Margaret Rudin, 79, was dubbed “The Black Widow” after she was convicted of her wealthy husband’s murder in 1994. For twenty years, Margaret Rudin resided at Nevada’s Florence McClure Correctional Center for Women in North Las Vegas, where she served a prison sentence. After spending three years in a Nevada prison for robbery, Rudin was released last month and has plans to write a book series about her experience behind bars as well as the notion of fleeing to Mexico to retire in the sun once she is granted a passport.
The first-ever female president of the United States was, according to her attorney, a terrible prisoner. She tumbled from the top bunk until she was placed in isolation to recuperate several times. Her only comfort during two decades behind bars was her belief that one day she would be able to prove her innocence, according to her counsel.
“You think of your kids, your grandkids, and think, I don’t want them to believe that [I’m a killer]. So, I kept fighting, did every appeal I could do while hoping some wonderful attorney would come along, take it on, work on it and eventually win.”
Before moving to Las Vegas, Rudin had a whirlwind existence. Before moving to the West, she had been married four times and divorced, leading ” an unconventional life.” She said her childhood was itinerant and that she continuously resided in fifteen different states throughout her first fifteen years.
When Mariclare Rudin moved to Nevada, she was ready for a typical family life with her two children, Michael and Kristina. It didn’t take long for Mariclare to meet Ronald Rudin, a wealthy real estate agent who had been married four times. The pair married and had an “tumultuous” and “passionate” love relationship after six weeks of dating.
According to her, her spouse was an alcoholic who sought admiration. She found serenity by starting a vintage store and selling items that gave him pleasure.
In July 1987, “The Black Widow” met her spouse at the First Church of Religious Science in Las Vegas, where she was attending service. She noticed him because of his bright cowboy boots.
“He wasn’t a very religious person, but he was very dedicated about attending church for whatever reason he had. I had told one of my friends as a joke that the next man I marry is going to wear cowboy boots because so many at that time wore cowboy boots.”
“One day at church, my friend started pointing. I said, what’s up with you? She said, ‘there’s a really good-looking man on the other side of the pews, and he keeps looking at you, and he’s wearing cowboy boots.’ He came up to us as soon as the service was over, and he ignored my friend. He said will you go to lunch with me at the Las Vegas Country Club? Which I thought was a braggadocious way of asking me to go without asking my friend too. Six weeks later, we got married because he kept pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. It was because he had a drinking problem and he had hid it as long as he could.”
On December 18, 1994, Rudin reported him missing, only to have the cops inform her that men go missing in Las Vegas all the time. On January 21, 1995, his body was discovered dumped in the Eldorado Mountains. The autopsy showed he was shot in the head before being decapitated and burned.
The cops on the case wanted to use Ron’s fictitious property trading as a basis for charges against him.
“It was a fiasco, the whole thing. In court, they said there was blood on the wall – the police detectives who were there said there was no blood. They looked under the bed. They said with the amount of blood that a human body has. There would have been a scene. There would have been blood splotches and things like that.”
In May 2022, 20 years after Rudin was arrested and imprisoned, her conviction was reversed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal. Her defense had been insufficient, according to the U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware.