In the 1930's, trunks are unloaded from a Phoenix to Los Angeles train. Something red and sticky is dripping from them and there's a horrible smell in the air. The train officials figure that someone wants to import a dead deer. When a lovely young woman comes to claim this baggage, they are surprised...she doesn't look like a hunter. When they ask her to open the trunks, she explains that she doesn't have the key but will go home to fetch it. They let her leave and she doesn't return. Eventually the police are called, they break the trunk locks, and find two carved up bodies of young women, the sight and smell so vile that the police had to run outside to vomit.
So begins the true crime life of Winnie Ruth Judd, the Trunk Murderess. The author fictionalizes Judd's story but it adheres very closely to the truth which reads like fiction. We follow the events in Judd's life that lead her to that train station and what comes after the trunks are discovered. Her marriage to her addict husband, Doctor, her friends and competitors, Anne and Sammy, and Jack Halloran, the pillar of Phoenix society, are all well drawn. The Mexican Revolution, William Randolph Heart's newspaper, and the history of the small town in Arizona starting to emerge as the city of Phoenix are part of her story. Was this just a love triangle gone wrong, the actions of a severely mentally ill woman, or a case of vengeance in the soul-sucking Phoenix heat?
Being a Phoenix native, I was always aware of the Trunk Murderess and the basic story of Winnie Ruth Judd. But Notaro brings out so many things that I wasn't aware of, notably that Judd became a beautician operating her salon in the asylum, and that she died in 1998, at the age of 93. This novel holds its own as historical fiction, but also as a piece of lurid Arizona history that most people don't know but should. And now they will.
Reviewed by Donna Ballard
Publication date - October 8, 2024
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