A warning for listeners: This episode talks about explicit and disturbing material, including murder-suicide and sexual abuse. Please, take care while listening. 

One Tuesday night in 2006, 28-year-old Zack Bowen, an Iraq War veteran, stuffed a hand-written note in his front pocket and nervously sipped his drink on the outside terrace of the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel before flinging himself from the rooftop.

In his note, on his lifeless body, Zack admitted to strangling, sexually violating and dismembering his girlfriend, Addie Hall, two weeks earlier. He also revealed her remains could be found in the flat above a voodoo shop that the couple shared.

At the end of part 1, Winnie Ruth Judd gave her first and only public confession about the murder of her two friends, Anne and Sammy, while awaiting her execution at the Arizona State Prison.

The confession led to her lover, Jack Halloran’s indictment, but as you may recall, Ruth pleaded not guilty due to self defense. When the judge agreed with her, he indirectly nullified Jack’s involvement in the murders and the cover up.

Jack was free to go, but Ruth remained under the hot spotlight of the media and the watchful eye of the state.

And the state remained under the searing, hungry eyes of the entire nation. Too much was at stake to let Ruth walk now. With her death sentence overturned, Ruth was deemed, quote, “mentally incompetent”, and became a lifetime patient of the Arizona State Asylum for the Insane. Or did she?

Today’s story takes place in Phoenix, Arizona, 1931 - two years deep into the Great Depression. Once considered a one-horse-town, the city had doubled in size as it neared 20 years of statehood and withstood economic hardships better than most. 

On the surface, the Valley of the Sun was inhabited by tight-laced moralists and virtuous families. 

But beneath the thin facade of all things prim and proper, lurked a more sinister version of the law-abiding community. 

The burgeoning metropolis teemed with late-night parties, bootlegging, and secret deals forged by powerful business tycoons and politicians - all men, of course - who controlled the rise and fall of the desert tides.

James Halloran, or “Happy Jack,” as he was known around town, was one of those men.  

For right or wrong, his name would turn to dust from Phoenix history books, replaced by a rather unextraordinary woman. National headlines dubbed her “The Tiger Woman,” others “The Blonde Butcher.” But no moniker would be so on the nose / as “The Trunk Murderess.” 

I’m Kate Naglieri - welcome to The Bygone Society Show. 

Sources:1. The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd, Poisoned Pen Press, by Jana Bommersbach2. The Big House on the Gila, Arizona Memory Project, by an ex-convict 3. Murder & Mayhem: The Strange Saga of Winnie Ruth Judd, Arizona Memory Project 4. The Velvet Tigress, Vimeo, by Jen Sachs