Ending what the victim’s sister called “a 45-year nightmare,” a former suburban lawyer and school board member was convicted Monday of killing his teenage wife in 1973. 
 
 Donnie Rudd, now 76, was found guilty of first-degree murder after a weeklong trial in Cook County and about three hours of jury deliberations. 
 
 Jurors apparently sided with prosecutors, who contended that Rudd staged Noreen Kumeta Rudd’s death to look like a car accident and that authorities at the time believed him because he had the credentials of an upstanding citizen. 
 
 “The defendant made it look like an accident, and he fooled a lot of people,” Assistant State’s Attorney Maria McCarthy told jurors just before they began deliberating the case. 
 
 After getting away with murder for more than four decades, Rudd is now likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. Having been out of jail on a $400,000 cash bond, Rudd was retaken into custody Monday for his sentencing, which is yet to be scheduled. He showed no reaction when the verdict was announced. 
 
 His lawyer vowed to appeal the decision and predicted it will succeed “if my client survives,” referring to Rudd receiving treatment for cancer. 
 
 “They put together a circumstantial case built on innuendos and painted him as a bad guy,” said Rudd attorney Tim Grace. 
 
 During the initial investigation into Noreen Rudd’s death at age 19, her husband apparently garnered little suspicion, despite the fact that he’d been living with another woman and her four children right up until his announcement that he was marrying Noreen, his co-worker at Quaker Oats in Barrington, and that the crash occurred less than a month after their wedding. 
 
 Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune Donnie Rudd arrives June 27, 2018, for his trial on murder charges at the county courthouse in Rolling Meadows. Donnie Rudd arrives June 27, 2018, for his trial on murder charges at the county courthouse in Rolling Meadows. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune) 
 
 Rudd inherited about $120,000 as a result of his young bride’s death and married his former girlfriend a few months later, according to authorities and testimony. 
 
 Noreen Rudd’s sister Karen Mezera said one of the most difficult things was realizing that Rudd deceived her family for decades, maintaining close ties with them but not revealing his swift remarriage. 
 
 Another of Noreen Rudd’s sisters Donna Haggerton said after Monday’s verdict: “It’s been a 45-year nightmare. I’m just glad it’s over.” 
 
 In closing arguments earlier Monday, prosecutors said Rudd chose a dark and secluded road in Barrington Hills to stage the crash that September evening in 1973. 
 
 They said he chose to take Dundee Road home to Hoffman Estates from a visit with his wife’s mother in Carpentersville, rather than a more direct route, because Dundee Road was more isolated, with less chance of witnesses. 
 
 A then-rookie Barrington Hills officer who responded to the scene, Christopher Bish, was called to testify last week and recalled finding Rudd in the front seat, cradling his severely injured wife. Bish said Rudd told responders that someone ran the couple’s Pinto Wagon off the road, that his wife was thrown from the car during the crash and that she hit her head on a rock. 
 
 Timeline: A 45-year-old mystery: Did Donnie Rudd's wife die from an accident or murder? » 
 
 Photo courtesy of Cindy Mulligan These photos show Donnie and Noreen Rudd during their wedding in 1973. These photos show Donnie and Noreen Rudd during their wedding in 1973. (Photo courtesy of Cindy Mulligan) (Photo courtesy of Cindy Mulligan) 
 
 Defense attorneys had sought to poke holes in the testimony of prosecution witnesses like Bish, noting that, despite his claims that the case always haunted him, he admitted under cross-examination that he never acted on any suspicions that the death was not accidental. 
 
 Rudd’s lawyers also addressed testimony of Rudd’s former stepdaughter Lori Hart, who said Rudd was her mother Dianne’s boyfriend and lived with her and her family before he suddenly announced one day that he was marrying Noreen the next day. Hart also testified that Rudd almost immediately returned to her mother after Noreen Rudd’s death. 
 
 Hart and her sister later published a book about Rudd called “Living with the Devil.” 
 
 “It’s outrageous to convict anyone on the testimony of someone trying to make a buck on a book,” Grace said. 
 
 As for Rudd having left his girlfriend to marry the 19-year-old Noreen, Grace said: “I’m not asking you to like a guy who cheats on his girlfriend, but that doesn’t mean he committed murder.” 
 
 Jurors began deliberation early Monday afternoon. A couple of hours in, they asked to review a video of police and prosecutors questioning Rudd in Texas in 2013 about his second wife’s death. In that interview, Rudd answered many questions by saying he could not recall, including whether he had struck his wife in the head before her death. He made no confession about her death during the interrogation. 
 
 Much of the case, though, hinged on whose medical experts jurors believed, and one juror, who declined to give his name, said following the verdict that the forensic evidence was the deciding factor. 
 
 Prosecutors called three pathologists, one of whom autopsied Noreen Rudd after she was exhumed in 2013. All three said they believed she died from being struck by a blunt object in the head — injuries they said were inconsistent with being thrown from a car. 
 
 Defense attorneys called their own medical expert to counter that he believed Noreen Rudd died not of blunt-force trauma but of “internal decapitation” caused by the car crash. That closely aligned with the finding of the emergency room doctor at Sherman Hospital in Elgin who saw Noreen Rudd when she was taken there after the crash. 
 
 But prosecutors sought to undermine the credibility of the defense’s medical expert, pointing out he never performed an autopsy. “He took $20,000 to offer an opinion on something he knows nothing about,” McCarthy said. 
 
 Police took another look at the case after reviewing the unsolved murder of Loretta Tabak-Bodtke, who was shot to death in 1991 in her Arlington Heights home. 
 
 Tabak-Bodtke was a legal client of Rudd’s and had threatened to report him to the state’s attorney disciplinary board over a financial dispute. Rudd was later disbarred amid several complaints by clients that he engaged in unethical practices. 
 
 An Arlington Heights police investigator, Richard Sperando, testified that he found notes about Rudd and his wife’s death in the Tabak-Bodtke case file and said outside of court last week that the determination that Noreen Rudd’s death was accidental just didn’t seem right. He contacted Bish, the former Barrington Hills police officer, and soon received court permission to have Noreen Rudd’s remains exhumed and autopsied. 
 
 It’s not clear if there’s any evidence tying Rudd to the death of Tabak-Bodtke, or if authorities have any plans to seek charges against him now. 
 
 Tabak-Bodtke’s daughter, Stephanie Tabak, attended the trial and, after the verdict was announced, turned to thank Sperando and now-retired Arlington Heights deputy police chief Mike Hernandez, who were also in the courtroom. 

 Donnie Rudd, an attorney accused in the cold case slaying of his young wife more than 40 years ago. was found guilty Monday afternoon.A Cook County jury found Rudd, now 76, guilty of killing 19-year-old Noreen Rudd.Prosecutors accused Rudd of beating his young wife to death less than a month after they were married and staging a car accident to cover it up - all for $120,000 in insurance money.Noreen's death was reclassified as a homicide in 2013 when Arlington Heights police exhumed her body as a part of an investigation into the 1991 cold-case murder of interior designer Loretta Tabak-Bodtke, with whom the Texas transplant had a business dispute.Rudd, who was a real estate attorney in Illinois but lost his license in 1994 after being suspected of fraud, has remained a suspect in the killing of his one-time client who was found shot to death in her suburban apartment.Rudd faces a minimum of 14 years in prison.Rudd's attorneys expressed disappointment in the verdict and said they planned to appeal. Meanwhile Noreen's family expressed gratitude and relief to the jury after their verdict was delivered, and said it had been a long and difficult road to justice.
– A weeklong trial and three hours of jury deliberations have ended a family's "45-year nightmare." Donnie Rudd, a 76-year-old former lawyer, was found guilty Monday of killing his teenage bride, Noreen Kumeta, a month after their 1973 wedding in Illinois' Cook County. Prosecutors argued Rudd staged the highway murder to look like a car accident before collecting $120,000 from life insurance policies and returning to live with another woman whom he later married. One of Rudd's stepdaughters from that marriage, who described his deception in a book called Living With the Devil, testified Rudd had left her mother just a day before his wedding. "I'm not asking you to like a guy who cheats on his girlfriend, but that doesn't mean he committed murder," his lawyer, Tim Grace, tells the Chicago Tribune. Vowing that an appeal will be successful (if Rudd survives his cancer treatment), Grace adds, "It's outrageous to convict anyone on the testimony of someone trying to make a buck on a book." But jurors also heard from three pathologists—one who autopsied Kumeta in 2013, finding she died of injuries inconsistent with being thrown from a car, as her husband claimed she was, and two who concurred. The autopsy came about through an investigation into the 1991 shooting death of one of Rudd's legal clients. Loretta Tabak-Bodtke, who'd threatened to report Rudd to the state's attorney disciplinary board after a squabble over money, was reportedly killed on the same day Rudd's car was seen at her home. He remains a suspect in that killing but hasn't been charged, per WLS. He faces a minimum of 14 years in the Kumeta case.