Lori Milliron Today: Prison, Appeals Ruling, and Resentencing

Lori Milliron is serving a 17-year federal prison sentence at FCI Marianna in Florida, with a projected release date of April 15, 2036. That date is now in question. On June 23, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit vacated one of her two perjury convictions and sent the case back to the trial court, opening the door to resentencing on the counts that remain.¹²

Where She Is Incarcerated

Milliron is held at FCI Marianna, a medium-security federal facility in the Florida Panhandle. Her projected release date, as it currently stands on the Bureau of Prisons record, is April 15, 2036.¹ She is also legally prohibited from communicating with Lawrence Rudolph, her former romantic partner and the man convicted of murdering his wife Bianca Rudolph in Zambia.³

The June 2026 Appeals Ruling

Milliron was convicted in August 2022 on four counts: accessory after the fact to foreign murder, obstruction of justice, and two counts of perjury before a federal grand jury. Judge William J. Martinez sentenced her in June 2023 to 204 months in federal prison plus the statutory maximum $250,000 fine, an upward departure from the sentencing guidelines.⁴

On appeal, the Tenth Circuit issued its opinion in United States v. Milliron (No. 23-1217) on June 23, 2026. Judge Gregory A. Phillips wrote the opinion.⁵

The court vacated Count Six, the perjury conviction based on Milliron’s grand jury answer about why Rudolph had given her roughly $60,000 during one year of their affair. Asked why he had been “so generous,” Milliron testified that she did not know. The Tenth Circuit held that the question essentially asked her to speculate about what was inside another person’s head, and that a witness generally cannot be convicted of perjury for saying she does not know someone else’s motives. The opinion emphasized that “precise questioning is imperative” in perjury cases and that a prosecutor’s role “is to obtain the truth, not to obtain perjury.”⁵

What the Court Left Standing

The Tenth Circuit affirmed Milliron’s three other convictions:

Accessory after the fact to foreign murder
Obstruction of justice
The second perjury count (Count Nine), based on her answer that Rudolph had “probably” proclaimed his innocence to her after learning of the FBI investigation

On Count Nine, the court found sufficient evidence that Milliron knowingly lied, because a bartender had testified to overhearing Rudolph tell her directly, “I killed my [expletive] wife for you.” That admission, the court reasoned, made it implausible that Rudolph had proclaimed innocence to her.⁶⁴

What Resentencing Could Mean

The case was remanded to the district court for further proceedings, which could include resentencing on the three counts that remain.² As of this writing, no resentencing date has been publicly announced.

Whether the 2036 release date moves depends on what the trial court decides on remand. The original 17-year term was tied to the full package of four convictions and to the judge’s upward departure from the guidelines. In imposing that departure, the court cited the underlying nature of the murder, evidence that Milliron helped procure propofol before the Zambia trip, what it described as her “torment of the victim’s family,” and her lack of remorse.⁴ Those factors would still be available to the court at resentencing, so a vacated perjury count does not automatically translate into a shorter term.

Why She Was Convicted

Milliron was the longtime romantic partner of Lawrence Rudolph, a Pittsburgh-area dentist convicted of shooting his wife Bianca through the heart with a 12-gauge shotgun in a hunting cabin at Kafue National Park in Zambia on October 11, 2016. Rudolph collected $4,877,744.93 on nine life insurance policies after her death. Prosecutors argued the killing was motivated by the insurance money and by Rudolph’s desire to live openly with Milliron, who worked as operations manager and later partner at his dental practice, Three Rivers Dental.⁷⁸

Milliron was not in Zambia when Bianca was killed. Her convictions rested on conduct before and after the shooting: testimony from a Three Rivers employee that Milliron had arranged for a “special delivery” of a vial of propofol to Rudolph shortly before the trip, testimony from another witness that Milliron had told Rudolph she would end the affair if he did not “get rid of” Bianca, and Milliron’s own answers to the federal grand jury in January 2022.⁹¹⁰

What Milliron Has Said From Prison

Milliron broke her silence in the three-part Hulu docuseries Trophy Wife: Murder on Safari, produced by ABC News Studios, which premiered on July 21, 2025. Speaking from prison, she maintained her innocence.¹¹

She denied giving Rudolph an ultimatum. “There was no ultimatum. Why would I wait 15 years to give him an ultimatum? It just didn’t make sense,” she said. On the death itself: “The police did an investigation, and they said it was an accident. Everyone believed it was an accident. So I assumed it was an accident as well.”¹¹

The documentary’s director, Dani Sloane, said the case against Milliron carried “a lot more opaqueness” than the case against Rudolph, noting that Milliron was thousands of miles from Zambia when Bianca was killed. Milliron’s daughter, who appeared in the series, described her mother as a single parent who worked hard to provide for her children and “fell in love with this guy, and fell into this world.”¹²

Rudolph, sentenced separately to life in prison in August 2023, has exhausted his direct appeals. The Tenth Circuit rejected his appeal on September 8, 2025, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari on January 12, 2026.¹³¹⁴ Milliron’s case is the one still moving. The district court’s action on remand will determine whether her release date holds at 2036 or shifts.

1
People. Where Is Dentist Larry Rudolph Now
2
Colorado Bar Association. United States v. Milliron
3
TV Insider. Trophy Wife Murder on Safari Director Larry Rudolph Details Hulu Documentary
4
U.S. Department of Justice. Accessory to Zambia Safari Murder Sentenced to 17 Years in Federal Prison
5
Law Week Colorado. Prosecutor Questions Requires Precision: Court of Appeals Ruling in Milliron
6
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. United States v. Milliron, No. 23-1217
7
U.S. Department of Justice. Lawrence Rudolph Sentenced to Life in Federal Prison for Murdering His Wife in Zambia
8
CNN. Larry Rudolph Dentist Safari Wife Death
9
GovInfo. United States v. Rudolph, No. 1:22-CR-00012 – Section: Pre-Trial Ruling
10
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. United States v. Rudolph, No. 23-1278
11
People. Girlfriend of Penn Dentist Who Killed Wife on Safari Breaks Her Silence in Prison
12
Rolling Stone. Trophy Wife Murder on Safari True Crime Doc Interview
13
Colorado Politics. Court Upholds Conviction of Lawrence Rudolph for Killing Wife in Africa
14
Supreme Court of the United States. Docket No. 25-675, Rudolph v. United States