Winnie Ruth Judd
Winnie Ruth Judd (January 29, 1905 – October 23, 1998), born Winnie Ruth McKinnell, also known as Marian Lane, was a medical secretary in Phoenix, Arizona, who was accused of murdering her friends, Agnes Anne LeRoi and Hedvig Samuelson, in October 1931. The murders were discovered when Judd transported the victims' bodies, one of which had been dismembered, from Phoenix to Los Angeles, California, by train in trunks and other luggage, causing the press to name the case the "Trunk Murders". Judd allegedly committed the murders to win over the affections of Jack Halloran, a prominent Phoenix businessman.
Winnie Ruth Judd
October 23, 1998 (aged 93)
American
"The Trunk Murderess",
"The Tiger Woman",
"The Blonde Butcher"
Medical Secretary
Dr. William C. Judd
(m. Apr 1924 – Oct 1945)
Rev. HJ McKinnell and Carrie McKinnell
Murder
Death; later commuted to incarceration
Judd was tried for LeRoi's murder, found guilty, and sentenced to death. However, the sentence was later repealed after she was found mentally incompetent, and she was committed to the Arizona State Asylum for the Insane (later renamed the Arizona State Hospital). Over the next three decades, Judd escaped from the asylum six times; after her final escape during the 1960s, she remained at large for over six years and worked under an assumed name for a wealthy family. She was ultimately paroled in 1971 and discharged from parole in 1983.
Judd's murder investigation and trial were marked by sensationalized newspaper coverage and suspicious circumstances suggesting that at least one other person might have been involved in the crimes. Her sentence also raised debate about capital punishment in the United States.[1]
Original police investigation[edit]
On the evening of Monday, October 19, 1931, Phoenix police first entered the bungalow where LeRoi and Samuelson had resided; neighbors and reporters were also allowed in and destroyed the original integrity of the crime scene. The following day, the bungalow's landlord placed newspaper ads in The Arizona Republic and The Phoenix Evening Gazette offering tours of the three-room bungalow for ten cents per person, attracting hundreds of curiosity seekers. During the trial, Judd's defense protested, stating, "By the advertisements in the newspapers, the entire population of Maricopa County visited that place."[7]
The police maintained that Judd's victims were shot while asleep in their beds. The mattresses from the two beds were missing the night the police entered. One mattress was later found with no blood stains on it miles away in a vacant lot; the other remained missing. No explanation was ever offered as to why one was found so far away, nor what became of the other mattress.[7]
In popular culture[edit]
In 1934 radio producer-director William Robson created a dramatic rendering of the crime for an episode of Calling all Cars entitled the Ruth Judd Case, which was introduced by then LAPD chief James E. Davis. The 32 minute program aired on the Don Lee network on September 9 and was sponsored by the Rio Grande oil company. Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel – director and writer of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, respectively – wrote a fictionalized account of the Judd story in 1975 in a screenplay titled Bleeding Hearts. The project, however, never came to fruition. In 2007, a feature-length film about the case, entitled Murderess: The Winnie Ruth Judd Story, was released. It was written and directed by Los Angeles filmmaker Scott Coblio, and featured an all-marionette cast.[21] Since its debut, the film has played annually at Phoenix's Trunk Space theater on October 16, the date of the original crime. While there are a number of fictitious films and books in existence which model themselves loosely upon the Judd's story, to date, Murderess remains the only feature-length film to tell it in a non-fiction framework.
The Trunk Murders were featured in a 2009 episode of the true crime television series Deadly Women entitled "Hearts of Darkness" (Season 3, Episode 6).
The 2009 novel Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott is based on the Judd case.
The 2015 art installation "Tiger Lady", by Darren Clark and Gary Patch, is a shadow cast kinetic projection on permanent display at the Valley Bar in Phoenix. It features select milestones from the Judd saga.
In February 2024 a stage play titled, The Truth About Winnie Ruth Judd will be produced by The Phoenix Theatre Company. This play looks at the case from the public's point of view and the exploitation of the case by the media. Radio station KOY turns the trial into a radio drama, spearheaded by then radio announcer, Jack Williams. The radio program became an early manifestation of what would later become, "True Crime Podcasts."