Richmond man poisoned wife’s Coca-Cola with cocaine, MDMA and BZD so he could marry her daughter
An Indiana man who conspired to poison his wife’s Coca-Cola with various drugs, kill her and marry her daughter has been sentenced after entering a guilty plea.
Alfred W. Ruf, 71, pled guilty Monday in Wayne County Court to aggravated battery posing a risk of death — a level 3 felony. A conspiracy to commit murder charge originally filed against Ruf was dismissed and he was sentenced to four years in prison and five years of probation.
The charges against Ruf stem from several 2021 incidents where his wife was hospitalized and tested positive for several illegal drugs she said she did not take. Ruf reportedly admitted to police he was poisoning her in an attempt to kill her and marry her daughter.
Ruf’s wife first contacted police in Jan. 2022 after her husband reportedly told her he had been trying to kill her with poison. She said she’d been hospitalized six times over the past weeks with unexplained headaches, drowsiness, diarrhea and more.
The woman said that, at the hospital, she tested positive for MDMA, cocaine and benzodiazepines. However, she denied ever having used the drugs that were found in her system.
While responding to Ruf and his wife’s home, police reportedly heard Ruf say had indeed been “spiking” his wife’s drink with an “unknown substance” given to him by his wife’s daughter. The wife was able to provide police with a pill bottle full of the off-white powdery substance and a Coca-Cola can with an off-white residue.
While the wife was again taken to the hospital for a blood and urine screening, Ruf was taken to the sheriff’s department for an interview. After saying he understood his Miranda Rights, Ruf reportedly confessed to the crime.
Ruf allegedly told police how his wife’s daughter from a previous marriage had given him a pill bottle with a white powder inside around three months ago. The daughter — who Ruf admitted he had been having sex with — reportedly told him to put the powder into his wife’s drink.
“Ruf stated that the substance would then make [his wife] go to sleep for approximately 13 hours or so,” court docs read. “He stated that he would do this to eventually kill her.”
