Donnie Rudd, convicted 4 years in the past of murdering Noreen Kumeta, his 19-year-old bride, alongside a lonely highway in Barrington Hills lower than a month after their 1973 marriage ceremony, died Wednesday in jail, an Illinois Division of Corrections spokeswoman confirmed.
He was 80.
Rudd claimed that one other driver pressured them off the highway Sept. 14, 1973, and that Kumeta was thrown from the automotive. An emergency room physician attributed her loss of life to a cervical backbone fracture and a coroner concluded that her loss of life was an accident. No post-mortem was carried out.
In 2013, authorities exhumed Kumeta’s physique as a part of their investigation into the cold-case homicide of Arlington Heights inside designer Loretta Tabak-Bodtke, who was discovered shot to loss of life in her townhouse on April 4, 1991. Rudd, a former legal professional disbarred in 1994 for fraud and illegal conduct, was concerned in a enterprise dispute with Tabak-Bodtke on the time of her loss of life. He remained a suspect in that case however was by no means charged.
After performing an post-mortem on Kumeta’s stays, a Kane County coroner decided that she died from blunt drive trauma to her head and reclassified her loss of life as a murder. That led to Rudd’s 2015 arrest and extradition from Texas on fees of first-degree homicide.
Convicted in 2018 and sentenced to 75 to 150 years in jail, Rudd was 4 years into his sentence when he died.
“Though Donnie spent a short while in jail, earthly justice was met,” stated Karen Mezera, Kumeta’s sister, who identified that Rudd died 49 years to the day after he murdered Noreen. “We pray for heavenly justice and solely God is aware of when that could be.”
In line with prosecutors, Rudd and Kumeta met after they each labored at Quaker Oats in Barrington. After a quick courtship, they married in August 1973. Twenty-seven days later, Kumeta was murdered, prosecutors say, for $120,000 in life insurance coverage insurance policies.
Per week after Kumeta’s loss of life, Rudd went again to the girlfriend he had been dwelling with earlier than her. They married eight months later.
Former Assistant Cook dinner County State’s Lawyer Maria McCarthy, lead prosecutor in Rudd’s case, described Rudd as probably the most harmful particular person she ever prosecuted.
“He would take a human life with out batting an eye fixed if it was going to profit him in any method,” McCarthy stated. “Fortunately his psychopathy is uncommon, even amongst murderers.”