspicion builds. Within a month of returning to the United States, Rudolph began filing claims on life insurance policies worth almost $5 million, about $4.88 million in total.^{9 • 8} Tips to the FBI alleged a long-running affair with Lori Milliron, an employee at his dental clinic, and a former bartender told investigators he had overheard Rudolph tell his mistress that he killed his wife for her.⁸ The series also examines an earlier incident: Rudolph claimed a crocodile attacked him while he fished in Zambia, costing him a finger, and collected disability insurance payments of $30,000 per month; former colleagues expressed skepticism about the story.¹⁰

Arrest, trial, and sentence. Rudolph was arrested in December 2021, more than five years after Bianca's death, and charged with foreign murder and mail fraud.¹¹ On August 1, 2022, a Denver federal jury convicted him of the murder of a U.S. national in a foreign country and of mail fraud for cashing in more than $4.8 million in life insurance claims.⁹ In August 2023, U.S. District Judge William Martinez sentenced him to life in prison with a concurrent 20-year term for the insurance fraud, and imposed over an estimated $15 million in financial penalties.⁴ Prosecutors argued he shot his wife in the heart with a shotgun and staged the scene to look like an accidental discharge while she packed, then rushed her cremation and intimidated officials investigating the death, about 80 miles (129 kilometers) from the nearest police station.⁴ Rudolph maintained throughout that the death was an accident.⁴

Milliron was convicted of being an accessory after the fact to the murder, obstruction of justice, and two counts of perjury before a grand jury, and was sentenced to 17 years in prison on June 23, 2023.⁹ The Tenth Circuit affirmed Rudolph's conviction and forfeiture order in a 2025 appeal.¹²