Judge Rules Against the Killer and the Insurer

$100,000 Awarded to Daughter of Loudoun Woman Shot by Ex-U.S. Marshal

Karen Ludwig's life insurance company does not dispute that her husband shot her to death one afternoon in their Loudoun County home during a quarrel. Nor does the company question that the husband, a U.S. marshal for 17 years, waited two days to report her death to authorities.

But the company, Boston Mutual Life Insurance, has spent months in Alexandria federal court, fighting for John Ludwig's right to collect on the $100,000 life insurance policy his wife signed up for shortly before she was shot five times.

The company argued that John Ludwig was legally entitled to the money because he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, not murder, in the July 2005 slaying.

But in a written opinion, U.S. District Court Judge James C. Cacheris has ruled against Boston Mutual, calling Ludwig's claim on the money a "quintessential act of chutzpah." In doing so, he clarified what some lawyers said was an ambiguity in state law that could have resulted in a killer one day profiting from a crime.

Under the judge's ruling, filed Friday, the money would go to Karen Ludwig's daughter from a previous marriage, Brandy Snider, 20, a single mother who lives with her grandmother in rural Pennsylvania and works at a convenience store.

"Hopefully, with this decision on the books, people like my client won't have to spend a fortune to get what they're entitled to," said Scott Surovell, who is Snider's attorney. His client was stunned to learn that Ludwig and Boston Mutual were challenging her right to the money as Karen Ludwig's only child.

"I just couldn't believe he thought he could benefit from my mom's death," said Snider, who plans to go to nursing school.

Snider, who was 18 when her mother was killed in the Ludwigs' Ashburn home, sat in a Loudoun courtroom in July and listened to what prosecutors said was a cut-and-dried case of murder. But John Ludwig's defense attorneys contended that he did not mean to kill his wife and that he reacted with a defensive instinct honed during his years in law enforcement.

Ludwig, now 54, told the jury that his wife pulled a gun first and that he shot her in self-defense. Prosecutors noted that Ludwig failed to mention that to investigators until a month after her death, but a parade of experts testified that it was plausible that Ludwig suffered from amnesia brought on by trauma.

Ludwig also testified that it took him two days to report the crime because he blacked out from drinking alcohol and ingesting pills.

Ultimately, the jury convicted Ludwig of the lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison, which he is serving in the remote Keen Mountain prison in western Virginia, where he is kept away from the general prison population because of his law enforcement background.

About a month after Ludwig's conviction, Boston Mutual asked that a federal judge decide whether Ludwig or Snider should get the life insurance money. But shortly afterward, the company took the unusual step of backing Ludwig in the disputed claim.