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, Anne LeRoi and Hedvig “Sammy” 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 after a jealousy-based argument about Jack Halloran, a prominent Phoenix businessman.
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 However, the sentence was later repealed after she was found mentally incompetent, and she was committed to the Arizona State Asylum for the Insane (later renamed the Arizona State Hospital).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.
Background Winnie Ruth McKinnell was born on January 29, 1905, to the Reverend H.J. McKinnell, a Methodist minister, and his wife, Carrie, in Oxford, Indiana. At age 17, she married Dr. William C. Judd, a World War I veteran more than twenty years her senior, and moved to Mexico with him. William was reportedly a morphine addict as a result of war injuries and had difficulty keeping a job, forcing the couple to move frequently and live on an uncertain income. The marriage was further strained by Winnie Ruth Judd's health problems and inability to bear children.
By 1930, the couple were mostly living separately, although they remained in constant communication. Judd, called by her middle name of "Ruth", moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where she worked as governess to a wealthy family. During this time, she met John J. "Happy Jack" Halloran, a 44-year-old Phoenix businessman who was active in the city's political and social circles. Although married, Halloran was a known playboy and philanderer. Judd and Halloran became friendly and eventually had an extramarital affair.
After a few months, Judd began working as a secretary at the Grunow Medical Clinic in Phoenix. There, she met Anne Alexandra LeRoi (birthname Agnes Anne), an X-ray technician, and her roommate, Sarah Hedvig Samuelson, who had moved together from Alaska after Samuelson contracted tuberculosis. The two women were also friendly with Halloran. Judd became friends with LeRoi and Samuelson, and even moved in with them for a couple of months in 1931, but differences developed between the women and Judd soon returned to her own apartment, located a short distance away from the rented bungalow shared by LeRoi and Samuelson.Sharp, Harold S., Footnotes To American History. The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Metuchen, NJ. 1977 At the time of the murders, Judd was 26 years old, LeRoi 27, and Samuelson 24.
Murders
According to police, on the night of October 16, 1931, LeRoi and Samuelson were murdered by Judd after an alleged fight among the three women over Halloran's affections. The prosecution at Judd's murder trial would suggest that quarrels over men and the relationship between LeRoi and Samuelson broke up the friendship of the three women, and that jealousy was the motive for the killings.
The two victims were killed with a .25 caliber handgun in their bungalow, located at 2929 (now 2947) N. 2nd Street. According to prosecutors, Judd and an accomplice then dismembered Samuelson's body and put the head, torso, and lower legs into a black shipping trunk, placing the upper legs in a beige valise and hatbox. LeRoi's body was stuffed intact into a second black shipping trunk.
Fleeing to Los Angeles
Two days after the murders, on Sunday, October 18, 1931, Judd, with her left hand bandaged from a gunshot wound, boarded the overnight Golden State Limited passenger train from Phoenix's Union Station to Los Angeles, California, along with the trunks and luggage containing the bodies. En route to Los Angeles Central Station, Judd's trunks came under suspicion from baggage handler H. J. Mapes due to their foul odor, as well as the fluids escaping from them. Mapes alerted the district baggage agent in Los Angeles, Arthur V. Anderson, that the trunks may have contained contraband deer meat. In those days, deer meat was frequently smuggled aboard trains running to the West Coast. Anderson tagged the trunks to be held until they could be opened for inspection. He asked Judd for the key, but she stated she didn't have it with her.
Burton McKinnell, Judd's brother and a junior at the University of Southern California, picked her up from the train station unaware of the murders or the bodies. Judd departed with her brother, leaving her trunks behind. At around 4:30 pm that afternoon, Anderson called the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to report the suspicious trunks. After picking the locks of each trunk, the police discovered the bodies. Meanwhile, Burton had dropped his sister off somewhere in Los Angeles, where she proceeded to disappear.Wanted poster Judd hid out for several days until she surrendered to police in a funeral home the following Friday, October 23, 1931. The murder became headline news across the country, with the press calling Judd the "Tiger Woman" and the "Blonde Butcher". Eventually, the case came to be known in the media as the "Trunk Murders", and Judd as the "Trunk Murderess".
Original police investigation 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." 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.
Trial and conviction
Judd's trial began on January 19, 1932, at the Maricopa County Courthouse, with Judge Howard C. Speakman presiding.Winnie Ruth Judd Sentenced to Hang, Lewiston Daily Sun, February 25, 1932, retrieved September 8, 2016 The dismemberment aspect of the double slaying was never addressed in court because Judd was tried only for the murder of LeRoi, whose body was not dismembered; she was never tried for the murder of Samuelson. The state argued that Judd acted with premeditation; that the relations between the three women had deteriorated over some weeks; and that they had argued over the affections of Halloran, all of which culminated in the murders. The prosecution maintained that Judd had herself inflicted the gunshot wound to her left hand to try to bolster her claim of self-defense. Judd's defense contended that she was innocent because she was insane, but did not introduce the self-defense argument for the record. Judd did not take the stand in her own defense.
The jury found Judd guilty of the first-degree murder of LeRoi on February 8. An appeal was unsuccessful. Judd was sentenced by Judge Speakman to be hanged February 17, 1933, and sent to Arizona State Prison in Florence, Arizona. This came despite sworn affidavits from four of the jurors claiming they only voted to recommend death after one of their fellow jurors, former Mesa mayor Dan Kleinman, persuaded them that it was the best way to get Judd to give up any accomplices in the murder. They urged Speakman to commute the sentence to life imprisonment.
Judd's attorneys uncovered evidence that Kleinman had already made up his mind that he would vote to convict Judd and send her to the gallows had he been on the jury. They lodged two appeals on this basis, arguing that Kleinman's behavior amounted to juror misconduct. However, neither of these appeals were successful. Judd's death sentence was overturned after a ten-day hearing found her mentally incompetent. Judd was then sent to Arizona State Asylum for the Insane Arizona State Hospital History http://www.azdhs.gov/azsh/history.htm on April 24, 1933.
Jack Halloran When it was discovered during the course of the trial that Halloran and Judd had been involved in an illicit affair, Halloran came under suspicion of complicity in the killings. He was indicted by a grand jury as an accomplice to murder on December 30, 1932, following new testimony from Judd. A preliminary hearing on the charge against Halloran was held in mid-January 1933, with Judd appearing as the star witness. In testimony that lasted almost three days, an emotional Judd told her story, saying
Judd testified she had gone to LeRoi and Samuelson's bungalow on an invitation to play bridge, and a fourth woman who had also been invited had already left. She testified that there was an argument about Judd's introduction of Halloran to another woman, and that she killed LeRoi and Samuelson in self-defense after they physically attacked her.Winnie Ruth Judd Sobs As Witness in Halloran Trial, Associated Press According to Judd, she met up with Halloran shortly after the killings and returned with him to the bungalow. After seeing the bodies, he went out to the garage, returned with a "great, heavy trunk" and told her not to tell anyone.Mrs. Ruth Judd Accuses Halloran in Trunk Murders, Gettysburg Times, Jan 18, 1933 Under cross-examination, Judd admitted repacking Samuelson's dismembered body in a trunk and other luggage two days after the murders."Murder Trunk Shift Admitted", Los Angeles Times
Halloran did not take the stand in his own defense. His attorney told the court that Judd's story was nothing more "than the story of an insane person" and argued that since she had testified that the two women were killed in self-defense, there was, in fact, no crime committed; therefore Halloran could not be tried for anything. Halloran's attorney then asked for the charges against his client to be dismissed. On January 25, 1933, the judge freed Halloran, saying that the state's case was inconsistent, and that trying him would be "an idle gesture".Halloran Is Freed Of Charges Made By Mrs. Ruth Judd, Ludington Gaily News, Jan 22, 1933 Although officially exonerated, Halloran eventually fell out of favor in Phoenix, losing his business associates and social status. He died in Phoenix in 1976.
Escapes and parole
After her death sentence was overturned, Judd was committed to the Arizona State Asylum for the Insane (later renamed the Arizona State Hospital) in Phoenix, the state's only mental institution. Judd escaped from the institution six times between 1933 and 1963, in one instance walking all the way to Yuma, along the old Southern Pacific railroad tracks. In 1952, Governor J. Howard Pyle formally commuted Judd's sentence to life in prison.