Wife, guest charged after man's body is unearthed

PINELLAS PARK -- On July 4, George Ruff Jr. returned to his West Virginia hometown to introduce his parents to his pride and joy -- sons Robert, 4, and Cody, 1. The three generations spent two weeks together and looked forward to doing it again.

That was the last time George Ruff's parents would ever see him alive.

On Wednesday, Ruff's body was found buried in the back yard of his Pinellas Park house.

Police say a houseguest, Lucas Dwayne Wawerczyk, 23, ambushed Ruff and repeatedly stabbed him with a large knife when Ruff, 29, returned from work Monday afternoon.

Detectives say Ruff's wife, Dawn Michelle Ruff, 25, had asked Wawerczyk to kill her husband. They say she helped clean up the crime scene and bury her husband's body in a shallow grave behind the house at 4161 69th Ave. N.

Dawn Ruff and Wawerczyk are in the Pinellas County Jail on first-degree murder charges.

"We can pinpoint when it happened," said Sgt. Paul Andrews, the head of criminal investigations for the Pinellas Park Police Department. "Witnesses have narrowed down the time line -- when the victim left work, when his child got home from school."

Police won't discuss a motive for the killing, or whether they think Dawn Ruff was present at the time of the stabbing.

"All of our detectives are still running things down," Andrews said. "We have enough information that we are comfortable charging her with being involved."

Police found the shallow grave when a tip led them to the house. They found a plot of freshly dug earth covered by concrete blocks from a neighbor's yard.

"They tried to make it look like a flower bed," said next-door neighbor Jack Durheim.

Authorities think the body in the back yard was that of George Ruff Jr., but they have not been able to positively identify it because of its condition.

Investigators will need dental records to prove that it is Ruff, said Pinellas Park police Sgt. Dan Levy.

"Because of the criminal nature of the case, we need a scientific confirmation of the identity to make sure there's no question down the road," said Bill Pellen, director of investigations for the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office.

George and Dawn Ruff met and married in the Marine Corps. When they left the Marines, they moved to Pinellas Park to live near her family. He worked at a pet crematorium, and she's a clerk at a Waldenbooks store.

Neighbors often saw the young father playing with his sons in their yard.

"It's awful, awful, awful," said neighbor Muriel Bruno. "It's a tragedy because of those little kids."

Ruff's father, George Ruff of Oak Hill, W. Va., described his son as friendly and outgoing.

"I know he loved his family and loved his sons very much," he said. "People enjoyed being around him."

Neighbors say Lucas Wawerczyk had stayed in the Ruffs' house in recent months. Florida law enforcement records list 22 arrests for Wawerczyk for charges such as child abuse and animal cruelty. When he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon in April, he gave the Ruffs' house as his address.

-- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Mike Brassfield can be reached at (727) 893-8455 or brassfield@sptimes.com.

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