A federal judge in Colorado has balked at a man’s offer to effectively pay for a private, home-based jail while murder charges are pending against him.

Authorities recently charged Lawrence Rudolph with killing his wife while the two were on a 2016 safari in Zambia. A magistrate judge initially determined he was a flight risk and a danger to the community, and ordered Rudolph detained pending trial.

On Jan. 27, U.S. District Court Judge William J. Martínez refused to let Rudolph leave detention, even though the defendant had suggested he could pay for private security guards to monitor him at home.

“The Court is also deeply troubled by any suggestion that the Defendant, by virtue of his wealth, should be able to buy his way out of detention by constructing a private jail from the comfort of his girlfriend or relative’s home,” Martínez wrote in an order denying Rudolph’s request.

The government has accused Rudolph of killing his wife of three decades, Bianca Rudolph, in October 2016 and collecting nearly $4.9 million in life insurance claims based on the representation that Bianca’s death was an accident.

“Resource-strapped Zambian investigators told the FBI that they couldn’t disprove the defendant’s claim of accident,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office described to the court. After U.S. authorities got involved, prosecutors cast doubt on “whether an experienced hunter incredibly shot herself in the heart by accident with a nearly four-foot shotgun.”

Rudolph, a dentist, was placed under arrest in December. He is confined at Denver’s Downtown Detention Center, as Colorado is one of the locations of the alleged insurance fraud. According to the federal indictment, Rudolph faces the prospect of life imprisonment or death if a jury finds him guilty of foreign murder.

On Jan. 17, Rudolph asked Martínez to allow him to leave pretrial detention.

“Dr. Rudolph is not a risk of flight. Dr. Rudolph, a 67-year old father of two with no criminal history, had every opportunity to flee when he learned of the investigation five years ago, but took no steps to abscond,” Rudolph’s attorneys wrote. “The notion that he could flee to a foreign country during a pandemic, without a passport, while being GPS monitored is fanciful.”

While maintaining his innocence, Rudolph indicated he was “amenable to private 24-hour security,” meaning he would “pay for on-premises, round-the-clock private security guards” at either his children’s houses or the home of his girlfriend in Phoenix.

In opting to detain him, U.S. Magistrate Judge Kristen L. Mix cited Rudolph’s extensive international travel, alleged threats toward others and use of firearms as a reason to keep him locked up.

“I understand why the Defendant wants to say that this is a weak case and wants the Court to reach that conclusion, but I cannot,” she said.

Rudolph believed Mix failed to properly account for all of the holes in the government’s case and disregarded the fact that Rudolph could not travel far due to his medical condition. Prosecutors, by contrast, claimed there was no case in which someone facing a foreign murder charge had ever been released on bond.

In reviewing the decision to detain Rudolph, Martínez noted that when probable cause exists that a person committed a violent crime, there is a presumption in favor of detention. The judge acknowledged that Rudolph lacked a criminal history, but agreed with the government that Rudolph’s “vast wealth” coupled with an incentive to flee the country pointed to a need for continued detention.

Martínez added that Rudolph appeared to have the resources to charter a private jet or even purchase foreign citizenship. He cited a list of cases involving prominent defendants – fraudster Bernard Madoff, accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell – to justify carefully considering how Rudolph could hypothetically use his wealth to evade justice.

Allowing Rudolph to pay for private home security in lieu of jail would “add additional administrative burdens on the court system and could embroil the Court in numerous issues relating to the private security firm’s enforcement ability,” Martínez noted, responding to prosecutors’ concerns about the legal authority or training that security contractors would have to prevent Rudolph’s escape.

The judge also granted a postponement of the speedy trial deadline at the defense’s request. The government has provided 6,000 pages of documents, audio files and photos, and Rudolph’s lawyers may need to travel to Africa to conduct further investigation in the case.

Rudolph’s attorneys, in arguing for their client’s release, incidentally illustrated the conditions that defendants in general face when awaiting trial on criminal charges in Colorado.

“Because COVID is rampant in the prison, video calls, which can last no more than 30 minutes and cost $10 per call (raising questions about the constitutionality of a detention regime that is meant to extract profits from those subjected to it), often get canceled or cut short,” they told the court. “When calls do happen, the attorneys, we have to shout to be heard. We can only see the top of his head and can’t share documents.”

Martínez dismissed those complaints as not being “uniquely onerous” to Rudolph.

The case is United States v. Rudolph.