Trunk Murders Bus Tour

Laurie Notaro is leading a bus tour through Phoenix on Saturday, October 17, from 6 PM to 8 PM, marking the 95th anniversary of the Trunk Murders. The tour starts at the Winnie Ruth Judd house, the home where the crimes took place in 1931. From there, it hits two other sites tied to the case: the clinic where Judd worked and the state hospital where she was sent in 1933.

If you aren't familiar with the story, it's one of the city's most infamous. In 1931, Winnie Ruth Judd killed two friends, Agnes Anne LeRoi and Hedvig "Sammy" Samuelson, in their Phoenix home. She carried their bodies to California by train in trunks, earning her the nickname the "Trunk Murderess." She was convicted and spent thirty years at the Arizona State Asylum for the Insane before being pardoned by Governor Jack Williams.

Notaro is a Phoenix native and a New York Times bestselling humorist who wrote for The State Press at Arizona State University and spent a decade as a humor columnist at the Arizona Republic. She published a true-crime novel about the case in 2024 and has since pointed to new evidence implicating a local doctor, Charles Brown, as an accomplice. The tour is her way of revisiting the story on the ground.

The first stop is the Judd house itself, which has been restored to its 1931 appearance. It's now a working law office and isn't typically open to the public, so this is a rare chance to actually step inside. The bus then takes you to the clinic where Judd worked and the state hospital where she spent three decades. The tour runs from 6 PM to 8 PM on Saturday, October 17.