(upbeat music) - Coming up next on this special literary edition of "Arizona Horizon," author Laurie Notaro is out with a new novel based on the true crime story of the notorious Phoenix trunk murderous Winnie Ruth Judd.

Also tonight, a new book filled with facts and photos of Arizona national parks and monuments.

And bestselling local author T.J. Newman joins us to talk about her latest thriller.

Those stories and more, next on "Arizona Horizon."

- [Narrator] "Arizona Horizon" is made possible by contributions from the Friends of Arizona PBS, members of your public television station.

- Good evening and welcome to the special literary edition of "Arizona Horizon."

I'm Ted Simons.

The story of Winnie Ruth Judd is one of the most sensational true crime sagas in Arizona history.

Judd was accused of murdering two friends, then stuffing their bodies in trunks and other luggage that wound up transported to California.

Judd was found guilty and sentenced to death, but that sentence was repealed when she was found to be mentally incompetent.

End of story?

Hardly.

Author Laurie Nataro is out with a new novel about the case and it's titled "The Murderous."

And while others have written about Ruth Judd, in this novel, we hear from Ruth Judd.

We recently welcomed Laurie Notaro back to "Arizona Horizon."

Of all the things to write about, why Winnie Ruth Judd?

- Well, I mean, you remember in days gone by, I was actually a reporter?

I wasn't always a humor columnist, and so we, as fellow journalists, you always wanna know the story behind the story.

And so I had grown up with the story, other books have been written, and I always figured, I think there's more to this.

I really kind of wanna get into her head because she's such a pretty woman and so well versed.

What makes someone like that, who looks like me and you, kill her two best friends?

- Yeah, yeah, and well, yes, and we have other things going on there as well.

Was there a moment where, was there a lightbulb going out, an aha moment?

I know your friend Robert Pela, mutual friends.

- [Laurie] Yeah.

- He's very much involved in this story.

Did something happen that said, okay, we're on this thing?

- It was, when I went to the archives first in 2014, I went under the assumption that it really was self-defense, I really did wanna believe that, but I still wanted to figure out why and how things spun so madly outta control.

And Ted, I was only there 15 minutes when I saw the autopsy report, and I saw that she had, the victims had stippling on their gun wounds, and that does not happen.

That's a direct shot.

It's, I've talked to Phoenix Police, that's a direct shot.

That doesn't happen during a struggle.

- Yeah.

- That happens when you have the muzzle of a gun right up against someone's temple.

- And we have a confession letter, a controversial confession letter - Very much so.

- in some quarters, but a confession letter.

- Yeah and that arose in 2014.

It had been in the Tucson Arizona Historical Society, the Tucson Archives, and had just been buried with Richardson's, who was Ruth's last, the insanity lawyer, for I don't know how many decades, they had been there.

And so finally they were just scanning that and then Robert Pela had been down there just, "Oh, I'll just go see if there's anything new in the Ruth Judd file," and lo and behold, here is this confession letter.

- Now, this confession letter was not, was it used or not used - [Laurie] Oh, no.

- because I mean, they had to bury the thing, which it kind of leads to its authenticity, does it not?

- Absolutely, because when you read that letter, there are some things where it actually does contradict the truth.

She relinquishes all responsibility from Halloran, who was her boyfriend, in any aspect of the crime, but I think she did that holding out hope that he would still save her.

But the train of thought you can see exactly what happens in that letter is what, is the only thing that fits the evidence.

- Yeah, the research on this, and the book is, it's just a great read and you can tell - [Laurie] Thank you.

- [Ted] you did a lot of research on this.

Did you find yourself kind of getting buried in this?

- There was a lot.

I was really, I did my own research and then I was helped, Robert Pela also, the one who, my colleague who found the confession letter is also very close friends with Sunny Worel, who was one of the victim's great nieces.

And Sunny had dedicated her entire adult life, she was a National Institute of Health librarian, research librarian, so she knew her stuff.

- Yes.

- She spent 30 years documenting everything she could get about this case.

And unfortunately, I never got to meet her.

She died in 2014 of pancreatic cancer, and then Sunny's mother gave Robert the archive and Robert gave it to me.

- Yeah, and off you go, but off you go on a true crime novel, why that approach?

- Yeah, I wanted to approach it much like "In Cold Blood," where we're telling a narrative, because I really wanted to get into Ruth's head.

I really wanted to see what she was thinking, what she was feeling, and that was really the only way that I can do it.

You know, like nonfiction books have been done already.

I didn't wanna redo that.

- [Ted] Right.

- I wanted to tell the narrative of what happened to this woman and what made her become a murderous.

- But in doing that, you had to, in lots of ways, shapes, and forms here become Winnie Ruth, we hear from Winnie Ruth Judd, - [Laurie] Yeah.

- which means we're hearing from you and Winnie Ruth.

How, was there like a Twilight Zone thing, where she was becoming you?

- It is terrible.

It was terrible.

I will tell you that I put off, I outlined the book, I did the research, I put off writing it as long as I possibly could because I knew that it wasn't going to be a fun time.

And I wrote a majority of that book in 40 days.

I just had to get there and get out, and it was terrible.

It was not a good place to be.

It was anxious, it was dark, it was really awful.

I had nightmares every night and I couldn't wait to get done with it.

And usually when I finish a book, I'm really sad, but with this one, I could not wait to get it away from me.

And I sent it to my editor and I said, "I don't wanna see this for 90 days."

- But to your credit, I mean, this is not, raving lunatic can be described in different ways, but this is a woman who had a job, she had a husband, had great concerns, and I won't give it away, but great concerns about being a mom and had children and these sorts of things.

- [Laurie] Yeah.

- I mean, it's not like she woke up every day and said, "Who can I kill and stuff into a luggage?"

- No, not at all.

She was, I believe, a victim of mental health in a time in the '30s, where we didn't even really have a word for depression, - [Ted] Yeah.

- let alone something like bipolar or know how to treat it.

So she was pretty much on her own dealing with these things, and stress certainly exacerbated those episodes in her life.

And she would spin out of control, and there were also drugs involved, there was alcohol involved.

She couldn't sleep, so she was taking a lot of Luminal, and just the wheels fell off the cart, and her two best friends died.

- Yeah, and one more thing about the process, 'cause I find it, 'cause I'm reading this, I know you, so I know it's you, but it's not you.

I'm reading this and this.

I mean, that had to be difficult.

I mean, you had to, I mean, for 40 days you kind of had to walk around in her shoes.

- It was, yeah, it was like putting on her dress or her skin, kind of like, - [Ted] Yeah.

- not to be gross, but it was, I really had to start thinking in order to understand and to feel what she felt, like having that live wire stuck in the middle of you and always being anxious.

And of course, I'm trying to meet a deadline, so I'm anxious number one.

- [Ted] Right, right.

- But just going through what she felt was not a pleasant experience.

- [Ted] Well.

- It was terrible.

- Going through what she, and going, being as close to her as you are in this novel, what do you think of her?

- I feel terrible for her, I sympathize with her, but at the same time, I don't forgive her.

- [Ted] Right.

- She killed two really vibrant people who had their whole lives in front of her, and it was because she couldn't get the help that she needed, you know?

So she did take matters into her own hands, and she did it.

She was not in the right state of mind.

She wasn't as sane as you and I are right now, hopefully.

But she didn't even think about the second victim, she just went in for the first victim.

- [Ted] Yeah.

- It was not even in her frame of mind - [Ted] Yeah.

- that she would have to kill a witness.

That's how out of the box this whole thing was.

It was just crazy.

- Congratulations, I got what's, like Bob Crane Confidential, what's next for you?

(Laurie laughs) I mean, goodness gracious.

- I'm going back to humor next time.

I'm going back to humor - [Ted] Oh, really?

- next time, yes.

- [Ted] Okay, yes.

- Yes, it's another humor book about more adventures in middle age, but I've been trying to write this book for 10 years and it's finally out and I'm done and I'm delighted.

- Well, congratulations, it really is a great read and continued success.

We're all proud of you.

- Thank you Ted.

- Thank you.

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(upbeat music) - [Gordon] Every little bit helps.

If we can do a whole lot of little bits, then we've done a great service.

- Travel writer Roger Naylor's new book is filled with facts, anecdotes, humor, and beautiful photographs of landmarks across Arizona.

The book is titled, "Arizona National Parks and Monuments, Scenic Wonders and Cultural Treasures of the Grand Canyon State."

Roger Naylor recently shared some of the highlights of his new book.

We love having you on, you always have these great books.

Your last one was on state parks.

Now, we're doing national.

- [Roger] National parks.

What is the difference between a national park and a national monument?

- Well, a national park requires an act of Congress to create.

We have three full fledged national parks: Grand Canyon, Saguaro, and Petrified Forest.

A national monument can be created by a presidential decree.

We have 19 of those, more than any other state, but we also have other national park units such as national historic trails, national historic sites, national heritage areas, national recreation areas, and so forth and so on.

I tell you how to distinguish all of them in the book.

We have 34 national park units all told, and I think a lot of people maybe don't realize just how many there are, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to put out this volume, to help them discover not only the big favorites, but some of the little guys.

- [Ted] Yeah.

- Hidden away out there.

- Let's look at some of these places now.

Canyon de Chelly is in your book and talk to us about this beautiful, wonderful place.

- I love Canyon de Chelly National Monument.

One of the things that makes it special is it kind of combines the twin themes of the book is that scenic wonders and cultural treasures.

This is a view of Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly from the south rim overlook.

That's an 800 foot column rising from the canyon floor.

So you get a, even if you have mobility issues or limited time, it's a wonderful park to visit because you have a north rim drive, a south rim drive, overlooks along the way, so you can enjoy it just like that.

If you have more time, I encourage you to take a Navajo led tour into the inner canyon and experience that is for up close looks.

- This sounds wonderful, wonderful.

- It is.

- Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

- This is our most popular national park, a million more visitors even than the Grand Canyon received last year.

It kind of, we share it with Nevada.

This is the Lake Mojave portion, which is my favorite that flows south from the Hoover Dam.

The canyon, the waters a little shallower, a little, the canyon walls rise a little higher.

- [Ted] Yeah.

- Very scenic, perfect for hiking, kayaking, fishing, some great beaches along there, a lot of wildlife.

So you know, as desert people we're drawn to water.

- Yes, we are.

- And anytime we can get to spend some time with water.

- You know, I've heard of Canyon de Chelly and Lake Mead.

I have never heard of Pipe Spring National Monument.

What is that?

- I hear that a lot.

This is one of my favorites.

This is a park that kind of upended my perception of national parks.

I discovered it when I was very young, just a kid.

I read something about it that made it seem like the loneliest place on the planet, so I thought, I gotta go there, and it is.

It's tucked away in the Arizona Strip, which is the portion of the state that's cut off by the Colorado River, so way up north, - Yes.

- very deep into the Strip.

I think it's the most remote place you can reach in Arizona via paved road.

But it's an old Mormon fort built atop a sacred water source, just a 40 acre park in the midst of this vast expanse, and yet it tells such a detailed rich story with all these historic buildings, Mormon history, Paiute history, cowboy history, just fascinating.

So it made me start looking at not just the large parks, but the small parks as well and how fascinating they were.

- Well, speaking of large parks, Saguaro National Monument, I think we've all been there and it's just every, I mean you can just stop anywhere, take a photograph, and it's beautiful.

- It is and it's Saguaro National Park.

This is one of our three big ones, and yeah, it's, this is a great place for spring wildflowers.

This is the Sendero Esperanza Trail a couple of years ago with one of our beautiful super bloom years.

And there's a wonderful network of trails, two units of the park, they bracket Tucson there, the east unit and the west unit.

The eastern unit has a little higher elevation, western unit a denser grove of saguaros, I think.

If you have limited time, that's probably the better one.

- Yeah.

- But both have scenic roads, wonderful hiking trails, and a chance to experience up close, you know, this iconic desert plant - Yeah.

- that is sort of our symbol.

- Here's another one that I haven't heard of, White Pocket.

Now I've heard of Vermilion Cliffs, but I haven't heard of White Pocket.

- Well, this is within Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.

And I like this place.

This is a back road experience, another one in, deep in the Arizona Strip.

But this, the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument kind of contains some of our most dramatic geologic features, including Paria Canyon, Buckskin Gulch, which is the longest, deepest slot canyon in the world, and of course The Wave.

Now, The Wave is a legendary feature where everybody tries to get a permit.

It's almost impossible.

So I offer as an alternative, White Pocket.

This is a very massive formation.

This is just a very small part of it here.

It goes on and on, but it has that same kind of swirls - Yeah.

- of sandstone and swoops and the colors, and it's really incredibly dramatic.

It does require four wheel drive to get back there.

I give you all that information in the book, miles of deep sand, but if you don't have four wheel drive, they do offer day tours from Kanab, Utah and Page, Arizona, so you can get out there on your own.

- Alright, Roger, always a pleasure, great stuff, thanks for joining us.

- My pleasure, thank you Ted.

- Good to have you here.

(horn honks) (upbeat music) (soft music) - [Narrator] Nearly 5 million people a year travel to Arizona from all over the world for a chance to peer into the sublime expanse of the Grand Canyon.

It's hard to imagine that any of them noticed the giant Navajo sandstone slab jutting from the earth, just outside the park's eastern entrance at milepost 268 on Highway 64.

A plaque was once affixed to this stone.

It honored the victims of one of the gravest air tragedies in American history.

(airplane propellors buzz) On the morning of June 30th, 1956, TWA Flight 2 and United Airlines Flight 718 left Los Angeles within minutes of each other.

One was in route to Kansas City, the other for Chicago.

They would collide over the Grand Canyon.

Both airlines and the government would recover, identify, and return home as many of the victims as the rugged wilderness would yield.

67 of the TWA victims, 63 unidentified, are buried in the Citizens Cemetery in Flagstaff.

Services were performed by Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Mormon Clergymen.

29 unidentified victims from the United Flight were interred below a memorial in the Grand Canyon Cemetery on the South Rim.

(airplane whizzes by) Public outcry from the accident resulted in the creation of the Federal Aviation Agency and a modernization of the country's air traffic control system.

Nobody knows what happened to the plaque that once paid tribute to the victims of Flight 2 and 718, but their deaths are honored by the safe arrival of the many tourists that fly to the Grand Canyon each and every day.

(soft music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Local bestselling author, T.J. Newman, is out with another thriller.

This one's titled "Worst Case Scenario," and it weaves all sorts of real and possible disasters ranging from plane crashes to nuclear meltdowns with family issues and small town dynamics.

Like all of T.J. Newman's books, there's a lot going on here.

But the plane's involved, but the plane's not necessarily, how much, give us the storyline as best you can.

I don't wanna give too much away here.

- Yeah.

not to give too much away, but it's not exactly a spoiler to say that by the end of the fifth page, the plane has crashed.

(Ted laughs) So whereas my first two books take place almost entirely on a plane or during the course of one flight, this one takes place almost exclusively on the ground in a small rural town in Minnesota.

The flight in question, the captain flying the plane has a heart attack at 35,000 feet, dies instantly, and it is at the moment that they're doing a bathroom break, and the first officer is in the bathroom.

So resulting in a plane crash and the plane crash happens in this small town into a nuclear power plant.

- Yes.

And then the fun starts.

- And then the fun starts.

- You had falling, you had drowning, now you got a plane crashing into, did you, were you like a towering, did "Towering Inferno" inspire you?

- Absolutely, "Poseidon Adventure," "Towering Inferno," absolutely, and also, you know, my time as a flight attendant, like this is how we're trained to think.

- Yeah.

- We're trained as pilots and flight attendants to be thinking, what is the worst case scenario?

What can go wrong and what am I gonna do about it?

- The book follows a number of responders at different places doing different, was it hard as a writer to keep 'em all in line?

- I outlined profusely.

You know, in writing you have pantsers or plotters.

Pantsers are people, authors, who write, you know, by the seat of their pants.

They just come up with the story as they write.

I wrote my first book that way and it took nearly 40 drafts to get there and many years to write.

Now I have deadlines and I have to speed up the process, so I've become a plotter, which means that I research extensively and then I plot everything out ahead of time.

And that process is, yes, like herding cats, figuring out how to make all the different storylines and characters make sense and fall in line into one cohesive story.

- Yeah, 'cause every character has their own little picadillos and their own little things that get 'em going into different directions.

But goodness gracious, the research when it comes to, especially with nuclear energy, nuclear reactors, everything from diving to all everything.

That's a lot of, that seemed like that would've been a lot of research.

Was it?

- It was a lot of research, and I have to tell you, the research for this book terrified me.

I went into it, not sure what I would find.

I wasn't even sure if there was a story there.

The idea for the story actually came from a conversation that I had with a pilot when I was doing research for my first book "Falling."

And I asked all the pilots that I was flying with at the time lots of questions about flying nuts and bolts, and I also asked them about the emotional, the psychological side of being a pilot.

And so I would ask them the question, what's your biggest fear?

And one day I had a pilot who looked me dead in the eye and said, "My biggest fear is a commercial airliner crashing into a nuclear power plant."

And I paused like you just did, - [Ted] Yes.

- and I thought like, hold on a second.

- [Ted] Bells are ringing.

- Bells are ringing, but also like, you know, I'm calling his bluff and I'm saying, "Come on, they've, we live in a post-911 world.

They've shown, you know, these structures have been fortified.

The studies have shown that if, in the unlikely event," and I'm giving my whole spiel as to why I'm not afraid of this and he's listening to me.

And then when I finish talking, he looks me again dead in the eye and says, "And that's exactly what they want you to think."

- [Ted] Oh my goodness gracious.

- Yeah, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up on edge and it was, I remembered it and I sort of tucked it away.

So then when I went to write my third book, I went back to this and said, is there anything there?

I let me just see.

And it did not take me long to figure out in the research process that there is a lot of validity to those spheres.

- Yeah, and just the research, the rescue operations, the recovery operations.

Family issues are also a big focus here, parental issues in a variety of levels.

Was it difficult to weave that in because it's, they're there and they're, it's part of these people, their character and their makeup, and that helps explain why they do certain things in the recovery and rescue.

- Absolutely.

You know, I write massive entertaining blockbuster action thrillers.

Those are the stories that I love, those are the stories that I wanna write, that I wanna watch and read, but explosions and car chases and all of that wonderful stuff, it's not gonna sustain a reader for 300 pages.

There has to be more there.

There has to be a reason why people are fighting so hard for something and sacrificing for something.

The heart has to be there.

And I've always found it centered around family.

Whether it's the family unit of a crew on an aircraft or a nuclear family, no pun intended, and in this book, it's all about the people that we love, and this small town community is that.

They're their own family.

They're all, they're all they have.

- [Ted] Yeah.

- Hope's not coming, so it's up to them to save not only themselves and their community, but the country and the world.

- The way the book ended, is that how you plotted for it to end, or did that happen just as you got there?

- That happened as I got there and no spoilers.

No spoilers on the ending.

- [Ted] Yes, no, no.

- But this was the first ending that I had that I, it ended how it had to end, but boy, sometimes I wish things didn't have to happen the way they go.

- [Ted] Were you tempted to have it end differently?

- No, 'cause it's in service of the story.

- [Ted] Yeah.

- You know, it's whatever the story needs, and my personal affinity and allegiance to the characters is secondary.

- Is Hollywood expressing interest?

They've expressed interest in the first two, what about this one?

- Yeah, I mean, it's, we'll see, you know, we'll see what happens down the road.

I don't take anything ever for granted, and just the fact that my first two books have movie deals attached to them.

"Falling" is with Universal Pictures and "Drowning" is with Warner Brothers.

The fact that those are moving forward is just, blows my mind.

- Are you working on your next one right now?

- I'm not at the moment.

I'm gonna take a break.

I mean, I've got stuff in the work.

I always have stuff going on, but this is, you know, my third book and one script, 'cause I'm doing the adaptation for "Falling."

- [Ted] Okay.

- Yeah.

So one script and three books in four years.

I'm tired, I need a break.

I want to go find a beach somewhere.

- There you go.

When you were stocking books and answering dumb questions from people like me at Changing Hands, did you ever think that this kind of success was gonna happen?

Now be honest here.

- When I used to shelve books by authors with the last name Newman, my last name, I used to take my thumb and cover up their first name and pretend that I was shelving my own book.

- [Ted] Wow.

- I dreamed of this moment.

I had no assurances that it would come and boy was it uphill to get here, but a lifelong reader, a lifelong writer, a lifelong dreamer of being a published author, but it was my time when I worked at Changing Hands Bookstore when that dream became a concrete goal.

- Well, it is a concrete success right now.

T.J. Newman, again, "Worst Case Scenario" is the latest.

It is always a pleasure to see you.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you so much.

- That's it for now.

I'm Ted Simons.

Thank you for joining us.

You have a great evening.

(upbeat music)