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Winnie Ruth Judd the trunk murderess

In Disneyland’s Tower of Terror, a newspaper is visible, dated October 31, 1939—it is a real, historical front page of the Los Angeles Examiner. Its headline reads, “Ruth Judd gives self up after 6 days returns to asylum in hysterics”.

Today, Angie shares the full story of Winnie Ruth Judd, aka “The Trunk Murderess.”

Transcript

Angie: Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast, the podcast where two absolute compulsive nut jobs are going to get lost in history stories, whether those are notes in the attic that we found that may or may not be our own families, or random things that we find, maybe on a TikTok, maybe on a YouTube, maybe on some random line in a book

Angie: that the bottom of a snapple cap. Wow.

Theresa: That sounds like a wild week, Angie.

Angie: Pulled that from the recesses of our childhood. I don’t know if the staple caps say things anymore.

Theresa: But either way, we’re here to learn the things that we only recently learned and info dump them on you and anybody else who tunes in. So thank you and sorry about your luck. They chose to be here. Truth.

Angie: But I’m not sorry.

Theresa: You told me you’re snagging the entire episode. So I get to rest on my nethers and sew my hand to things as I try to listen to you.

Angie: Yeah, I mean, if if you’re cool with it, because it could definitely be shorter, but it could also definitely be longer.

Theresa: You know, the number of stories I think we all tell like that. Fair. I’m here for it. You know what? You tell me what you got, because it’s this is the Halloween story. So I am so curious as to what you’ve squirled away for this.

Angie: I need you to know that I’ve been holding on to this story for like a year and a half. Um, and it is so far out of my wheelhouse that it is insane. And my husband thanks you for your service of listening to my story because he is probably tired of it. Uh but this has probably been one of the ones that he’s been the most like vocal about, which is fun. So uh that said, my story this week has some really interesting connections to both of us. And when I started out, I had no idea.

Um, but then I like some some things popped up, and I was like, oh, and it sort of turned into a little bit of a scavenger hunt for me to see if there was any more once I found that first one. Um without further ado, I’m gonna tell you the story about Winnie Ruth Judd Nay McNeil.

Theresa: Wait, wait, does she said Winnie the Pooh Judd McNeil?

Angie: No. Winnie Ruth Judd her maiden name McNeil. Okay. Excuse me, McKinnell. I I said McNeil, McKinnon. M-G-K-I-N-N-E-L-O. Does the name Winnie Ruth Judd ring a bell to you?

Theresa: No, and it makes more sense than Winnie the Pooh McNeil.

Angie: Fantastic. And now I can’t unsee Winnie the Pooh as part of the story, so thanks for that. Oh, so first of all, I should start by saying that my story was brought to you by a TikTok I saw, like I said, a year and a half ago. The creator’s name is Kate Disney Ciceroon. And um, it was about the Tower of Terror at Disney. There is a newspaper there that’s like strewn about the lobby and like in different places, and it features this headline.

Ruth Judd gives self up after six days, returns to asylum in hysterics. The date of that newspaper is October 31st, 1939. Okay. It’s a real paper. Yes.

So I had to confirm that, and I have like 755 tabs, give or take, open. And one of the other headlines from that day reads, Ruth Judd, starving and hysterical, surrenders, returns to asylum after six days in nearby field. So at this moment, that is all you’re gonna get, and I will not give you my sources until the end, and you’ll know why when we get there. So moving on.

Winnie Ruth McKinnell, she’s born January 25th, 1905, in Darlington, which as I understand it is near Oxford, Indiana. I’m gonna be honest. I’ve never once thought about places in Indiana. I’m so sorry. It’s easy enough, too.

Like it never anyway. Her family lives in the parsonage where her dad’s a free Methodist minister. Prior to that, both her parents had been teachers. She says that her mother was about 38 years old when she married and then gave birth to her. So 38 in 1905 seems kind of late to be starting family.

Theresa: Uh 38’s a geriatric pregnancy now. Yeah.

Angie: So um because of her mom’s age and the fact that it’s 1905, medical care is of the utmost importance, but nonetheless, baby Winnie, she chills and she gets pneumonia at birth. Nineteen months later, excuse me, her brother’s born. Things seem to go teen months. Months, yeah.

Theresa: You go 39 years without getting knocked up, and then you have Irish women.

Angie: Pretty much, yeah. Um things pretty seem to go pretty well for our little girl till she turns about four. Because her lungs had already been battered by the pneumonia, she contracts tuberculosis.

Get out your bingo card now, you’re gonna be able to fill a ton of spots. because this story has a little bit of everything. Um she makes a point to say that the tuberculous tuberculosis had quote zapped her vitality all through life. She goes on to say that she would have had like she would have great years, good years, she would enjoy school sometimes, other times she’d run this low grade fever all the time, and it made her feel stupid, and she believed that it really hindered her ability to learn. That said, she loved her family and by all accounts had a decent childhood. She speaks fondly of both of her parents saying that her dad was quote the world would seem brighter just to talk to him.

And I feel like that’s a wonderful man right there, you know. Um her mom was kind and good, and her brother they have a rather strict life, like no movies because of the church. They they miss out on a lot of things because dad’s a Methodist preacher, and so mom thinks they have to uphold this standard that the church will agree with, like the parishioners will agree with.

Right. So um she’d say things like, When I attended school, I didn’t fit with modern school activities. I had never attended I had never attended a circus, a carnival ball games, movie, a skating rink, or a bowling alley, nor was I allowed to wear jewelry. My mother didn’t think these things were wrong, but our church did not approve of it.

So they just sort of kiboshed the whole thing. Um so she says, We lived a simple life in a comfortable home, but I did have a repressed childhood and later a very repressed marriage. So while she seems like genuinely content with her childhood, she knows that there are things that could have been different that would have made it better, right?

Yeah. So moving right into that repressed marriage, she’s between 17 and 19 sources differ a little bit when she meets and marries a man called Dr. William C. Judd. He is a World War One veteran who happens to be more than twenty years her senior. That’s wow. Yeah.

Theresa: Do we know how old her dad was in comparison to her mom? Because now I have questions.

Angie: I don’t, and I hadn’t thought about that till now. I think it I’m not okay with the age difference in this case because she is less than twenty and he is twenty years her senior. Um but I think it’s one of those things that like this is the this is the twenties, right? We’re moving into, and I think this is the time when young women are told to marry the doctor or the lawyer. You’ll have a comfortable life.

Like that’s that’s my take. So when the when this nice doctor shows up, she’s like, Oh, he’s perfect, I’ll marry him. And by all accounts, they have – there’s definitely love in their marriage. There it’s there’s not not for want of luck, you know what I mean? Like they like each other. They they enjoy spending time with each other. Okay, so the problem is he can’t really hold a job very long because he is also an opioid addict.

Theresa: That’s young to be an o or early, like you I mean, okay. I’m trying to communicate early 1900s feels like a well, I guess no, because they had Laudanum. I’m talking myself into agreeing with you.

Angie: You don’t have to agree with me one way or the other. It’s just the fact he had a stain had sustained a wound during World War One. Okay. And as a result of that also sustained the addiction to the painkiller. Gotcha.

Theresa: Yep, okay. Right. You know what? Here we are.

Angie: Still feels early, but then we have things like the opium wars before this. So I guess it it works. Now, this causes them to sort of travel all over the place looking for work for him, and eventually they’re gonna find themselves living in Mexico. Wait a minute. He finds…

Theresa: He’s a doctor as well, so he dude can just write himself prescriptions. Oh snap.

Angie: I don’t know if that’s what he’s doing, but sure. I’m sure that’s probably along the lines, right?

Theresa: True fine listen.

Angie: Right. So they find themselves living in Mexico. He finds work as the doctor for this American mining company there. The pay is not great, but it does offer accommodations, right? So they do have like a place to live.

And um this job is eventually gonna be lost too because he is an addict. And some of this she kind of explains away to her parents in these really friendly, really hopeful letters home, talking about how isn’t this just what everyone else is experiencing right now? This is the end of the 20s. So she’s like, we’re on the doorstep of the depression.

Like, of course, everyone’s struggling to hold a job. And she’s very, very hopeful in these conversations, but with her brother, she’s a little bit more um lets down her hair a little bit and and says things to him a little bit more straightforward, but she is still very hopeful about how things are gonna play out. Okay. He’s gonna find a job, we’re gonna be stable, it’s gonna be okay. Um however, another problem that they are experiencing experiencing is that she is not really capable of bearing any children. This was um, according to her biography, something that she had always hoped for, or at least that’s what her husband said. Quote, twice pregnant by her husband while they lived in Mexico, she had lost the baby both times because of her poor health. Even so, Dr. Judd would remember how Ruth sometimes pretended she had actually given birth, greeting him at the end of the day with stories about the baby’s activities, the cute things he did, and he recalled her fretting for days over what to name the phantom baby. Her favorite choices were Moses, Caesar, or Napoleon. What?

Theresa: I mean, okay, so we’ve got some big issues involved, and psychosis seems to be a through line.

Angie: Keep that in your noggin, okay. So Dr. Judd said at first he thought she was kidding, but eventually realized that in her mind they did have a child. All that said, things are not as great as she has made them out to be when she writes home to mom, right?

Like that’s that’s pretty clear. And then you add that the lovely Mexican weather has been giving her tuberculosis a beating. Twice in the years they were in Mexico, she was sent to LA in California to get better.

So sometime in 1930, she makes her way to Phoenix, Arizona. Now, despite the fact that to some degree, around this point, her and the good doctor seem to be a little bit stran estranged simply because he just can’t keep it together and she really needs stability, and also um her tuberculosis is just kicking her butt.

Theresa: She’s super sick, he’s an addict. She’s also showing delusional signs. Right. Okay.

Angie: So she makes her way to Phoenix, and the hope is that he is gonna make his way to her with a job, or he’s gonna find a really good gig in California and she’ll meet him there once she’s feeling better. Like that’s that’s the plan. What he whether he finds a job in Phoenix or he finds a job in LA, whatever. Like they’re gonna make it work, but he has to have a stable income and a stable place to live, and she has to be healthy enough to make it wherever they’re at. In the meantime, so she gets to Phoenix, she initially takes work as the governess to a wealthy Phoenix family, and this is where she meets a man called Jack Holleran. He is the well-to-do neighbor. John um j excuse me, Judd’s biographer. Her name is a she’s a journalist called Jana Wait for it, bombers back.

Theresa: Love her name. Yeah.

Angie: She has this to say about him. Quote, Holleran was 44 years old and one of the town’s success stories. Someone would later describe him as a prominent man, as prominent a man as you would find in Phoenix those days. When anyone in Phoenix named the movers and the shakers, Jack Holleran’s name was on the list. He and his wife had three children.

They lived in the stocking, silk stocking section of town. If you wanted a political favor, Jack Hollering knew just who to ask. People remember him as a take charge kind of guy whose laugh could fill the room. Enough about him. Let’s get back to the main story. But you just need to know that that this is when she meets Jack Hollering.

The next couple parts of the time timeline are not in c entirely clear, but what we know for sure is that when he leaves her job as the governess under the promise of a job that’s gonna pay her tw 125 dollars a week. This is huge.

Theresa: And this is different. What year again?

Angie: We’re in early, like maybe late 1930, early 1931.

Theresa: Okay, yeah, that’s a ton of money. Right.

Angie: And up to this point, I think she’s making like maybe eighty dollars a month, but she’s also got room and board because she’s a governess, right? So let’s put that with.

Theresa: room and board isn’t exactly glamorous. I mean, you’re you’re living in the break room of the house.

Angie: Yeah. Um, so honestly, I don’t blame her for taking this job, especially in the c in the economy that they’re dealing with, but unfortunately, the job is patronage, and as far as I can tell, that means that as soon as the election is over, so is the gig. And I’m not sure she fully understood that at the time because she takes this job until the election is over. She quickly figures out she is out of work and finds work at something called the Grunnow Clinic.

She applies to be a medical secretary. She is an absolute liar. She cannot do the things that she says she can do, so she is like faking it till she makes it. Like she’s supposed to be typing up like the medical records, and she’s like, I don’t know how to type.

Theresa: Hunting and pecking. I’m with her.

Angie: Right. So um sh by January, so that was like late 30. By January of 31, her husband, having spent the last five months in a veteran’s hospital trying to get clean, makes his way to her. He’s like, Huh, done it, got it. Uh unfortunately, Phoenix has no work for him, so he moves on to other spots.

Like he is still looking for a spot. Now, Winnie, for her part, at this point, she is not done to her husband’s situation, and in a letter to her brother Burton, she tells him as much, saying, quote, Doctor and I have a scrap every few days. I love that she refers to him as doctor. Doctor and I have a scrap every few days. I will stay here until he makes enough to take care of me.

I don’t want to give up my job and then be broke again. I’m all alone, and I wish that Mama could c could come out now. I have a little house and I’m all alone. Oh, why don’t you come over next weekend? Hike on over and visit me. We can talk over how we can get mama out here. At this point, her brother is a student in LA. So I guess hike on over just means like I don’t know.

Theresa: Okay, yeah.

Angie: That’s when I’m taking it. Now she has of course made some connections in this clinic with a few of the girls that are working there. And she strikes up a bond with some of them, and one of them’s name is Agnes Ann Leroy, and Anne has a roommate called Hedwig Sammy Samelson.

Samuelson. I don’t know why I have a hard name time reading her name out loud. Anyway, all of these off women are more often than not going to use their middle name, which seems like all the rage to me at the time. I don’t know why, but they all are called by their middle names.

Theresa: Well, I mean this, right? Like you need to be a special person to rock that name.

Angie: Yeah, I guess that’s true. You have to have a little hoot. Right. Um now all three of these women are battling tuberculosis. Which is wild to me, but I guess that was a pretty common thing. Like people move to Phoenix because of the weather because of tuberculosis.

Theresa: I mean, that’s like Doc Holiday with the tombstone.

Angie: So I it’s more common than I thought, you know. Sammy’s is so bad, she can’t hold down a job, and Anne works for the both of them. They had met elsewhere, I think maybe in Alaska, and they come to Phoenix together. And long story short here, Winnie ends up moving in with them, but the quarters are a little cramped. They only have one bedroom. So like three girls, well, it’s not going great as far as like sharing space. Well, so sometime around September, Winnie gets an apartment of her own, but she is still spending a great deal of time over with the girls. And as she is doing this, the girls are often hosting dinners and things like evenings with um prominent doctors and other like well-to-do men in the area. They keep a busy social calendar. I could go like way into this, but this they keep a very busy social calendar.

On any given night they could be entertaining. In fact, there is this great quote from the uh Arizona historian and journalist named Dan Didera that in relation to all the entertainment that happens in Phoenix at the time, and he says that quote, in this town and at this time, hanky was the name and Panky was the game.

Theresa: Wow. So they are entertaining in quotation marks.

Angie: Take it how you will, because uh yeah. I have thoughts. Um Phoenix at this time is known for its good Christian morals and being like above board about everything.

Theresa: Not but underneath. and tanky.

Angie: Yeah. But underneath there’s this like subculture and the people party. In fact, her biography goes into it pretty deep, and they talk about how in the summertime the men are called the summer bachelors because they send their wives and family north where it’s cooler. And then they play. Right. So just keep that in your mind.

So there’s, like I said, a ton I could go in to about this. But the point is, these girls, they are all in the orbit of these very powerful, very well off men in Phoenix. Despite the fact that she is always with the girls and they’re always about doing things. we need to keep in our minds that she has this near constant, or at least as constant as possible for the time, contact with her husband. So she has not just like thrown him to the wayside.

They are constantly in communication with each other in some fashion. And part of the reason that she moves out of the apartment with the girls or or the home with the girls is because she’s hoping that he finally gets his crap together and gets a job lined up, and she wants to make sure he has a good place to land. Also, by this point, her parents are aging, right? Since mom was like 38 when she was born, and now she’s in her twenties. So they’re thinking of retiring and moving to the area.

And she’s hoping, so the the plan is mom and dad are gonna sell their home and then they’re gonna be able to put a deposit on. Right. Okay. So she is hoping that she can find a place big enough to house everyone.

Her, the doctor, her parents, and also a space with a separate entrance so the girls can live there as well. Wow. Right. Like everybody’s gonna pitch in and help with the bills. They’re gonna all gonna have a nice safe place to live, and there’s gonna be a ton of people around to help care for everybody that needs it because you got three with tuberculosis. She wants a commune. Sure.

Okay. That’s her idea. It that’s what she wants. Now, the middle of October rolls around, so it’s October 1931, and she thinks she has finally found the perfect place.

In fact, her and the girls are supposed to go check it out Saturday afternoon when they get off work, to the point where she asks her realtor friend if they can borrow his car so they can drive out there. And he’s like, I’m not really comfortable with that.

Theresa: Yeah, we’re friends, but we’re not that good.

Angie: I just don’t blow my car out, whatever. Um they find other other travel arrangements, it’s fine, whatever. But um, Ann and Sammy are both gonna be dead by Saturday morning, and by Sunday, October 18th, dead, yeah. By Sunday, October 18th, Winnie Ruth Judd is going to be on her way to Los Angeles wearing a brown suit, a brown velvet turban, and a very bandaged hand. She is also toting several pieces of luggage. Caraca, what’s in those bags? Um are they leaking? They’re gonna be. Oh. It’s not ham. No. Um station personnel think it’s contraband meat. Likely venison.

Theresa: It’s they’re not fully wrong. It is contraband meat. Yeah.

Angie: So apparently, this was a side quest I had to take. There was a big problem back then of the transportation of meats across state lines, and Ma’am, are you carrying contraband salami.

Theresa: It’s all I can think of. We play a game at our house. I can’t even remember what it’s called, the Sheriff of Nottingham, maybe, where all your goal is to get the contraband stuff into the castle. So I’m just like, oh gross.

Theresa: Is that a game or are you just teaching your kids to smuggle?

Angie: It’s a board game. Oh, it’s a board. But yes, okay. So, um apparently the contraband meat coming from Arizona into California at the time is venison, because apparently the Arizona and Venison is just to die for, quite literally.

I’m gonna just say this. I don’t think we’re ever gonna truly know what happened that Friday night in 1931, but by Monday morning, about 745, she arrives in Los Angeles with these traveling trunks. They are leaking and they are very smelly. A baggage man on the runway where the train gets off has already flagged the two trunks.

They smell and they’re leaking what looks like blood. On arrival, he tells the LA baggage agent that um this is what’s going on, and they have the trunks ordered to be held because nasty. What are you doing? She gets off the train, a porter is carrying her beat up suitcase and her hat box. She goes to the ladies’ room, has the suitcase and the hat box, she stacks it behind the door, and she sits in the waiting room for hours. She is clearly looking and waiting for someone who never appears to show up.

The restroom attendant is a woman called Stella Conway. She later says the Judd claimed she had burned her hand. Because remember, she arrives in Los Angeles and her hand is like really, really heavily bandaged. She says she burned her hand. She’s just waiting for her brother to collect her. Unfortunately, she has no money to check her bags.

Could the attendant keep an eye on the bags? In fact, you know what? Don’t let anybody else touch him. I’m just gonna go find my brother. Because she has now been waiting for a substantial amount of time.

Theresa: And her My brother’s just a college student.

Angie: Who legit has no clue what’s going on? Around noon, Jed comes back to the loading dock with her brother Burton, and the district bag bad oh my gosh, baggage, excuse me, agent Arthur V.

Anderson meets him there. The trucks by the trunks by this point, they are on a flatbed. They are stinky, they are leaking, and now there are flies buzzing about. Anderson, the baggage agent, asks what’s inside. She says, oh, just some personal things. He tells her, something’s wrong. It smells.

You should take a look. She says she can’t smell anything. Her brother, he’s like, uh, I do. And Anderson then tells her to open the trunks. She opens her handbag, fishes around, can’t find anything, and then says, Oh, my husband has the keys. She tries to phone him. But she can’t reach him. She’s gonna have to leave and go get them and the keys, and they’ll be back. And I don’t know why baggage handlers are so lax in these days, but they’re like, okay.

Theresa: Yeah, this chest go for it.

Angie: It’s just gonna be back. The they leave, her and her brother leave. The um she takes the the chet like the tickets you would have to pick up your trunk. The claim ticket. She takes them with her.

Yeah, yeah, like the claim ticket, exactly. She takes them with her, and she definitely does not go back. About four thirty, so she arrives at 7 45 in the morning, it is now 4 30 in the afternoon. This is Monday.

She has not come back, and Anderson calls the LAPD because he’s like something’s up. This is us, yeah. Yeah. Detective Lieutenant Frank Ryan opens the trunks. He expects it to be contraband deer meat. In the larger trunk, under bedding papers and clothes, is Anne LeRoy’s intact body in pink pajamas. In the smaller trunk are two bundles. Sammy’s head.

Yeah. Sammy’s head and p pajama clad torso and a lower leg. She had been cut into pieces. The midsection was missing from that trunk.

Both the women had been shot. Ryan, the detective lieutenant, promptly slams the lid shut. He’s like, huh, that’s enough for that. Seeing enough here.

Yeah. Later that day, the rest of Sammy’s body and a 24, excuse me, 25 caliber automatic weapon are found in the hand luggage that Jude left in the ladies’ room. Because the suitcase held the missing section of her body and the hat box held the gun.

Theresa: Look, she brought it all with her. She’s a completionist.

Angie: Truly. Um when her brother asked her what the hell was going on, she told him it’s better if she didn’t know. If he didn’t know, he didn’t press the issue.

And later, yeah, like, okay, she you must be serious about it. He later tells the police that after they left the station, he has this conversation with her and gives her five dollars and lets her out on 7th and Broadway, where she just disappears into the city. Now LA informs Phoenix and police enter the bungalow at 2929 later, 2947, North 2nd Street, where the girls lived. Neighbors and reporters were also let in for weeks.

Theresa: This is accurate. This is what happened in the time.

Angie: People are coming and going. In fact, in her biography, I believe it says that the landlord eventually charges like a cover charge to come in. Like thousands of people have wandered through the front door in a three-week time span. The scene is obviously toast.

Theresa: It’s beyond compromise at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Angie: Um Ruth’s landlord, a man called H U, I believe you pronounce it as Grim, tells the Associated Press that he and his son his son had hauled her luggage to the Phoenix Union Station Sunday for her when she asked, like she let them know she was going to Los Angeles and needed to take some of the doctor’s things to him. Could could they help her?

Um so you can imagine their shock when they find out it is in fact not loaded with medical texts and doctor supplies. Um by that night, the Phoenix police are broadcasting a request for the arrest of Ruth Judd, who is a secretary at the Lois Grinnell Medical Clinic, and her husband Dr. William C. Judd. Now supposedly he had been in Phoenix the week before.

He left on the Sunday train with no knowledge of anything. They like he just thought, okay, next week Ruth is gonna look at this house and maybe we’ll buy it. Right.

He okay. So this part is so wild to me. She stays missing until Friday, October 23rd. And this week is as far as I’m concerned why this is on the Unhinged History Podcast, because oh my God. She recounts the days from the 19th to the 23rd in a letter written in 1952 saying, quote, and this is a long one, but it is so worth hearing it in her words. On Monday night, October 19th, I went to the Lavena Sanit Sanitarium.

I vaguely remember going to the room I had occupied both times I was a patient there, because remember her husband sent her to California twice to heal from the tuberculosis. Okay. Right. It was occupied. So I went to the next room, which was also occupied. And then I went to a third room. It was unoccupied. I went to bed there and I remember nothing for four days. As impossible as it may sound, no one entered the room. No one had stopped me when I went in. I do remember getting up after the fourth day, I brushed my hair, and I tore some paper from the lining of the dresser, and then I walked out with no one giving me a second glance. Then I went to Pasadena where I telephoned a physician I knew at Bishop’s Sanitarium asking him if he would get a letter to my husband.

He answered, Oh, Ruth, I can tell that you are sick. Tell me where you are so I can get you and do something for you. I then went to Los Angeles and I wrote a letter and mailed it. From there I went to the Broadway department store where I had once worked. I stood around staring at people I knew or who knew me. I was in such a stupor that I got locked in the store all night. I don’t think to ch I didn’t think to change clothes, but to steal anything was the farthest mem thing from my mind.

I slept in the furniture department of that store under a rug. When I awakened the right, when I awakened the next morning, people were rushing all around me going about their business. Later in the day, I heard a worm a woman discussing me. She was reading a newspaper and she said her husband wants her to call this number. And she mentioned the number. Immediately I called that number and my husband answered in Spanish. Now, okay, so I should rewind and just tell you briefly, in her time in Mexico, she had mastered Spanish.

Theresa: So I just Okay, okay, good, because I was just like this is I’ve forgotten the Mexico bit. Thank you.

Angie: Yeah. Um her I my husband answered in Spanish and told me to meet me meet him at the Biltmore Theater. It took me no more than ten minutes to read the reach the Biltmore, and he had a car waiting at the back entrance of the Biltmore garage. I kept thinking, when will it end?

When will it end? When I met my husband, another man was with him who said he was my attorney. We drove to a funeral parlor. My husband had promised the sheriff and prosecu prosecuting attorney that he would turn me over to them on condition that I first be put in a psychopathic hospital under the observation for one month because he thought I would be unable to tell coherently what happened. The promise was made the promise made by officials was not kept. So she surrenders at the LA funeral home. The next day, papers had already named her the trunk murders, or they had already already had the name, the trunk murders, and Winnie Ruth Dredd Judd as the trunk murderess. Wow.

Yeah. So the headline for October 20th, 1931, reads, Two murdered women’s bodies arrived here in trunks. Ken held wife hunted as killer. At the funeral home, her hand was finally attended to, which by this point was like infected and nasty. She had a bullet wound in there.

Theresa: Oh just like burn. Yeah.

Angie: Um in fact the bullet was still in her hand. She said that it was inflicted by Hedwig, which is Sammy, during a fight on Friday night. The police arrived and she was taken into their custody and she refused to answer any questions. The following day, detectives find this is so weird to me. They find and pieced together torn fragments of a sixteen page confession letter that Ruth had supposedly written to Dr. Judd, but instead of sending it to him, she stuffed like ripped it up and stuffed it in the drain at the um train station.

Yeah. It was found, and this 16-page defense letter details her story as self-defense. Ruth Judd is then transferred to Phoenix on October 29th. Her trial for murder began on January 19th in 1932. The defense argued for insanity, citing glandular disorders, delusions of motherhood, and an unbalanced nature.

You got ghosts in your blood. Claiming she was not responsible for her actions and acted in self-defense, which was supported by the bullet wound in her hand, but persecution, persecution, prosecution.

Theresa: I mean, she probably felt persecuted.

Angie: She definitely did. The prosecution counters saying that Ruth’s hand wound was self-inflicted after the fact. Some witnesses say they saw her hand unbandaged on Saturday morning before the wound appeared. But that’s not really true because witnesses couldn’t tell you which hand was injured. Some say it was the left and some say it was the right. There were several people that saw her Saturday.

Theresa: But the good news is is that they all agreed that there were only two hands to choose from because you could throw it was the front hand as opposed to the backhand.

Angie: It truly. The prosecution said her actions were most definitely premeditated and they sought the death penalty. On February 8th of 1932, the jury found Ruth Judd guilty of first-degree murder and fixed the penalty at death. This is – like her trial is enough for one whole episode. And in my opinion, everything that happened prior to this should have made the case null and void. The second somebody besides the police walked into that house should have, it irks me so much. Anyway, now she at this time is only being charged for the death of Anne. Like the idea, as I understand it, was to charge her for one at a time and determine what to do after that. Okay.

Theresa: Like they didn’t know if they could get her for Ann, so they just wanted a second shot.

Angie: I guess, yeah. Um the eve of her execution, she gets a second trial pleading guilty by reason of a sanity insanity, and as a consequence, resulted in her incarceration at the Arizona State Hospital for the Insane, where she remained a model patient for at least six years. She truly believed in that time frame that someone on the outside was working to help her out.

In the meantime, she does all she can to be helpful and kind towards everyone there in the hospital, which at the time holds like everybody. The regular hospital in town is basically like a quick stop, and the state hospital here holds all the long-term patients. You have the infirm, the mentally ill, the elderly that have no place to go, and children with no one to care for them. So it’s kind of just a uh land all for everybody that needs some sort of long-term care.

To say that proper medical care and psychiatric care is a little lacking here is probably going to be an understatement. But in those first six years, she is pretty much the queen of the hospital. Like she works with the nursing staff and the doctor’s staff to help other patients because she is able-bodied and she wants to help. Like she sees these elderly women that need to be attended to. She’s she cares for the children that come in as orphans. Like she just she goes, she talks about how like her mother raised her to be good and kind, and this was the perfect place for her to do that. At one point, she is running a full-fledged beauty parlor for the h patients inside the hospital.

Theresa: Is she doing a good job? What’s her yellow?

Angie: Apparently, she’s getting paid a quarter ahead, and she’s so good at it that the like upstanding good women of Phoenix are coming out to the hospital to have their hair done by her. Because one of her things is her, I wouldn’t say vanity is the word to describe her, but she was one of those women that fully believed you needed to be put together at all times. So she was really specific about making sure her hair was done. Like she and she loved doing it for other people.

Okay. To the point where like local other barber beautician like other salons are bringing her product so she can help the women in the hospital. Like they’re she’s got a lot of friends on the outside that are just trying to make this place better and trying to make her stay there better. However, one of her um women one of the women on the outside has a bit of a fit about this because it goes against a cosmetology board because she doesn’t have a cosmetology license. And they report her. And her whole operation gets shut down. Now to this point, she’s free to move about the campus as she so wishes. She can even go across the street to the little little corner store that’s right there. Like, nobody she’s not bothering anybody, nobody’s bothering her. But when the cosmetology board gets involved, all hell it just all goes to hell for her, and she’s everything is taken away from her, and she is devastated. Um Pivot real quick. We need to go back. The first ten months that she’s there and during her trial, she thought that she’s gonna have an opportunity to share her story, and so did the local sheriff, who she would eventually decide was probably the only powerful friend she actually had in this area.

Okay. She would not get the chance to testify in this case, and really the only thing that the public would hear from her would even come out of her mouth was quote an hysterical outburst the day she was sentenced. She yells those girls were murdered, weren’t murdered, she screamed at the judge, who almost broke his gowel restoring order to the courtroom.

You’re trying to hang me, I and I won’t have it, she bellowed, before her husband struck her across the face to quiet her and then held her in his arms. That’s in courtroom. Like so during those first ten months in the hospital, there’s tons of people reaching out to the state of Arizona trying to get her sentence overruled. People like the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, and even Henry Ford is like, she didn’t do it.

Get her out. Like this whole thing is ridiculous. And the whole time her attorneys keep telling her to just hold her tongue and let the record speak for themselves. Seven days after the court says she’s to hang, the sheriff McFadden finally gets her to tell to put down her story, and to quote her biography, she said she had it said, excuse me, she had less than two months to live.

She was scheduled to die between the hours of five and six AM on February seventeenth, nineteen thirty-three. Already professional hangmen from around the country were offering their services, some for free to do the deed. Which is insane. Wow.

Yeah. Now, McFadden, the sheriff, he’s just hoping if he can get her story out to the world, he can push that day off or cancel it altogether. Because he’s like, mm, I we really should, maybe we should just look when so for four hours she talks to him, one of his deputies, and the court reporter, as well as the warden. They have her site her statement typed out, and it slid into a cardboard cover, and to everyone’s dismay, not seen again for fifty-eight years. What what was the purpose? The sheriff wanted it out, the press wanted it out. Somebody blocked it from being taken to the public.

It was a state librarian that found it like buried in the archives in the 90s. Like nuts. Okay, so in those four hours, we get the very best version of her story that we will ever get. And it basically goes like this. So we’re gonna rewind the timeline to when the night of the event or the week of the event. Jack Hollorin, and I could just stop this.

Theresa: The old dad or the old boss.

Angie: The the boyfriend, the the guy she met with.

Theresa: I thought she was the gov or he was that was her governor or she was the governess of

Angie: He was the governess when she was the governess, he was the neighbor. She met him as the neighbor, and immediately it sounds like kicks off some sort of sword affair with him. So Jack and Ruth had supposedly been carrying on this affair for months, maybe even the whole time she knew him. Thursday night, October 15th, 1931, he picks her up and another gal called Lucille Moore, up for a dinner date.

Now she’s a little pissy at him because he stood her up the night before. But that’s neither here nor there. That happens.

Whatever. Now, supposedly, Ruth wanted Jack to meet Lucille because he was planning this hunting trip in an area that Lucille was really, really familiar with and like knew the terrain. And so she was hoping that that would be helpful to Jack and his his hunting crew. What Ruth neglects to tell Jack is that Lucille is being treated for syphilis. Oh here we go with a bingo card.

Get your bingo card. Um Jack wants to stop by Ann and Sammy’s real quick to pick up some of the other friends he’s got that have been at her house uh hanging hanging out with the girls at their house. Ruth is gonna say that she knew all these fellows were helping to support them, and she doesn’t want to go because she doesn’t want the girls to see that she’s in bringing a new girl into the fold.

Right, right. And she’s also still a little pissy at Jack. But he convinces her it’s fine. The women come out of the house, they’re all sort of gathered around the car, they play it off just fine, no big issue. The next day, Anne and Ruth go to lunch, they have a wonderful time together, they walk back to the office arm in arm, like things are great. Anne’s like, it is what it is.

Like, whatever. And she tells her, hey, you should come over this evening and play bridge with another one of her friends. I can’t remember her name, and I didn’t put it in my notes off the top of my head. And Ruth demurs on saying, I’ve got work, because remember, she’s not a great typist. Um, so she brings her work home a lot. So that Friday night, she gets done with her work and thinks, Oh, I can still make up.

But wait, she’s lying. Because she really was supposed to be meeting with Jack Friday night, and when he didn’t show up again for the second time in the week, she was not going to get caught there waiting for him. So she just decides, you know what, I am gonna go play bridge with the girls, forget this guy.

Like, he’s a loser, whatever. So she goes over to the house with the girls, they play a few hands of bridge, the fourth friend leaves, Ruth and the ladies are chatting, and by the time they realize it it’s too late for Ruth to catch the last trolley home. So Anne’s like, it’s fine, we’ll just fix up the couch like we always do.

Loans are a pair of pajamas, things are going fine, whatever. They’re sitting and chatting, and like sort of in passing, Anne asks Ruth, how ever in the world did you get Jack mixed up with the likes of a girl like Lucille? And Ruth says, Well, I I introduced them, of course.

And that’s when this argument breaks out. Um, because Lucille has syphilis, and don’t know if you know this, but if Jack gets syphilis, it’s gonna be problematic, like forever for everyone involved, and it it turns into a thing. There’s going to be some nasty words said, It leads Ruth to saying some really mean things to the girls about how all the doctors in the office think that they are lovers, and anyway, if they tell Jack that we still have syphilis, then quote, as we were quarreling, I said I was going to tell the doctors at the clinic that they were perverts, and when I tell them that, they will be sure to believe it. Because it’s not okay to be lesbians in Phoenix, Arizona in 1931.

Theresa: I mean, honestly, it wasn’t up until I feel like recent history, and even still be careful where you are when you say such things.

Angie: Truly, right? So this goes on, both sides, they’re they’re not doing great, right? It’s not I I didn’t know this at the time, but syphilis in America was such a big deal that it was called the social disease for one, but it was even more terrifying in the 30s for someone to have syphilis than it was for someone in the eighties to have AIDS. Like to the people of Phoenix, Arizona, like they that’s how they described it. Like it was just it was career ruining, it was life ending, like you could destroy an entire family, like it was a whole a whole thing.

Um, so all these comments are flying back and forth that can socially and economically ruin all these girls, right? At that point, Ruth decides she’s just gonna walk out of the fight, she goes to put her glass down in the kitchen, and when she turns around, Sammy is pointing a gun at her. There is a physical altercation between the three girls with Ruth and Sammy trying to get or keep control over the gun. And Anne trying to brain Ruth with the ironing board.

Theresa: You know the fight has gone full tilt when someone brings an ironing board into the equation. Right.

Angie: The conversation with the sheriff goes on. In fact, it’s three hundred and page three hundred a hundred and three pages long.

Theresa: But I want to end up play by play. Yeah.

Angie: But I want to end on this part of the story with the quote saying, Her attorney, O. V. Wilson speaks up. We are here looking after you. We just want you to tell what happened. Sheriff Sheriff McFadden gets the conversation back on track, asking, now where did Anne’s body fall? Ruth answers, it fell back towards the stove.

Sammy’s head was in towards the breakfast room. So Ruth admits to having shot Anne. Like, whether it was on accident in the fray, she knows she’s the one that pulled the trigger.

Or she thinks she does. So she’s telling him at this point, this is where Anne fell, right? Sammy’s head was in towards the breakfast room, the feet towards the kitchen door because she came in that way and fell. When we fell with we were both with heads into the breakfast room. I don’t know how long I was sitting in the floor.

I must have fell too. Afterwards, because I was sitting on the floor and Sammy was laying in one place and Anne was in another. Her attorney tries to clarify and how Anne was shot. Now, she says, In shooting Anne, were you sitting on the floor? She says, I started to get up, and she’s like illustrating. I was down on the floor and we were rolling back and forth fighting for this gun, and when I started to get up, she banged me on the head with the ironing board just as I shot. She hit me on the head. And when I came to, I was sitting between two bodies on the floor.

I ran out of that place. I put my dress on and nothing else, just my shoes and my dress. I went back to her apartment is on Brill Street to get my pocketbook. I went home and I got my black pocketbook and money and started out of the door when Jack Hollering came in the driveway. That’s her story.

Theresa: But now how do they get into the boxes? Like they don’t just dismember themselves and get into some steamer trunks. Truly.

Angie: So Jack and her end up back at the house, and he tries to calm her down, and and rightfully so, she cannot calm down.

Theresa: Yeah, you know, you just have to your friends.

Angie: She thinks, anyway, right? Now, at one point, she is in the house when Jack picks up Sammy’s body and moves it from the breakfast room to the bed. She doesn’t think Jack knows Sammy’s dead at this point.

Theresa: I have a feeling you can figure that out.

Angie: Pretty quick, right? Um Long story short, he tries to calm her down, she won’t call calm down, so he’s like, you know what? Go home, I’ll handle everything. He botches the whole thing up from here, in my opinion. But the gist is he tells her that he will pack them into the trunks, and all she’s got to do is get them to LA where someone will meet her there and take the whole thing off her hands. And she buys it.

Hook, line and sinker. She there’s a ton more, but for the sake of time, like I’m not gonna get into like how Jack supposedly dismembers Sammy’s body, but he gets her in the trunk. There is another doctor involved, and it takes Ruth her whole life to realize he maybe was called, and that’s how Sammy got taken apart.

It’s gnarly. Now, back to her time at the state hospital. Remember, she’s got that beauty parlor thing going, but someone throws a fit, cosmetology board shuts it down. She is so upset by this that the governor himself tells him, tells her, I’m gonna make it okay. We’re gonna get this straightened out, and he’s gonna come out and he’s gonna tell her everything that’s happened and make sure she’s back on board for her beauty parlor and her free movement.

Okay, so he doesn’t. And um, she’s a little upset, and she just decides, you know what, forget it, and she leaves. She goes to see her ailing father and then hides in a cornfield for six days, and then goes back to the hospital. She goes right up to the back door and simply says, Well, I’m here.

Fully aware that the country is on the hunt for her. The headline I read at the beginning is released on Halloween 1939 and is displayed all over the Tower of Terror in Disney. Wow. Right?

Okay. So the headline just as a reminder says, Ruth Judd gives herself up after six days, returns to asylum in hysteria. They she says they straitjack at her for a while, she gets a good beating.

It’s it’s not great. Um, she’s gonna escape six more times. With the last one being the longest. She makes it to California by this point. Her parents and her husband are dead, but she’s got her brother and his kids. So she finds work in the Bay Area and a new name, and she is as she’s working as a housekeeper and a companion to this incredible old moneyed woman.

She’s elderly. She adores Ruth. And Ruth this is like the first happy time in her life. Like, she’s so delighted to be taking care of this old woman. They she talks about how like they stay up at night and they watch the news together. The old woman takes her to plays, takes her to movies. She dotes on her with all kinds of gifts, and the whole time Ruth is like, I have never had anything as nice as a as a handkerchief that’s got my initials on it.

Like But you could tell this was just like the best six years of anyone’s life. Like she just had an honest profession, and the woman loved her. But oh, and she’s going by Mary and Ruth Lane at this time. And the old matriarch’s family loves her too, or at least her daughter does. And when the matriarch dies, she ensures in her will that Mary and Ruth Lane will be well cared for with housing and a stipend and will like she will not want for anything. And the old the daughter’s like all for it.

She’s like, great, let’s do it. She retires to this wonderful little cottage, I believe near San Jose. It’s June of 1969. And one afternoon, she is hosting a lunch with a friend of the old money matriarch, who still like all of her friends she would put on, the old woman would put on these tees several times a week, and they all just came to love Ruth. So even after she died, they were still trying to visit her and like be a part of her life.

Which I think is super cool. So one of the old woman’s friends is there, they’re all having lunch together, and that’s when a police car shows up and she is arrested and sent back to Arizona. Devastating. Wow. Truly. Wow.

Yeah. Um, the Blemmers is the name of the family she worked for. They are on vacation at the time, and they fly home from like Switzerland or something, and they do everything they can possibly do to help her situation, including collecting and looking after her dogs.

Because they’re decent folk. Yeah. And I just kind of love that. At this point, the most famous fugitive in the country is old and tired, but still quite famous, and she hires the most famous defense attorney money can buy, and one of them is none other than the king of torts himself, Melvin. Melvin Belly.

Wow. If And if you’re curious, Teresa goes a deep onto his life, it’s episode 137 titled Another Missing Leg Story. The book describes him as quote, he was flamboyant and bombastic and bodacious, and he was so good, he usually won. His part in her case is hilarious to me.

And I think one day I will do a shorty about it. But what you need to know here is that the governor of Arizona hated him so much. I mean, he seems both extremely gregarious and hateable.

Theresa: And the governor of Arizona had no love, like none whatsoever, and neither did his other def the other defense attorney working for Ruth. So the governor hated him so much that he refused to sign the papers for her to be for her sentence to be commuted as long as he was her lawyer. Wow.

Yeah. Her other lawyer, who is also, like I mentioned, not a great fan of him either, types up a letter that night for Ruth to sign, goes down to the hospital to see her and says, What do you want me to do? She fires Belly on the spot. The next day the governor signs her papers. She leaves the hospital the state hospital.

She had spent so much of her time in the middle of the night, a tired 66-year-old woman who just wants to go back to her home in California and live out the quiet remainder of her life. She which she does, except for one moment when she has to sue the good Dr. Blemmer because after his wife dies, he doesn’t really want to play nice with the inheritance rules. Um she wins.

Good. She goes about her very quiet life. She eventually moves to Stockton, Which at the time she absolutely loved. She said Stockton was the perfect place for an elderly woman. Like you could take a bus for ten cents.

Theresa: And Stockton, when you drive through it and you see what were probably super cute World War II bungalows, you know this was a cute place back in the day. True.

Angie: There are parts of Stockton I love and there are parts of Stockton I avoid.

Theresa: It’s like lock the doors, roll the windows up, don’t make eye contact. Truly.

Angie: But at the time, it was so dreamy. Eventually, she’s going to leave Stockton and go back to Arizona where she meets the author of her biography. And Winnie Ruth Judd or Marion Ruth Lane would die October 23rd, 1998 at the age of 92.

Theresa: Holy cow.

Angie: Having spent like most of her life in the Arizona State Hospital. Which is insane.

Theresa: And forever memorialized in the Tower of Terror. Yep.

Angie: Oh, and we actually don’t know where she was buried in secret. So no one can bother her in her afterlife. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so what were your sources? Okay, my sources were her biography by Jana Bumbersbach. Um I’m scrolling back up 14 pages. Excuse me one second. Okay.

Um Winnie Ruth Judd unpacked Arizona’s infamous trunk murders, which is from a company called Get Ghosted Phoenix.com. Excuse me, sir. He just knocked over everything so he could come sit in my lap.

Theresa: To be fair, he also pawed your face so that you would turn and look at him and ignore me.

Angie: He we’re talking about my cat who is very needy and knows he’s the baby of the house. But he made it this far, so I’m really proud of him. Now, uh the get ghosted Phoenix um seems to be a website where like a I think a few times a year they host an event where you can like go and see all the pictures and things. So there wasn’t a ton of information there, but there was a ton of pictures there. There is unpacking the story of Winnie Ruth Judd, the Arizona Historical Society. Today in history, Phoenix’s infamous Trunk Murderess Killings, that’s uh 12news.com. It was written by author Janet John Tenet on October 16th of 19, excuse me, 2024. The Arizona Library actually has a copy of the execution invitation.

It’s just crazy. And then um uh the Arizona Library also has the murdered mayhem, the strange saga of Winnie Ruth Jed. The Morgan P Morbid podcast has an episode on her that’s really fun, and they got me to the source, which was her biography, The Trunk Murderous Winnie Root Jed by Jana Bombersback, which was published in 1992. Now, arguably, this was my biggest source, but it has been criticized for being a little too apologetic towards Judd. There are many beliefs who believe the author’s time with her as an older woman left her willing to think otherwise than the actual facts of the case.

Um Okay. I don’t know that that’s the case. I think maybe she she did get a little emotional, she did get a little attached, but I think that the author did a really good job of presenting everything, every angle of the case, every person involved in the case, down to the jurors. Um, and I think by the end of her time with her, she really just wanted to write the wrong that was society at the time. I don’t necessarily think that she was being too apologetic. I think she just put out into the world what she saw of this woman.

Wow. That said, I have yet to decide if I think she actually did it. I think she was cohorted. she did it. I think she at least killed Anne. I think she was cohorced into believing the rest.

You think what? I think she was cohorced into believing the rest. Because we are she already has this history of mental instability. She seems like she could be told to believe anything, at least her younger self. And I don’t know, I’m just thinking if you found like you woke up in between the two bodies of your two best friends, and you know you think you shot at least one of them, making her believe something else could be entirely easy.

Theresa: Okay, but if she didn’t know, but I’m not sure who did.

Angie: Jack Hollerin. Why? I don’t know. Maybe the girls saw something they weren’t supposed to see, maybe they knew something they weren’t supposed to know. I have no idea. Maybe it really was something as simple as a quarrel that just turned bad and he showed up at the right time with the right idea. I don’t know. It’s it’s such a weird, I don’t think we’re ever gonna truly know what really happened. I think we’re we only know that she thinks she killed Anne for sure. Wow. Yeah.

Theresa: This was a good story. And you’re right. This is out of your wheelhouse. You’re very typical, you know, ones you do.

Angie: I’m so done with it.

Theresa: And I will tell you. As you were telling the story, I was like, where’s the overlap with me? Did she think I’m a trunk murderess? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean No. It was Melvin.

Angie: I as soon as we got there, I was like, there we go. There.

Angie: it is. Ninety-five percent of story is over, and she is like, the hell is going on.

Theresa: Yeah, I’m just like, huh, this is like I dated a guy in high school who read the Fight Club and said, This book reminds me of you. It that’s one of those throwaway statements that keeps me up at night. I’m Jack’s khaki pants.

Angie: I was gonna say, have you ever read the book? Um, maybe there’s something in there.

Theresa: I mean, it’s pretty in line with the movie, and you know. I don’t know. It was Melvin Belly. It was Melvin Bellet. Okay, great. I’m good because Melvin Ballet, brilliant.

Um, if you also are like, yes, it was Melvin Ballet, that is the only overlap. We know Teresa so well so much. We’ve been with you guys nearly 200 episodes. And thank you. And if you haven’t been with us 200 episodes, you got a back out a back catalog to really play with. Rate, review, subscribe, send this to somebody else who might be curious at the start of this as to why this overlaps with me. And on that note, give on a

Speaker 3: hi.