[6] Ronald Rudin (born November 13, 1930, Chicago) disappeared on December 18, 1994, aged 64, after walking to Margaret's antique shop which was in the same strip mall as his real estate office.
Police later searched the Rudin residence and found blood spatter in the bedroom as well as semen on the floor that had been removed from the house by authorities to test.
She spent the next 31 months in hiding until she was arrested in Massachusetts in November 1999 and was extradited to Nevada to face murder charges in the death of her husband.
[9] The Las Vegas Sun reported on April 26, 2011 that Margaret Rudin had filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court seeking a new trial and reversal of her conviction based on ineffective assistance of trial counsel, impermissible hearsay testimony, faulty jury instructions and other points.
[10] On January 25, 2012, U.S. District Court Judge Roger L. Hunt dismissed Margaret Rudin's federal habeas corpus case with prejudice.
Margaret Rudin's direct appeal and collateral review proceedings have been pending in either state or federal court for a combined total of 13 years.
Yet she has never had an opportunity to present those claims in court.Rudin's defense counsel, Amador, indisputably engaged in egregious professional misconduct during the course of her underlying criminal trial.
Although two members of the Nevada Supreme Court found the record sufficiently clear as to the "inherent prejudice created by [trial counsel]" to require immediate reversal of Rudin's judgment of conviction, a majority of the court declined to address the effect of those errors, finding them more appropriate for resolution on collateral review.
[13] On February 29, 2016, the United States Supreme Court denied a petition by the attorney general of Nevada challenging the Ninth Circuit's ruling.
[citation needed] In May 2022, United States District Judge Richard F. Boulware vacated the murder conviction of the 78-year-old Rudin after she had spent 20 years in prison.
She told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that she intended to relocate to Chicago to be closer to her daughter, granddaughter and great-grandchildren, and that she was "optimistic her murder conviction will one day be tossed.
[20][21] "Evil Women" by John Marlowe, one of the thirty-four cases covered in this writing is about Margaret Rudin's killing of her husband; ISBN 9781788284660, published: November 2017, 303 pages.
[22][23] Court TV's (now TruTV) crime documentary series Mugshots interviewed Rudin inside a Las Vegas, Nevada prison.