By Jana Bommersbach
If historical past is correct, she used to be sentenced to die yet ""cheated the gallows"" by way of performing insane. She spent approximately forty years in Arizona's insane asylum-flummoxing officers via escaping six instances.
If historical past is correct, she simply bought her freedom at age 66-after serving extra time than the other convicted assassin within the heritage of the nation--because Arizona was once ultimately bored with punishing her.
But if historical past is incorrect, Winnie Ruth Judd's existence was once squandered in a terrible miscarriage of justice.
Award-winning journalist Jana Bommersbach reinvestigates the twisted, strange homicide case that has captivated the kingdom for many years. She not just uncovers proof lengthy hidden, yet will get Winnie Ruth Judd to damage her life-long silence and eventually converse.
In telling the tale of this American crime legend, Bommersbach additionally tells the tale of Phoenix, Arizona-a backwater city that will turn into an incredible American city-and the tale of a distinct second in American historical past jam-packed with social taboos.
But such a lot of all, she tells the tale of a lady with the braveness to survive.
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Extra resources for The Trunk Murderess
Sample text
New York had just built the world舗s tallest structure, the Empire State Building, at an astonishing one floor per day. Nobody in Phoenix could even imagine a building 102 stories tall, but they were just as excited at their own emerging profile. Already seven buildings of over four stories graced the city, including the sixteen-story Westward Ho Hotel, which would remain the tallest until 1959. There had been parties and hoopla when each new building opened. 舡 It wasn舗t just a selling point, it was the city舗s priority list.
That舗s the point, I stressed. She舗s never talked. She didn舗t testify at her trial, and by the time she tried to speak, they said she was insane and who舗d listen to a crazy lady? She舗s stayed silent all these years, and if the curiosity about this case is ever to be satisfied, she has to talk. Debus, who owed me a favor for some forgotten reason, agreed to try because her case had always troubled him. 舠She was the victim of small-town politics and a justice system that wasn舗t just,舡 he said. 舠She deserved to be punished for the right crime.
It finds the story of Winnie Ruth Judd is really two stories: the one that history records, and what really happened. But it舗s not just the story of a puzzling crime that still fascinates. Or of extreme punishment. Or, as this investigation reveals, of some of the most bizarre twists ever seen in a murder case. It舗s the story of a backwater town that would become one of America舗s major cities. It舗s the story of a moment in time舒with its social taboos, its hysterical conventionality, and its concentrated political power舒when this strange story could be orchestrated.
