Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Rundle accuses wife in death of mother

In slaying confession, man says she tampered with mother's pills, arranged disposal of body

In a statement to police, murder suspect Bill Rundle said his slain wife, Shirley, tampered with his mother's morphine medications and helped dispose of the elderly woman's body when she died.

During a lengthy August interview with Las Vegas police at a Florida jail, Rundle also told detectives he killed his 63-year-old wife with a baseball bat. But the slaying came in the midst of a heated domestic dispute after his wife had attacked him with a champagne bottle, Rundle said.

"Absolutely nuts," Rundle said of how his wife repeatedly struck him with the bottle. "I'm serious.

"So I went into the closet. ... There's a baseball bat there, and I hit her once," he said.

Rundle, 57, is charged with first-degree murder and other counts in Shirley Rundle's summer bludgeoning death.

A Clark County grand jury is also probing the disappearance of his 87-year-old mother, Willa. Authorities have not yet found Willa Rundle's body.

Bill Rundle's defense attorneys, Curtis Brown and Nancy Lemcke of the Clark County public defender's office, said Rundle's description of his wife's killing shows there was no premeditation.

"That is significant because it would not be a first-degree murder without premeditation and deliberation," Brown said. "This was more of a heat of passion, reactionary type of situation."

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the case. Clark County prosecutor David Schwartz declined comment on the contents of the statement Rundle gave to police, obtained Tuesday by the Review-Journal.

The statement was recorded by Homicide Detectives Sheila Huggins and Don Tremel at the Seminole County Jail in Seminole County, Fla. Rundle had just been arrested after a nationwide manhunt, and he confessed to police before his extradition to Las Vegas.

Rundle offered to police the first possible explanation for the disappearance of his mother, saying his wife and his mother never got along.

"We'd play simple board games at the table, Clue or Scrabble, and they'd be yelling back and forth that they were cheating and that I was helping her," Rundle told the detectives.

Rundle told police his wife was no angel, saying she had been arrested on suspicion of shoplifting and that she was fired from a casino for stealing.

And, he said, Shirley Rundle later told him she had toyed with his elderly mother's morphine tablets.

"Shirley started upping my mother's medication," Rundle said.

"She admitted this to me after it happened," Rundle said. "That she was taking the capsules and putting ..."

"More?" an astounded detective asked.

"A lot more in each capsule, then putting them back into her, uh, thing," Rundle said.

On May 4, 1997, Rundle said he found his mother dead in her bed in the Rundle home.

"I confronted her (Shirley) about it, and she was as cold and callous as could possibly be," Rundle said. "And I said, `We've got to call the police.' "

Rundle said Shirley Rundle told him "she could take care of everything."

Rundle said he left for work, then returned home later that day.

"I got back from work, the body was gone," Rundle said.

Rundle said his wife hired two Filipinos to dispose of the body and that Rundle does not know where his mother's body is.

In the statement, Rundle also admitted spending Willa Rundle's Social Security checks, and he said his wife also accessed the money.

"We were completely at fault for using her Social Security money, naturally," Rundle said.

Rundle's defense attorneys said Tuesday that before the police interview, detectives promised to save Rundle from the death penalty if he disclosed the whereabouts of his mother.

"Clearly, he has no idea as to the whereabouts of his mother," Lemcke said.

Brown said Rundle's truthfulness shouldn't be doubted because he was entirely forthcoming with police about the slaying of his wife.

"He answered all their questions," Brown said.

If Rundle knew the location of his mother's body, he has every incentive to tell police, given authorities' promises to help him avoid capital punishment, Brown said.

"If Bill knew anything different or knew the whereabouts of his mother, he literally would not be facing the death penalty today," Brown said.

In his statement to police, Rundle talked in great detail about the killing of Shirley Rundle.

He said at the time of the slaying, he and his wife had significant financial problems. The problems were caused by loans to family members and Shirley Rundle's spending habits, Rundle said.

Rundle said his wife was also an extremely jealous woman and that on the night of her death, she had consumed about a bottle and a half of champagne.

"She took the bottle and she continually hit me," he said. "And she hit me and hit me and she broke my arm."

Rundle said he retrieved the baseball bat from a closet and struck Shirley Rundle, causing her to slump in her chair, her head bloody.

"So I said, `Oh my God, look at this,' " Rundle said. "She quit breathing. So I said, `Jesus Christ.' "

Rundle said he struggled as he carried her body to his car with a wounded arm. He broke down in emotion as he told police about the murder and about putting his wife's body in the vehicle's trunk.

He placed a note on the family home saying the two had gone to the Philippines. He rinsed off the bat then fled, driving to Reno.

He stayed at the Reno downtown Holiday Inn, then drove to Portland, Ore., the next morning. On the way to Oregon, he dumped his wife's body alongside a highway in California.

"I put it right at the side of the road, where she'd be found, uh, in a blanket," he said.

Rundle said he spent the night in Portland, and the next day he drove to Seattle, contemplating a run for Canada. He spent six nights in Seattle, and while hiding out, he got bored.

He said he placed online sports bets at a Kinko's and bought season tickets to the Seattle Mariners baseball team.

"I went to five Mariners games," Rundle said, adding, "I was just so lost for what to do."

Rundle said he monitored the Review-Journal's news coverage, and when the newspaper broke the story that he and his wife were missing, he fled Seattle.

"At that point I was going to work my way back to Las Vegas and call Gary Waddell up," Rundle said.

Waddell is a news anchor for KLAS-TV, Channel 8, the Las Vegas Valley's CBS affiliate.

But Rundle instead rented a car and headed toward the East Coast.

"I knew I wanted to see Mount Rushmore, so I headed north across the top of the country," he said.

He spent one night in Missoula, Mont., and two nights in Rapid City, S.D, then Sioux City, Iowa.

"So then I got to Washington, D.C., and there was a convention there. ... They didn't have any rooms, so that kind of ticked me off," Rundle said. "So I drove down to Virginia."

He reached Florida, where he visited tourist attractions before his arrest. Of his wife's death, he said:

"It was a definite, spur of the moment, anger thing. That's the truth. I had no malice or anything to do anything like that."

Rundle was asked by the detectives why he didn't call police during the domestic dispute he described.

"If I had done that, she would tell the police and everybody else that I had given her the idea about my mother," he said. "And it was kind of blackmail, you know."

Rundle, who previously was portrayed by police as a lifelong con man in affidavits, said he threw the champagne bottle in the trash, and that he regrets killing his wife.

"I have terrible remorse of everything that happened," Rundle said. "I feel very bad what I did to the family."

Bill Rundle first became known to Las Vegans in 1987 when, months after his marriage to Shirley, his son was killed while pushing his best friend from the path of a drunken driver. Las Vegans celebrated the heroism of Richie Rundle and named an elementary school in his honor.