Noreen K. Rudd Case

The death in 1973 of 19-year-old Noreen Kumeta Rudd was first considered to be the result of car crash injuries. Forty-five years later, however, prosecutors argued Rudd courted and then married Noreen Kumeta because he was feeling financial pressure and wanted to collect more than $100,000.00 in insurance. The case was reopened in 2013 and Rudd was arrested in 2015. He was found guilty in 2018.

Here is how it unfolded:

Sept. 14, 1973 - A deadly car crash -- or something else?

Less than a month after their wedding, the Rudd’s are driving back to their Hoffman Estates home from visiting her mother when their Pinto Wagon ends up in a field in Barrington Hills, with Noreen fatally injured. Donnie Rudd tells police, who find him cradling his wife in the front seat, that another driver ran him off the road and that Noreen was thrown from the car and hit her head on a rock. She was pronounced dead at Sherman Hospital in Elgin, where the emergency room doctor said she had a broken neck but did not have X-rays taken, according to his testimony. Noreen Rudd would be buried in her wedding dress days later at Dundee Township East Cemetery. Her widower receives about $120,000.00 in life insurance.

2013 - the case reopened; her body exhumed

While taking a fresh look at the unsolved slaying of Loretta Tabak-Bodtke, Arlington Heights Police Detective Cmdr. Richard Sperando finds notes in the file on Donnie Rudd and Noreen Rudd's death, the detective later said, adding "it just didn't seem right" that Noreen died accidentally. He contacts Christopher Bish, who was a young Barrington Hills police officer when he responded to the 1973 car crash and who testified that the case haunted him. Within weeks, Sperando and investigators win a court order to have Noreen's body exhumed and examined. A pathologist finds that Noreen has skull injuries that appear to have been caused by blows from a blunt object, not a car crash, and the death is reclassified as a homicide. In December, Sperando, his partner and two prosecutors fly to Sugar Land, Texas, a Houston suburb, to interview Rudd, approaching him outside a grocery store. Rudd voluntarily goes to the police station but answers many questions by saying he doesn't know or remember, including whether he hit Noreen in the head, according to Sperando's testimony.

(The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office flew me to Chicago where I walked them through the crime scene step by step which gave them sufficient evidence to exhume her body since no autopsy was conducted on the date of her death. Despite misleading media reports after my trial testimony, I attempted to resurrect the investigation after the coroner abruptly ended my testimony during the 1973 inquest to no avail. Another Arlington Heights detective contacted me in 1991 and I shared my suspicions with him as well. Thankfully, Rich revisited their case in 2013 and contacted me when I reiterated my decades long concerns that her death was no accident, especially when he advised me of the insurance payout collected by Donnie Rudd.)

June 26, 2018 - The trial begins

Rudd goes on trial in Cook County's Rolling Meadows court for the alleged murder of Noreen Rudd.

July 2, 2018 - Rudd is found guilty

Rudd is convicted of first-degree murder after a week long trial and three hours of jury deliberations.

Sept. 13, 2018 - Judge calls Rudd 'diabolical'

A Cook County judge ensures that Rudd will be a free man no more, sentencing him to 75 to 150 years in prison -- even as Rudd remained defiant to the end, taking the stand to proclaim his innocence.

Sept. 14, 2022 - Donnie Rudd dies in prison

Rudd died while serving his prison sentence — reportedly 49 years to the day after the death of his wife, whom he was found guilty of killing in 2018.