Book 3 of my Grave Sisters Mysteries is coming out in July. As part of my newsletter, I like to do an email sequence that expands upon a topic related to the book I’m releasing. Sometimes that means a specific event in history (such as post-WWI attitudes and struggles for soldiers coming back to civilian life, as I did with Book 2 of this series). Sometimes it means a true crime case that somehow relates to the book itself, though not necessarily inspired it.
For Book 3, I wanted to focus on a true crime case that featured murder and friendship, since this is a heavy theme in Book 3. At first, I had the idea of highlighting a famous case that took place in 1920s Hollywood: the death of director William Desmond Taylor. The murder happened in 1922, the same year as the events in Book 3, and in California, the setting of Book 3. Friendship may or may not have played a role in the murder (as it still remains unsolved today).
But when I started to dig deeper into classic cases related to friendship, I came across the case of Winnie Ruth Judd. Although the murders associated with it occurred almost ten years after the Taylor case and happened in Arizona rather than California, it was far more interesting and complex than the Taylor case (which I will save for another time).
Photo Credit: Winnie Ruth Judd (smiling) leaving the courthouse to return to prison during the trial. The man is her husband, Dr. William Judd, and the woman behind her is the sheriff’s daughter who served as her maid during the trial. Acme Newspicture, 1933: Gzen92bot/Wikimedia Commons/PD France
Judd’s life wasn’t an easy one from the start. She grew up in what seems like a loving, supportive, but poor family. At the age of seventeen, she married a man in his late 30s named Dr. William Judd. The doctor was, sadly, something of a bum and a morphine addict. They bumped around Mexico while he tried to hold down a job (and didn’t succeed). In 1930, Winnie contracted tuberculosis and moved to Phoenix to recover from her illness while her husband went down to Los Angeles to find work. In spite of her illness, Judd was able to get a job as a secretary for a clinic. There, it seemed, her troubles began.
She befriended two coworkers, Anne LeRoi and Sammy Samuelson. The three women were, at first, great friends and inseparable, even sharing an apartment for a time. But squabbles over house rules and men (all three girls were party girls, inviting men to their apartment for dinner and cards) forced them apart, and Winnie moved into her own place a few blocks away but still maintained close ties with the two other women. There was nothing deadly about this — just like a lot of women friends, they were simply not compatible as roommates.
The details of the crime are still rather fuzzy and uncertain, which is one of the bizarre aspects of this case. What is known is Winnie killed Anne and Sammy and was herself injured in the process. The reason for the murder is also hazy. Some say she killed them out of jealousy, as all three women were crazy about a prominent and influential businessman named John “Happy Jack” Halloran. Judd maintained all her life that the two women attacked her and she killed them out of self-defense. However, the narrative Judd told about this in the 1960s was odd and confusing and not very believable.
What happened next, though, was even more bizarre than the seeming lack of motive. Winnie headed for the train station, presumably to take the train to Los Angeles to be with her husband. She took several large trunks with her. In L.A., those trunks were discovered to be reeking of a bad odor and leaking blood. What was inside would feed the imagination of the press and its readers for months: the dismembered bodies of the two women she killed.
Judd was eventually caught and brought back to Phoenix for trial. The verdict was guilty, and Judd was sentenced to the death penalty. However, in 1933, that sentence was overturned, and Judd was confined to a mental institution instead. She ran away six times in thirty years, the last time managing to evade the police and work for a family as a live-in maid for six years before she was caught and brought back to the institution. However, by that time, she was able to lobby for parole and was granted it in 1971. Twelve years later, she was released from parole and completely free. She moved back to Arizona and lived there until her death in 1998.
There are a lot of twists and turns to this case, including a possible cover-up. To find out the complete dossier on the case, you’ll want to sign up for my newsletter here. If this is your first time signing up, you’ll get some goodies as a gift, including an Adele Gossling Mysteries novella.
As for A Weekend Getaway Murder, the book is on preorder now at a special price. You can read all about it here.
