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After this first attempt to recover her health, she tried several
times to rejoin her husband in Mexico, following him from one
indigent town to another. Tending to Mexico's poor spoke well of his
principles, but this practice did not support a young wife who was
neither accustomed to living in poverty nor, more practically, was
she physically strong enough to endure these conditions because of
health problems. In 1930, she traveled back to the U.S. He remained
in Mexico. Their communication was constant, but Ruth found she
required more than Xs on a letter.
In 1930, she moved to Phoenix, Arizona, known for its tubercular
relief.
She cut her long hair and sported the fashionable "bob"
cut of the day.
And she fell in love with smiling, debonair, bedroom-eyed and
saucy Jack Halloran.
Her first job was as governess to the wealthy Leigh Ford family,
a position she loved. Halloran, the Ford's next-door neighbor,
proved to be a side benefit. Their over-the-fence chats developed
into much more and every chance they had she would steal from the
Ford homestead, and he from his wife and three children, for a
rendezvous under the desert skies of Phoenix.
"Halloran was 44 years old and one of the town's success
stories," reads Jana Bommersbach's heavily researched The
Trunk Murderess. "When anyone in Phoenix named the movers
and shakers, Jack Halloran's name was on the list... If you wanted a
political favor, Jack Halloran knew who to ask. People remember him
as a take-charge kind of guy whose laugh could fill a room."
He probably emanated a charm that the complacent William Judd
never could, and exploded sexuality totally foreign to the good
doctor.
*****
Phoenix in the early Thirties, despite its jabs at modernity and
a large population of good people just trying to live and let live,
was in many ways still a Wild West personality, full of modern-day
desperadoes. It uniquely bore the raw and rough- and-tumble-ahead,
carefree rapport with life that was slowly disappearing in other,
older cities behind a somber, more prayerful and conscientious hope
for industry thrust upon them by a national Depression.
Phoenix's boardwalks were full of the regular john does who
sought the most peaceful life possible; they had heard that Arizona,
the newest state in the Union, offered that. Miles of desert between
itself and other metropolises seemed to have cut, at least escaped
from, a reality of past problems.
But, the desperadoes straddled the same boardwalks, and they were
everywhere. They didn't come this time with a snarl, waving guns and
staging shootouts at high noon. They smiled now, and wore pinstriped
suits and stole the advantage of the town rather than the
money from its banks outright. They were rustlers, like Jack
Halloran, who enjoyed running Phoenix like a Saturday night
hootenanny and shooting from the hip with swagger and verbosity; the
meter of their caliber was lethal: political savvy and an assured
grin. They were the roustabouts, boasting a clutch on the throttle
of the town administration, scuffing their path with invisible
spurs, even up the sacred aisles of Municipal Hall to address the
civic committees to promise their support for a more God-Fearing and
Better Phoenix.
Because Phoenix had grown basically out of the desert ether, that
is from a hitching-post town to one with an emerging art deco
skyline, it was able to creep up ungoverned while the rest of the
country was unaware of it. The reformers were watching Chicago, as
was New York and Kansas City and St. Paul. But, Phoenix was viewed
as a blossoming cactus of the Southwest, its needles albeit
unobserved. On the surface, it wore a strict code of family morals
and wedded loyalty – and most of the 50,000 residents practiced
what they preached – but there was the element who found the
motto, "a city of homes, churches and schools" a
convenient mask to camouflage their lifestyles.
There was a league of Jack Hallorans there, big biters and big
takers and big kickers. Suddenly rich on the pastel Sonora Desert,
they ran Phoenix for the pleasure of their own pocketbook and
libido. Americans didn't think of Phoenix as a Gomorrah, and that
was its greatest power.
Jack Halloran was part owner of one of the largest lumberyards in
this modern-day garden of sin. And owning a lumberyard in a
burgeoning garden-turned-metropolis is a virtue that speaks for
itself. A member of the Phoenix Country Club, he rubbed shoulders
with the denizens of smoke-filled political backrooms, mayor on
down, as well as patrons of business who, because they hoped to
maintain an industry there, became very adept at psalming,
"Yes, sir, mayor!" with an efficient nod of the head. Jack
probably started out as a yes-man, too, but now he was one of the
rich and favored.
*****
Winnie Ruth Judd didn't realize the dangerous company she was
giving herself to in the back seat of Model Citizen Jack's luxury
sedan. She may have had misgivings – she continued to pour out her
love to Dr. Judd in ink and, in fact, wrote him that she hoped he
would come to Phoenix – but in the interim she obviously was
feeling the freedom of the new girl in town. Attracting male stares
made her feel like a woman, not just a preacher's daughter. Sensing
the space and experimenting with what a woman can find in that
space, she was having the time of her unconventional life.
After a few months with the Ford family, Winnie sought a
financial step up as a medical secretary at the private Grunow
Clinic. Her salary of $75 was quite good for the year 1931; it
afforded her monthly rent for a small cottage at 1102 East Brill
Street, food in the Kelvinator ice box, and a little left over to
send her husband who had left Mexico for California where he had
admitted himself into a hospital for drug cure.
Ruth's best friends were Anne LeRoi, a 32-year-old Oregonian
divorcee who was an X-ray technician at Grunow, and 24-year-old
Hedvig (or "Sammy") Samuelson from North Dakota who,
because she was suffering from TB, had taken a hiatus from a
teaching career. Before coming to Phoenix in early February of 1931,
both these professional women worked in Alaska. It was there that
they met and where they decided to move together down south because
of Sammy's worsening health.
After their deaths, certain newspapers would hint at Anne's
"mannishness" and term their friendship as a "queer
love," a derogatory term for lesbianism in the first decades of
the 20th Century. That they were bisexual might be true, for their
relationship does seem to have extended to that. But,
simultaneously, they also openly exhibited an interest in certain
men, especially Ruth's male companion, who they called "Happy
Jack".
They lived at 2929 North Second Street, in a small studio-type
duplex, "a trolley ride away," according to Bommersbach,
from Ruth's Brill Street place. There, they often threw small
parties for Ruth and Halloran and the latter's married business
buddies whom he brought along for revel.
He also brought crates of bootlegged booze. The men wined and
dined the girls throughout the evening while their wives figured
hubby was at the office working hard. Rather, hubby was hardly
working. Because these knights of big business and big city dealings
tended to leave behind them a wad of money for the girls'
hospitality, one might conclude without so skeptical a mind that the
hospitality may have included more than a tray of pastrami
sandwiches and a leisurely bowl of popcorn.
Ruth knew that Jack tended to visit the two girls on his own and
would, many times, begift them rolls of greenery and bundles of
presents, but according to what is known she never balked. Still,
author Bommersbach hints in her book The Trunk Murderess that
beneath the amiability and, in fact, secret-sharing relationship the
three girlfriends had, there was indeed a semblance of kinetic
rivalry.
If she had been a fool, Ruth might have totally overlooked Jack's
generosity to her female friends, but she was not a fool. Jack, she
determined, was not a benefactor Santa Claus. Anne was a tall,
well-built, stunning brunette with chiseled features, and blonde,
dimpled Sammy did not exactly leave men cold. Both were charismatic,
fun loving and, what Jack liked best, adventurous.
In autumn, 1931, the three girls attempted space sharing in the
small quarters on North Second Street. Living under one roof
produced problems, though. They began arguing daily, mostly over
differences in housekeeping. Ruth was casual in her habits; the
other two were obsessively neat. To placate, Ruth returned to her
old digs at Brill Street.
But, a feeling of animosity was developing nevertheless, and not
over tidiness. The bond between Anne and Sammy had always been
impenetrable; they were sisters in one thought for so long and,
whether sexual or spiritual, they doted on each other, protecting
each other to no extent; Anne was the breadwinner and Sammy the
homemaker. They were a family of two. Winnie, in a manner of
speaking, was an outsider who, probably because she felt that way,
had chosen to give them the freedom they needed to once again live
the way they required.
Not that she wished to penetrate their circle – she was
independently happy and lost in the throes of romance with her Jack
– and fighting conscience over her betrayal of Dr. Judd -- but, no
doubt, the interplay that existed between her and Jack, and Jack and
her friends, almost certainly caused a sensation of distrust among
all parties.
This negative underplay came to a combustive and startling –
and deadly – head on Friday, October 16, 1931. Trouble began to
twitch the evening before, on Thursday. During the week, Ruth
learned that Jack and his crones had been planning a deer-hunting
party in the White Mountains of northern Arizona. She offered to
introduce Jack to a fellow employee at Grunow Clinic, a pretty,
young nurse named Lucille Moore, who had come from that part of the
country and was familiar with its wildlife. Jack agreed to meet Miss
Moore and on Thursday he first picked up Ruth, then Moore, and
headed back to Ruth's house where she had dinner in the oven.
On their way back, Jack remembered that he had promised to stop
at Anne and Sammy's house to see a couple friends who were visiting
there. Ruth felt uncomfortable because she had earlier turned down a
dinner invitation telling Anne that she had business that night; she
hadn't wanted to go into the history of the planned hunting
excursion and Lucille Moore's involvement. While her reasons are
unclear, they strongly and strangely suggest that she might
have sensed a jealousy that would have raged had the girls known
that she was introducing Jack to another good-looking woman. Later
presumptions conclude that Ruth knew, or strongly suspected, that
she had been sharing Jack's bed with Anne and, possibly, Sammy, too.
Jack went into the house to see his buddies, and Ruth's friends
came out to say hello to Ruth and Miss Moore (whom Anne slightly
knew from the clinic). Ruth observed no resentment in their actions;
they were highly cordial – even asked them to stay for dinner,
which Ruth had to turn down because of her dinner waiting at home.
It would not be until the following night that Ruth realized her
initial suspicions had been correct.
Anne LeRoi and Sammy Samuelson hadn't liked the idea of pretty,
young Lucille Moore one bit.
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