Las Vegas ‘Black Widow’ Killer Released From Prison, Says She Was Framed
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Margaret Rudin, the 76-year-old Las Vegas socialite dubbed the ‘black widow’ after being convicted of the murder of her millionaire husband in 1999, is proclaiming her innocence. Rudin, who was released from prison on parole on Friday, said she now plans to sell her life story so she can fund the search for her fifth husband’s real killer. “I want to be exonerated,” Rudin told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I did not do it.” Rudin disappeared after a diver found the .22 caliber gun with a silencer used to kill her husband, whose skull and charred bones were found near the Colorado River reservoir near Las Vegas in 1996. She was arrested in 1999 on a tip to a “most wanted” TV show that led investigators to Massachusetts where she was living with a firefighter she met in Mexico. Prosecutors say Ron Rudin was shot in the head as he slept and that his body was taken to the desert and burned.