A 71-year-old man admitted to putting a poisonous “white powdery substance” in his wife’s Coca-Cola to kill her so he could marry her daughter. State court records were revealed through the USA TODAY website.
Alfred Ruf pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in July for attempting to poison his wife. According to Indiana court records, he was sentenced to four years in prison and five years of probation.
Attempted poisoning in Indiana
The man confessed in January 2022 that he had been "adding" a substance to his wife's drinks for months and that these substances had been given to him by his wife's daughter.
Ruf's wife contacted the Wayne County Sheriff's Department and told them what her husband intended to do. In the documents, they describe that there was a pill bottle containing an unknown powdered substance that he drank with a Coca-Cola aluminum can. At the bottom of the can, there was a "whitish residue."
It was reported that, when making the complaint, an officer took the woman to the hospital and she tested positive for MDMA, cocaine, and benzodiazepines in her blood and urine, but she denied having consumed drugs.
"Once the state changed the nature of the crime, he took responsibility for what he did wrong," said John Lawrence Tompkins, Ruf's defense attorney, to USA TODAY on Tuesday. "That's what should be done."
His wife's daughter ordered him to kill her mother.
When conducting the investigations, Ruf, who was 69 years old at the time, confessed to having had sexual relations with his wife's 31-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, according to the sworn statement.
Ruf explained that his wife’s daughter was the one who gave him the bottle of pills with the powdered substance in September 2021 and ordered him to put it in his mother’s drink. The man’s goal was to marry his stepdaughter.