November 12, 2025 • 58 mins
In this concluding half of a two-parter, Paul and Kate return to an investigation started by the discovery of two bodies in 1931 Los Angeles. After a suspect is apprehended, a harrowing investigation and court case lead investigators in some unexpected directions.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Ay, Kate, how are you?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm doing well. Have you been thinking about this case, Paul.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I've been thinking about it all week?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
John, Yes, Oh what's going on? I was trying to
not snicker every time you said he he he he
when we were talking about the offender and I said,
I wonder if he's going to get mad at me,
which is why I put the reveal at the very end,
because then you wouldn't have time to be mad at me.
When I said, oh, it's a woman.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I am so used to you just leaving me hanging
and bamboozling me and all of that.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
So it's all right, I know it's my job. I
know I've been called a lot of things. I'm not
sure a bamboozler is something I've ever been called, but
I appreciate. Well, let's get into this because I just
there's a lot of background. So the first half of
this was very forensic ly, you know, talk about wounds
and weapons and who the potential offender is. Now we
(01:52):
know who the offender is, and now you're going to
have to kind of get into the criminal profiling part
of this, or the offender profiling, because this is not
an open and shut case. As you can tell, a
woman who is being accused of murdering her two former roommates, who,
as we get into this, we're very good friends. So
let me go ahead and do the recap and then
(02:12):
we'll get right back into it. If you've had any
lingering questions or thoughts, you can certainly talk about that
after the recap. Sure, Okay, So nineteen thirty one, a
train arrives from Phoenix to Los Angeles. There are a
couple of steamer trunks, a small brown suitcase, and a
hat box that smell. There are body parts belonging to
(02:34):
one woman in various locations in these different things, and
then another woman who is curled up in the fetal position.
Both are dead, and there has been oozing and smells.
There was a woman who showed up with a friend
of hers who was college age. His name was Burton,
and they claimed the trunks. But then when they thought
(02:56):
it seemed a little like maybe somebody was suspicious of
them because of the ooze, they said, we don't have
the key, and then they took off and they're in
the wind. And in the meantime, they've put together all
of this information about the two women who were murdered.
They are Sammy and Anne. They are roommates in Phoenix.
(03:16):
One is a nurse, and we haven't had any red
flags except when they finally figure out because they know
who Burton is because I'm assuming they paid him and
knew his first and last name, they found out who
the other woman is, and the other woman is Winnie Judd,
who Winnie Ruth Judd is a pretty famous name. When
people have pitched this to me, which of course I
(03:37):
said was a fantastic idea, it's always as the trunk murderess,
which is what she was known for. We kind of
get into the world of tuberculosis of independent young women,
you know, in Phoenix, and you know, a kind of
a man hunt for this mysterious woman.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
When Winnie shows up with Burton in the La train station,
they know who he is. He's a local USC student
college age. Does he have any connection to Phoenix at all?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
It doesn't seem like it right now now, except this
is his sister. She is a woman that passengers start
to remember and recognize who was on the train with
the hat box and the small suitcase.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Okay, so this explains. So you have the two steamer
trunks that are in essence checked right. So when he
brings those to the train out in Phoenix, that goes
over to the train staff to in essence put them
in cargo for transport. But she holds onto the suitcase
and the hat box. And so when she gets off
(04:43):
and things are not looking right, she leaves those in
the bathroom at the train station in La.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Got it, abandoned all of it. If they had not
known Burton's name because he had worked for them, you know,
as a porter, I guess a little on a freelance
gig over Christmas to earn a extra money. Then I
don't know if they would have identified her, because I'm
sure she paid cash, and you know, eventually they would
have figured out with the roommate situation. But yeah, this
is this is where it all starts to kind of unravel.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, And I think what's interesting to me is why
is Winnie And I'm presuming Winnie is the one responsible
for Samy and Ann's death, dismemberment and transport to the
train station. Imagine the risk that she's taking. You know,
she in essence is transporting two homicide victims plus the
evidence from the crime scene with her out to LA
(05:32):
I have to conclude at this point that in her mind,
because she's a former roommate of the two victims, that
she would naturally presume that she would become a suspect.
And so fundamentally, she is trying to hide that a
crime has committed inside that condo, at least for as
long as possible, so she can set up maybe an
(05:54):
alibi or put distance between her and the crime scene.
In terms of physical distance as well as temporal distance.
How much time has passed before authorities discovered that you know,
these two victims are victims of homicide, but it.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Seems so disjointed. So she gets rid of these mattresses.
I don't know how. She almost gets halfway through cleanup
and then changes her mind, and then halfway through something
else and then changes. I just don't understand what her
mindset is, but maybe we will as we go along.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I think she got in over her head. That's what happened,
you know, And that's she's now taking shortcuts just to
get out of dodge.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Okay, well, let's get into this. Winnie and Burton. They're
both the children of a minister from Indiana. Winnie moved
to Phoenix from Mexico. She had been in Mexico in
nineteen thirty, so just a year before. Winnie is also
a lunger, so she had tuberculosis. So everybody's coming to Phoenix.
So she's there for about a year and she becomes
(06:53):
friends with Anne. Anne and Winnie work at the same clinic.
Remember I told you Anne's nurse and she's an X
ray technician and Winnie is a medical secretary. They become friends,
and Winnie moves in to this duplex and over a
game of cards, you know, they listen to I can
(07:17):
just sort of picture this is so nineteen thirties. So
they play bridge all the time, and they all like
to listen to the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which was
a radio show. And they have late night parties and
hang out with you know, well to do Phoenix men.
They're all attractive. Things get very complicated. They become good friends,
but then their love lives start happening. There's nobody's had
(07:40):
luck in this whole apartment with love and had been married.
I told you that Winnie had not been very lucky
in love either. Her husband is a guy named doctor
William Judd, and he is twenty three years older than her.
He is addicted to narcotics, and he had trouble holding
a job. And they got married when and she was
only nineteen, and she had two miscarriages. Her family was
(08:05):
giving the detectives in La some background on her, and
eventually they would talk to William, her husband, and they
would say, you know, what is she like? And they
said that she would sometimes fantasize about what life would
have been like if she had given birth to a
baby named Moses, Caesar or Napoleon. She would talk to
(08:29):
William about the baby's milestones and their adventures. She was
making up these stories. He thought it was silly, but
I think upon reflection, he wonders if there was some
sort of psychosis going on. Frequent moves and financial struggles
isolated William and Winnie, and she eventually had hoped that
(08:49):
she would just stay in Phoenix and that they would
stay married. But in nineteen thirty one, he was again
out of a job, and he took off and went
to la to look for work, and she was there,
you know, now living with these women. By June of
nineteen thirty one, all three of them had tuberculosis and
at that point, so Anne took off and went to
(09:10):
Portland for the summer to be with her family. And
Winnie and Sammy are now together.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
So when you say Winnie and Sammy are together, is
there more than just a friendship?
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Not that I know of, no, But I think they
were trying to support each other. I mean, tuberculosis is
not you take a pill and it's over with. It's
very long disease, and so I think they were trying
to help each other out. So Anne left in June,
and it left Sammy and Winnie together just to kind
of support each other. In August, Anne comes back, all
three of them living together. They were friends, but this
(09:44):
is also now the Great Depression, so there's just a
self preservation happening here. They are very low wages pretty soon.
This is a small place, remember there's one bedroom, and
eventually they kind of separate so that Winnie moves out
into a one bedroom apartment on Real Street in early October,
(10:05):
and it's close enough where she can walk to work
if she wants to. There didn't seem to be major fights,
according to the detectives what they found. She just you know,
moved out and moved not too far away. Within weeks though,
these two women are dead.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
You know, the detectives Observation are talking to doctor William
Judd and he's talking about how Winnie is kind of
constructing some sort of fantasy life between her and an
unborn child. And you know, these these names Napoleon, Moses,
and the other name is it Caesar Caesar? I mean,
(10:41):
obviously these are significant historic figures. I also start to think, okay,
something there is a mental health aspect going on with
with Winnie. Now if she's creating a construct with this
fantasy life with a child that she does not have.
(11:03):
How is she perceiving Sammy and Anne? You know, is
there potential misperception on Winnie's part just because she's got
some I don't know if I want to use the
term psychotic, but she's definitely got some sort of mental
illness that's causing her to maybe read into certain things
(11:23):
that Anne and Sammy have done or said that she's
now feeling slided by.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
I don't know how long, you know, any of these
women had had tuberculosis. I wonder if tuberculosis would you know,
make things worse if she did have a mental health struggle,
or would have caused something to begin with. I don't
know anything about it though in that way, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I definitely don't. But it also brings up not only
the disease, but what medications are they being given, you know,
and maybe maybe Whennie's having you know, a bad trip
so to speak, from whatever medicaid was being used for
TV back in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Again, somebody with mental health struggles when your husband is
in work, out of work, and he's an addict, an
active addict, you know, she was probably on her back
heels the whole time, just trying to figure out what's
up and what's down. You know, the police in California
and Arizona start searching, of course, immediately. This is a
three or four day long search trying to find Burton
(12:25):
and his sister Winnie. Eventually they find Burton and they
find William, the husband, and they talked to the Phoenix
neighbors coworkers at the clinic. During Burton and William's interrogations,
the police say it's clear that they had not been
involved with the crime. They were very open. They had
alibis to attest that neither had been in Phoenix during
(12:49):
that month when it happened. So what Burton says is
that he first heard about all of this with the
trunks when Winnie here at USC's campus around eleven am
on the day that she arrived in La so that
October nineteenth. So if we believe this, she did all
(13:11):
of this herself. The trunks go on the train, she
goes to La you know, she kind of abandons the
trunks and immediately goes to USC and finds her brother,
and he said that she said to him, you need
to come with me. You need to get these trunks.
We're going to sink them in the Pacific Ocean. She
doesn't explain why he tried not to pry. But then
(13:35):
when the station agent started interrogating them, he turned to
her after they left and said, did you kill someone?
And finally she said that she could justify everything that
happened is exactly what she said. And then she took
off and that was it. And then Burton is the
reason why that she's kind of been caught this early.
So we've got William who's been taken off the table
(13:56):
as an accomplice. We've got Burton who's been taken off
the table by the police. Then they go to Winnie's apartment,
remember she has that one bedroom apartment. They find surgical
instruments in a satchel. There are also bottles of tell
me if this is right. There are bottles of luminol,
which is a non narcotic sedative. Is that luminol? Luminol?
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I'm presuming. So I'm not familiar with luminol being used
in a medical sense, but it wouldn't surprise me. You know,
when we use luminol for visualizing latent bloodstains at a
crime scene, it's mixed with sodium hydroxide. You know, it's
got a buffer, Okay, But the luminol I think would
be the drug that they would be using.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Pino barbitual used as a sedative into control seizures, calming
effect and induces drowsiness. So that's what they found luminol.
They also found one suitcase that had men's clothing, a
man's surgical shirt, and an article of women's lingerie. There's
another suitcase. I mean, boy, she just packed all of
(15:01):
these in another suitcase that had some blankets, a small
caliber shell which had been fired, we presume of a
twenty five caliber shell, and a photo album of the
family with friends the jud family. In the southwest corner
of the bedroom, under a chair, they find another shell.
The shell matches the shells and the bullet in the trunk.
They said that there were nine tablets of poison that
(15:25):
were typically in William Judd's medicine cabinet, so he must
have lived there off and on. The researcher Ali said
she can find out what kind of poison it was,
but the first wife of William died of an accidental
morphine poisoning, so if that's what he's addicted to, and
(15:45):
that's what he had on hand. The poison could have
been morphine.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
I suppose it sounds like when Hee was looking at
a variety of different ways to kill Sammy and and
poison possibly being one of the first ways that she
thought about. And then the expended cartridge cases, the shells,
the twenty five caliber shells found at Winnie's place. You know,
I kind of wonder did she maybe she had no
(16:11):
firearms experience and so these were test shots so she
could figure out how a gun works. You know, I
don't know if they found any you know, bullet impacts
inside her apartment, or she could have gone outside and
shot at a tree. You know, who knows, But you
know the fact that she would be bringing the cartridge
cases back inside seems remote, but maybe not.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
The mystery expands here. She ends up surrendering on kind
of the fourth day of this search. Okay, she turns
herself in in La to the police. A plea from
her husband and his assurance that you know, they would
hire the best lawyers is what got her in there.
So he had been interviewed by newspapers saying, turn yourself in.
(16:55):
This isn't going to end well, I will take care
of you, I promise. So she turned herself in. She
had been hiding at Lavina Sanitarium, where she had been
previously treated for tuberculosis. She had also been hiding in
a Broadway department store where she had once been a clerk. Okay,
so she's turning herself in.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, I think what will be interesting to me? You know,
she's bringing Burton out to the train station. I mean,
he's a patsy. He has no idea at least when she,
oh yeah, initially reaches out to him and he shows
up at the train station that this is a homicide
case that she's asking him to participate in. So she's
needing his help to move these steamer trunks, the suitcases,
(17:37):
et cetera. And it may just be she needs to
do that in a quick, kind of non suspicious manner,
having her brother with her. But what's going on out
in Phoenix. I mean she's having to get all of
these items out of the apartment, plus two mattresses. There's
obviously a vehicle involved. Is it her vehicle she's driving
(17:58):
disposing of these mattresses. One is found, one isn't. But
she has to get to the train station and get
those items up onto the train. Is her vehicle parked
at the Phoenix train station, and if it's not, then
I would say somebody transported her there and that could
be your accessory on the front end.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Okay, we have a confession, which I know seems odd
because we're definitely not at the end of this episode.
But let me tell you what she says. She gets in,
she starts to talk to the police. William did get
her a good attorney. Her attorney reads a prepared confession. Now,
I don't have a note about whether or not this
is to the police or to the press or what
is happening, but.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
It's also filtered through her attorney.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
You're right, Okay, So this is what she says through
her attorney. I had gone to the girls home to
confront Miss Samuelson, which is Sammy, for some nasty things
she had said about missus Leroy, who is Anne. Miss
Samuelson got a hold of a gun and she shot
me in the left hand. I struggled with her and
the gun fell. Miss Leroy grabbed an ironing board and
(19:05):
started to strike me over the head with it. In
the struggle, I got hold of the gun and Sammy
got shot. Missus Leroy was still coming at me with
the ironing board and I had to shoot her. Then
I ran away from the place. And her hand does
have a bullet lodged in it.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, it's bs.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
You can act professional about this apology. You're so funny.
Your face changed in the middle of that statement.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Well, okay, so you know think about this. Let's talk
about and this is this is your prototypical husband accidentally
shoots wife and she's got a contact gunshot wound to
her left temple and has a contact gunshot wound to
her left temple. This is a gun that has been
(19:55):
placed hard against her head and the trigger was pulled.
This is not not a self defense scenario where now
in the process of defending herself, Winnie shoots. And this
is an absolute fabrication. And this is the attorney setting
up a self defense case to try to get his
client off. But the physical evidence completely contradicts that statement.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
I think self defense is on the table for sure.
Her left hand, just so you know, is completely bandaged.
She also has a blackish wound between the fourth and
fifth fingers on her right hand. Because it is looking
like it's developing into ganggreen Winnie is escorted to the
Georgia Street Receiving Hospital. They extract a twenty five caliber
(20:44):
bullet from the base of her middle finger, close to
the point where it joined with the fractured index finger.
There were contusions over much of Winnie's body, So that's
going to be part of the self defense part, obviously,
we know. But self defense when the victim is fighting
back to try to save her own life does not
count well.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
And we've got an expended cartridge case or shell in
Winnie's own apartment. You know, this is going back to that.
This is you know, you see these offenders when they're
trying to stage a crime scene. She's shooting herself in
the hand. She's not shooting herself someplace where it might
be fatal, you know. So this all speaks to she's
(21:25):
pre planning, you know, her self defense by injuring herself
both with the gun as well as maybe she's you know,
throwing herself up against walls and pieces of furniture inside
her apartment, realizing, oh, they found out, they've got the
steamer trunks, and now I've got to figure out how
I'm going to get out of this, and I'm drawing
(21:46):
that conclusion just based off of how ridiculous her statement
is relative to the physical evidence.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Well, we'll see what the prosecution says. They're now putting
together a case, and they're trying to do it quickly
because it's already October twenty ninth when she is extradited
to Phoenix to stand trial on first regree murder charges
for Ann. They'll have a separate trial for Sammy. So
her case involving Anne starts in January. So she's sitting
(22:13):
in jail for November and December and most of January,
and it's in downtown Phoenix. And it is a media
shit show, is probably the only way I can describe it.
And this is a bary bones first, I just thought
you'd think this was fun. We have actual video footage
from the trial because this was such a big deal,
this trial, So I sent you a video file.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
So it opens up showing who I'm assuming are the
attorneys or the DA involved in the case, and then
it's showing a packed courtroom, and then now it looks
like the defendant when he judges sat down. She's dressed
in a very conservative outfit. She's looking very demuror trying
to pretend to be an innocent defendant. Well, but she's
(22:58):
been coached, you know, it's try to get the jurors sympathy. Yeah,
and then that's it. So, you know, what stood out
to me, Like you had mentioned earlier that Anne, Sammy,
and Winnie were all three reasonably attractive women. Winnie is
an attractive woman for sure, you know, and so you
could see where, you know, the jury could find her
(23:18):
as a very sympathetic figure. And so the prosecution, you know,
does have a little bit of a hurdle to cross,
to say that this woman, attractive woman who's sitting there
looking innocent, you know, shot and killed two women in Phoenix,
cut one of them up, and transported their bodies halfway
across the United States. Yeah, I mean it sounds unbelievable,
(23:40):
but you know, obviously there's no questions she's involved.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Let's go back though, to our discussion about we didn't
say psychosis, but the imagining the future of babies who
aren't there, the husband who's addicted to stuff, she's got tuberculosis.
Can any of that fit into this scenario.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
At the same time, it fits into sort of the
why why did she do this? How does this play
out in a legal sense, you know, particularly in Arizona,
and what are there insanity statutes. You know, from my perspective,
you know, she may have some sort of mental illness
(24:23):
going on, but take a look at the level the
extent that she went through to try to cover up
the crime. That is showing she knows right from wrong.
And generally when you can show that within somebody, there
isn't that insanity aspect to them. There may be arguments,
(24:44):
mostly maybe on the sentencing side in terms of, you know,
how severe the punishment is going to be because of
some sort of diminished capacity situation, but in terms of
guilt or not guilt, you know, she knew from wrong
and she knew what she was doing when she did it,
that this was a crime. I mean, it's a horrific crime.
(25:06):
She killed two women.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well, let's continue on because there are two sides to this,
and I understand what you're saying, but you know, yeah,
I'm not ready to end the podcast right now, Paul,
So just bear with me. I'm ready to go to dinner.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Case to try to convince me she's innocent, and that's
going to be a big hurdle.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I want to present both sides of this case as
the objective journalist that I am, so let me show
you what I've got. Okay. The prosecution says that Winnie
had acted with premeditation. We've already talked about. That she
shot herself is what they believe. And here is the
mystery figure that I had told you. We need to
(25:47):
mention there is a romantic rivalry between her husband and
a lover that she has become involved with. He is
a wealthy Phoenix lumber baron. I don't get to say
barn very much with these sorts of stories. His name
is Jack, Happy Jack. I put quotes around that happy Jack. Halleran,
(26:09):
We'll go with Jack. And they had been having an
affair since December of nineteen thirty, so nine or ten
months or so until this happened. So the doctors in
Phoenix had told the police that a month before the murder,
Winnie had taken a pregnancy test because she thought she
was pregnant. She was not, sounds like. Also, the DA
(26:29):
presents what they called the drain pipe letter. So this
is to me really interesting. So one day after Winnie
turned herself in, there was a plumber who was called
to that store that department store where she worked. The
owner said, something's lodged into I think it was the toilet.
It was a wad of telegraph sheets that had been
(26:51):
torn up and flushed. Winnie had been, of course, hiding
in this space until she turned herself in. It sounds
like a dressed to her husband. Not but it's a
confession and this is well, so let's see how different
this is. According to the letter, on the morning of
October seventeenth, these three women fought over whether they should
(27:11):
alert mister h who is you know? Jack hallierrant to
the fact that Winnie had introduced him to a woman
who had syphilis. And I don't know if that was
the intention for them to sleep together. That's what it
sounds like. And this isn't a letter to her husband.
So Winnie says, is defending herself, and she says, I
(27:33):
did not set him up with some bad woman. Because
Winnie said, she's undergoing treatment for syphilis, so she's not contagious.
Do not tell him this information. Ann said, no, that's awful.
I'm going to tell him myself that Winnie is associated
with people who have syphilis and they won't have a
thing to do with you. Is what Anne told Winnie.
(27:55):
If we think Winnie's the one who wrote this letter,
which I'm sure we do, Sammy, we need a gun
at Winnie is what Winnie says to her husband in
this letter. In fear for her life, Winnie covered the
gun's muzzle with her hand, grabbed a bread knife, and
after Sammy shot her hand, Winnie disarmed her and retaliated.
Believing that Anne had plotted to blackmail her, she shot
(28:18):
her too. The letter ends with the writer reasserting that
she had killed in self defense. She said, I am
essentially dead at this point. Forgive me, not forget me.
She says. It was as much a battle as Germany
and the US. I killed in self defense, so she
was at war, she was saying.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
And again this is BS.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
I don't understand the dynamic between Halran and Winnie here,
but I'm gonna see if we hear from him. What
do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Let me just address you know straight up. You know
this confession to her estranged husband, William. Yep, you know
she's saying in this confession that Sammy produced the twenty
five caliber pistol. And so when he, of course covers
the pistol, up with her hand, arms herself with a knife,
and that's presumably how she gets her injury to her
Her hand is during this struggle. Yet she has expended
(29:14):
cartridge cases from that pistol in her apartment all the
way out in la That ballistics showed came from that pistol.
It matches the bullets out in Phoenix. So again this
doesn't make any sense. Why is Samy out of Phoenix
producing the murder weapon, and then why is Whinnie taking
this pistol And in fact, she doesn't take the pistol.
(29:36):
The pistol is found inside I think it was a
hat box. I mean, she's in the process of transporting
the pistol back. It never makes it back to her apartment,
So she had that pistol ahead of time, and then
it gets taken out to Phoenix where she shoots and Sammy. Again,
the physical evidence doesn't match the confession. So this is
(29:58):
a letter to her strange husband that is self serving.
And I'm not entirely sure the reason for this whole
syphilis aspect. That may just be it's such an outrageous
act to set somebody up that you know has such
what could potentially be a disfiguring and deadly disease, that
(30:19):
there's a reason why Winnie had to act the way
she did and kill Sammy and Anne. I think she's
just trying to come up with a mechanism as to
why she acted out in self defense. So it's completely
self serving. It doesn't match up with the physical evidence and.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
The defenses sort of behind everything to begin with the
judges ruling against them for bringing on certain kinds of experts,
and nobody's talking about this bloody fingerprint, which I thought
was interesting. It was a thumb print actually on the
window shade, So we don't hear anything about that. We
hear in the defense from two psychiatrists who say she
(30:59):
was faking insanity.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Oh, Also one interesting note, So there were witnesses who
did see Winnie at the duplex because she didn't live
there anymore, and it was Friday night, so ten thirty pm.
I just thought you'd be interested in the sequence of events.
So ten thirty pm Friday night, she kills them, and
then she takes the Sunday night train to Los Angeles.
So she takes all day Saturday and most of the
(31:23):
day Sunday to get this taken care do you feel
like she needed an accomplice or no, I know we've
kind of touched on this before.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
I don't think she necessarily needed an accomplice. And when
you take a look, I did see that photo of
the hallway in Anne and Sammy's apartment where you have
the scratches on the floor, it's obvious those scratches are
from those metal protective corners on the heavy steamer trunk
and it's being drug So that suggests to me one
(31:51):
person is dragging that trunk at least over that section
of the exposed floor. It is a lot of work
for one person to do everything that happened, you know,
in terms of the dismemberment, the clean up, the packaging,
getting into a vehicle, disposing the mattresses, getting everything out
(32:12):
to the train. And that's where I, you know, from
an investigator standpoint, is like, well, wor's her vehicle? Is
her vehicle at the Phoenix train station. If it's not,
then I have questions. And then oh, maybe there is
an accomplished And it may be another patsy where she
called up and said, hey, you know, I've got some
heavy luggage. Can you help pick this up? And oh,
by the way a couple of mattresses, you know, bring
(32:33):
a truck and just ignore the fact that one mattress
has a bunch of blood on it.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah, it's it's pretty Uh, you'd have to have a
pretty big patsy for the right. Yes, Okay, the defense
does something interesting. She had said it was self defense.
The defense says she's insane. So they enter a plea
of insanity. They have psychiatrists who and her parents who
all take the stand. There's no consensus between the psych
(33:00):
hiatrist as to her mental state to think that she
has schizophrenia. The third one thinks she has a psychopathic
personality with a paranoia strain. Is that a thing? Paranoid strain?
Speaker 2 (33:12):
They're putting an additional characteristic onto the psychopathy diagnosis, you know,
They're they're indicating, yeah, there's a level of paranoia, you know,
and of course with schizophrenia you can see where you
have your paranoid schizophrenic right, and now they're literally in
this world where something is after them. They're they're paranoid
(33:33):
about whatever it is. And so this particular psychologist is going, well, no, no,
she's not schizophrenic. She's psychopathic, but she's got a paranoid
aspect to her, you know, and that may be where
you know, she's assessing and and Sammy and their behaviors
and statements and everything else, and are completely misinterpreting what
(33:54):
they are saying as being somehow harmful to her. And
there may be that paranoid filter that she is processing
that type of information through. But you know, fundamentally, I
just don't see any real argument for true insanity here.
You know, there may be a mental health concern, you know,
(34:16):
but I don't think it rises to the level where
you can't convict.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Well, let's see, we have a verdict coming up after
everybody rests, and she is convicted a first degree murder.
She is sentenced to death, which is supposed to happen
in February of nineteen thirty three. This does not happen
because when e jud will not go away, this just
keeps going and going. And it's really interesting. This is
(34:42):
like a confession rama, I guess, is what I would call.
There's a lot of confessions that happen. Okay, so the
attorney's demand a retrial. They said there's some kind of
jury bias. Doesn't work. Convictions upheld. There are petitions sent
to the governor on her behalf, and she hires new
attorneys who fall for a hearing before the State Supreme
(35:03):
Court a little less than a month before she's scheduled
to hang. Okay, so nothing is working for her, She
requests a private conference with her attorney and law enforcement
officers and reporter. She confesses in front of all of
these people. She claims self defense, but she fingers an accomplice.
Who is Jack Polleran. She says that after she shot
(35:27):
and killed Anne and Sammy, that he helped her remove
the bodies and get rid of the evidence. He carried
Sammy from the kitchen to Anne's bed, and then he
mopped up the kitchen. He wanted to call a doctor.
While drawing the shade to make the phone call, he
left behind a bloody fingerprint. Dumb print? Is I think
what it meant? He pulled Sammy's large packing trunk from
the garage, placed Anne's body in it, and told Winnie
(35:50):
he would dispose of it in the desert. He told
her that Sammy had been operated on, is what he said.
So she's saying he dismis Sammy. At this point, Whennie
wanted to just go see William. She felt safe with William,
so she went to LA. She wanted him to remove
the bullet, so she and Jack devised a plan where
(36:10):
she would take the trunks with her to LA on
the Saturday night train and he would arrange for someone
to meet her at the Los Angeles depot to dump
the trunk. But she ran into trouble when the deliverymen
who went to bring the trunk from the duplex to
the train station said no because the trunk, this one trunk,
(36:30):
was too heavy and there was blood leaking from the trunk.
Although when he was panicked, she decided to move ahead
with the plan. She told the delivery service to transport
the trunk to her apartment because she was at ann
in Sammy's apartment. The next day, she transferred part of
Sammy's dismembered body into the small suitcase. By Monday night,
(36:51):
she was on the train.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
The first thing I want to know is the bloody
thumb print was at actually matched to Jack. No, okay,
So at this point, right now, without that physical evidence,
I can't say whether it's more feasible or not. You know,
when you were first reading that, I was like, oh, okay,
so Jack was there. Now, I can't say that, and
(37:13):
she's still claiming self defense, and I still have a
massive issue with that, particularly with Anne because of the
contact gunshot wound to the left temple.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
My suspicion is that as she has gone through the
trial process, seeing testimony heard, you know, evidence and everything else,
she is now coming up with another scenario that better
fits the information that she knows that the prosecutors have,
but it still is way off base from what actually happened.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Okay, Well, the saga continues. The Arizona Supreme Court says
no to this rehearing, but Markopa County is considering indicting
Jack because this all sounds sort of reasonable to the
DA there. I mean, she's not saying I didn't do it,
She's just saying I got help. So they try to
indict Jack and she testifies in front of a grand jury.
(38:08):
She reiterates the details of the confession. She convinced a
grand jury that she had in fact killed Anne in
Sammy in self defense. And it sounds like the juryman
petition for her death sentence to be commuted to life
in prison, which is what happened. So she got out
of the death penalty. Jack is not indicted, but there
(38:28):
is another hearing, so they petitioned for it. But then
there has to be God, there's a lot of hearings
in the story. There has to be a hearing to
figure out whether or not she will be executed or
given life in prison. The hearing to determine if Winnie's
sentence is to be commuted to life in prison happens
in March of thirty three. They introduced new witnesses, someone
(38:49):
who is testifying to have smelled burning something coming from
the vacant lot to the south of North Second Street
duplex on the night of octob seventeenth. I don't know
if they think that's where the mop happened, but that
was a new detail.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
The mop itself, even though there was evidence that had
it had been burned, was you know, the handle was
found in the actual victim's apartment, right, so probably the
working end of the mop, the one that got bloody.
It was white as being burned, along with a mattress.
A bloody mattress.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, and this is not This person did not explore
what that was, so he didn't get out he could
just smell it. Sure, the phoenix sheriff said that when
he escorted her from la back to Phoenix when she
was in his jail, she admitted that while she was
repacking the bodies in two separate trunks, some of Sammy's,
the bladder and the intestines fell out onto the floor
(39:48):
of her apartment. She wrapped the organs and towels and
then threw them out the window of the train. So
she carried them on to the train in her suitcase,
I think, and then tossed them out the window. There
was a lot of blood in the breakfast room in
the kitchen, is what he's testifying too. And then Jack
takes the stand. So you have a I can only
expresses a skeptical look about the tossing the bladder and
(40:09):
the intestines out the window of a train.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Well, I think I primarily have a problem. You know
that the intestines and the bladder just fell out. You
know they are somewhat attached to the body. They need
to be removed. Now, the intestines, you know, it's not
just some you know, wound up tube inside the body
(40:32):
that you know, you get cut open, and it's just
they just go everywhere. I mean, the loops of the
intestine are actually interconnected. You got this momentum, there's structure
to it. Now, yes, it could when you bisect a body,
all of a sudden you've got this intestinal mass. But
for the bladder just to fall out, it has to
be removed. It literally needs to be cut out in
(40:54):
order to you know, package it. Could she have taken
it on the train, maybe, but you know, why do that.
I can't dispute what she's saying there outside of the fact, Oh,
they just fell out, so I had to do something.
There's something else going on there.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Okay, well, let's keep going, because this is the story
that never ends. Paul Jack takes the stand. He says,
this is bananas. I was just sleeping with this woman
and that's it, and they believe him. William, her husband, says,
she is not a woman of sound reason. She still
is going to hang. The Arizona Bord of Pardons and
Paroles says, we're keeping the hanging. So she said to
(41:33):
hang April twenty first of nineteen thirty three, so this
is a full two years after this is going on,
but ten days before her execution, the warden at the
Arizona State Prison in Florence requests and is granted a
sanity trial for Winnie. So there are ten days of
expert testimony. The verdict is in. She is found insane,
(41:57):
she is narrowly escaped execution for the second time, and
she's transferred to the Arizona State Asylum for the mentally
Insane on April twenty fourth. I don't have details on
what people said. It just was enough to convince, you know,
I guess this would have been an insanity trial that
would have been Would that have been a judge for who?
(42:18):
That wouldn't have been a jury?
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Right? With what I'm hearing, they're not overturning her conviction, right,
They are now saying at this point two years later,
she now has a true medical illness issue that requires
more specialized medical care than what the prison can do,
and it sounds like they must convene some sort of panel,
(42:41):
if you will, that here's testimony, and then says, yes,
she does have mental issues and needs to go to
this other facility. So she still is under conviction. But
because now she is in this other facility and has
been deemed insane at that point in time, right before
her execution, the state cannot execute an insane person. So,
(43:04):
in essence, she has escaped the execution as a result
of her current medical situation. It's not her mental situation
at the time the crime was committed.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Okay, Well, she is transferred to the Arizona State Asylum
for the mentally insaying. Okay, Paul, here we go. This
is Winnie's life over the next twelve years. Between nineteen
thirty nine and nineteen sixty two, she escapes from prison
seven times.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
That's because she's at in a low level, you know,
custodial environment, you know, and she's smart enough and sane
enough to be able to figure out how she can
actually get out of this facility, you know. So I
bet she was feigning this insanity aspect, you know, in
order to avoid the death sentence.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Listen to this lady. In nineteen sixty two, she outpaid
this is the police for six and a half years.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
She's out of custody for six and a half.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Years, Yes, six and a half years, from sixty two
until sixty eight. She is living under the name Marion Lane,
and she's in San Francisco. I mean, I don't mean
to laugh at this, because she did dismember somebody and
murder two people. But in sixty nine, Arizona medical experts say, okay,
she's saying, we don't want her anymore, and they turn
(44:25):
her back over to the state penitentiary in Florence. Is
this story over yet, no, sir, okay.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
So she ultimately gets caught in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
After six and a half years.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yes, so that's between sixty two and sixty eight or
sixty nine.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
And then when they get her back in sixty nine,
they say, clearly this woman is sane enough to stay,
you know, away and elude us for that long.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Stop smiling, Paul, Well, I'm now starting to wonder are
there any dismembered women in the Bay area and solve cases? Right?
Speaker 1 (44:55):
I was thinking about that. I mean, sometimes I say,
allowed with people, you know, there's no record of them
doing anything while they were on the lamb, But with
this case, I'm not quite sure. So then listen to this.
So she's back in prison from sixty nine. In the
end of the year nineteen seventy one, the governor of Arizona,
who is a guy named Jack Williams, signs a pardon
(45:18):
and she is free. He said, you can never tell
your story. That was her only stipulation.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
So yeah, who is bending the governor's ear? There must
be somebody pretty powerful that, for whatever reason, is within
Winny's you know circle, or as sympathetic to Winnie. You know,
that is bizarre.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
She's sixty five when this happens, So I wonder if
he thinks she's not going to dismember that many people
at sixty five. I don't know what he was thinking.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Well, now now she's out in the public domain again.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yep, so she's out. You know. I keep thinking people
like this are going to die quickly after she does not.
She dies in ninety eight at the age of ninety three.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
She dies in her sleep, peacefully. But her story continues
because when she was on death row in thirty three,
she wrote her first and only confession. Real confession is
what she says happened. So now this is the last
This is the definitive confession. It was located and it's
now in the state archives in Arizona. So the confession
(46:21):
basically confirms the majority of what the prosecutor said during
the first trial. She was ashamed of her infidelity, and
she was frustrated by Anne because she said that Anne
was trying to get money out of Jack. I don't
know what's happening with Jack and these women. I don't
know what the relationship is. But in this confession, Winnie
(46:41):
says that Anne was Anne was always asking for money
from Jack and he was giving it to her. Whinnie
says that Anne would kind of taunt her about stuff,
and she became consumed by wild ideas. She said, I
knew my nerves were breaking. I could feel it. She
said she acted on impulse. She got the gun. She
drove over to Anne's on the first murder attempt. She writes,
(47:04):
I waited next door. I was trying to shoot through
the window. I started crying so hard. I turned and
went home. But then she tried again. About a week later,
maybe she tried again. On Friday, October sixteenth, she went there,
seemingly driven by psychosis, to Anne's duplex. This is according
to Winnie. She said, my brain was whirling. I was
(47:25):
so excited. I was panting for breath. Never did I
have the slightest dream of hurting Sammy. She simply never
entered my mind. I expected to get Anne stop those
taunts so I could sleep. Nothing more did I think
of I took the gun and a knife. How I
would do it, I was not sure. I hid in
(47:46):
the house next door. After they retired, I went to
the back door, laid the knife and my shoes outside
the door, then crept into the unlocked front door. That
insane desire, that power led me on and I started
for Anne. So she describes approaching the bedroom, retreating, falling
(48:06):
back asleep on the girl's couch. Finally, in the morning,
I crept past the bathroom door shot Anne. It was
a low shot, is what she called it. Sammy came
rushing out of the bathroom and easily disarmed Winnie. She said, Sammy,
I am crazy. I have lost my mind. Give me
that gun and I will blow my brains out right
here on this door. Sammy did not give her the
(48:27):
gun smartly, so Winnie ran outside to get the knife.
As I grabbed for the gun, I stabbed her in
the shoulder. The fight continued and Winnie got shot through
the hand. With Winnie getting shot through the hand until
Sammy was dead. Essentially, she dragged Sammy's body into the bathroom,
cleaned up the kitchen floor, went to the garage to
get the trunk. In the bedroom, she slid Anne from
(48:49):
the bed onto the trunk. Around nine or nine thirty,
she went to work, leaving Sammy on the bathroom floor.
She put the knife in the gun and the bloody
pajamas in Anne's locker at the clinic until the end
of the day. She fed the cat. She returned to
the duplex, she broke in through the bathroom window. At
that point, Samy's body was heavy and stiff. She took
(49:10):
two cheap knives from the kitchen and severed her body
into portions that she says I could not lift. I
was hours doing this, and then inch by inch pulling
the trunk back into the living room. That trunk weighed
four hundred and twenty pounds. Yet my maniacal condition gave
me superhuman strength, she said. She tried to destroy the
evidence of the duplex. She turned the hose on the
(49:32):
front porch, went into the house, got the blood soaked mattress,
and carried it over to the vacant lot at the
corner of Third and Pinchon, where I struck perhaps about
five matches onto it. Sunday morning the next day, at
her apartment, she divided the women's corpses between two trunks
she washed the gun, accidentally discharging it under the water,
(49:55):
and put it in the handbox. Toward the end of
her confession, she writes, from here on, I think most
everything has already been known. At the end of the letter,
Winnie forbids her attorney from ever divulging this information.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
The end, I think things are adding up there. Okay,
I'd like to know more details when she says she
shot Anne, you know, I want to see does she actually,
in case she put the gun up against Anne's head
and pulled the trigger, because that's what the evidence shows.
The one thing that I kind of keyed in on
was the stabbing of Sammy and the left shoulder, which, yeah,
(50:34):
the autopsy isn't showing that. And I'm looking at you know,
Sammy's photos now yep, and she has a couple of
marks on her left shoulder.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Maybe they were nicks. Let me look at the autopsy
report to there's a superficial puncture, but that's in her neck.
You would think if he had noted that, wouldn't he
have noted a stab wound even if it was like
a nick.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yeah, that's routine. They need to record all the injuries,
you know, whether superficial or actually significant injuries during their autopsy.
But you know, fundamentally, that last confession seems to line
up best with the evidence. I didn't realize the vacant
(51:19):
lot where the mattress was found was so close that
she could carry a mattress there. Which is you see
somebody carrying two mattresses.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
It depends. I wonder if I mean, I can look
this up. I don't think mattresses in the nineteen thirties
are the kind of mattresses we think of now. I
don't think they're I mean this and these are twins.
I mean, I'm not saying sure. I don't know whether
that's possible or not, but I don't think they are
quite as I mean, I can't hardly lift up a
full size mattress on my own, but I don't think
(51:50):
they were like that.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
So that's a good point. So her telling about the
the emotional turmoil that she's experienced, that sounds real to me.
Now she's putting blame on Anne. Anne is taunting her,
Anne is using her lover Jack for money. I think
(52:12):
that there's more of a jealousy aspect going on there,
that maybe she's suspecting that Anne and Jack were having
their own relationship, sexual relationship, and Winnie is jealous about that.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
Yeah, because there's no talk about selfhilless or this other woman.
There's none of that. So ultimately, do you feel like
I think it's clear that she at least she had
some mental health struggles. But that's different than somebody who
is triggered and then works really hard to cover everything up,
which is what she did.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
Yeah, I think I think there is a mental health component.
It is does not arise up to the level of
legal insanity. In my opinion, I think she needs to
be held or needed to be held responsible for her crimes.
I do not believe that she's somebody that should should
have been subjected to the death penalty, life in prison. Sure,
(53:06):
the extent that she went through, I mean, this is
this is what's just stunning to me, is I mean
you you literally are cleaning up a double homicide, the
victims and crime scene and all, and shipping the victims
and the crime scene out to LA to pick them
up there. You know, that's just that's crazy from my perspective.
(53:30):
You know, that's just really I think it's just underscores.
Sometimes these offenders think too hard. That was when he's downfall.
You know, she didn't think about, oh, these bodies are
going to leak and they're going to smell and people
are going to notice. And that's ultimately at least you
had somebody who was observant enough at the LA train
(53:52):
station going hold on steamer trunks. That's a problem.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
Would have worked if she had dumped both of those
she wanted Burton to do with, as trunks have just
floated and somebody would have discovered those bodies, both of
them floating in the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
It's possible that aspects whether the trunks themselves would have floated.
I think with Anne, I mean she's bloated inside the trunk.
So in essence, you have a balloon inside that trunk
at least for a period of time. You know, eventually
Anne is going to burst. Fundamentally, she's going to leak
that and so the buoyancy aspect may not be there.
(54:30):
And I don't know, you know what the buoyancy of
these trunks are. You know, do they sink naturally or
do they float? You know, that's that would be a
hard thing to try to surmise as to the trunks themselves. Sammy.
You know, with no gases due to the dismemberment, that
trunk may have just floated and there's no way that
(54:50):
because of well, I actually can't say that because I've
got bodies again in that hellser case that were much
more dismembered than what we're seeing with Sammy. And they
were you know, put in multiple duffel bags way down
with walking pavers and stones, and they floated they came
(55:11):
back up, and that's how that case got got solved,
you know. But it depends on how far you go
out off the coast and if they do float, do
they wash up on shore or do they just go
out into the middle of the note of the ocean
and there never never land.
Speaker 1 (55:25):
I mean, I'll put a photo on social media of
this trunk. I think I've done that before. The trunk,
much like her trunk, looks imposing, it's not. It's really light.
The problem we had with it was the leather straps
had broken off of it, but it had wheels, little
tiny castor wheels, and it's tin in the wood that
(55:46):
is in there is so lightweight. I'm pretty sure this
would float no problem. And it's a huge trunk. It's math.
I mean all of the equipment that I use in here, lights,
all of everything, it goes in that trunk, and it
fits perfectly in that trunk. So that's a two body
I would call that a two body trunk the one
I have, so it would have floated for sure. I mean,
these are meant even though they're big and sturdy and
(56:08):
they look like they take a beating, they're meant to
be carried around by a woman. Anybody can carry these.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
I actually have a case with a body and a
steamer trunk.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
You do.
Speaker 2 (56:17):
I do had nothing to do with a train or
being thrown in the water. But it was a I
won't go into the details because it's a really horrific crime,
but it was an elderly woman, you know, petite woman
who has put in this her own steamer trunk. I
had to deal with processing both the body as well
as the steamer trunk, and once the body was out,
(56:39):
that trunk was fairly light.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
Yeah. I mean it's meant for being transported on ships
and everything else. So anyway, when I was reading about
this case, I was thinking, I cannot believe one person,
and I caught myself saying one woman could do this,
and then I thought, I mean this, she did it
and she's saying she did it with no help whatsoever.
So I thought that was really interesting. And again I
(57:02):
did get a little bit of a kick out of
you kept saying he he he as the offender, and
I just thought, what's he going to do when he
finds out this right starlet looking woman is the one
who does it. So anyway, we will for sure have
another compelling case next week. It will not involve a
trunk and I don't know about the female killer part
of it, but I like bringing you stories, especially with
(57:24):
the you know, we've dug into a lot of history stuff.
There's there are things in history with this story that
you know, we were able to learn. So I was
glad to be able to do that.
Speaker 2 (57:33):
Yeah, well you introduced me to I guess what is
a famous historical case. So thank you, Kate.
Speaker 1 (57:39):
And that you can use luminol the ingredient as a sedative.
Who knew? Don't do it at home. We're not advocating
for anything, but who knew? All Right, I'll see you
next week.
Speaker 2 (57:50):
Sounds good.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
This has been an exactly right production for.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
Our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com
slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (58:04):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
Research by Alison Trumble and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (58:12):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (58:17):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
buried Bones pod.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's
Cold Cases is also available now.
Speaker 2 (58:40):
Listen to Barry Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Ay, Kate, how are you?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm doing well. Have you been thinking about this case, Paul.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I've been thinking about it all week?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
John, Yes, Oh what's going on? I was trying to
not snicker every time you said he he he he
when we were talking about the offender and I said,
I wonder if he's going to get mad at me,
which is why I put the reveal at the very end,
because then you wouldn't have time to be mad at me.
When I said, oh, it's a woman.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I am so used to you just leaving me hanging
and bamboozling me and all of that.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
So it's all right, I know it's my job. I
know I've been called a lot of things. I'm not
sure a bamboozler is something I've ever been called, but
I appreciate. Well, let's get into this because I just
there's a lot of background. So the first half of
this was very forensic ly, you know, talk about wounds
and weapons and who the potential offender is. Now we
(01:52):
know who the offender is, and now you're going to
have to kind of get into the criminal profiling part
of this, or the offender profiling, because this is not
an open and shut case. As you can tell, a
woman who is being accused of murdering her two former roommates, who,
as we get into this, we're very good friends. So
let me go ahead and do the recap and then
(02:12):
we'll get right back into it. If you've had any
lingering questions or thoughts, you can certainly talk about that
after the recap. Sure, Okay, So nineteen thirty one, a
train arrives from Phoenix to Los Angeles. There are a
couple of steamer trunks, a small brown suitcase, and a
hat box that smell. There are body parts belonging to
(02:34):
one woman in various locations in these different things, and
then another woman who is curled up in the fetal position.
Both are dead, and there has been oozing and smells.
There was a woman who showed up with a friend
of hers who was college age. His name was Burton,
and they claimed the trunks. But then when they thought
(02:56):
it seemed a little like maybe somebody was suspicious of
them because of the ooze, they said, we don't have
the key, and then they took off and they're in
the wind. And in the meantime, they've put together all
of this information about the two women who were murdered.
They are Sammy and Anne. They are roommates in Phoenix.
(03:16):
One is a nurse, and we haven't had any red
flags except when they finally figure out because they know
who Burton is because I'm assuming they paid him and
knew his first and last name, they found out who
the other woman is, and the other woman is Winnie Judd,
who Winnie Ruth Judd is a pretty famous name. When
people have pitched this to me, which of course I
(03:37):
said was a fantastic idea, it's always as the trunk murderess,
which is what she was known for. We kind of
get into the world of tuberculosis of independent young women,
you know, in Phoenix, and you know, a kind of
a man hunt for this mysterious woman.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
When Winnie shows up with Burton in the La train station,
they know who he is. He's a local USC student
college age. Does he have any connection to Phoenix at all?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
It doesn't seem like it right now now, except this
is his sister. She is a woman that passengers start
to remember and recognize who was on the train with
the hat box and the small suitcase.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Okay, so this explains. So you have the two steamer
trunks that are in essence checked right. So when he
brings those to the train out in Phoenix, that goes
over to the train staff to in essence put them
in cargo for transport. But she holds onto the suitcase
and the hat box. And so when she gets off
(04:43):
and things are not looking right, she leaves those in
the bathroom at the train station in La.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Got it, abandoned all of it. If they had not
known Burton's name because he had worked for them, you know,
as a porter, I guess a little on a freelance
gig over Christmas to earn a extra money. Then I
don't know if they would have identified her, because I'm
sure she paid cash, and you know, eventually they would
have figured out with the roommate situation. But yeah, this
is this is where it all starts to kind of unravel.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, And I think what's interesting to me is why
is Winnie And I'm presuming Winnie is the one responsible
for Samy and Ann's death, dismemberment and transport to the
train station. Imagine the risk that she's taking. You know,
she in essence is transporting two homicide victims plus the
evidence from the crime scene with her out to LA
(05:32):
I have to conclude at this point that in her mind,
because she's a former roommate of the two victims, that
she would naturally presume that she would become a suspect.
And so fundamentally, she is trying to hide that a
crime has committed inside that condo, at least for as
long as possible, so she can set up maybe an
(05:54):
alibi or put distance between her and the crime scene.
In terms of physical distance as well as temporal distance.
How much time has passed before authorities discovered that you know,
these two victims are victims of homicide, but it.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Seems so disjointed. So she gets rid of these mattresses.
I don't know how. She almost gets halfway through cleanup
and then changes her mind, and then halfway through something
else and then changes. I just don't understand what her
mindset is, but maybe we will as we go along.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I think she got in over her head. That's what happened,
you know, And that's she's now taking shortcuts just to
get out of dodge.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Okay, well, let's get into this. Winnie and Burton. They're
both the children of a minister from Indiana. Winnie moved
to Phoenix from Mexico. She had been in Mexico in
nineteen thirty, so just a year before. Winnie is also
a lunger, so she had tuberculosis. So everybody's coming to Phoenix.
So she's there for about a year and she becomes
(06:53):
friends with Anne. Anne and Winnie work at the same clinic.
Remember I told you Anne's nurse and she's an X
ray technician and Winnie is a medical secretary. They become friends,
and Winnie moves in to this duplex and over a
game of cards, you know, they listen to I can
(07:17):
just sort of picture this is so nineteen thirties. So
they play bridge all the time, and they all like
to listen to the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which was
a radio show. And they have late night parties and
hang out with you know, well to do Phoenix men.
They're all attractive. Things get very complicated. They become good friends,
but then their love lives start happening. There's nobody's had
(07:40):
luck in this whole apartment with love and had been married.
I told you that Winnie had not been very lucky
in love either. Her husband is a guy named doctor
William Judd, and he is twenty three years older than her.
He is addicted to narcotics, and he had trouble holding
a job. And they got married when and she was
only nineteen, and she had two miscarriages. Her family was
(08:05):
giving the detectives in La some background on her, and
eventually they would talk to William, her husband, and they
would say, you know, what is she like? And they
said that she would sometimes fantasize about what life would
have been like if she had given birth to a
baby named Moses, Caesar or Napoleon. She would talk to
(08:29):
William about the baby's milestones and their adventures. She was
making up these stories. He thought it was silly, but
I think upon reflection, he wonders if there was some
sort of psychosis going on. Frequent moves and financial struggles
isolated William and Winnie, and she eventually had hoped that
(08:49):
she would just stay in Phoenix and that they would
stay married. But in nineteen thirty one, he was again
out of a job, and he took off and went
to la to look for work, and she was there,
you know, now living with these women. By June of
nineteen thirty one, all three of them had tuberculosis and
at that point, so Anne took off and went to
(09:10):
Portland for the summer to be with her family. And
Winnie and Sammy are now together.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
So when you say Winnie and Sammy are together, is
there more than just a friendship?
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Not that I know of, no, But I think they
were trying to support each other. I mean, tuberculosis is
not you take a pill and it's over with. It's
very long disease, and so I think they were trying
to help each other out. So Anne left in June,
and it left Sammy and Winnie together just to kind
of support each other. In August, Anne comes back, all
three of them living together. They were friends, but this
(09:44):
is also now the Great Depression, so there's just a
self preservation happening here. They are very low wages pretty soon.
This is a small place, remember there's one bedroom, and
eventually they kind of separate so that Winnie moves out
into a one bedroom apartment on Real Street in early October,
(10:05):
and it's close enough where she can walk to work
if she wants to. There didn't seem to be major fights,
according to the detectives what they found. She just you know,
moved out and moved not too far away. Within weeks though,
these two women are dead.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
You know, the detectives Observation are talking to doctor William
Judd and he's talking about how Winnie is kind of
constructing some sort of fantasy life between her and an
unborn child. And you know, these these names Napoleon, Moses,
and the other name is it Caesar Caesar? I mean,
(10:41):
obviously these are significant historic figures. I also start to think, okay,
something there is a mental health aspect going on with
with Winnie. Now if she's creating a construct with this
fantasy life with a child that she does not have.
(11:03):
How is she perceiving Sammy and Anne? You know, is
there potential misperception on Winnie's part just because she's got
some I don't know if I want to use the
term psychotic, but she's definitely got some sort of mental
illness that's causing her to maybe read into certain things
(11:23):
that Anne and Sammy have done or said that she's
now feeling slided by.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
I don't know how long, you know, any of these
women had had tuberculosis. I wonder if tuberculosis would you know,
make things worse if she did have a mental health struggle,
or would have caused something to begin with. I don't
know anything about it though in that way, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I definitely don't. But it also brings up not only
the disease, but what medications are they being given, you know,
and maybe maybe Whennie's having you know, a bad trip
so to speak, from whatever medicaid was being used for
TV back in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Again, somebody with mental health struggles when your husband is
in work, out of work, and he's an addict, an
active addict, you know, she was probably on her back
heels the whole time, just trying to figure out what's
up and what's down. You know, the police in California
and Arizona start searching, of course, immediately. This is a
three or four day long search trying to find Burton
(12:25):
and his sister Winnie. Eventually they find Burton and they
find William, the husband, and they talked to the Phoenix
neighbors coworkers at the clinic. During Burton and William's interrogations,
the police say it's clear that they had not been
involved with the crime. They were very open. They had
alibis to attest that neither had been in Phoenix during
(12:49):
that month when it happened. So what Burton says is
that he first heard about all of this with the
trunks when Winnie here at USC's campus around eleven am
on the day that she arrived in La so that
October nineteenth. So if we believe this, she did all
(13:11):
of this herself. The trunks go on the train, she
goes to La you know, she kind of abandons the
trunks and immediately goes to USC and finds her brother,
and he said that she said to him, you need
to come with me. You need to get these trunks.
We're going to sink them in the Pacific Ocean. She
doesn't explain why he tried not to pry. But then
(13:35):
when the station agent started interrogating them, he turned to
her after they left and said, did you kill someone?
And finally she said that she could justify everything that
happened is exactly what she said. And then she took
off and that was it. And then Burton is the
reason why that she's kind of been caught this early.
So we've got William who's been taken off the table
(13:56):
as an accomplice. We've got Burton who's been taken off
the table by the police. Then they go to Winnie's apartment,
remember she has that one bedroom apartment. They find surgical
instruments in a satchel. There are also bottles of tell
me if this is right. There are bottles of luminol,
which is a non narcotic sedative. Is that luminol? Luminol?
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I'm presuming. So I'm not familiar with luminol being used
in a medical sense, but it wouldn't surprise me. You know,
when we use luminol for visualizing latent bloodstains at a
crime scene, it's mixed with sodium hydroxide. You know, it's
got a buffer, Okay, But the luminol I think would
be the drug that they would be using.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Pino barbitual used as a sedative into control seizures, calming
effect and induces drowsiness. So that's what they found luminol.
They also found one suitcase that had men's clothing, a
man's surgical shirt, and an article of women's lingerie. There's
another suitcase. I mean, boy, she just packed all of
(15:01):
these in another suitcase that had some blankets, a small
caliber shell which had been fired, we presume of a
twenty five caliber shell, and a photo album of the
family with friends the jud family. In the southwest corner
of the bedroom, under a chair, they find another shell.
The shell matches the shells and the bullet in the trunk.
They said that there were nine tablets of poison that
(15:25):
were typically in William Judd's medicine cabinet, so he must
have lived there off and on. The researcher Ali said
she can find out what kind of poison it was,
but the first wife of William died of an accidental
morphine poisoning, so if that's what he's addicted to, and
(15:45):
that's what he had on hand. The poison could have
been morphine.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
I suppose it sounds like when Hee was looking at
a variety of different ways to kill Sammy and and
poison possibly being one of the first ways that she
thought about. And then the expended cartridge cases, the shells,
the twenty five caliber shells found at Winnie's place. You know,
I kind of wonder did she maybe she had no
(16:11):
firearms experience and so these were test shots so she
could figure out how a gun works. You know, I
don't know if they found any you know, bullet impacts
inside her apartment, or she could have gone outside and
shot at a tree. You know, who knows, But you
know the fact that she would be bringing the cartridge
cases back inside seems remote, but maybe not.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
The mystery expands here. She ends up surrendering on kind
of the fourth day of this search. Okay, she turns
herself in in La to the police. A plea from
her husband and his assurance that you know, they would
hire the best lawyers is what got her in there.
So he had been interviewed by newspapers saying, turn yourself in.
(16:55):
This isn't going to end well, I will take care
of you, I promise. So she turned herself in. She
had been hiding at Lavina Sanitarium, where she had been
previously treated for tuberculosis. She had also been hiding in
a Broadway department store where she had once been a clerk. Okay,
so she's turning herself in.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, I think what will be interesting to me? You know,
she's bringing Burton out to the train station. I mean,
he's a patsy. He has no idea at least when she,
oh yeah, initially reaches out to him and he shows
up at the train station that this is a homicide
case that she's asking him to participate in. So she's
needing his help to move these steamer trunks, the suitcases,
(17:37):
et cetera. And it may just be she needs to
do that in a quick, kind of non suspicious manner,
having her brother with her. But what's going on out
in Phoenix. I mean she's having to get all of
these items out of the apartment, plus two mattresses. There's
obviously a vehicle involved. Is it her vehicle she's driving
(17:58):
disposing of these mattresses. One is found, one isn't. But
she has to get to the train station and get
those items up onto the train. Is her vehicle parked
at the Phoenix train station, and if it's not, then
I would say somebody transported her there and that could
be your accessory on the front end.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Okay, we have a confession, which I know seems odd
because we're definitely not at the end of this episode.
But let me tell you what she says. She gets in,
she starts to talk to the police. William did get
her a good attorney. Her attorney reads a prepared confession. Now,
I don't have a note about whether or not this
is to the police or to the press or what
is happening, but.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
It's also filtered through her attorney.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
You're right, Okay, So this is what she says through
her attorney. I had gone to the girls home to
confront Miss Samuelson, which is Sammy, for some nasty things
she had said about missus Leroy, who is Anne. Miss
Samuelson got a hold of a gun and she shot
me in the left hand. I struggled with her and
the gun fell. Miss Leroy grabbed an ironing board and
(19:05):
started to strike me over the head with it. In
the struggle, I got hold of the gun and Sammy
got shot. Missus Leroy was still coming at me with
the ironing board and I had to shoot her. Then
I ran away from the place. And her hand does
have a bullet lodged in it.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, it's bs.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
You can act professional about this apology. You're so funny.
Your face changed in the middle of that statement.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Well, okay, so you know think about this. Let's talk
about and this is this is your prototypical husband accidentally
shoots wife and she's got a contact gunshot wound to
her left temple and has a contact gunshot wound to
her left temple. This is a gun that has been
(19:55):
placed hard against her head and the trigger was pulled.
This is not not a self defense scenario where now
in the process of defending herself, Winnie shoots. And this
is an absolute fabrication. And this is the attorney setting
up a self defense case to try to get his
client off. But the physical evidence completely contradicts that statement.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
I think self defense is on the table for sure.
Her left hand, just so you know, is completely bandaged.
She also has a blackish wound between the fourth and
fifth fingers on her right hand. Because it is looking
like it's developing into ganggreen Winnie is escorted to the
Georgia Street Receiving Hospital. They extract a twenty five caliber
(20:44):
bullet from the base of her middle finger, close to
the point where it joined with the fractured index finger.
There were contusions over much of Winnie's body, So that's
going to be part of the self defense part, obviously,
we know. But self defense when the victim is fighting
back to try to save her own life does not
count well.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
And we've got an expended cartridge case or shell in
Winnie's own apartment. You know, this is going back to that.
This is you know, you see these offenders when they're
trying to stage a crime scene. She's shooting herself in
the hand. She's not shooting herself someplace where it might
be fatal, you know. So this all speaks to she's
(21:25):
pre planning, you know, her self defense by injuring herself
both with the gun as well as maybe she's you know,
throwing herself up against walls and pieces of furniture inside
her apartment, realizing, oh, they found out, they've got the
steamer trunks, and now I've got to figure out how
I'm going to get out of this, and I'm drawing
(21:46):
that conclusion just based off of how ridiculous her statement
is relative to the physical evidence.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Well, we'll see what the prosecution says. They're now putting
together a case, and they're trying to do it quickly
because it's already October twenty ninth when she is extradited
to Phoenix to stand trial on first regree murder charges
for Ann. They'll have a separate trial for Sammy. So
her case involving Anne starts in January. So she's sitting
(22:13):
in jail for November and December and most of January,
and it's in downtown Phoenix. And it is a media
shit show, is probably the only way I can describe it.
And this is a bary bones first, I just thought
you'd think this was fun. We have actual video footage
from the trial because this was such a big deal,
this trial, So I sent you a video file.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
So it opens up showing who I'm assuming are the
attorneys or the DA involved in the case, and then
it's showing a packed courtroom, and then now it looks
like the defendant when he judges sat down. She's dressed
in a very conservative outfit. She's looking very demuror trying
to pretend to be an innocent defendant. Well, but she's
(22:58):
been coached, you know, it's try to get the jurors sympathy. Yeah,
and then that's it. So, you know, what stood out
to me, Like you had mentioned earlier that Anne, Sammy,
and Winnie were all three reasonably attractive women. Winnie is
an attractive woman for sure, you know, and so you
could see where, you know, the jury could find her
(23:18):
as a very sympathetic figure. And so the prosecution, you know,
does have a little bit of a hurdle to cross,
to say that this woman, attractive woman who's sitting there
looking innocent, you know, shot and killed two women in Phoenix,
cut one of them up, and transported their bodies halfway
across the United States. Yeah, I mean it sounds unbelievable,
(23:40):
but you know, obviously there's no questions she's involved.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Let's go back though, to our discussion about we didn't
say psychosis, but the imagining the future of babies who
aren't there, the husband who's addicted to stuff, she's got tuberculosis.
Can any of that fit into this scenario.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
At the same time, it fits into sort of the
why why did she do this? How does this play
out in a legal sense, you know, particularly in Arizona,
and what are there insanity statutes. You know, from my perspective,
you know, she may have some sort of mental illness
(24:23):
going on, but take a look at the level the
extent that she went through to try to cover up
the crime. That is showing she knows right from wrong.
And generally when you can show that within somebody, there
isn't that insanity aspect to them. There may be arguments,
(24:44):
mostly maybe on the sentencing side in terms of, you know,
how severe the punishment is going to be because of
some sort of diminished capacity situation, but in terms of
guilt or not guilt, you know, she knew from wrong
and she knew what she was doing when she did it,
that this was a crime. I mean, it's a horrific crime.
(25:06):
She killed two women.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well, let's continue on because there are two sides to this,
and I understand what you're saying, but you know, yeah,
I'm not ready to end the podcast right now, Paul,
So just bear with me. I'm ready to go to dinner.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Case to try to convince me she's innocent, and that's
going to be a big hurdle.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I want to present both sides of this case as
the objective journalist that I am, so let me show
you what I've got. Okay. The prosecution says that Winnie
had acted with premeditation. We've already talked about. That she
shot herself is what they believe. And here is the
mystery figure that I had told you. We need to
(25:47):
mention there is a romantic rivalry between her husband and
a lover that she has become involved with. He is
a wealthy Phoenix lumber baron. I don't get to say
barn very much with these sorts of stories. His name
is Jack, Happy Jack. I put quotes around that happy Jack. Halleran,
(26:09):
We'll go with Jack. And they had been having an
affair since December of nineteen thirty, so nine or ten
months or so until this happened. So the doctors in
Phoenix had told the police that a month before the murder,
Winnie had taken a pregnancy test because she thought she
was pregnant. She was not, sounds like. Also, the DA
(26:29):
presents what they called the drain pipe letter. So this
is to me really interesting. So one day after Winnie
turned herself in, there was a plumber who was called
to that store that department store where she worked. The
owner said, something's lodged into I think it was the toilet.
It was a wad of telegraph sheets that had been
(26:51):
torn up and flushed. Winnie had been, of course, hiding
in this space until she turned herself in. It sounds
like a dressed to her husband. Not but it's a
confession and this is well, so let's see how different
this is. According to the letter, on the morning of
October seventeenth, these three women fought over whether they should
(27:11):
alert mister h who is you know? Jack hallierrant to
the fact that Winnie had introduced him to a woman
who had syphilis. And I don't know if that was
the intention for them to sleep together. That's what it
sounds like. And this isn't a letter to her husband.
So Winnie says, is defending herself, and she says, I
(27:33):
did not set him up with some bad woman. Because
Winnie said, she's undergoing treatment for syphilis, so she's not contagious.
Do not tell him this information. Ann said, no, that's awful.
I'm going to tell him myself that Winnie is associated
with people who have syphilis and they won't have a
thing to do with you. Is what Anne told Winnie.
(27:55):
If we think Winnie's the one who wrote this letter,
which I'm sure we do, Sammy, we need a gun
at Winnie is what Winnie says to her husband in
this letter. In fear for her life, Winnie covered the
gun's muzzle with her hand, grabbed a bread knife, and
after Sammy shot her hand, Winnie disarmed her and retaliated.
Believing that Anne had plotted to blackmail her, she shot
(28:18):
her too. The letter ends with the writer reasserting that
she had killed in self defense. She said, I am
essentially dead at this point. Forgive me, not forget me.
She says. It was as much a battle as Germany
and the US. I killed in self defense, so she
was at war, she was saying.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
And again this is BS.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
I don't understand the dynamic between Halran and Winnie here,
but I'm gonna see if we hear from him. What
do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Let me just address you know straight up. You know
this confession to her estranged husband, William. Yep, you know
she's saying in this confession that Sammy produced the twenty
five caliber pistol. And so when he, of course covers
the pistol, up with her hand, arms herself with a knife,
and that's presumably how she gets her injury to her
Her hand is during this struggle. Yet she has expended
(29:14):
cartridge cases from that pistol in her apartment all the
way out in la That ballistics showed came from that pistol.
It matches the bullets out in Phoenix. So again this
doesn't make any sense. Why is Samy out of Phoenix
producing the murder weapon, and then why is Whinnie taking
this pistol And in fact, she doesn't take the pistol.
(29:36):
The pistol is found inside I think it was a
hat box. I mean, she's in the process of transporting
the pistol back. It never makes it back to her apartment,
So she had that pistol ahead of time, and then
it gets taken out to Phoenix where she shoots and Sammy. Again,
the physical evidence doesn't match the confession. So this is
(29:58):
a letter to her strange husband that is self serving.
And I'm not entirely sure the reason for this whole
syphilis aspect. That may just be it's such an outrageous
act to set somebody up that you know has such
what could potentially be a disfiguring and deadly disease, that
(30:19):
there's a reason why Winnie had to act the way
she did and kill Sammy and Anne. I think she's
just trying to come up with a mechanism as to
why she acted out in self defense. So it's completely
self serving. It doesn't match up with the physical evidence and.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
The defenses sort of behind everything to begin with the
judges ruling against them for bringing on certain kinds of experts,
and nobody's talking about this bloody fingerprint, which I thought
was interesting. It was a thumb print actually on the
window shade, So we don't hear anything about that. We
hear in the defense from two psychiatrists who say she
(30:59):
was faking insanity.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Oh, Also one interesting note, So there were witnesses who
did see Winnie at the duplex because she didn't live
there anymore, and it was Friday night, so ten thirty pm.
I just thought you'd be interested in the sequence of events.
So ten thirty pm Friday night, she kills them, and
then she takes the Sunday night train to Los Angeles.
So she takes all day Saturday and most of the
(31:23):
day Sunday to get this taken care do you feel
like she needed an accomplice or no, I know we've
kind of touched on this before.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
I don't think she necessarily needed an accomplice. And when
you take a look, I did see that photo of
the hallway in Anne and Sammy's apartment where you have
the scratches on the floor, it's obvious those scratches are
from those metal protective corners on the heavy steamer trunk
and it's being drug So that suggests to me one
(31:51):
person is dragging that trunk at least over that section
of the exposed floor. It is a lot of work
for one person to do everything that happened, you know,
in terms of the dismemberment, the clean up, the packaging,
getting into a vehicle, disposing the mattresses, getting everything out
(32:12):
to the train. And that's where I, you know, from
an investigator standpoint, is like, well, wor's her vehicle? Is
her vehicle at the Phoenix train station. If it's not,
then I have questions. And then oh, maybe there is
an accomplished And it may be another patsy where she
called up and said, hey, you know, I've got some
heavy luggage. Can you help pick this up? And oh,
by the way a couple of mattresses, you know, bring
(32:33):
a truck and just ignore the fact that one mattress
has a bunch of blood on it.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah, it's it's pretty Uh, you'd have to have a
pretty big patsy for the right. Yes, Okay, the defense
does something interesting. She had said it was self defense.
The defense says she's insane. So they enter a plea
of insanity. They have psychiatrists who and her parents who
all take the stand. There's no consensus between the psych
(33:00):
hiatrist as to her mental state to think that she
has schizophrenia. The third one thinks she has a psychopathic
personality with a paranoia strain. Is that a thing? Paranoid strain?
Speaker 2 (33:12):
They're putting an additional characteristic onto the psychopathy diagnosis, you know,
They're they're indicating, yeah, there's a level of paranoia, you know,
and of course with schizophrenia you can see where you
have your paranoid schizophrenic right, and now they're literally in
this world where something is after them. They're they're paranoid
(33:33):
about whatever it is. And so this particular psychologist is going, well, no, no,
she's not schizophrenic. She's psychopathic, but she's got a paranoid
aspect to her, you know, and that may be where
you know, she's assessing and and Sammy and their behaviors
and statements and everything else, and are completely misinterpreting what
(33:54):
they are saying as being somehow harmful to her. And
there may be that paranoid filter that she is processing
that type of information through. But you know, fundamentally, I
just don't see any real argument for true insanity here.
You know, there may be a mental health concern, you know,
(34:16):
but I don't think it rises to the level where
you can't convict.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Well, let's see, we have a verdict coming up after
everybody rests, and she is convicted a first degree murder.
She is sentenced to death, which is supposed to happen
in February of nineteen thirty three. This does not happen
because when e jud will not go away, this just
keeps going and going. And it's really interesting. This is
(34:42):
like a confession rama, I guess, is what I would call.
There's a lot of confessions that happen. Okay, so the
attorney's demand a retrial. They said there's some kind of
jury bias. Doesn't work. Convictions upheld. There are petitions sent
to the governor on her behalf, and she hires new
attorneys who fall for a hearing before the State Supreme
(35:03):
Court a little less than a month before she's scheduled
to hang. Okay, so nothing is working for her, She
requests a private conference with her attorney and law enforcement
officers and reporter. She confesses in front of all of
these people. She claims self defense, but she fingers an accomplice.
Who is Jack Polleran. She says that after she shot
(35:27):
and killed Anne and Sammy, that he helped her remove
the bodies and get rid of the evidence. He carried
Sammy from the kitchen to Anne's bed, and then he
mopped up the kitchen. He wanted to call a doctor.
While drawing the shade to make the phone call, he
left behind a bloody fingerprint. Dumb print? Is I think
what it meant? He pulled Sammy's large packing trunk from
the garage, placed Anne's body in it, and told Winnie
(35:50):
he would dispose of it in the desert. He told
her that Sammy had been operated on, is what he said.
So she's saying he dismis Sammy. At this point, Whennie
wanted to just go see William. She felt safe with William,
so she went to LA. She wanted him to remove
the bullet, so she and Jack devised a plan where
(36:10):
she would take the trunks with her to LA on
the Saturday night train and he would arrange for someone
to meet her at the Los Angeles depot to dump
the trunk. But she ran into trouble when the deliverymen
who went to bring the trunk from the duplex to
the train station said no because the trunk, this one trunk,
(36:30):
was too heavy and there was blood leaking from the trunk.
Although when he was panicked, she decided to move ahead
with the plan. She told the delivery service to transport
the trunk to her apartment because she was at ann
in Sammy's apartment. The next day, she transferred part of
Sammy's dismembered body into the small suitcase. By Monday night,
(36:51):
she was on the train.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
The first thing I want to know is the bloody
thumb print was at actually matched to Jack. No, okay,
So at this point, right now, without that physical evidence,
I can't say whether it's more feasible or not. You know,
when you were first reading that, I was like, oh, okay,
so Jack was there. Now, I can't say that, and
(37:13):
she's still claiming self defense, and I still have a
massive issue with that, particularly with Anne because of the
contact gunshot wound to the left temple.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
My suspicion is that as she has gone through the
trial process, seeing testimony heard, you know, evidence and everything else,
she is now coming up with another scenario that better
fits the information that she knows that the prosecutors have,
but it still is way off base from what actually happened.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Okay, Well, the saga continues. The Arizona Supreme Court says
no to this rehearing, but Markopa County is considering indicting
Jack because this all sounds sort of reasonable to the
DA there. I mean, she's not saying I didn't do it,
She's just saying I got help. So they try to
indict Jack and she testifies in front of a grand jury.
(38:08):
She reiterates the details of the confession. She convinced a
grand jury that she had in fact killed Anne in
Sammy in self defense. And it sounds like the juryman
petition for her death sentence to be commuted to life
in prison, which is what happened. So she got out
of the death penalty. Jack is not indicted, but there
(38:28):
is another hearing, so they petitioned for it. But then
there has to be God, there's a lot of hearings
in the story. There has to be a hearing to
figure out whether or not she will be executed or
given life in prison. The hearing to determine if Winnie's
sentence is to be commuted to life in prison happens
in March of thirty three. They introduced new witnesses, someone
(38:49):
who is testifying to have smelled burning something coming from
the vacant lot to the south of North Second Street
duplex on the night of octob seventeenth. I don't know
if they think that's where the mop happened, but that
was a new detail.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
The mop itself, even though there was evidence that had
it had been burned, was you know, the handle was
found in the actual victim's apartment, right, so probably the
working end of the mop, the one that got bloody.
It was white as being burned, along with a mattress.
A bloody mattress.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, and this is not This person did not explore
what that was, so he didn't get out he could
just smell it. Sure, the phoenix sheriff said that when
he escorted her from la back to Phoenix when she
was in his jail, she admitted that while she was
repacking the bodies in two separate trunks, some of Sammy's,
the bladder and the intestines fell out onto the floor
(39:48):
of her apartment. She wrapped the organs and towels and
then threw them out the window of the train. So
she carried them on to the train in her suitcase,
I think, and then tossed them out the window. There
was a lot of blood in the breakfast room in
the kitchen, is what he's testifying too. And then Jack
takes the stand. So you have a I can only
expresses a skeptical look about the tossing the bladder and
(40:09):
the intestines out the window of a train.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Well, I think I primarily have a problem. You know
that the intestines and the bladder just fell out. You
know they are somewhat attached to the body. They need
to be removed. Now, the intestines, you know, it's not
just some you know, wound up tube inside the body
(40:32):
that you know, you get cut open, and it's just
they just go everywhere. I mean, the loops of the
intestine are actually interconnected. You got this momentum, there's structure
to it. Now, yes, it could when you bisect a body,
all of a sudden you've got this intestinal mass. But
for the bladder just to fall out, it has to
be removed. It literally needs to be cut out in
(40:54):
order to you know, package it. Could she have taken
it on the train, maybe, but you know, why do that.
I can't dispute what she's saying there outside of the fact, Oh,
they just fell out, so I had to do something.
There's something else going on there.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Okay, well, let's keep going, because this is the story
that never ends. Paul Jack takes the stand. He says,
this is bananas. I was just sleeping with this woman
and that's it, and they believe him. William, her husband, says,
she is not a woman of sound reason. She still
is going to hang. The Arizona Bord of Pardons and
Paroles says, we're keeping the hanging. So she said to
(41:33):
hang April twenty first of nineteen thirty three, so this
is a full two years after this is going on,
but ten days before her execution, the warden at the
Arizona State Prison in Florence requests and is granted a
sanity trial for Winnie. So there are ten days of
expert testimony. The verdict is in. She is found insane,
(41:57):
she is narrowly escaped execution for the second time, and
she's transferred to the Arizona State Asylum for the mentally
Insane on April twenty fourth. I don't have details on
what people said. It just was enough to convince, you know,
I guess this would have been an insanity trial that
would have been Would that have been a judge for who?
(42:18):
That wouldn't have been a jury?
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Right? With what I'm hearing, they're not overturning her conviction, right,
They are now saying at this point two years later,
she now has a true medical illness issue that requires
more specialized medical care than what the prison can do,
and it sounds like they must convene some sort of panel,
(42:41):
if you will, that here's testimony, and then says, yes,
she does have mental issues and needs to go to
this other facility. So she still is under conviction. But
because now she is in this other facility and has
been deemed insane at that point in time, right before
her execution, the state cannot execute an insane person. So,
(43:04):
in essence, she has escaped the execution as a result
of her current medical situation. It's not her mental situation
at the time the crime was committed.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Okay, Well, she is transferred to the Arizona State Asylum
for the mentally insaying. Okay, Paul, here we go. This
is Winnie's life over the next twelve years. Between nineteen
thirty nine and nineteen sixty two, she escapes from prison
seven times.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
That's because she's at in a low level, you know,
custodial environment, you know, and she's smart enough and sane
enough to be able to figure out how she can
actually get out of this facility, you know. So I
bet she was feigning this insanity aspect, you know, in
order to avoid the death sentence.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Listen to this lady. In nineteen sixty two, she outpaid
this is the police for six and a half years.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
She's out of custody for six and a half.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Years, Yes, six and a half years, from sixty two
until sixty eight. She is living under the name Marion Lane,
and she's in San Francisco. I mean, I don't mean
to laugh at this, because she did dismember somebody and
murder two people. But in sixty nine, Arizona medical experts say, okay,
she's saying, we don't want her anymore, and they turn
(44:25):
her back over to the state penitentiary in Florence. Is
this story over yet, no, sir, okay.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
So she ultimately gets caught in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
After six and a half years.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yes, so that's between sixty two and sixty eight or
sixty nine.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
And then when they get her back in sixty nine,
they say, clearly this woman is sane enough to stay,
you know, away and elude us for that long.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Stop smiling, Paul, Well, I'm now starting to wonder are
there any dismembered women in the Bay area and solve cases? Right?
Speaker 1 (44:55):
I was thinking about that. I mean, sometimes I say,
allowed with people, you know, there's no record of them
doing anything while they were on the lamb, But with
this case, I'm not quite sure. So then listen to this.
So she's back in prison from sixty nine. In the
end of the year nineteen seventy one, the governor of Arizona,
who is a guy named Jack Williams, signs a pardon
(45:18):
and she is free. He said, you can never tell
your story. That was her only stipulation.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
So yeah, who is bending the governor's ear? There must
be somebody pretty powerful that, for whatever reason, is within
Winny's you know circle, or as sympathetic to Winnie. You know,
that is bizarre.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
She's sixty five when this happens, So I wonder if
he thinks she's not going to dismember that many people
at sixty five. I don't know what he was thinking.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Well, now now she's out in the public domain again.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yep, so she's out. You know. I keep thinking people
like this are going to die quickly after she does not.
She dies in ninety eight at the age of ninety three.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
She dies in her sleep, peacefully. But her story continues
because when she was on death row in thirty three,
she wrote her first and only confession. Real confession is
what she says happened. So now this is the last
This is the definitive confession. It was located and it's
now in the state archives in Arizona. So the confession
(46:21):
basically confirms the majority of what the prosecutor said during
the first trial. She was ashamed of her infidelity, and
she was frustrated by Anne because she said that Anne
was trying to get money out of Jack. I don't
know what's happening with Jack and these women. I don't
know what the relationship is. But in this confession, Winnie
(46:41):
says that Anne was Anne was always asking for money
from Jack and he was giving it to her. Whinnie
says that Anne would kind of taunt her about stuff,
and she became consumed by wild ideas. She said, I
knew my nerves were breaking. I could feel it. She
said she acted on impulse. She got the gun. She
drove over to Anne's on the first murder attempt. She writes,
(47:04):
I waited next door. I was trying to shoot through
the window. I started crying so hard. I turned and
went home. But then she tried again. About a week later,
maybe she tried again. On Friday, October sixteenth, she went there,
seemingly driven by psychosis, to Anne's duplex. This is according
to Winnie. She said, my brain was whirling. I was
(47:25):
so excited. I was panting for breath. Never did I
have the slightest dream of hurting Sammy. She simply never
entered my mind. I expected to get Anne stop those
taunts so I could sleep. Nothing more did I think
of I took the gun and a knife. How I
would do it, I was not sure. I hid in
(47:46):
the house next door. After they retired, I went to
the back door, laid the knife and my shoes outside
the door, then crept into the unlocked front door. That
insane desire, that power led me on and I started
for Anne. So she describes approaching the bedroom, retreating, falling
(48:06):
back asleep on the girl's couch. Finally, in the morning,
I crept past the bathroom door shot Anne. It was
a low shot, is what she called it. Sammy came
rushing out of the bathroom and easily disarmed Winnie. She said, Sammy,
I am crazy. I have lost my mind. Give me
that gun and I will blow my brains out right
here on this door. Sammy did not give her the
(48:27):
gun smartly, so Winnie ran outside to get the knife.
As I grabbed for the gun, I stabbed her in
the shoulder. The fight continued and Winnie got shot through
the hand. With Winnie getting shot through the hand until
Sammy was dead. Essentially, she dragged Sammy's body into the bathroom,
cleaned up the kitchen floor, went to the garage to
get the trunk. In the bedroom, she slid Anne from
(48:49):
the bed onto the trunk. Around nine or nine thirty,
she went to work, leaving Sammy on the bathroom floor.
She put the knife in the gun and the bloody
pajamas in Anne's locker at the clinic until the end
of the day. She fed the cat. She returned to
the duplex, she broke in through the bathroom window. At
that point, Samy's body was heavy and stiff. She took
(49:10):
two cheap knives from the kitchen and severed her body
into portions that she says I could not lift. I
was hours doing this, and then inch by inch pulling
the trunk back into the living room. That trunk weighed
four hundred and twenty pounds. Yet my maniacal condition gave
me superhuman strength, she said. She tried to destroy the
evidence of the duplex. She turned the hose on the
(49:32):
front porch, went into the house, got the blood soaked mattress,
and carried it over to the vacant lot at the
corner of Third and Pinchon, where I struck perhaps about
five matches onto it. Sunday morning the next day, at
her apartment, she divided the women's corpses between two trunks
she washed the gun, accidentally discharging it under the water,
(49:55):
and put it in the handbox. Toward the end of
her confession, she writes, from here on, I think most
everything has already been known. At the end of the letter,
Winnie forbids her attorney from ever divulging this information.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
The end, I think things are adding up there. Okay,
I'd like to know more details when she says she
shot Anne, you know, I want to see does she actually,
in case she put the gun up against Anne's head
and pulled the trigger, because that's what the evidence shows.
The one thing that I kind of keyed in on
was the stabbing of Sammy and the left shoulder, which, yeah,
(50:34):
the autopsy isn't showing that. And I'm looking at you know,
Sammy's photos now yep, and she has a couple of
marks on her left shoulder.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Maybe they were nicks. Let me look at the autopsy
report to there's a superficial puncture, but that's in her neck.
You would think if he had noted that, wouldn't he
have noted a stab wound even if it was like
a nick.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yeah, that's routine. They need to record all the injuries,
you know, whether superficial or actually significant injuries during their autopsy.
But you know, fundamentally, that last confession seems to line
up best with the evidence. I didn't realize the vacant
(51:19):
lot where the mattress was found was so close that
she could carry a mattress there. Which is you see
somebody carrying two mattresses.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
It depends. I wonder if I mean, I can look
this up. I don't think mattresses in the nineteen thirties
are the kind of mattresses we think of now. I
don't think they're I mean this and these are twins.
I mean, I'm not saying sure. I don't know whether
that's possible or not, but I don't think they are
quite as I mean, I can't hardly lift up a
full size mattress on my own, but I don't think
(51:50):
they were like that.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
So that's a good point. So her telling about the
the emotional turmoil that she's experienced, that sounds real to me.
Now she's putting blame on Anne. Anne is taunting her,
Anne is using her lover Jack for money. I think
(52:12):
that there's more of a jealousy aspect going on there,
that maybe she's suspecting that Anne and Jack were having
their own relationship, sexual relationship, and Winnie is jealous about that.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
Yeah, because there's no talk about selfhilless or this other woman.
There's none of that. So ultimately, do you feel like
I think it's clear that she at least she had
some mental health struggles. But that's different than somebody who
is triggered and then works really hard to cover everything up,
which is what she did.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
Yeah, I think I think there is a mental health component.
It is does not arise up to the level of
legal insanity. In my opinion, I think she needs to
be held or needed to be held responsible for her crimes.
I do not believe that she's somebody that should should
have been subjected to the death penalty, life in prison. Sure,
(53:06):
the extent that she went through, I mean, this is
this is what's just stunning to me, is I mean
you you literally are cleaning up a double homicide, the
victims and crime scene and all, and shipping the victims
and the crime scene out to LA to pick them
up there. You know, that's just that's crazy from my perspective.
(53:30):
You know, that's just really I think it's just underscores.
Sometimes these offenders think too hard. That was when he's downfall.
You know, she didn't think about, oh, these bodies are
going to leak and they're going to smell and people
are going to notice. And that's ultimately at least you
had somebody who was observant enough at the LA train
(53:52):
station going hold on steamer trunks. That's a problem.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
Would have worked if she had dumped both of those
she wanted Burton to do with, as trunks have just
floated and somebody would have discovered those bodies, both of
them floating in the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
It's possible that aspects whether the trunks themselves would have floated.
I think with Anne, I mean she's bloated inside the trunk.
So in essence, you have a balloon inside that trunk
at least for a period of time. You know, eventually
Anne is going to burst. Fundamentally, she's going to leak
that and so the buoyancy aspect may not be there.
(54:30):
And I don't know, you know what the buoyancy of
these trunks are. You know, do they sink naturally or
do they float? You know, that's that would be a
hard thing to try to surmise as to the trunks themselves. Sammy.
You know, with no gases due to the dismemberment, that
trunk may have just floated and there's no way that
(54:50):
because of well, I actually can't say that because I've
got bodies again in that hellser case that were much
more dismembered than what we're seeing with Sammy. And they
were you know, put in multiple duffel bags way down
with walking pavers and stones, and they floated they came
(55:11):
back up, and that's how that case got got solved,
you know. But it depends on how far you go
out off the coast and if they do float, do
they wash up on shore or do they just go
out into the middle of the note of the ocean
and there never never land.
Speaker 1 (55:25):
I mean, I'll put a photo on social media of
this trunk. I think I've done that before. The trunk,
much like her trunk, looks imposing, it's not. It's really light.
The problem we had with it was the leather straps
had broken off of it, but it had wheels, little
tiny castor wheels, and it's tin in the wood that
(55:46):
is in there is so lightweight. I'm pretty sure this
would float no problem. And it's a huge trunk. It's math.
I mean all of the equipment that I use in here, lights,
all of everything, it goes in that trunk, and it
fits perfectly in that trunk. So that's a two body
I would call that a two body trunk the one
I have, so it would have floated for sure. I mean,
these are meant even though they're big and sturdy and
(56:08):
they look like they take a beating, they're meant to
be carried around by a woman. Anybody can carry these.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
I actually have a case with a body and a
steamer trunk.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
You do.
Speaker 2 (56:17):
I do had nothing to do with a train or
being thrown in the water. But it was a I
won't go into the details because it's a really horrific crime,
but it was an elderly woman, you know, petite woman
who has put in this her own steamer trunk. I
had to deal with processing both the body as well
as the steamer trunk, and once the body was out,
(56:39):
that trunk was fairly light.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
Yeah. I mean it's meant for being transported on ships
and everything else. So anyway, when I was reading about
this case, I was thinking, I cannot believe one person,
and I caught myself saying one woman could do this,
and then I thought, I mean this, she did it
and she's saying she did it with no help whatsoever.
So I thought that was really interesting. And again I
(57:02):
did get a little bit of a kick out of
you kept saying he he he as the offender, and
I just thought, what's he going to do when he
finds out this right starlet looking woman is the one
who does it. So anyway, we will for sure have
another compelling case next week. It will not involve a
trunk and I don't know about the female killer part
of it, but I like bringing you stories, especially with
(57:24):
the you know, we've dug into a lot of history stuff.
There's there are things in history with this story that
you know, we were able to learn. So I was
glad to be able to do that.
Speaker 2 (57:33):
Yeah, well you introduced me to I guess what is
a famous historical case. So thank you, Kate.
Speaker 1 (57:39):
And that you can use luminol the ingredient as a sedative.
Who knew? Don't do it at home. We're not advocating
for anything, but who knew? All Right, I'll see you
next week.
Speaker 2 (57:50):
Sounds good.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
This has been an exactly right production for.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
Our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com
slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (58:04):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
Research by Alison Trumble and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (58:12):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (58:17):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
buried Bones pod.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's
Cold Cases is also available now.
Speaker 2 (58:40):
Listen to Barry Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
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