Original subtitles

This is the very strange story

of an all-American family...

Just a very idyllic childhood growing up.

...determined to support their mother's second chance at love.

He made her feel good about herself, and I think

that's something that she really needed in her life.

But there are secrets behind the smiles...

Things that were going on

in the background were -- were very disturbing.

...which will erupt to the surface

in ways that no one can imagine.

That's when life in our house went

downhill about as fast as it could go.

It's June 1956 in Chicago, Illinois.

Excited guests are flocking to congratulate a newlywed couple.

Bride, Gianne, has just turned 18,

and she's happy to be sealing her union with her new husband,

John Hart.

My parents told us they met at

a -- like a basketball game that they were at.

My dad used to play basketball, and he --

the minute he saw my mom, he said that she was the one.

They wanted to get married and have kids

and have the all-American family.

John and Dianne set up home

in the quiet suburb of Franklin park.

It isn't long before the happy arrival

of little Lori in 1957, followed by baby Cindy

two years later.

I remember my mom and dad bringing Cindy home from

the hospital and her being in her bassinet, um,

in our living room, and I can -- I can

picture what it was like to look in and see.

We had the perfect family.

You know, two kids, two adults, two dogs.

We did everything together.

Lori and Cindy are soon joined

by a lively little brother, John Jr.

There was, um, a lot of competition

with my sisters when I was younger.

Um, you know, I was the troublesome one.

We fought like cats and dogs, but we loved each other.

And finally, baby glory arrives

to complete the family in 1963.

It was just like, no, here comes another one,

so I think I might have been maybe a...

...a surprise.

Soon after, Dianne and John move to Hoffman estates

and buy a home fit for a clan of six.

They bought what was called the riviera model of home,

which was considered to be the, um,

nicest model to buy in Hoffman estates.

When John isn't working

as an electronic technician,

he likes to treat his family to grand vacations.

Back in the days in the beginning,

when we had family vacations, and we went to California

and yosemite and...

All these fun places.

Just a very idyllic

kind of childhood growing up.

You know, at that point,

we really felt everything kind of revolved around us.

The harts appear to have

their future all mapped out.

But these days, Dianne is feeling uncertain

about the path in front of her.

She finds herself increasingly restless

in her role as a housewife.

My mom was extremely smart,

and I think that being a mom

was not all she really wanted to be.

There was something she always felt was missing.

She -- she knew there was more in store for her.

In 1970, when Lori and Cindy have started middle school,

Dianne volunteers to attend school board meetings.

Mom was looking for a little bit something else to do,

was pretty active with her kids, and managed to get herself

elected to the school board.

It's here that she meets up-and-coming

28-year-old attorney and fellow father of four,

Donnie Rudd.

Donnie was a Texan,

and he was texan through and through.

My mom and Donnie were both the new kids on the block,

and they started talking.

There was a lot of conferences that they went to,

and she became quite friendly with him, and eventually

we became friends with the Rudd family.

But back at home, Dianne's husband, John,

is less than thrilled.

I think my dad was very content to have someone

that was at home,

that was cooking his meals and cleaning the house

and raising the kids.

Sometimes she would go to conferences for

the school, and she'd have to leave for the weekend,

and I think he wasn't that happy

with it when she started it.

As Donnie and Dianne spend more

time together on the school board,

their friendship gathers steam.

My dad wasn't really a romantic,

and Donnie was the kind who gave my mom a lot of attention.

He made her feel good about herself,

and I think that's something that she really,

really needed in her life.

He was exciting. He was smart.

And he can be very charismatic.

He made her feel -- feel better about herself.

In August 1971,

things come to a head for John and Dianne.

I was getting ready to take a big vacation when, um,

everything kind of fell apart with both families.

About a week or two before we were scheduled

to, um, leave on the trip, my mom came home

and told my dad that she wanted a divorce.

And I saw the look on my dad's face that just broke my heart.

He was so devastated.

I just don't think he saw this coming at all.

It's a jolt for the family.

In that time period,

divorce was not common, particularly,

in the social structure that we were in,

it stunned us, because we were not

used to divorces in the family.

Donnie's wife, Louann,

and Dianne's husband, John, both find themselves single.

What happens next will leave the hart children stunned.

I come home one night, and my dad and Louann were sitting on

the couch talking,

and I saw he had his arm touching Louann and realized

that maybe something was happening to make a really bad

situation even more complicated.

A few months after Dianne and Donnie

take their affair public,

John and Louann announce that they, too,

want to move in together.

So in the end, John and Donnie simply swap households.

There were two houses, and we had to decide

which kids were gonna live at which house and which parents

and which belongings were gonna get moved,

and it was kind of a, um,

a real eye-opener as you watched

all these things going on,

and you really, as a child, had no say so.

At the time, I was, you know, eight years old,

so they had, um,

four children and it was like, more --

more kids to play with, you know?

As soon as the divorces are finalized,

John and Louann get married.

My dad is a person that was

always taken care of in a relationship.

He worked, he came home, his wife had dinner

on the table, um,

and Louann was willing to do that.

But surprisingly, things don't move

so quickly between Dianne and Donnie.

Suddenly, my dad was remarried to Louann,

and my mom was not married to Donnie.

But there started to become some, um,

signs that there were trouble between my mom and Donnie.

Donnie was working, and I think he was

disappearing quite a bit on my mom.

I heard that my mom had gone to Donnie's apartment,

and there was a woman in there,

and it was a blonde woman, and my mom was knocking on

the door, and he won't let her in.

It turns out that this mysterious woman

is the reason for Donnie's absence.

He came home one day

and told my mom he was getting married the next day.

The long and short of it

was that Donnie slept at our house that night,

got up the next day,

packed his little pinto and left

and went and married Noreen.

Noreen Kumeta is a 19-year-old

library clerk who Donnie met through work.

What's more, she knows nothing

about his relationship with Dianne.

I would say that my mom, that Christmas was --

she was very depressed,

you know, that she just blew up our lives for -- for Donnie.

Dianne hart finds herself blindsided.

She's left to raise four kids alone.

That's when life in our house went downhill

about as fast as it could go.

It's August 1973.

Dianne hart has left her husband to be with Donnie Rudd,

only to be abandoned herself.

For Donnie, it's all smiles as he exchanges vows

with his new bride, Noreen Kumeta.

Well, I didn't think twice about going up

and being best man at that wedding.

Donnie and Noreen seemed happy.

I think we maybe saw Noreen

once after that we did not have much of

a chance to ever develop a relationship with Noreen.

On September 14th,

the harts receive an unexpected call.

The phone rang, and I answered it,

and it was Donnie, and I was pretty nasty to him.

And he wanted to know if my mom was home,

and I just said, "no," and he goes, "well, can you

tell her I called?" And I said, "no."

I said, "you're a jerk," basically hung up on him.

It was the next day is when it came out

that Noreen had been killed.

He called us the night that Noreen died

and told us that she had died.

He was obviously very upset.

Donnie explains that he and Noreen were

driving home from a visit to Noreen's mother

when his car was run off the road.

Noreen was thrown from the car,

and her head struck a rock.

She was rushed to the hospital,

but it was too late.

The coroner rules the death as accidental.

Dianne is conflicted about the tragedy.

I think she felt very regretful

about what had happened to Noreen,

but I think that there was part of her that

saw the door open for her to return to Donnie.

Little by little, Donnie and Dianne rekindle

their connection.

The hart children have misgivings about Donnie Rudd.

After all, he broke their mother's heart.

But it's clear to all of them

that Dianne is hopelessly in love.

She still wanted to be with him.

It was a magnetic pull that there was nothing

that we could do.

Dianne decides to take Donnie back,

despite the children's concerns.

So after Noreen died and Donnie moved back in,

I really felt like maybe things were gonna be normal.

We were gonna have two parents in the house,

and we were all gonna live together on

Carlton road, and things would be different,

mom would be happy again.

But what the children don't know

is that their stepfather is hiding a secret.

One night, when Donnie is driving 16-year-old Lori home

from a friend's,

she works up the courage to ask about Noreen's death.

He said, basically, she -- she was murdered,

that they were run off the road and that, um,

he thought it was some kind of a hit.

Donnie tells Lori that at the time of Noreen's death,

he was secretly working for a U.S. Attorney.

He believes that this work has made him a target.

There was some corruption that was going on in

Hoffman estates at that point.

He claimed that it had something to do with that

corruption, um, investigation that was going on,

that somebody had tried to do a hit on him, because he was

doing this undercover work.

That concerned me, you know, was somebody still after him?

Dianne, however, doesn't seem concerned.

In 1974, she and Donnie marry quietly in a private ceremony.

The couple have had an unconventional start,

but before long, they're beginning to thrive.

He became an expert at, um, condominium law,

which is the rules and regulations that begin with

someone owning a part of a building.

He had found a big specialty,

and he was making quite a bit of money and becoming very

successful in his law practice.

And given his larger-than-life persona,

what happens next comes as no surprise.

Welcome to the condominium television network.

I am your host, Donnie Rudd.

Tracy, I've probably, in my lifetime now,

attended in excess of 5,000 board meetings.

Donnie launches his own TV show.

He even acquires a new stage name.

Called himself "Mr. Condo,"

and I would say that marketing himself was his primary

business during that time, not practicing law.

In 1974, at the age of 38, Dianne decides

to enroll in law school.

I think one of the things that came out of living with Donnie

was he did open my family's eyes to the possibilities

of a better education.

My mom was a house wife and had never thought of it,

but I think Donnie kind of opened her eyes

that that was out there.

Dianne graduates with flying colors,

and, before long, is a practicing attorney,

just like her husband.

At last, Dianne and Donnie have everything they've ever wanted.

I'm not sure if it's really that you believe

your lies or that your truth is different.

It's Christmas 1988.

Dianne and Donnie's relationship has had its share of strife,

but that's all behind them now.

They are enjoying high-flying careers

and a more stable family life in the Chicago suburbs.

But on April 4, 1991, the hart and Rudd families'

quiet and exclusive suburb is stunned.

Well, it was funny

because Loretta was originally my mother's client,

my mother had incorporated her and she had a, um,

dispute with her -- her business partner.

And so she -- my mom had referred her to Donnie

to handle the business dispute.

Detectives find no murder weapon

and no trace of the killer,

but when they canvass the area, they catch a break.

A neighbor remembers hearing a gunshot around 3:20 P.M.

And gives a detailed description of

a car outside Loretta's house.

She recalls it because it had a memorable vanity plate --

Mr. Condo.

The police, pretty much, after finding Loretta's body,

were at Donnie's house within an hour or two.

Donnie tells police that Loretta was one of his clients

and that they had met earlier that day,

but he knows nothing about her murder.

They asked Donnie whether he had a gun,

and Donnie was a big gun collector.

He had a ton of guns.

And then he brought them up and said,

"here's the guns I have in the house.

Take a look at them."

So they asked Donnie

if they could do a gunpowder residue test,

and Donnie, he said, "you just had me

"get these guns.

"I handled each of these guns and opened them.

"There is going to be gunpowder residue on my hands.

"There is no accurate test that you can give me now,

because you asked me for these guns."

When police investigate further,

they learn that Loretta thought she was owed payment

by Donnie.

We do know that he had told her that she had won a case

against her law partner

and was supposed to get a substantial amount of

money and that Loretta was very upset

that the money hadn't come and that she had bills to pay.

Loretta had told her daughter

if he didn't come up with the money,

she was calling the attorney registration and disciplinary

commission on him.

Police think that the money owed to Loretta

could potentially be a motive for Donnie to kill his client.

It's totally uncontroverted

that Donnie was there that afternoon.

The only real question was, did he, you know,

was he there when she died?

In November 1991, Donnie receives a subpoena

to appear in front of a grand jury

on suspicion of Loretta's murder.

Dianne decides to act as Donnie's defense attorney.

She became very committed to making sure that

Donnie had his story down when it came to Loretta.

Dianne has proof that Donnie called her when he got home

on the day of Loretta's murder.

She builds a timeline that shows Donnie

couldn't have shot Loretta at 3:20 P.M.

And then driven home in time to make the call to Dianne.

She drove the route. She timed everything.

So she got her phone records, you know,

so she could prove conclusively what time he got home.

She had the weather report about how

it was raining that day, and the traffic was worse,

and she managed to put in that they didn't have as good of

a time of death

that could prove that he was at the house at the time

she died, and she went through it,

and she was very focused and very convincing.

There are question marks over

Donnie's conduct on Loretta's case,

but Dianne's timelines convince the grand jury

not to press charges for murder.

The day he got off, it was definitely a relief.

Thanks to Dianne, the whole family is

able to move on with their lives.

So it kind of, um, actually was, well, vindication, maybe.

I guess he didn't do it.

By Thanksgiving 1991, the camera's rolling in

the Rudd home, and it's almost as if

nothing had ever happened.

Donnie is cooking up a storm for the extended family.

We might have been having a good time in that moment,

but the things that were going on in the background were

very disturbing.

It's Christmas 1991 in the Rudd and hart household,

and the hart kids are trying

hard to pretend things are normal.

Behind the idyllic scenes,

Donnie and Dianne are struggling in the wake of

the grand jury hearing.

You'd wake up, and the front page of the newspaper

would say, is Mr. Condo really Mr. Con?

And you'd think, "everybody's gonna lose

"their jobs, and all this is --

terrible things are gonna happen."

And then eventually, he would get more clients,

and he would be talking, and we would go out to dinner,

and everything seemed normal.

Donnie and Dianne are planning a move

to Texas to escape the negative publicity,

but right before they leave,

Dianne is given some devastating news of her own.

We found out that my mom had cancer.

You know, no one had had cancer in our family,

and, um, we always thought of our mom as

so strong that it was -- it was a real --

real shock.

The hart children do their best

to remain upbeat for their mother.

We had some really good Christmas.

-Yes, we did. -That was Amanda's

first Christmas -- there's Donnie.

But there's still an apparent tension

between Donnie and his wife's children.

Do you notice he's always kind of away from all of us?

- Yeah. - He's away from the fray.

He's always sitting in a chair in another room.

He's waiting for it to be over.

Donnie is struggling with Dianne's illness.

Well, I feel like he -- he didn't like that,

you know, she was getting this extra attention.

Almost became like he was gonna compete

with my mom when she had cancer.

The first time my mom went to chemo,

he -- they were, like, two hours late coming home because he

had to stop at the doctor and get something fixed for him.

He did not like anybody having more attention than he did.

Dianne gets the all clear some months later.

She did he have a short period of time where she appeared

to be cancer-free.

But in may 1995,

the cancer returns -- this time, it's terminal.

The breast cancer had spread into her abdomen

and wrapped itself around

her mesenteric arteries,

and that it was not treatable.

The hart children are devastated

but are determined to rally around Dianne.

They organize a big family vacation to Wisconsin.

Got three months to go.

This was happy. This was --

it was happy and sad, because this was

when we found out mom was gonna die.

-Yeah. -So we were trying to

have, like, a good weekend.

Donnie doesn't handle the news well.

Even on video, he appears detached from Dianne.

She always thought she was gonna die from the cancer,

so she was belligerent and depressed.

Even now, Dianne isn't getting

support she needs from Donnie.

I think by that point, she realized that this hope

that Donnie was gonna be there for her,

you know, I think she realized that who was

there for her was her children.

Dianne deals with the situation

the only way she knows how...

...by throwing herself into work.

I remember I was sitting there once,

and she was working, and I started to film her.

She was just answering the phone and doing

normal stuff, and I was like, you know,

I think that's maybe something I want to capture.

No, I get really tired.

Lori's video reveals the state of

Donnie and Dianne's marriage.

Donnie had --

by this point in time, had no conscience.

The only thing Donnie was out for was himself.

Despite his wife dying of cancer,

Donnie has once again left Dianne for another woman.

After 22 years together,

Dianne decides to move away from their Texas home.

It was about a month before she died

when she finally agreed to come home.

I think she was tired.

She was weak, and she wasn't fighting it anymore.

She moves in with a close friend

in Chicago to be near her kids.

But it was a difficult time, because my mom,

she -- you know, she loved her home in Texas, and...

She loved where she lived, and...

I'd have to move her up to

Chicago and bring her stuff up there,

and... it was very difficult for her.

But she can't forget Donnie.

We would have done anything for her,

but I still think at the end of the day,

she really still wanted him.

We knew that it was time to put her back in the hospital,

and so when we put her in the hospital,

I believe she was in there for a total of two weeks.

It was bad times,

and we had set up the -- the rolling watch

so that there was always somebody there.

Dianne holds out for a little longer.

Yeah, she was kind of holding on because

she was waiting for Donnie or Donnie to come see her.

And I told her I said, "ma, you need to go."

I said, "it's okay. We're gonna be fine."

And then she stopped breathing...

And then I watched all the blood drain from her face.

And I remember, it kind of looked like frost.

It was kind of sad.

You know, she finally found peace.

She found peace.

And I think that that was the only way that she would

ever probably finally been able to break free of him,

was -- was by -- just by dying.

Dianne's funeral takes place in June 1996

in south barrington, Illinois.

It was a lovely service. Lori spoke at it.

She was always really good

and made everyone laugh a little bit,

and when we were at the church,

we were sitting in the church, and all of a sudden,

Donnie showed up.

His arm in a sling and on crutches.

And, it was basically an insult,

I mean, even in mom's funeral,

he was trying to distract attention away to himself.

So,

the one nice thing about the funeral

was that, um, it separated us from him.

The family are furious at their stepfather's behavior.

But they hope that the man who has caused their mother

so much heartache will now be out of their lives for good.

He did move away, and we separated ourselves,

and, you know, it was a very positive thing

as far as I was concerned, but I figured he'd be back.

The hart children are attempting

to move on with their lives

after losing their mother, Dianne, to cancer.

They try to forget about the stepfather

that caused them all so much grief.

I think we learned not to talk about Donnie.

But a phone call in November 2012

threatens to open old wounds.

I got a call

that told me about this article

that they'd put out on Donnie,

you know, about this -- this bodtke case.

It's been over 20 years since

the murder of Donnie and Dianne's neighbor,

Loretta bodtke, and in all that time,

the case has remained unsolved.

Donnie Rudd was cleared by the grand jury

in 1991, but his stepchildren have doubts.

I found,

the detective's number, it was listed in the article,

and I called him up.

And I told him, I said, you know,

"why have you been investigating this for so long,

"and it's a cold case file, and you really

haven't talked to any of the people that lived with him?"

Detectives speak with John,

and soon, they call his sisters.

I think the police, at that point,

felt that Donnie was a suspect,

because Loretta had been really angry at him.

Donnie told Loretta that she had won

an $800,000 settlement,

but he never produced the money.

After learning this, police decide to

speak to some of his other clients.

It doesn't take long to discover Donnie Rudd's

track record.

Donnie was a con man.

He was a con man that had a law license.

Underneath that top notch reputation,

there was this huge amount of chaos and fraud and negligence

that was going on in his practice of law.

Despite the evidence of Donnie's corruption,

it's hard for police to find enough solid evidence to link

Donnie to Loretta's death.

They never found the gun that killed Loretta,

and that was a big piece of the evidence that they needed.

But when police speak to the hart family,

they discover another mysterious death,

that of Donnie's young bride, Noreen Kumeta,

39 years ago, in 1973.

I told them I felt that something had

happened with Noreen,

although I wasn't sure exactly what happened,

I was so young.

You know, there's always that thing,

and it's, like, this little feeling that you have in

the back of your mind of...

He's capable, but did he actually do it?

In his statement,

Donnie said that he had swerved off the road

and hit a ditch to avoid an oncoming car.

He was saying that he had no choice but to run off the road

and that Noreen

had fallen out of the car, and she had hit her head

on a rock.

But when police arrived on the scene,

both Noreen and Donnie were inside the vehicle.

According to Donnie, he had moved her back in.

If you get in a car accident and someone falls out of

the car, who picks 'em up and brings 'em back?

And he suffered no injuries at all.

What's more, in 1973, Donnie Rudd

received life insurance payouts of $120,000.

40 years after the crash, police reclassified Noreen's

death as a suspected homicide,

and in February 2013, they take action to prove it.

Noreen's family, for all those years,

believed that it was an accident,

but they agreed to have her body exhumed.

Pathologists carry out a forensic exam,

and what they discover leaves police stunned.

Her head was really bashed in, and it was --

there was damage on both sides of her head,

as if she had been clubbed.

Noreen didn't die from being thrown from the car.

The evidence shows that she was beaten to death,

and the only person with her that night

was her new husband, Donnie Rudd.

I had spent most of my childhood really avoiding it,

talking about it very little

and wanting it to all go away and not really

accept the truth.

In December 2015, 42 years after the supposed

accident, Donnie Rudd is arrested for her murder.

When he finally got charged,

I actually was at work when they called me, and I had to get

in my truck and go away, and I cried,

because it had been so many years that he had been

running around as a free man, hurting people,

and I knew he wasn't gonna hurt anybody anymore.

After learning of Donnie's arrest,

the hart children begin to reevaluate the events

surrounding their mother's cancer.

If he's capable of that,

I mean, what else was he capable of?

The doctors all said that her cancer

shouldn't have come back.

After Dianne's first cancer diagnosis,

she was advised to stop taking her prescribed

estrogen tablets.

She was told that if she continued to take estrogen,

that it could make the cancer grow

even though she'd had her breasts removed.

As far as the family know,

Dianne had avoided estrogen,

but a chance discovery makes them reconsider.

We got an email from one of my mom's friend's daughters,

who said that she had found syringes

and estrogen in a closet.

They also discover searches on Donnie's computer

about the effects of estrogen on hormone-receptive cancer.

That's when he started with the insurance policies

on ma and jackin' the insurance up.

The computer searches, syringes, and insurance policies

lead the harts to suspect

that Donnie may have accelerated Dianne's cancer

by secretly administering estrogen.

My mom was cremated.

I'll never know if he did something.

There is no direct evidence

that Donnie was involved,

and he is never investigated or charged in relation

to Dianne's death.

But the case against him for Noreen kumeta's murder

is striking.

They had some pretty compelling evidence against him.

At Donnie's trial, prosecutors lay out what

they believe happened on the night in question.

Donnie and Noreen are driving back from her mother's house.

It's a dark night on a secluded road.

Donnie pulls in and gets out of the car.

He hauls his new wife out and beats her

around the head with a blunt object.

Once his new bride is dead, he runs their car off the road

and waits for someone to find them.

I think Donnie killed her for the insurance money.

Most of the suspicious things that have happened

around him have always been about money.

In less than three hours,

the jury returns its verdict.

Donnie Rudd is found guilty of first-degree murder.

At the age of 76,

he's handed a 75- to 150-year sentence.

We felt relief, but I think there was still

some sadness in it, um,

that it happened so late in Donnie's life,

um, and what things could have been like if --

if only he had been held accountable earlier --

earlier in his life.

I was shocked by the magnitude

of the sentence.

I feel sorry for Donnie, because I think I would

feel sorry for anybody that I knew

that is going through what he is going to go through

the rest of his life.

For the harts,

it's hard to comprehend that the man who was part of

their family for so many years is now a convicted murderer.

I mean, I was the type of kid that was afraid

there was a monster under my bed.

As I got older, I realized

the monster wasn't under the bed.

The monster was

sleeping in the bed with my mom.

Donnie Rudd remains the number-one suspect

in the unsolved murder of Loretta bodtke,

but due to insufficient evidence,

no charges have ever been brought.

The hart children believe he is responsible due to

the fact that he had a strong motive.

Donnie knew he was gonna lose his law license

if Loretta reported him to the ardc,

and so he probably murdered her so she wouldn't do it.

I think Donnie kills when something is

just an obstacle in front of him.

The hart children will never know if Donnie

played a role in their own mother's death.

I think Donnie

took from our family what,

I hope, that each of us kids give our family

is just stability and love

and, you know, the chance to grow old together.

I think that he took apart

that American dream family that we had.