Rudolph has pleaded not guilty and said he believes the gun was accidentally fired. “I didn’t kill my wife. I couldn’t kill my wife. I wouldn’t kill my wife,” Rudolph told jurors when he took the stand at a federal trial in Denver last week. The Phoenix couple shared a passion for big game hunting and had traveled to Zambia, South Africa in September 2016 so Bianca Rudolph could add a leopard to her trophy animal collection. They brought two guns for the hunt: a Remington .375 rifle and a Browning 12-gauge shotgun. Two weeks later, as Bianca Rudolph was packing for the couple’s return home, she was fatally shot by a Browning shotgun at their hunting cabin in Kafue National Park. Rudolph told investigators he heard the gunshot early in the morning while he was in the bathroom and believed the shotgun accidentally broke as he holstered it, court documents state. He told investigators he found her bleeding on the floor. But federal prosecutors at Rudolph’s trial in Denver, where the insurance companies are based, described it as a premeditated crime. Prosecutors argued Rudolph killed his wife of 30 years for insurance money and to be with his girlfriend. “Bianca Rudolph deserved justice,” U.S. Attorney Cole Fingan said in a statement after the jury’s decision. “We can only hope that this verdict will bring Bianca’s family some peace.” Defense attorney David Marcus had argued that Larry Rudolph had no financial motive to kill his wife. In court documents, he noted that Rudolph has a dental office near Pittsburgh worth $10 million. “We are obviously extremely disappointed. We believe in Larry and his children,” Marcus and defense attorneys Margot Moss and Lauren Doyle said in a statement after Monday’s verdict. “There are a lot of really strong secondary issues, which we will pursue after we’ve had a chance to regroup.”

An embassy official raised suspicions after the shooting, the FBI said

In court documents, investigators claimed Rudolph raised suspicions when he tried to hastily cremate his wife’s body in Zambia. Rudolph scheduled the cremation three days after her death, according to court documents. After reporting her death to the U.S. Embassy in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, the consular chief “told the FBI that he had a bad feeling about the situation, which he believed was moving too quickly,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Donald Peterson wrote in the crime . Affidavit. As a result, the consular chief and two other embassy officials went to the funeral home where the body was kept to take pictures and preserve any evidence. When Rudolph discovered that embassy officials had taken photos of his wife’s body, he was “alive,” Peterson wrote. Rudolph initially told the consular chief that his wife may have died by suicide, but an investigation by Zambian law enforcement determined it was an accidental discharge. The insurers’ investigators came to a similar conclusion and paid the policies. However, forensic evidence showed Bianca Rudolph’s wounds came from a gunshot from at least two feet away, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court. “At this distance, there is reason to believe that Bianca Rudolph was not killed by an accidental discharge as reported,” the complaint said.

A friend of Bianca Rudolph asked the FBI to investigate

But federal investigators argued the shooting was premeditated so Rudolph “could falsely claim that the death was the result of an accident.” Rudolph orchestrated his wife’s death as part of a scheme to defraud life insurance companies and to allow him to live openly with his then-girlfriend, the FBI alleges. Bianca and Lawrence Rudolph moved from Pennsylvania to Arizona about four years before her death. Rudolph’s dental practice remained in Pennsylvania and commuted from his home in Phoenix. The feds got involved after a friend of Bianca Rudolph asked the FBI to investigate the death because she suspected foul play. The friend said Larry Rudolph had been involved in extramarital affairs and had a girlfriend at the time of his wife’s death. The girlfriend worked as a manager at his dental practice near Pittsburgh and told a former employee that she had been dating him for 15 to 20 years, according to court documents. Three months after Bianca Rudolph’s death, the girl moved in with Larry Rudolph, according to court documents. A jury found Rudolph’s girlfriend guilty Monday of accessory after the fact to murder, obstruction of justice and two counts of perjury before a grand jury, according to the Justice Department. CNN has reached out to her attorney for comment.