Book description
If history is right, a 26 year-old beauty named Winnie Ruth Judd
murdered her two best girlfriends one hot Phoenix night in 1931. Then
she hacked up their bodies, stuffed the pieces into a trunk, and took
them by train to Los Angeles as her baggage. If history is right, she
was sentenced to die but "cheated the gallows" by acting
insane. She spent nearly 40 years in Arizona's insane asylum-flummoxing
officials by escaping six times. If history is right, she only got her
freedom at age 66-after serving more time than any other convicted
murderer in the history of the nation--because Arizona was finally tired
of punishing her. But if history is wrong, Winnie Ruth Judd's life was
squandered in a horrible miscarriage of justice. Award-winning
journalist Jana Bommersbach reinvestigates the twisted, bizarre murder
case that has captivated the nation for decades. She not only uncovers
evidence long hidden, but gets Winnie Ruth Judd to break her life-long
silence and finally speak. In telling the story of this American crime
legend, Bommersbach also tells the story of Phoenix, Arizona-a backwater
town that would become a major American city-and the story of a unique
moment in American history filled with social taboos. But most of all,
she tells the story of a woman with the courage to survive. A backward
look at a headliner who did in and chopped up two women, put the pieces
into two trunks and calmly started to ship them. It was the pieces-parts
angle that captured the headlines, that and the fact that Winnie Ruth
was, if we are to believe the photos, a real stunner. Glamour, blood and
a cold-case, what more could even a tabloid desire? But there was more
to it than that and Bommersbach weaves the tale well - with care and
detail, including the endings which make Judd into a female Houdini who
drove the Arizona prison system nuts. Pick your own star when you
mentally cast this for a mini-series. Jana Bommersbach is one of
Arizona's most respected and acclaimed journalists. She has earned
numerous national, state and regional awards, including the prestigious
Don Bolles Award for investigative reporting for the newspaper series on
Winnie Ruth Judd that led to this book. She lives in Phoenix.
