Strings Attached

She didn’t do it.

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More About

• Winnie Ruth Judd
• Hedvig Samuelson
• Jana Bommersbach
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Murder and Homicide

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Most folks forget -- or don’t know -- that Winnie Ruth Judd did not, in fact, hack up the body of one of her friends and shove it into a steamer trunk in October of 1931. Many of us are convinced, in fact, that she didn’t kill either Agnes LeRoi or Hedvig Samuelson, the friends and roommates she was convicted of murdering. Many people -- like former New Times editor Jana Bommersbach, who wrote a book on the subject -- think Judd was railroaded by sleazy political types.

Filmmaker Scott Coblio is among those people who believe that Judd was a scapegoat -- an angle he presents with pathos and humor in his movie Murderess: The Winnie Ruth Judd Story, in which each of the characters is played by a handmade marionette. Coblio and local historian Marshall Shore will be on hand to discuss the film.