Tonight Saturday“48 Hours” An American woman dies from a gunshot wound while on safari in Adrica – Was it an accident or murder?
Tonight, The April 16 edition of “CBS 48 Hours” airs at 10PM ET/PT on CBS. You can watch previous episodes at CBS and ParamountPlus.
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Lawrence Rudolph and his wife, Bianca, were getting ready to head back home after a safari vacation in Zambia, Africa in October 2016 when something went terribly wrong. The couple were experienced hunters. Lawrence, a successful dentist with several offices near Pittsburgh, Pa., told local authorities that he was in the bathroom of the couple’s two-room cabin when he heard a shot and found his wife dead in the next room.
“CBS 48 Hours” “Death on Safari“
Local police found Bianca Rudolph lying on the floor with a gunshot wound. Lawrence said his wife was packing up a shotgun in a soft-shell gun case. At first, he told a local hunting scout that his wife had died by suicide, but later he told investigators that the gun must have accidentally fired. After two days of investigating, Zambian police closed the case, calling it an accident.
“It boggles the mind that two experienced hunters, for this to have been an accident,” says James Gagliano, a retired FBI supervisory special agent and a CBS News consultant.
Lawrence had his wife’s body quickly cremated in Zambia, which led a friend of Bianca’s to doubt this was an accident. Soon after Bianca’s death, the friend called the FBI. According to an FBI complaint, she also said Lawrence was having an affair and had been verbally abusive to Bianca. The friend also told the FBI that the couple fought over money.
It took investigators five years to investigate the case. Lawrence was arrested in December 2021 for the murder of his wife. He maintains that he is innocent, and his attorneys write in a statement to 48 HOURS that the case is built “…without any real evidence, no eyewitnesses, no forensics, no anything.”
So what happened to Bianca Rudolph? Patta talks with a game scout, a park investigator, a retired police commander in Zambia and others about the case.
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