What happened to Alfred Ruf, the man who poisoned his wife to marry her daughter?

Alfred Ruf, 71, and his wife Lisa Bishop had a volatile relationship and cops in Richmond, Indiana were often called to the couple’s home because of domestic violence issues. However, after Bishop ended up in the hospital six times in just a few weeks, she told police she suspected her husband was poisoning her. Turns out he was, and the reason he did is one for the history books – he wanted to marry her daughter.

Before the poisoning incident, Bishop and Ruf fought often. During one especially violent altercation, she “beat him bloody” and then ran over him with her car, per Ruf’s attorney John L. Tompkins. 

“She wasn’t prosecuted. Maybe none of this would have happened if some prosecutorial action had been taken when she did those things,” Tompkins said. “It was a mutually destructive relationship, and it’s just unfortunate. And what she did to him doesn’t excuse what he did.”

So why did Ruf end up in jail and not his wife? The whole poisoning incident got on the radar of authorities after Bishop told police she kept going to the hospital and she felt that her husband was trying to murder her.

Bishop showed officers a pill bottle with a white powder inside and said her husband had been putting it into her drink. She also showed them a Coke can she drank out of with a powdery substance on the bottle. When she was taken to the hospital, she tested positive for cocaine, MDMA, and a depressant drug called benzodiazepine. His motivation? Sex with his Bishop’s daughter.

Per an arrest affidavit cited by NBC News, Bishop’s daughter from a previous marriage provided him with the drugs to poison his wife. “Alfred stated that the substance would then make Lisa go to sleep for approximately thirteen hours or so,” the affidavit said. “Alfred stated that he would do this to eventually kill Lisa.”

The daughter “would call him and tell him to give the substance to Lisa” and then come over with a friend and have sexual relations with him. The daughter allegedly told Ruf she wanted to “get mom out of the picture” and collect a life insurance policy on her. When that was done, she said she would marry him.

Ruf gave his wife the powdery substance 12 times from Sept. to Dec. 2021. Despite being responsible for her suffering, he took her to the hospital six times. She would experience headaches, lightheadedness diarrhea, and drowsiness. Each time she was poisoned, she would pass out for around half a day.

Ruf told police in a confession that while he was having sex with one of the women, the other one would go through the house and steal his wife’s personal items, per FOX 59. Eventually, he admitted the scheme to his wife because he “felt bad.”

Ruf was arrested on a conspiracy to commit murder charge but pleaded down to aggravated battery posing a risk of death. He was sentenced to four years in the penitentiary followed by five years of probation. There have been no other arrests in the case.