In 1931, a woman fled Phoenix, Arizona with two trunks. When the content of those trunks were discovered, the life of Winnie Ruth Judd was splashed across headlines for all to see. And she had a new name, too – The Trunk Murderess.
Winnie Ruth McKinnell was born on January 29th, 1905. Her parents were school teachers in Oxford, Indiana, where her father was also a Methodist minister.
In 1924, McKinnell, who went by Ruth, married Dr. William C. Judd, taking his name. He was over 20 years older than her, and a World War I veteran. William worked as a physician for a silver mining company in Mexico, where he moved his young wife. Soon, Ruth became pregnant. However, she soon lost the baby when she contracted tuberculosis – a disease that she’d battled off and on since childhood.
The pattern repeated itself, with Ruth becoming pregnant and losing the baby once again. Ruth seemed desperate to become a mother, according to William. She even had names picked out, in the even the couple had a son – Caesar, Napoleon, and Moses.
For three years, Ruth and William lived in Mexico. However, when Ruth contracted tuberculosis once again, it became apparent that she needed care in a different environment. Ruth travelled up to California, and checked herself into a sanitarium – a facility specifically designed to treat tuberculosis patients.
While Ruth was ill, it became apparent that her husband, William, was severely addicted to narcotics, especially morphine. William had difficulty keeping a job due to his addiction, and Ruth was stressed and strained, even after recovering from her illness.
By 1930, Ruth had moved to Phoenix, Arizona to look for work, while William lived separately, travelling and looking for work. Ruth’s health made it extremely difficult for her to follow her husband, so she settled in Phoenix, where the climate allowed her to live a fairly normal life.
Ruth lived in a small apartment, working as a governess for a wealthy family, before gaining employment working as a secretary at the Grunow Medical Clinic. As Ruth worked, she sent money to her husband, who had seemed to settle in Los Angeles, California to continue to look for work.
While in Phoenix, Ruth befriended her neighbour, John J. “Happy Jack” Halloran. Halloran was a well-known businessman, who had ties to the upper echelon of the Phoenix social circles. He was also a notoriously misogynistic playboy. Though they were both married, Ruth and Halloran began having an affair on Christmas Eve, 1930. Ruth believed that Halloran’s sexual attention meant he loved her. Halloran believed she was ‘easy’.
While working at the Grunow Medical Clinic, Ruth befriended Agnes Anne LeRoi, an X-ray technician, and Agnes’s roommate Hedvig “Sammy” Samuelson.
Agnes and Sammy had moved to Phoenix from Alaska, where they’d met and become very fast friends. Sammy was often ill with tuberculosis, and the Phoenix climate was best suited for her recovery. Through Ruth, Agnes and Sammy also met Halloran. He wasted no time developing relationships with them, as well.
In the fall of 1931, Agnes was 32 years old, Sammy was 24 years old, and Ruth was 26 years old.
While stories vary dramatically, the overall series of events reamins fairly consistent.
On the evening of October 16th, 1931, Winnie Ruth Judd went over to the bungalow that was shared by Agnes and Sammy, and shot them both with a .25 caliber handgun. Whether she had an accomplice or not has always been a matter of debate. However, fact remains that Sammy was then dismembered, and her body packed away in a trunk, a hatbox, and a carryon valise. Agnes was contorted to fit into a trunk, though her body was not dismembered.
The following day, Ruth called into the clinic, posing as Agnes, and called her out sick. A little while later, appearing frazzled and exhausted, Ruth went into work. She had a large bandage wrapped around her hand.
The next day, on October 18th, 1931, Ruth boarded the overnight Golden State Limited passenger train, with the valise, hatbox, and two trunks, and rode from Phoenix, Arizona, to Los Angeles, California. During the trip, a baggage handler, H. J. Mapes, was suspicious of Ruth’s luggage. He believed that Ruth may have been transporting contraband deer meat, as the luggage had a foul order, and appeared to be dripping blood. At the time, it was quite common for travellers to attempt to smuggle deer meet across state lines.
Mapes, ever prudent, alerted Arthur V. Anderson, who was the baggage agent for Los Angeles. When the train arrived in Los Angeles, Anderson tagged the trunks to be held for inspection. Ruth wasn’t particularly fond of this. She wanted to leave with the trunks. Seeing no other alternative, Ruth left in a huff.
She had no plan. She went to the powder room, where she dropped the valise and hatbox. She informed the attendant that she did not have the funds tor a locker to place her luggage, and asked her kindly to watch over her things as she took a taxi to the University of Southern California.
There, she found her brother, Burton, who was a junior at the university, and had him drive her back to the train station to pick up her luggage. Burton was unaware of what, exactly Ruth was carrying with her. When it became apparent that Anderson was not about to release the luggage, Ruth left with Burton. She did not put up much of a fight.
Anderson then called the LAPD in order to report the suspicious trunks. It wasn’t until an detective picked the locks that they made the discovery of one body, and various body parts. It didn’t take long for word to spread, and for the detectives to find the hatbox and valise in the powder room.
A .25-caliber handgun, and various surgical tools were also discovered inside the trunks.
Burton, unaware of the discovery taking place, dropped Ruth off near a department store where she used to work. She told him she was intending on meeting William there. Burton took off, leaving his sister on the streets of Los Angeles.
On Monday, October 19th, 1931, news of the murders made national headlines. Phoenix police were fairly certain they knew what had happened – Winnie Ruth Judd had murdered her friends, and then travelled with their bodies in trunks in an attempt to cover up the murder. The name Winnie Ruth Judd soon became synonymous with The Trunk Murderess.
Police theorized that Ruth had shot Agnes and Sammy in their beds. As they searched the bungalow, they noticed that both of the mattresses were missing from the bedrooms. One was found in a vacant lot, absent of bloodstains. The other was never recovered.
In the meantime, Ruth had vanished. She’d snuck into a department store, and while there, she wrote to her husband. The letter was later torn apart, but found in a drainpipe. The letter was dried, and then pieced back together. In the letter, Ruth spoke of her love for William, while in the same breath claiming that she’d killed her friends in self-defense. In the letter, Ruth was adamant that the murders had occurred on the morning of Saturday, October 17th, 1931.
After tearing apart the letter, Ruth phoned her husband. He convinced her to go to a care facility, telling her that she could check herself in there, and that the doctors would take care of her. Instead, on the morning of Friday, October 23rd, 1931, police apprehended Ruth at the care facility. It had been a ruse.
After the letter was found, Ruth denied that she’d been the letter’s author. Instead, she placed the blame on William, the man who had turned her in. William, in turned out, had been paid handsomely by the press to recite the letters, and claim that had come from her. All according to Ruth, of course.
After she was arrested, a doctor looked over the wound in Ruth’s hand. They found a bullet wound, and the bullet still lodged in her left hand.
In due time, Ruth was extradited back to Arizona, where her trial began on January 19th, 1932. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
The prosecution argued that Ruth had acted with premeditation. They posited that the three women had argued over the attention and affection of one Happy Jack Halloran. They also stated that Ruth had shot herself in the hand in order to make a claim of self-defence – a claim never once brought up by her defence team.
Ruth’s defence put their full force into proving that Ruth was not in her right mind. While incarcerated, and on trial, Ruth often screamed after children that didn’t exist, telling anyone who would listen that they were taking her away from her baby, or that they were stealing her baby from her. Ruth’s husband, parents, and brother all took the stand to declare that Ruth’s desperation for a baby had led to extreme mental illness. It was a tactic dubbed “Mother Mania” by the L.A. Times.
On February 8th, 1932, the jury found Winnie Ruth Judd guilty of the first-degree murder of Agnes Anne LeRoi. Ruth’s defense launched an appeal, which was unsuccessful. She was sentenced to be hanged on February 17th, 1933.
However, other jurors came forward with evidence that the jury had been corrupt from the start. Former Mesa Mayor, Dan Kleinman, was a member of the jury, and had vowed to ensure that Ruth be sentenced to death. Two appeals were launched on the basis that Kleinman’s behaviour amounted to juror misconduct. These appeals were unsuccessful.
However, after a hearing that found Ruth to be ‘mentally incompetent’, her sentence was overturned. On April 24th, 1933, Ruth was sent to the Arizona State Asylum for the Insane, now the Arizona State Hospital.
Prior to this, on December 30th, 1932, Happy Jack Halloran was indicted by a grand jury as an accomplice to murder. Ruth testified during for three days during a preliminary hearing in January of 1933. It is believed that Kleinman later was set on sentencing Ruth to death as an act of revenge for the things she said about his friend.
During the hearing, Ruth exclaimed emotionally that: “I am going to be hanged for something Jack Halloran is responsible for”. This is where the story begins to get murky.
Ruth testified that on the evening of October 16th, she’d gone to Agnes and Sammy’s home on an invitation to join them to play Bridge. From there, Agnes and Sammy confronted Ruth about Halloran, and his affections for all three women. Ruth then explained that Agnes and Sammy had attacked her, and she’d shot them in order to defend herself.
After initially committing the murders, Ruth left the bungalow, and ran into Halloran outside of her apartment. She told him what she’d done, and he brought her back to the bungalow. Upon seeing the bodies, he went to the garage, and came back with a trunk. He told her not to tell anyone. He left the rest up to Ruth.
Halloran did not take the stand. Instead, his attorney posited that seeing as Ruth had testified to murdering Agnes and Sammy in self-defence, no crime had actually been committed, and therefore, Halloran could not be tried for any crime. Halloran’s defense team asked the judge to dismiss the charges against Halloran.
On January 25th 1933, all the charges against Happy Jack Halloran were dropped. Despite this Halloran’s true colour coming to light in such an extravagant, and public way, ensured that he lost favour and social status among the Phoenix elite. In 1939, John J. “Happy Jack” Halloran died in Tucson, Arizona.
While incarcerated at the Arizona State Hospital, Right escaped approximately six times between 1933 and 1963.
On October 8th, 1963, Winnie Ruth Judd escaped the institution for the last time. She walked right out the front door, after a friend of her who worked at the hospital had given her a key.
Burton and his family helped Ruth assume a new name, and get established in a small apartment in Oakland. Shortly thereafter, Ruth, under the name of Marian Kane, gained employment as a live-in maid and caretake for a wealthy family. She was well taken care of, and beloved by the family. They showered her in gifts, and considered her a member of the family. When the matriarch of the family passed, her daughter moved Ruth into her own guesthouse.
On August 18th, 1969, police arrived at the family’s home to ask some questions. Ruth had bought her nephew a car, while at the same time threatening to turn her in whenever he wanted, should she not do what he asked. The car belonged to him, but was registered to Ruth. It had been found at a murder scene.
When the police asked after Winnie Ruth Judd, she claimed not to know anyone by that name. However, she knew that her time as Marian Kane was coming to a close when police officers took her fingerprints, and identified her as Winnie Ruth Judd.
Ruth soon hired San Francisco based defense attorney Melvin Belli, who in turn hired Larry Debus. They negotiated with the Governor of Arizona, Jack Williams, who agreed to sign off on Ruth’s release. However, he maintained that the meeting had to be kept quiet.
On December 22nd, 1971, after two years of legal battles, Winnie Ruth Judd was paroled. She moved to Stockton, California where she lived out the rest of her life quietly until her passing on October 23rd, 1998, at the age of 93 years old. It was 67 years, to the day, from when she was arrested for murder in 1931.
Over the years, many people have become enthralled with the case of the Trunk Murderess. Jana Bommbersbach is one such individual. In the course of her investigation, she found the police and prosecution in the case to be heavily biased against Ruth, as they were socially and politically connected to Halloran. She also concluded that had Kleinman not been on the jury, it’s highly likely that Ruth would have been convicted of second-degree murder, at the most.
However, Bommbersbach’s objectivity in regards to the case has been called into question, as she was known to have developed a deep friendship with Ruth in Ruth’s later years.
In 2014, new questions were raised about the case – and sort of subsequently answered – when a ‘confession letter’, written by Ruth in 1933 to her attorney H. G. Richardson was discovered.
In the infamous letter, Ruth apparently confessed to the murder in full. She claimed that she acted completely on her own, and had been planning on murdering Agens for a long while. Sammy was just an unfortunate ‘accident’.
Ruth wanted Agnes out of the way. Agnes kept taunting and teasing Ruth about her own relationship with Halloran, claiming that she planned to steal him away from Ruth. When she went to the bungalow and murdered Ruth, she had no choice but to kill Sammy, too, after Sammy began fighting her, having been woken up from the gunshots.
It would seem that the initial theory posited by police had been correct. Agnes had, indeed, been murdered as she slept in her bed. And then she’d shot Sammy in a fight for the gun. During the altercation, the gun went off, lodging a bullet in Ruth’s left hand.
Richardson apparently ensured that the letter would never see the light of day. He had a plan, and this letter contradicted everything he was trying to achieve with Ruth’s case. After his death, Ruth apparently wrote to his widow, asking for the letter back. The widow declined the request.
In 2002, four years after Ruth’s death, the letter was anonymously donated to the Arizona state archives, revealing the truth behind Winnie Ruth Judd, the Trunk Murderess.
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Sources:
Remember the 1931 ‘Trunk Murderess’ Case – Pat Flannery – AZCentral
Ruthless: A Long-Lost Confession Letter May Finally Tell the Real Story of Winnie Ruth Judd – Robert L. Pela – Phoenix New Times
Hollywood Crime Scene podcast – Episodes 174 and 175 – Winnie Ruth Judd Part 1 and Part 2
Winnie Ruth Judd Wikipedia page