Escapes and Parole
After her death sentence was repealed, Judd was committed to the state's only mental institution, Arizona State Hospital in Phoenix. From 1933 to 1963, Judd escaped from the institution six times, in one instance walking all the way to Yuma, Arizona, along the old Southern Pacific railroad tracks.
She escaped for the final time on October 8, 1963, using a key to the front door of the hospital a friend had given her. Judd ended up in the San Francisco Bay Area where she became a live-in maid for a wealthy family living in a mansion overlooking the bay, using the name Marian Lane. Her freedom lasted six and a half years. Her identity in California was eventually discovered and she was taken back to Arizona on August 18, 1969.
Judd hired famed San Francisco defense attorney Melvin Belli. Belli needed an Arizona-licensed attorney to help him", so he hired then "unknown Phoenix attorney" Larry Debus. Gov. Jack Williams was going to sign for Judd's release as long as the meeting was kept "hush, hush". In the following days, Belli called a press conference calling for the immediate release of Judd, therefore Debus had to fire Belli from getting in the way of Judd's release. Judd was paroled and released on December 22, 1971 after two years of legal wrangling.
Judd moved to Stockton, California. In 1983, the state of Arizona issued her an "absolute discharge," meaning she was no longer a parolee. She died 23 October 1998 at the age of ninety-three, 67 years to the day from her surrender to Los Angeles police in 1931.
Read more about this topic: Winnie Ruth Judd
Famous quotes containing the words escapes and/or parole:
“Comparatively, we can excuse any offense against the heart, but not against the imagination. The imagination knows—nothing escapes its glance from out its eyry—and it controls the breast.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)