Several minutes before all the passengers had collected their luggage from the platform when a woman appeared in search of two enormous trunks. George, the porter at the train station, quickly stopped her: the smell they gave off from her made him suspect that she had some contraband product.
Faced with the evasions of the owner, George's boss entered the scene and urged the woman to open the suitcases, but after claiming that she did not have the key and excusing herself to make a call, the stranger disappeared. Minutes later, the police arrived at the platform and forced the locks on the suitcases. Once open, he came across a gruesome scene: two mutilated women. From there began a frantic search to find Winnie Judd, the trunk killer.
Winnie Ruth McKinnell was born on January 29, 1905 in Oxford, Indiana, and was raised under the Christian precepts of justice, sanctification, and mercy of the Methodist Church. Her father was one of the reverends. Little else is known about the young woman except that she married Dr. William C. Judd at the age of 17, a doctor twenty years her senior, from whom she took her last name and settled in northern Mexico.
Their marriage was a complete failure. Her husband's addictions, the impossibility of getting pregnant and the diagnosis of tuberculosis, as well as the disappointment of a life completely different from the one imagined -she dreamed of traveling, while he toured towns in deplorable conditions- took a toll on Winnie, who decided to put middle ground, take a break and return to the United States.
Our protagonist found in Phoenix (Arizona) a kind of letter of freedom where she could recover her health and fend for herself. Her first radical change was her image: she now wore a bob-style cut, very fashionable in that year 1930 of the last century. Later, she began working as a governess for the Leigh Ford family and, as a work of fate, she met the one who would be her lover, the seductive Jack Halloran. The downfall of her.
The man was a 44-year-old successful businessman and neighbor of the Fords, with extensive contacts in the world of politics and a knack for pulling strings in the shadows. He rubbed shoulders with important people, whom he cajoled, had a riveting oratory and "a laugh that could fill a room," he said. In addition, he was a born conqueror: all the women fell in love with him, including Winnie.
The young woman fell madly in love with Jack and they began an affair in secret and became lovers. As the months passed, Winnie continued communication with her husband, completely unaware of her relationship status, quit her job as a governess, set up as a medical secretary in a private practice, and rented her own home at 1102 East Brill Street.
At the same time, Winnie developed a strong friendship with two coworkers: Agnes Anne LeRoi, a 32-year-old X-ray technician, and Hedvig “Sammy” Samuelson, 24, a medical student. Gossip pointed to both as bisexuals and lovers, something very frowned upon at that time, but not so in Winnie's eyes.
It was precisely this that led the young woman to trust her new friends and not question Jack's kindness with these women, whom he often visited alone and without Winnie's company. The young woman was incapable of imagining that her lover maintained an intimate relationship with all three at the same time.
However, her lover's bad reputation was a fact. This is how a devastating rivalry was propped up under these secret relationships.
On Friday, October 16, 1931, the tension between the three friends broke out as a result of a monumental fight, leading to the double crime. Winnie lashed out at Sammy, who was carrying a .25 caliber pistol, knocking it over and firing it into her chest.
A few seconds before and in the middle of the struggle, a bullet had accidentally hit Winnie's left hand, leaving her badly injured. Seconds later, the assassin was also killing Agnes.
Then Winnie took the tram and went home, where Jack was waiting for her. Prey to her nerves, she told him what happened and, from this moment on, two different versions of the subsequent events emerge. Was the murderer able to accurately dismember the corpses of her friends, hide them in two trunks and put them on a train without the help of a third party?
Or as she herself pointed out during the trial, was it her lover who helped her in all this process after the crimes? "She told me that he would take care of this himself ... and that everything would be fine," she said, but that he should "say absolutely nothing [to anyone]."
Although the initial plan was to dump the bodies in an inhospitable area, it would be easier for the police to identify the victims and link them to Winnie. Hence, he finally chose to put them in two trunks and take them by train to Los Angeles, where one of his brothers lived. "There would be someone there to receive me, a name called Williams or Wilson," he declared, pointing to his lover as the architect of the plan.
Two days later, Winnie, her hand bandaged and blood oozing from her gunshot wound, boarded the express for Los Angeles. Arriving at the station and greeting her little brother, she headed to the baggage platform later than expected.
There the inspectors questioned her about the nauseating odor content and Winnie, after several evasions, fled. Shortly after, the police would discover the origin of that characteristic stench: two decomposing corpses.
Authorities launched an unprecedented manhunt and, on October 23, arrested the murderer hiding in a funeral home. “I'm Winnie Ruth Judd,” she acknowledged. And, at the gates of the police station before a crowd of journalists, she whimpered: “I had to do it. She had to do it”.
Before the interrogation, Winnie underwent an emergency operation to remove the bullet from her left hand, which was already gangrenous, and hours later they took her statement to clarify the facts.
From there, the press took part in a sensationalist circus, made front pages in the most important newspapers and baptized the defendant as "tiger woman", "velvet tigress" or "the blonde butcher". The famous trunk killer had just been born.
On January 19, 1932, the Maricopa County Court, presided over by Judge Howard C. Speakman, began the trial of Winnie Judd for the murder of Agnes LeRoi, but not for the murder of Hedvig Samuelson due to insufficient evidence.
During the trial, the prosecution maintained that the defendant acted with premeditation and out of jealousy, and that the gunshot wound to her left hand was self-inflicted and not in self-defense, as she stated under arrest.
For its part, the defense opted for the strategy of mental alienation to exonerate its client. According to her lawyer, Winnie was innocent of all charges due to her psychological problems. Added to this was the defendant's own statement on the stand.
First, the murderer confirmed her first version before the authorities: the deaths of her friends were in self-defense after a violent altercation during a heated argument.
Later, she pointed to her lover, Jack Halloran, as the true architect of the dismemberment and concealment of the corpses. “He eliminated all the evidence, he is guilty of everything that I am guilty of,” she said.
And he justified himself in a handwritten letter: “I couldn't have done this… I was very sick. I was not present when the dismemberment and placement of the bodies in the trunks took place. However, I admit that it was a gruesome act. I have asked God for forgiveness many times for my role in transporting the trunks to Los Angeles, but I was sick, injured and in shock."
The explanations and forensic reports on the movement and transfer of the bodies were useless. On February 8, the jury found the trunk killer guilty of first-degree murder, and ten days later Judge Speakman sentenced her to death by hanging.
However, the death sentence was overturned by declaring her mentally incompetent at a later hearing. Her destination would not be prison but the Arizona State Asylum. Meanwhile, her lover was arrested and brought before a court. Without prosecution evidence and only with the testimony of a woman with psychological problems, Jack was released.
Between 1933 and 1963, Winnie escaped up to six times from this mental institution, from where she even left through the main door by getting a key. In her latest run, which lasted six years, the killer established herself as a maid for a wealthy family in the San Francisco Bay Area under the assumed name of Marian Kane.
After her true identity was discovered in August 1969, Winnie was sent back to the mental hospital. Two years later and after several legal disputes, the state granted him parole and "absolute release" in 1983.
Until the day of her death, on October 23, 1998, Winnie always maintained her version about the night of the proceedings: she admitted to having shot Agnes and Sammy, but "I will never confess to a murder, only self-defense."
Before her death, at the age of 93, investigative journalist Jana Bommersbach dusted off this case, interviewed the protagonist and pointed to the seductive lover as the architect of what happened.
In her book The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd, the writer states not only that Halloran's release was a judicial error, but that his exoneration was due to a political cover-up. According to witnesses, her car was seen the night of the murders and also the following day, but the psychological instability of the murderer played in her favor. No one saw him as her accomplice.
