The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Trial for murder of son in May
By Cayla Vidmar
The legal defense team for Deborah Rudibaugh presented a self-defense claim in the murder of her son, Jacob Millison to the court earlier this month, which the judge denied as applicable to the case.
The defense council representing Rudibaugh, the mother of Jacob Millison, who was fatally shot in the head in May 2015 while he slept, submitted a motion earlier this month requesting the court make a preliminary determination of the applicability of self-defense to the first-degree murder charge filed against Rudibaugh. Judge Steven Patrick denied the motion for a pretrial determination of the applicability of self-defense to the count of murder. Meaning that judge Patrick deems self-defense is not an applicable defense for the defendant to use as reasoning for the first degree murder charge, and is insufficent as a matter of law.
Rudibaugh has been charged with one count of murder in the first degree; one count of tampering with a deceased human body; one count of concealing death; and one count of abuse of a corpse in the murder of her son, Millison. In May 2015, Millison was shot in the head while he slept, and later buried in a manure pile at the family ranch located near Parlin, where he and Rudibaugh lived.
On July 17, 2017, police arrived to the ranch with a search warrant and cadaver dogs, according to an arrest warrant. Before officers searched the property for Millison’s remains, they questioned Rudibaugh, asking if she knew where on the ranch they might find his body.
During the questioning, Rudibaugh expressed fear that “If I tell you and there’s no, no evidence and you don’t know exactly why I did what I did and you don’t know about the mushrooms and the cocaine…”
Agent Rosa Perez with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation asked Rudibaugh during the interview if she was alluding to Millison’s death as self-defense or an accident, Rudibaugh replied, “But if I shot him in self-defense while he was asleep because I was afraid what would happen when he woke up again, that’s not self-defense.”
Later in the investigation Rudibaugh claimed that Millison had begun to act aggressively towards her because “he wanted the ranch.” She alleges that Millison had physically abused her by sitting on her chest, cracking some of her ribs, choking her. She said he had verbally threated her while wielding a wooden club, and “He said nobody would ever miss me.”
Rudibaugh said she witnessed Millison’s alleged aggression increase when he began practicing mixed martial arts, and claimed he used cocaine to prepare for his fights, according to the arrest warrant.
When asked by investigators why she had not reported the abuse previously, she said, “The only thing I figured that would happen is they would go haul him off, yell at him a bit, release him and then he’d be back again.”
The arrest warrant notes that prior to the interview on the day the search warrant was executed in July 2017, “DEBORAH specifically said she and JACOB ‘never got physical’ during their arguments/disagreements.”
Earlier this month, the defense sought to establish whether self-defense is an applicable defense to this case.
Rudibaugh’s defense attorney, Randy Canney, wrote in the motion submitted to the court, “There is a legal issue whether a person who kills their sleeping abuser is entitled to assert self-defense.”
Canney writes that due to the nature of the case, defense is looking for a prior determination because the decision would “radically alter how the parties present the case and also whether a resolution is possible.”
In the motion, Canney writes, “She believed she had no choice but to kill her son, that the isolated nature of the ranch and its distance from town increased the risk to her, and that he in fact presented an imminent threat to her life.”
Ultimately, judge Patrick denied the defenses use of self-defense for the first degree murder charge.
Rudibaugh’s case goes to trial May 20 through May 24 and May 28 through May 31, 2019.
