True crime, social history, psychological insight - it's all here in The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd by award-winning investigative journalist Jana Bommersbach. Along with Bugsy, Dillinger, and Lizzie Borden, Winnie Ruth Judd entered the pages of true crime history when, in 1931, the twenty-six-year-old medical secretary and daughter of a minister allegedly shot and killed her two best friends in their Phoenix home, dismembered one body, stuffed them both into trunks, and checked them as baggage on a train to Los Angeles. That night - Friday, October 16, 1931 - marked the beginning of her nightmare and the birth of the crime legend known as "The Trunk Murderess."Judd was immediately arrested - her motive determined to be jealousy. Though she was married to a doctor, it was widely known that she was dating a handsome married man, prominent in Phoenix society, and that this same man had also been more than a little "friendly" with the two dead victims, Anne LeRoi and Hedvig "Sammy" Samuelson.Winnie Ruth Judd never stood a chance in Phoenix in 1931 - not as a woman, not against a so-called male pillar of society, and not against lawyers who found it more valuable to protect one of their own than to fight for justice. Never once was she given the opportunity to speak in her own defense. Winnie was sentenced to hang, but was saved from the gallows when her lawyer persuaded her to plead insanity. She was then committed to an insane asylum from which she repeatedly escaped, only to be found and returned again, for the next thirty-nine years of her life. Finally, in 1971, after spending more time in prison than any other convicted murderer in the history of the United States, Winnie Ruth Judd was paroled by the state of Arizona.The amount of information Bommersbach uncovered is phenomenal and is documented for the first time in the pages of this book. There is the original transcript of Winnie's testimony to the sheriff; hospital and police records; forensic reports; and personal letters. And, there are sixteen pages of absolutely incredible photographs.Bommersbach interviewed hundreds of people who were involved with the case, including the only living member of the jury. Most important, she has spoken with the only person who knows the absolute truth: Winnie Ruth Judd.Winnie Ruth Judd, who is in her eighties and lives under a false name in California, revealed to Bommersbach openly and honestly her painful and frightening memories of that fateful night in Phoenix, the terrible years of imprisonment in the asylum, and the people who were behind the massive cover-up which destroyed her life.This is not just the story of a puzzling crime that still fascinates, nor an investigation of one of the most twisted, bizarre murder cases in American history. It is a story of a backwater town that would become a major city; the story of a moment in time filled with social taboos: the story of a woman whose courage to survive has been nothing short of heroic. Read Less