A 71-year-old Indiana man was sentenced this week to four years in prison after he admitted to poisoning his wife 12 times as part of an alleged scheme to marry her daughter.
In January 2022, Alfred Ruf said he had been giving his then 51-year-old wife, Lisa Bishop, an unknown substance that he knew would eventually kill her, according to the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department . Bishop had told law enforcement that Ruf was poisoning her.
She also revealed that she had been hospitalized several times the previous year and that she believed her symptoms were caused by the poisonings.
Ruf said he took his wife to the hospital six times – she experienced headaches, drowsiness, diarrhea and lightheadedness.
He was arrested on Jan. 3, 2022 and lodged in the Wayne County Jail and was charged with conspiracy to commit murder, a felony charge. In July Ruf pleaded guilty to aggravated battery.
“Once the state changed the nature of the offense, he took responsibility for what he did wrong," John Lawrence Tompkins, Ruf’s defense attorney, told USA TODAY Tuesday . “That’s the appropriate thing to do.”
USA Today also reported this week that it obtained a probable cause affidavit related to the case. Per the affidavit, Ruf claimed that the substance he poisoned Bishop with was given to him by her 31-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. He told deputies that he was sexually involved with Bishop’s daughter, who was not named in the report. Ruf is the only person charged in connection with the poisoning, USA Today said.
“Two other persons of interest in this case are being sought in the continuing investigation,” said authorities in January 2022.
Court documents said Ruf “explained that his wife’s daughter gave him the pill bottle with the powdery substance in September 2021 and instructed him to put it in her mother’s drink.”
Bishop provided samples of a powdery substance to authorities and gave them an aluminum Coca-Cola can she drank out of. When she cut the can open, Bishop found an off-white residue. Law enforcement took her to the hospital, where tested positive for having MDMA, cocaine and Benzodiazepines in her blood and urine, according to the affidavit.
Bishop said she had not used any of those drugs.
“Ruf told the deputies that the drug cocktail would make his wife go to sleep for ‘13 hours or so,’ the affidavit says. He also confessed that he put the drugs in the drink to ‘eventually kill (her)’ according to the document,” USA Today reported.
He said that he gave her the drugs around a dozen times from September through December of 2021 in order to have sex with Bishop’s daughter and the daughter’s friend. Ruf said the two told him to drug Bishop.
“Once Ruf's wife was asleep, her daughter and her daughter's friend would put on a ‘show’ for Ruf, according to the affidavit,” said USA Today. “The show involved the two women putting on Ruf’s wife’s negligees and then performing ‘sex acts on each other,’ the court document continues.”
He also said the two women would take turns stealing Bishop’s personal items and having sex with him.
At one point, Bishop’s daughter learned that the couple was selling their home and then told Ruf she wanted to get her mother “out of the picture,” according to the affidavit. She allegedly mentioned a life insurance policy to him and said that they would get married after her mother’s death.
Ruf told authorities eventually admitted to the crimes “felt bad,” according to the affidavit. In addition to four years in prison, he was sentenced to five years of probation.
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