True Crime Stories

While this case takes place in the early 1930's and the same issues as previous cases, when it comes to time and accuracy occurs, this case is a little easier to separate most of the fact and fiction.   This is the case of Winnie Ruth Judd.  She was born in 1905 in Indiana and by 1931 she had been married to a much older man, Dr. William C. Judd, for about 7 years.  Her marriage was waning and reports differ on some things involving where each of the married parties were at particular times.  Some reports say that Dr. Judd had moved from Phoenix, where they lived together, to Los Angelos in 1931 to reestablish a practice where other reports claim that he was in Mexico moving from town to town practicing.  Some reports also claim that Dr. Judd's practice was waning also due to a drug addiction.   What is known is that in 1931 Winnie Ruth was working as a medical secretary in Phoenix and by at least October of that year Dr. Judd was not with her and ...

While I so often find the long ago stories interesting, as in "The Bloody Benders" or the trial of Leopold and Loeb, they are also difficult to get all the true information.  It is often like playing telephone from a time prior to secure records, newspapers and especially the Internet.  It is often hard to distinguish the difference between fact and fiction. The case of John and Sarah Makin is just one of those stories. The Makin's resided in Australia in the late 1800's.  During that time, as well as continued well into the 20th century, when an unwed woman became pregnant there was the stigma that shame would be brought not just to her and her family but to the child as well.  A practice was started called "Baby Minding."  In essence what generally happened is that an unwed mother would seek out a baby minder to care for her child for a fee.  Sometimes the mother, and sometimes the father was involved too, would make agreements to continue seeing the ch...