Summary of "The Trunk Murderess, By Jana Bommersbach":

Winnie Ruth Judd, Anne LeRoi and Hedvig “Sammy” Samuelsen were in the middle of it all.They were all friends and even lived together sometimes. Judd and LeRoi worked at the hospital and brought home doctors and businessmen to entertain. Samuelsen was very sick with tuberculosis most of the time and couldn’t work.  She is described as tall, beautiful and lounged around in silk pajamas most of the time. The 3 women often entertained men and in return they received money, food and small gifts. Judd was married to a doctor 40 years older than her but he was rarely in town, leaving her to fend for herself.  He was addicted to narcotics and could not hold a job for very long. He lived in Mexico and California mostly looking for  work. Winnie had suffered from tuberculosis but was well enough to work. TB patients moving to Phoenix was common because the weather usually  improved their health.


Winnie was having an affair with one of the businessmen in town that partied with the 3 girls. His name was Jack Halloran. Newspapers claimed that Judd killed her 2 friends because she was jealous of his attention toward them. But according to Judd’s own confession she killed them in self- defense. She has always denied cutting them up and putting them into the steamer trunks. Her confession states that the women fought over the fact that Judd recently introduced a new girl into their group. This girl was known to have syphilis and Anne and Sammy were angry. Winnie also threatened to report Anne for tampering with the x-ray machine at work. She states that Sammy starting shooting at her with a gun which Winnie fired into Sammy while rolling around on the kitchen floor. During the fight on the floor Anne was hitting Winnie with an ironing board. When Sammy was dead, Winnie turned the gun on Anne.  Winnie was shot in her left hand. The bullet was eventually removed over a week later when she was captured in Los Angeles. She called Jack after the incident to come over and help. She states that they cleaned up blood and moved one girl to the bedroom. Jack attempted to make several phone calls to a doctor but never got through. He then took Ruth home and told her he would  take care of everything.  
 
 
Winnie never saw the bodies after that. She did not cut them up or put them into the trunk. The newspapers stated that both bodies were chopped into little pieces. Only Sammy’s body was dismembered and it was done in a precise, medical manner. The body was cut so cleanly that the coroner was able to stitch her back together perfectly. Winnie does finally admit to having to “re-pack” the body parts into several travelling cases because it was too heavy to send as baggage on the train but insists that she did not perform the “operation”. The story of her trip to Los Angeles with the trunks, her hiding from the police for days when the leaking trunks were discovered and her reasons for even leaving Phoenix with the trunks is very confusing. The newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst paid for her defense lawyers. She did not testify at her trial and a lot of the witnesses and police called to the stand did not tell the truth about the evidence. There was even evidence found of jury tampering and yet she was still sentenced to hang for first degree murder. The author even discovered that 2 different caliber guns were used to kill the girls. Sammy was killed with the same caliber gun that Winnie owned and was packed in the trunk with the body. Newspapers at the time originally reported that 2 different caliber shell casings were found at the scene but it was never brought up at trial by any police officers or the coroner. All of the newspapers quickly claimed that they made a mistake.

 
They did have another trial to decide that she was insane and therefore was sentenced to an insane asylum. Winnie actually had a lot of freedom at the hospital. She opened a beauty parlor with donations from the community and did hair for the patients. She took care of the children and babies who were sent there with their mothers. She even visited the stores in the area to buy little things for the hospital and was allowed to go to staff members’ homes. The staff didn’t think she was insane or guilty of murder but the influential men in the community needed to make sure that she was kept locked up and declared crazy so that no one would believe her stories about Jack and the lifestyle of the wealthy men in town. Any reference made about Jack Halloran in any court documents was blacked out. When newspapers or radio announcers talked about the case they called him Mr. X. The people running the town were so influential that some witnesses who supported Winnie were run out of town. This injustice went on for thirty-two years.  
 

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