Bianca Rudolph went to Africa to hunt big game — but ended up becoming prey.
The 56-year-old was fatally shot in the chest on the final morning of a two-week hunting excursion in Zambia in October of 2016.
Bianca’s husband, Lawrence “Larry” Rudolph, a successful dentist with a practice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, insisted it had been a tragic accident. He told those on the scene that Bianca had accidentally fired a shotgun while trying to pack it away as they prepared to head to the airport that last day of the trip, according to the “Safari Story” episode of Dateline: Unforgettable.
The death was ruled an accident, but after Larry returned to the United States alone, cashed in on millions of dollars in insurance money, and moved his long-time mistress into his swanky Phoenix, Arizona, home, Bianca’s friends began to suspect something more sinister had happened in the African wilderness.
“This was one of the most unique cases I’ve covered in my whole career,” Dateline correspondent Andrea Canning said in the episode. “Our team traveled 8,000 miles to Africa to find out what happened to big game hunter Bianca Rudolph. Bianca was comfortable around predators in far away places, but as any true crime fan knows, sometimes the real threat is hiding closer than you might think.”
Who were Bianca and Larry Rudolph?
Bianca and Larry met more than three decades before Bianca’s death, while they were both students at the University of Pittsburgh. Larry was enrolled at the dental school at the time. After tying the knot with Bianca, he opened his own successful dental practice, Three Rivers Dental.
While Larry grew the business into four successful clinics operating around Pittsburgh, Bianca cared for the couple’s two children, Julian and AnaBianca.
“Bianca was a really proud woman. She was wonderful and caring,” her friend Betsy Wandtke recalled. “She wanted their marriage to be the one that everybody looks at and says, ‘I want a relationship like that.’”
The couple found a way to connect through hunting. Both avid hunters, they often traveled to Zambia to hunt big game at Kafue National Park, where they even had their own river-front cabin built.
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Bianca Rudolph’s last hunting trip
In the fall of 2016, after 34 years of marriage, the couple headed to their beloved Zambia for another trip. Bianca, who was the only one hunting on this trip, had hoped to track down a leopard.
“She was a good hunter, she was a good shot,” Wandtke remarked. “She could handle a gun as well, if not better, than most of the men I know.”
But after nearly two weeks without any luck, the couple prepared to head back to the United States for a family wedding.
The day Bianca Rudolph was fatally shot
On the morning of October 11, 2016, as they were getting ready to travel to the airport, their game scout, Spencer Kakoma, heard a shot ring out and rushed to the couple’s cabin.
“When I entered the cabin, I saw Bianca Rudolph,” Kakoma said. “I was very shocked.”
Bianca lay in a pool of blood. Nearby, her shotgun lay on the ground, still partially zipped in its case, although a hole had been torn through one end.
Larry was crying, asking, “What am I going to tell my children?” as he knelt over his wife.
Larry told Kakoma and camp manager Godfrey Necube that he had been in the bathroom when he heard the gunshot and that he ran out to find Bianca on the floor.
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Although he initially claimed he thought Bianca may have committed suicide, Larry later said he thought she had accidentally shot herself while trying to pack up the weapon.
Bianca’s body was taken to Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city, which was about four hours away from couple’s cabin, to undergo an autopsy. Larry insisted that his devout Catholic wife be cremated and left Africa less than a week later, without telling the couple’s children of their mother’s tragic fate.
Zambian police ruled that Bianca died after the weapon accidentally discharged.
Larry cashed in on $4.8 million in life insurance policies and continued to manage his thriving Pittsburgh dental practices remotely from Phoenix, where he and Bianca had built a lavish home. His staff was instructed not to mention his wife’s death.
Larry Rudolph’s staff suspicious of his wife’s death
It seemed as if life was going on for Larry, but some of the people who knew the couple were not convinced his wife’s death had been an accident.
Larry’s former office manager Anna Grimley knew that for years, Larry, known to those he worked with as having a volatile temper, had been carrying on an affair with an employee at his dental office, Lori Milliron.
Milliron had once told Grimley about the affair and confessed they had plans to move away with loads of cash that they’d received from the business. According to Grimley, Milliron also told her that she’d given Larry a deadline to end his marriage.
“What she said to me is, ‘He has a year to get rid of Bianca,’ is what she gave him, one year,” Grimley said. “Or she’s leaving.”
Larry Rudolph’s mistress moves in with him
Just months after Bianca was fatally shot, Milliron moved in with Larry at his Phoenix property.
By that time, Grimley was living in Las Vegas and was no longer connected to the dental office, but she couldn’t shake her suspicions and called the FBI to tell them, “Somebody needs to look into it.”
“You know, just take a look at everything that’s happened,” she told Dateline.
Grimley was shocked to learn she wasn’t the only one who had called the federal investigators. One of Bianca’s close friends had also reached out to them because she was convinced that Bianca would never have wanted to be cremated.
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Clues suggest Bianca Rudolph’s death wasn’t an accident
Federal authorities headed to Zambia and launched an investigation into Bianca’s death. Aside from the large insurance payout and Larry’s girlfriend on the side, investigators learned that those on the scene of Bianca’s death that morning had noticed some troubling clues.
Kakoma, the game scout, said that although Larry told him he’d been in the shower when he wife was shot, when he arrived at the cabin just seconds after the gunshot rang out, Larry had been fully clothed.
“How can he manage to put on everything? Shoes, t-shirt and jeans, a belt,” Kakoma said. ‘So, to me… it was like a puzzle.”
Kakoma also said he was a “hundred percent” certain that he saw Bianca cleaning her gun the night before, meaning someone must have re-loaded the weapon that morning.
Investigators were also unnerved by the speed in which Larry had wanted his wife’s body cremated. After an official autopsy was conducted, police in Zambia wanted to conduct their own post-mortem exam, but Larry refused.
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When authorities called the U.S. consulate to report the death and Larry’s insistence that his wife be cremated — an uncommon practice in the African country — the consulate general was unsettled and rushed to the funeral home with two security agents to take photos of the body before it was cremated.
“He’s a former Marine and has seen gunshot wounds and looks at this and says, ‘This doesn’t look like a self-inflicted wound to me,’” former FBI Agent Pam Flick, who consulted on the case for Dateline, explained.
The FBI also conducted its own ballistics tests and concluded the weapon had likely been between 1 to 3 feet away when it was fired, making it impossible for the large rifle to have been pressed into Bianca as she tried to zip up the carrying case.
Another stunning development came from Phoenix-area bartender Brian Lovelace. Lovelace reported overhearing Larry tell Milliron, “I killed my f–king wife for you,” one evening during a heated argument while the pair sat at the bar of a popular steakhouse.
“I’m 100% sure, there’s definitely no doubt,” Lovelace said of the words he heard that night. “It was crystal clear.”
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Larry Rudolph arrested for wife’s murder
Federal authorities concluded that Larry had killed his wife to cash in on the life insurance policies and continue his love affair with Milliron. He was arrested in December of 2021, more than five years after Bianca’s death.
Milliron was called to testify before a grand jury about her relationship with the successful dentist. Six weeks later, she found herself under arrest as well for obstruction of justice, perjury while on the stand, and being an accessory after the fact.
The pair went on trial together in July of 2022. Larry was convicted of premeditated murder and mail fraud and was sentenced to life in prison. Lori was convicted of being an accessory after the fact for murder, obstruction of justice, and some of the perjury charges against her. She was sentenced to 17 years behind bars.
Bianca and Larry’s children initially stood behind their father, even once issuing a statement about his innocence. But Julian told ABC News in 2023 that his view changed after the trial.
“I can’t stand by that original statement, because that was before we saw the evidence in the trial,” he told the news outlet.
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