Bury Me Deep
Feb. 11th, 2019 01:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maplemood"Where are my girls?"
I first came across the story of Winnie Ruth Judd, aka the Trunk Murderess, on an episode of My Favorite Murder (the Buzzfeed Unsolved Network also has a super-short video up that summarizes the case pretty well), and it's stuck with me ever since, probably because even though the case is technically "solved" so much about it--Winnie's motivations, whether she had an accomplice who helped dismember one of the bodies, whether she actually did it at all or took the fall for someone else--is still unknown, and almost all the theories that I've heard feel murky and unsatisfying. Not that, obviously, there's ever a really satisfying explanation for murder, especially a murder that ends with two women shot and stuffed into shipping trunks, but. This story in particular has always niggled at me.
Basically, it goes like this: Winnie Ruth Judd was working as a secretary at a clinic in Phoenix, Arizona in the 1930s; she lived apart from her husband, William C. Judd, who was apparently a morphine addict. She met an X-ray technician who also worked at the clinic, Agnes Anne LeRoi, and became good friends with both Agnes and Agnes's roommate, Hedvig Samuelson. They even moved in together, but after a few months Winnie moved out again, and sometime around the night of October 16th, 1931, she shot and killed both Agnes and Hedvig. Three days later Winnie showed up in Los Angeles with two trunks containing the bodies, and things began to fall apart for her once a baggage agent noticed liquid oozing from one of the trunks.
Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbot follows the basic outline of that story up until this point. In a lot of ways, it reads like an alternate-history version of the case where Winnie--except in this version she's called Marion, her friends are named Louise and Ginny, and the married lover who may or may not have been involved in the murders in real life is DEFINITELY involved here--had a little more time to make her escape, a husband who's still a morphine addict but willing to take the fall for her, and a chance to get revenge on her former lover, who in the book is portrayed as the puppet-master behind the murders and an all-around sociopath. He's charming enough that Marion never comes across as stupid for falling for him, just sheltered and repressed and pretty desperately lonely, and her relationship with Louise and Ginny is fascinating. None of them are perfect people, or even necessarily good people, but they become so dependent on each other so fast that the fallout feels inevitable and also like a punch in the gut. In real life, the theory is that the argument that ended with both Agnes and Hedvig being shot and Hedvig's body chopped into pieces had something to do with Winnie's lover, whom all three women knew. In the book, their argument starts with him, though it's also clear that it's about Louise's protective instinct and love for both Marion and Ginny, and Ginny's jealously and suspicion that Louise and Marion will eventually run off together and abandon her; Ginny, like Hedvig Samuelson, has tuberculosis and is in no position to live on her own or take care of herself. And of course, in the book, Marion's lover is in exactly the right position to know all these instincts and suspicions and to manipulate Marion and her friends through them.
I checked this one out because a.) it's one of four old-school-noir-style novels Megan Abbot wrote, and all four have fabulously pulpy covers, and b.) I loved her thriller, The End of Everything, which is set in the 80s and also features intense female friendships and predatory men. I wouldn't call either book a fun read, and if you're not a fan of very (very) descriptive writing styles they take some getting used to, but they're both fascinating and absolutely full of tension and foreboding in a way that's, again, very noir. Bury Me Deep is also great if you like true crime (and I do)--it captures a lot of the how-could-something-like-this-ever-happen horror of the case without feeling sleazy or exploitative, and Marion's a complex and sympathetic character, even in her worst moments.
I first came across the story of Winnie Ruth Judd, aka the Trunk Murderess, on an episode of My Favorite Murder (the Buzzfeed Unsolved Network also has a super-short video up that summarizes the case pretty well), and it's stuck with me ever since, probably because even though the case is technically "solved" so much about it--Winnie's motivations, whether she had an accomplice who helped dismember one of the bodies, whether she actually did it at all or took the fall for someone else--is still unknown, and almost all the theories that I've heard feel murky and unsatisfying. Not that, obviously, there's ever a really satisfying explanation for murder, especially a murder that ends with two women shot and stuffed into shipping trunks, but. This story in particular has always niggled at me.
Basically, it goes like this: Winnie Ruth Judd was working as a secretary at a clinic in Phoenix, Arizona in the 1930s; she lived apart from her husband, William C. Judd, who was apparently a morphine addict. She met an X-ray technician who also worked at the clinic, Agnes Anne LeRoi, and became good friends with both Agnes and Agnes's roommate, Hedvig Samuelson. They even moved in together, but after a few months Winnie moved out again, and sometime around the night of October 16th, 1931, she shot and killed both Agnes and Hedvig. Three days later Winnie showed up in Los Angeles with two trunks containing the bodies, and things began to fall apart for her once a baggage agent noticed liquid oozing from one of the trunks.
Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbot follows the basic outline of that story up until this point. In a lot of ways, it reads like an alternate-history version of the case where Winnie--except in this version she's called Marion, her friends are named Louise and Ginny, and the married lover who may or may not have been involved in the murders in real life is DEFINITELY involved here--had a little more time to make her escape, a husband who's still a morphine addict but willing to take the fall for her, and a chance to get revenge on her former lover, who in the book is portrayed as the puppet-master behind the murders and an all-around sociopath. He's charming enough that Marion never comes across as stupid for falling for him, just sheltered and repressed and pretty desperately lonely, and her relationship with Louise and Ginny is fascinating. None of them are perfect people, or even necessarily good people, but they become so dependent on each other so fast that the fallout feels inevitable and also like a punch in the gut. In real life, the theory is that the argument that ended with both Agnes and Hedvig being shot and Hedvig's body chopped into pieces had something to do with Winnie's lover, whom all three women knew. In the book, their argument starts with him, though it's also clear that it's about Louise's protective instinct and love for both Marion and Ginny, and Ginny's jealously and suspicion that Louise and Marion will eventually run off together and abandon her; Ginny, like Hedvig Samuelson, has tuberculosis and is in no position to live on her own or take care of herself. And of course, in the book, Marion's lover is in exactly the right position to know all these instincts and suspicions and to manipulate Marion and her friends through them.
I checked this one out because a.) it's one of four old-school-noir-style novels Megan Abbot wrote, and all four have fabulously pulpy covers, and b.) I loved her thriller, The End of Everything, which is set in the 80s and also features intense female friendships and predatory men. I wouldn't call either book a fun read, and if you're not a fan of very (very) descriptive writing styles they take some getting used to, but they're both fascinating and absolutely full of tension and foreboding in a way that's, again, very noir. Bury Me Deep is also great if you like true crime (and I do)--it captures a lot of the how-could-something-like-this-ever-happen horror of the case without feeling sleazy or exploitative, and Marion's a complex and sympathetic character, even in her worst moments.