Review: "The Murderess," Laurie Notaro

In 1931, Winnie Ruth Judd, a preacher’s daughter from Indiana, arrived at Union Station is Los Angeles with the bodies of two women (one dismembered) in her luggage.

Really.

Laurie Notaro tells Judd’s story in a gripping novel that reads like a true crime story.

Which it is.

I only had a passing knowledge of Judd, which is surprising. I was a true-crime buff in my younger years. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood remains one of my favorite books, and I devoured almost everything Ann Rule wrote.

But I knew very little about Judd. So I was able to read and enjoy this book as a fictional creation. When I compared the narrative to the facts, however, I realized how firmly the author had stuck to the facts.

Here’s how the story unfolds in the novel:

Judd was a small, pretty and personable woman. She married Dr. William C. Judd, in 1922, perhaps to escape her restrictive upbringing. She was 17, he was 37.

Judd was a veteran of World War I and became a drug addict, likely due to his injuries. The couple moved around the Southwest and spent time in Mexico—he kept getting fired due to his problems. Ruth, as she was known, had issues of her own. She was mentally ill, probably schizophrenic.

In 1929, Dr. Judd takes a job in California. He sends Ruth back to Indiana to stay with her parents for awhile. En route, Ruth meets a woman who’s headed for California to open a beauty salon. She decides to go along, and cashes in her train ticket. When the woman’s car breaks down, Ruth finds herself stuck in Phoenix.

She decides to settle in and bloom where she’s planted. Ruth gets a job as a secretary in a new medical clinic and makes friends with Anne LeRoi and Helvig “Sammy” Samuelson, who share a house. The three enjoy meals and games of cards together, and listening to mystery show broadcasts on the radio.

Then Ruth meets Jack Halloran, a wealthy lumber broker and contractor. She exults in their affair—until he meets Anne and Sammy.

He and Anne flirt outrageously. Ruth is sure the relationship is going further than that. And then Jack begins bringing men to Anne and Sammy’s bungalow—clients he wants to impress. Wild parties ensue.

Ruth feels more and more isolated—and betrayed. Her old demons rise to the surface. Her friends insist nothing untoward is happening, and convince Ruth to stay overnight at the bungalow. By morning, both Anne and Sammy are dead.

When Ruth arrives with her morbid cargo at Union Station, the trunks are reeking. The police are called. Ruth disappears. She goes on the lam, is caught and extradited to Arizona. Ruth is on death row when she is declared insane and sent to the state hospital.

There she manages to escape several times before authorities decide to let her just be—until another murder happens.

Yes, it’s one of those stories where, if the writer made it up, it would defy belief.

Ruth is a sympathetic character despite herself. She never got the help she needed, even though her issues surfaced in adolescence. She was vilified in the press, which called her “the velvet tigress.” And it’s highly unlikely that she was able to cut up Sammy with surgical precision. Jack Halloran was indicted as an accomplice but eventually exonerated. It is a satisfying bit of karma that he did lose all his wealth and died young and alone.

Ruth lived to the ripe old age of 93, a legend in both life and death. Her story, real and fictionalized, is fascinating.