11 Grisliest Trunk Murders In History

Winnie Ruth Judd was accused of killing two friends, Hedvig Samuelson and Agnes Anne LeRoi, on October 16, 1931. She allegedly shot them in their Phoenix, AZ, bungalow. Judd later claimed she killed the women in self-defense after they attacked her during a fight about a man.Prosecutors said this.Judd and an accomplice dismembered Samuelson's body and left LeRoi's body whole. They stuffed the remains of both women into two shipping trunks, a hatbox, and a small suitcase.

On October 18, 1931, Judd boarded a train to Los Angeles. The next morning, when she arrived in California, station staff found the corpses. The trunks leaked fluid and gave off a bad smell. The press called Judd the "Trunk Murderess." Judd was arrested, convicted of killing LeRoi, and sentenced to death for first-degree murder. The killer appealed the sentence; she eventually went to a psychiatric facility.

Judd escaped from the mental hospital six times before being released on December 22, 1971. She died in 1998 at age 93.

On June 18, 1909, Manhattan restaurant owner Sun Leung visited his 30-year-old cousin, Leon Ling, after not hearing from him for several days. Before Leung entered Ling's Chinatown apartment, he smelled a putrid odor and returned quickly with police. Police broke down Ling's door and saw a large trunk wrapped in rope. After opening the container, they made aThis was a shocking discovery in the list '11 Grisliest Trunk Murders In History'.: inside the trunk was the badly decomposed body of a young woman, later identified as 19-year-old Elsie Sigel. Someone had strangled the teenager to death; the rope remained tight around her neck, and most of her clothes were gone.

Officers found that Sigel, a missionary teaching Christianity to recent Asian immigrants, met Ling while visiting Chinatown with her mother. The two became romantically involved, but Sigel had another lover. Law enforcement determined Ling killed Sigel in a jealous rage before putting her in the trunk and fleeing the country.

Investigators could not catch Ling. The scandal involving Sigel's brutal murder and the couple's interracial relationship—which was highly forbidden then—made it a major mystery in Chinatown.

On September 9, 1977, 37-year-old [Name] was involved.Ira was [involved].Einhorn was [involved].'s former girlfriend visited his Philadelphia, PA, home to get her things after their five-year relationship ended. Soon after, Helen "Holly" Maddux, age 30, entered Einhorn's apartment and he killed her. He put her corpse in a big trunk, covering her body with newspapers, packing peanuts, and air fresheners to hide the smell of rotting flesh. Neighbors called police on March 28, 1979, reporting a bad odor from his home and a reddish-brown liquid leaking through the floor into the apartment below.

Officers found the trunk in Einhorn's bedroom closet. It held Maddux's partially mummified corpse, weighing only 37 pounds. An autopsy showed multiple skull fractures. This showed Einhorn likely beat her to death with a blunt object.

Einhorn faced murder charges for Maddux. He then fled the country and lived as a fugitive.Einhorn lived as a fugitive.He lived in Europe for twenty years. Police caught Einhorn in France in 1997. In October 2002, a Pennsylvania court found him guilty of murdering Maddux. The court sentenced him to life in prison without parole.

In New Orleans, LA, on the morning of October 27, 1927, the family's housekeeper found the mutilated, dismembered bodies of two sisters, Theresa and Leonide Moity. They stuffed the bodies into two trunks in a home shared with Theresa's husband, Henry, and their three children. Police quickly named Theresa's husband as the main suspect. After a search, they captured Henry in a Louisiana bayou.Henry confessed to the killings.Henry claimed he became enraged when his wife ended their marriage and his sister-in-law tried to interfere during the argument.

Investigators found a story Leonide wrote in the home where the women died. Leonide warned girls, "be careful, for marriage is a life sentence." The next year, Henry was convicted of killing his wife, but not his sister-in-law Leonide. He received a life sentence.

On March 24, 1906, police went to a train depot in Stockton, CA. Station workers noticed a trunk giving off a disturbing smell. Officers opened the container and found the corpse of Albert N. McVicar, Emma LeDoux's third husband. The medical examiner found he died from a morphine overdose. The doctor actually put the dead man's remains on public display at the morgue.

Law enforcement tracked down LeDoux. They learned her second husband died of heart failure at age 30, leaving her $10,000 in life insurance. LeDoux married Jean LeDoux in 1905, despite staying married to McVicar, giving her a reason to kill the man found dead in a trunk.

Less than a month after McVicar's corpse appeared, LeDoux was convicted of murder.Emma LeDoux received the first-degree sentence on April 18, 1906. California gave LeDoux the death penalty. Jury tampering claims reduced her sentence to life in prison. She was paroled in 1920 after ten years. LeDoux faced jail time for other crimes. Cancer killed her in prison in 1941 at age 69.

After an argument about alleged cheating, the 26-year-old Toni ManciniToni Mancini murdered his 42-year-old girlfriend Violette Kaye on May 10, 1934. He stuffed her body in a trunk kept at the foot of his bed in his Brighton, England home. Police searched Mancini's home after Kaye vanished. On July 15, 1934, they found the trunk leaking fluid and smelling bad.

Police found Kaye's body in the trunk. This reminded them of a still-unidentified pregnant woman whose dismembered corpse appeared in a trunk at a Brighton train station on June 17, 1934. The killings were not connected, but they earned the name "Brighton Trunk Murders."

A jury found a not-guilty verdict for Toni Mancini's murder of Kaye. Decades later, Mancini admitted he killed her by throwing a hammer at her head.

On April 14, 1885, maids at a St. Louis, MO, hotel smelled a bad odor from a locked trunk in a guest room. Charles Bieger, the dealer who recently sold the trunk to a man called "Dr. Maxwell," opened the container. The opened trunk showed the decomposed body of Charles Arthur Preller. Missouri detectives later found "Dr. Maxwell" was Hugh Mottram Brooks, a British man who met Preller while traveling from England to the United States.

The two men became close friends, planning trips to New Zealand together. But Brooks vanished days before Preller's body surfaced, telling hotel guests his rich friend had already left St. Louis. Auckland, New Zealand, caught Brooks, who was then tried for Preller's murder in 1886.Brooks said, he accidentally killed his wealthy new friend by using too much chloroform to treat what he called Preller's "private disease."

Brooks, called the "Little Chloroformer" by the press, was convicted of murder and hanged on August 10, 1886, before over 200 witnesses.

On December 13, 1915, two workers digging a Philadelphia, PA, basement found a large wooden packing crate under the dirt floor. Inside, they found a leather trunk holding a corpse covered in powdered lime. The workers called police. Police quickly identified the dead man as Daniel J. McNichol. The 23-year-old owned a leather goods firm with Edward Keller. His wife had reported him missing nearly two years earlier on March 14, 1914.

Keller, with a long criminal history of burglary, grand larceny, and embezzlement, eventually...Authorities convicted Keller of voluntary manslaughter.Authorities linked Keller to the trunk where McNichol's body was buried. Keller served eight years in prison for killing his business partner.

After leaving East State Penitentiary, Keller got a job as a security guard at the Corn Exchange National Bank. On December 20, 1925, Keller stole $20,000 from his employer. Keller fled in a taxi but died from a heart attack in the back seat.

On February 10, 1921, 36-year-old James Mahoney married Kate Mooers, who was over 30 years his senior. They married soon after meeting through Mahoney's mother and sister, who worked at a Seattle, WA, hotel owned by the wealthy divorcee. Less than two months later, the couple supposedly began a late honeymoon. On April 27, 1921, the groom returned without his new bride, telling friends and family Mooers planned to extend her trip to Cuba. Mahoney used a forged power-of-attorney to quickly take over his absent wife's finances, making Mooers's nieces suspicious and they contacted law enforcement.

Police soon found that on April 16, 1921, Mahoney arranged for a moving company to move a trunk from his home to a houseboat on Portage Bay. Then, Mahoney had men put the heavy trunk on a small boat, which Mahoney said he would row to another houseboat. Instead, Mahoney steered the skiff into the bay and dumped the trunk in the water.

On August 8, 1921, the trunk surfaced in Portage Bay. Law enforcement officials discovered the decomposed body of...Kate Mooers Mahoney.They poisoned her with morphine, put her in the trunk, and killed her with multiple head blows from a blunt object. On October 1, 1921, Mahoney was convicted of killing his wife and received the death sentence. He was hanged on December 1, 1922.

According to law enforcement, on September 12, 1936, 16-year-old...Irene Hart.Irene Hart was at home in Rotherham, England, with Andrew Bagley, her step-grandfather. Bagley, who had argued with the teenager about spending time with boys, allegedly shoved newspaper down Hart's throat and strangled her to death. Then, Bagley forced her lifeless body into a tin trunk, which he hid in the teenager's closet.

Bagley fled after killing Hart. He ran until October 23, 1936. Law enforcement arrested him at a public library in Hucknall, England. An acquaintance recognized Bagley and told the police where the wanted man was.

Bagley denied killing Hart. He claimed a man he brought home murdered her. Still, the court convicted Bagley of killing the teenager. They hanged him on February 10, 1937, at age 62. Some people do not believe Bagley killed the teenager; Jeannette Hensby published this in 2016.The Rotherham Trunk Murder reveals an eighty-year-old miscarriage of justice.The author argues another person strangled Hart to death.

In May 1996, a large steamer trunk appeared near the Appalachian Trial in rural Virginia.The trunk contained the body.The body belonged to an elderly man strangled to death. In January 2003, military records identified the man as 75-year-old Jasper Frederick "Jack" Watkins from Reistertown, MD.

After finding the remains, law enforcement learned Nancy Jean Siegel had been cashing Watkins's Social Security checks. Siegel, who was 30 years younger than Watkins when he died, met him while selling burial plots. Siegel took advantage of the 75-year-old during their short relationship. Watkins thought Siegel loved him and wanted to marry him. Instead, she opened credit lines in his name to fund her gambling.

When police confronted Siegel about Watkins's murder, she claimed she found him dead in his home with a ligature around his neck. She panicked, stuffed his body in a trunk, and threw the corpse in Virginia. A jury rejected Siegel's story. In March 2009, she was convicted on 20 counts and received a 400-month prison sentence for her crimes.