Dentist Larry Rudolph: Zambia Killing, Life Sentence, Appeals

Larry Rudolph is the Pittsburgh-area sedation dentist convicted in August 2022 of murdering his wife, Bianca, during a hunting trip in Zambia and filing nearly $5 million in fraudulent life insurance claims afterward. A federal judge sentenced him to life in prison in August 2023, the Tenth Circuit affirmed his conviction in September 2025, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case in January 2026.¹

Who He Was Before the Killing

Lawrence “Larry” Rudolph earned his dental degree from the University of Pittsburgh, where he met Bianca Finizio. They married in 1982 and had two children, Julian and AnaBianca.² Rudolph marketed himself as “Pittsburgh’s premier sedation dentist” through television commercials and built a practice, Three Rivers Dental Group, with offices in Cranberry, Greensburg, and Green Tree.³

The money followed. By 2000 the couple had accumulated $9.5 million in marital assets, and his net worth eventually reached an estimated $15 million or more.⁴ They kept homes in western Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Wyoming, along with a condominium in Cabo San Lucas.⁵ Rudolph was also an avid big-game hunter and once served as president of Safari Club International before being ousted from the organization.²

For more than a decade during the marriage, Rudolph carried on an affair with Lori Milliron, a dental hygienist and office manager at his practice.⁶ Prosecutors later argued Milliron had given Rudolph an ultimatum to leave his wife.⁷

The Shooting in Zambia

On the morning of October 11, 2016, the final day of a two-week hunting trip in Kafue National Park, Bianca Rudolph was shot in the chest with a Browning 12-gauge shotgun inside the couple’s riverfront cabin. Larry Rudolph told Zambian authorities he was in the shower when he heard the shot and found his wife bleeding on the bedroom floor. He said the shotgun had been left loaded from the previous day’s hunt and discharged while Bianca was zipping it into a soft-shell carrying case.⁸

Game scout Spencer Kakoma reached the cabin within seconds. He found the shotgun on the floor with a hole torn through one end of the case, and he noticed Rudolph was fully clothed, not in a towel or fresh from the shower. Rudolph also initially suggested to people at the scene that Bianca may have killed herself, before settling on the accidental-discharge explanation.⁹

Zambian police ruled the death accidental. Rudolph moved quickly to have his wife’s remains cremated in Zambia, an uncommon practice there. That request drew the attention of the U.S. consulate, and the consular chief sent two security agents to the funeral home before the cremation. One of them, a former Marine, photographed the wound and observed it appeared to be a direct shot to the heart without the gas burns or tissue expansion expected from a contact wound, concluding it did not look self-inflicted.¹⁰ Rudolph left Africa less than a week after the shooting.⁹

What Unraveled the Accident Story

The FBI opened an investigation after a friend of Bianca contacted the bureau, troubled that Bianca had been cremated against her known religious wishes. That friend also told agents about Rudolph’s affair with Milliron and a pattern of verbal abuse over money.¹¹

The FBI’s Denver Division ran the case for more than five years, with help from the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs.¹² Ballistics testing determined the shotgun had been fired from roughly two to three and a half feet away, a distance the packing-accident scenario could not explain.¹³ Agents also ran a “reach study” using 15 women of similar height to Bianca (five feet four inches) and asked them to reach the trigger of the three-foot-seven-inch shotgun while zipping the case shut. None of them could.¹⁴ Prosecutors added that the camp sat roughly 80 miles from the nearest police station, a remoteness they argued Rudolph had counted on.

Within a month of returning to the United States, Rudolph filed claims on nine life insurance policies from seven different companies for a total of $4,877,744.93. The insurers, relying on the accidental-death ruling, paid nearly the full amount.¹

The Steakhouse Statement

Federal agents arrested Rudolph in December 2021, and a grand jury in the District of Colorado indicted him on January 5, 2022, on charges of foreign murder under 18 U.S.C. § 1119 and mail fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1341.¹⁵

The trial in Denver, before Senior U.S. District Judge William J. Martinez, turned on one moment as much as any forensic finding. In 2020, after learning the FBI was looking into Bianca’s death, Rudolph argued with Milliron at a Phoenix steakhouse and, according to a bartender who testified at trial, said, “I killed my f—ing wife for you.” Rudolph’s attorney, David Markus, argued the bartender had misheard and that Rudolph actually said, “They’re saying I killed my f—ing wife for you.” The defense also argued Rudolph had no financial motive given his wealth and a prenuptial agreement, and that both spouses had histories of extramarital affairs.⁴

The jury found Rudolph guilty of foreign murder and mail fraud on August 1, 2022.¹¹

Life Sentence and Forfeiture

On August 21, 2023, Judge Martinez sentenced Rudolph to life in federal prison on the murder count and a concurrent 20-year term for mail fraud.¹ The court also imposed roughly $15 million in financial penalties: $4,877,744.93 in restitution to the defrauded insurers, a $2 million fine, and forfeiture of substantial assets. When arrested in 2021, Rudolph had estimated his own assets at $27 million.¹⁶

Forfeited property included his $3.8 million home in Paradise Valley, Arizona, on which he had made a $1.15 million down payment using insurance proceeds; a home in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, purchased after the indictment; a 2018 Aston Martin DB-11 bought for $239,000; a 2017 Bentley Bentayga bought for $162,000; and funds from multiple bank accounts.⁵

Lori Milliron’s Case

Milliron was tried alongside Rudolph in Denver in the summer of 2022. The jury convicted her of accessory after the fact to murder, obstruction of justice, and two counts of perjury before a grand jury, and acquitted her of three additional perjury counts.¹⁷

Judge Martinez sentenced her on June 23, 2023, to 17 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. The court cited evidence that Milliron had “encouraged” the crime, noted she appeared “emotionally unmoved” when shown graphic evidence at trial, and found it “more likely than not” that she had helped Rudolph obtain vials of propofol, a powerful anesthetic that can be lethal at certain doses, before two of the couple’s Zambian safaris.¹⁸¹⁷ On June 23, 2026, the Tenth Circuit vacated one of Milliron’s two perjury convictions but affirmed the accessory, obstruction, and remaining perjury counts.¹⁹

Appeals and the Supreme Court

Rudolph appealed his conviction and the forfeiture order to the Tenth Circuit. His attorneys argued the trial should not have been held in Colorado because the district had no connection to the crime, that he should have been tried separately from Milliron, that the trial court improperly admitted hearsay statements Bianca made to a friend, and that the forfeiture was excessive.²⁰

On September 8, 2025, a three-judge panel of Chief Judge Jerome A. Holmes, Judge Nancy L. Moritz, and Judge Veronica S. Rossman unanimously affirmed the conviction and sentence. The court held Colorado was a proper venue because Rudolph was first taken into federal custody on the murder charge in Denver, after being deported from Mexico, and rejected the other arguments.²⁰

Rudolph then petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court (No. 25-675), arguing the government had engaged in unconstitutional “forum shopping” by arranging his arrest in Denver to manufacture venue. On January 12, 2026, the Court denied the petition without comment, leaving the life sentence in place.²¹

The Children and the Estate

Julian and AnaBianca Rudolph initially defended their father. After his 2021 arrest, both submitted sworn affidavits stating they knew him “better than anyone else” and believed he was innocent. Julian later told ABC News the trial evidence was “horrifying” and “eye-opening,” that he could no longer stand by that affidavit, and that his father calls him from prison but he rarely answers.²²

The children have also pursued the assets seized by the federal government, arguing the insurance proceeds, homes, and vehicles belong to their mother’s estate. An Arizona judge ordered Rudolph to repay them nearly $7 million from that estate, plus more than $3 million in interest. A federal judge was weighing whether to appoint a mediator to resolve the dispute between the children and the Department of Justice.²²

1
U.S. Department of Justice. Lawrence Rudolph Sentenced to Life in Federal Prison for Murdering His Wife in Zambia
2
People. Where Is Dentist Larry Rudolph Now
3
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Trophy Wife: Murder on a Safari
4
NBC News. Dentist Confessed to Killing Wife on African Safari, Federal Prosecutor Says
5
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. United States v. Rudolph, 152 F.4th 1197
6
ABC News. Death on Safari: The Bizarre Tale of a Larger-Than-Life Ladies Man
7
ABC7 New York. Larry Rudolph Dentist Lori Milliron Bianca Killer
8
People. Larry Rudolph Safari Killing Wife Docuseries Hulu
9
Oxygen. Larry Rudolph Killed Wife Bianca Rudolph Africa Safari
10
NBC News. Pennsylvania Dentist Allegedly Killed Wife on African Safari to Collect Millions
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CBS News. Larry Rudolph Dentist Bianca Rudolph Murder Investigation African Safari
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WBAL-TV. Dentist Gets Life Sentence for Killing Wife on African Safari
13
CBS News. Lawrence Rudolph’s Girlfriend Lori Milliron Sentenced
14
CBS News. Larry Rudolph: Pittsburgh Dentist, Bianca Rudolph Fatal Gunshot Safari
15
U.S. Supreme Court. Rudolph v. United States, Petition for Writ of Certiorari
16
Union Progress. Former Greensburg Dentist Gets Life in Prison for Murdering Wife on African Safari
17
U.S. Department of Justice. Accessory to Zambia Safari Murder Sentenced to 17 Years in Federal Prison
18
CBS News. Lawrence Rudolph’s Girlfriend Lori Milliron Sentenced to 17 Years
19
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. United States v. Milliron
20
Colorado Politics. Court Upholds Conviction of Lawrence Rudolph for Killing Wife in Africa
21
U.S. Supreme Court. Rudolph v. United States, No. 25-675
22
ABC News. Dad Murdered Mom on African Safari, Now the U.S. Government…