71-year-old Alfred Ruf pleaded guilty to aggravated battery causing a risk of death on Monday, August 26, 2024, for a series of disturbing events that took place in late 2021.
According to court documents and police reports cited by Local12 News, Ruf's plan was a slow-burning horror.
His goal, as police uncovered, was to eliminate his wife so he could pursue a relationship with her adult daughter from a previous marriage, because he believed this would eventually lead to them collecting her life insurance money.
The investigation began after Ruf’s wife bravely came forward in 2022 and told police she suspected her husband was poisoning her.
She had been hospitalized six times in recent weeks, and each time, doctors found illicit drugs in her system—drugs she swore she never took.
Meanwhile, for approximately four months, from September to December 2021, Ruf systematically drugged his wife as reported by Local12 News .
According to police affidavits, Ruf confessed to spiking his wife's drinks on about 12 separate occasions by putting a whitish powder into her Coca-Cola cans.
Police later obtained one of these cans, which still had white residue at the bottom, along with a pill bottle full of the suspicious powder from the victim.
What was in the powder? The substances Ruf admitted to using were a dangerous mix of cocaine, MDMA (commonly known as ecstasy), and benzodiazepines.
His reason for the prolonged poisoning was as twisted as the act itself. Authorities reported that Ruf said he drugged his wife because it would "make [his wife] go to sleep for approximately 13 hours or so."
During those long, drug-induced sleeps, Ruf allegedly told police that his wife's daughter and her friend would come to the house.
There, the two women would put on what Ruf described as a "show" for him, which reportedly involved them wearing his wife's clothes and performing sex acts. Ruf also allegedly admitted to having a sexual relationship with his wife's daughter.
Ruf claimed to investigators that the daughter was the mastermind, giving him the drugs and telling him they needed to get her mother "out of the picture" to cash in on her life insurance.
He stated that he was aware his actions could eventually kill his wife, and that death was the "ultimate goal."
The plot finally unraveled in early January 2022 when Ruf allegedly began to feel guilty about what he was doing and on January 3, 2022, he confessed everything to his wife. This admission led her to go to the police with her evidence, sparking the formal investigation.
When police questioned Ruf, he reportedly confessed again, this time to them, and he was arrested shortly after. At the time of his arrest in 2022, authorities mentioned they were looking into two other people connected to the scheme. However, as of his guilty plea this week, no other arrests have been made public according to reports by Local12 News.
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