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Sammy and Sunny: The Story of Hedvig Samuelson, Murdered by Winnie Ruth Judd and The Story of Sunny Worel's Search for Sammy
In 1931, a young woman was murdered in Phoenix, and the life she had lived was forgotten in a whirl of tabloid sensation. Hedvig "Sammy" Samuelson was seen by the public as simply one of two victims of the Winnie Ruth Judd Trunk Murders. Sammy's life as an adventurer, a schoolteacher, a shaper of young minds, went unremarked for decades. Then, seventy years after her death, her great-niece Sunny Worel set out to correct the record, to bring Sammy's life back into focus, to restore her dignity as a human being. By the time Sunny had done so, it was obvious that Sunny's spirit mirrored that of Sammy. Two women had reached out to each other across the gulf of time.
170 pages, Paperback
Published October 8, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 13, 2015
To understand my somewhat unusual perspective on this book, you may want to take a good look at the cover (which can be found here, http://www.amazon.com/Sammy-Sunny-Hed..., if it's not showing up on Goodreads for you). Then mouse-mosey over to CD Baby and view this disc, http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bensiems3.
Yes, that is my CD of original music, and yes, that is Sunny Lynn Worel herself on the cover, in a photo from a long-ago day she and I spent together by Lake Superior. I met Sunny in eighth grade English class and knew her throughout her life, which ended July 1, 2014 after a two-year battle with colon cancer. I wrote the song, "Sun's Gonna Shine" in her honor long before that, when we were 21. The dedication on the back cover of the CD reads, "Death is not the end of a friendship that matters." I promised Sunny that as long as Rosalie (my acoustic guitar) and I are together, Sunny will live still. And I will cherish my friendship with her as long as I draw breath.
Needless to say, I will therefore make no claim of objectivity with regard to Sammy and Sunny. Many of the stories related in the book were told to me by Sunny herself. Reading those stories now, I remember the exact occasions on which she shared her discoveries with me—the places, the times of day, the sound of her voice, every detail.
I know a great deal about Sunny's complex and often contradictory motives for embarking on her quest to know her great aunt, Sarah Hedvig (Sammy) Samuelson, known to the rest of the world simply as one of two victims in the infamous 1931 Phoenix Trunk Murders. It is strange for me to read an account of Sunny's adventures that makes no mention of the inner struggles that lay beneath them. But it is neither my place nor my desire to tell Sunny's secrets.
Perhaps the most important thing this book does is give some insight into the lives of young women in the 1920s and early 1930s—the incredibly limited opportunities available to even the brightest of them, and their virtually hopeless struggle to attain financial security and independence when the economic deck was horribly stacked against them. And yet, some particularly brave and adventurous young women achieved a remarkable amount of freedom in how they lived their lives. Sammy's willingness to embrace the unknown was and is an inspiration. Sunny's own journey offers many sobering reminders of the barriers women still face in the present day.
The one specific criticism I will offer is that I am disappointed by the work of Charles Kelly, who served as editor of the book and also handled its formatting. Janet V. Worel, Sunny's mother, did the bulk of the work in assembling the book. She is not a writer and has no aspirations of becoming one. The passages she wrote to flesh out the story deserved deep and empathetic editing attention. Mr. Kelly's work was rather slapdash over all. Both Sunny and Janet deserved better.
So, will this book really give you the chance to know either Sammy or Sunny? Probably not. Much of the portrayal of Sammy is eulogy-esque, filled with platitudes about her friendliness, beauty, popularity, etc. Only late in the book do we gain some access to Sammy's mind through excerpts from her letters and journals. We learn, among other things, that she had a romantic, literary view of life and saw the world through the lens of favorite poems and stories. We also learn that she had an intriguing penchant for melodrama and no small amount of talent at manipulation. Other conclusions about her wishes and feelings drift briefly by. Make of them what you will. Sunny hated such speculation, and the memory of her anger is still too fresh in my mind for me to violate her wishes.
Sadly, just when we begin to enter Sammy's private world, the story is engulfed by the presence of Winnie Ruth Judd, the woman who ultimately killed Sammy and Anne LeRoi. Even having traveled thousands of miles in following Sammy's journey through life, Sunny could not escape the shadow of the murders. I saw the effect that shadow had on her with my own eyes. Perhaps if we take nothing else from this book, we should at least think twice about ever using the phrase, "murder victim." A person should never be defined by how she or he died. I applaud Sunny, and admire her as I always have, for making a brave attempt to tell a story of life in spite of the public's fascination with death.
Yes, that is my CD of original music, and yes, that is Sunny Lynn Worel herself on the cover, in a photo from a long-ago day she and I spent together by Lake Superior. I met Sunny in eighth grade English class and knew her throughout her life, which ended July 1, 2014 after a two-year battle with colon cancer. I wrote the song, "Sun's Gonna Shine" in her honor long before that, when we were 21. The dedication on the back cover of the CD reads, "Death is not the end of a friendship that matters." I promised Sunny that as long as Rosalie (my acoustic guitar) and I are together, Sunny will live still. And I will cherish my friendship with her as long as I draw breath.
Needless to say, I will therefore make no claim of objectivity with regard to Sammy and Sunny. Many of the stories related in the book were told to me by Sunny herself. Reading those stories now, I remember the exact occasions on which she shared her discoveries with me—the places, the times of day, the sound of her voice, every detail.
I know a great deal about Sunny's complex and often contradictory motives for embarking on her quest to know her great aunt, Sarah Hedvig (Sammy) Samuelson, known to the rest of the world simply as one of two victims in the infamous 1931 Phoenix Trunk Murders. It is strange for me to read an account of Sunny's adventures that makes no mention of the inner struggles that lay beneath them. But it is neither my place nor my desire to tell Sunny's secrets.
Perhaps the most important thing this book does is give some insight into the lives of young women in the 1920s and early 1930s—the incredibly limited opportunities available to even the brightest of them, and their virtually hopeless struggle to attain financial security and independence when the economic deck was horribly stacked against them. And yet, some particularly brave and adventurous young women achieved a remarkable amount of freedom in how they lived their lives. Sammy's willingness to embrace the unknown was and is an inspiration. Sunny's own journey offers many sobering reminders of the barriers women still face in the present day.
The one specific criticism I will offer is that I am disappointed by the work of Charles Kelly, who served as editor of the book and also handled its formatting. Janet V. Worel, Sunny's mother, did the bulk of the work in assembling the book. She is not a writer and has no aspirations of becoming one. The passages she wrote to flesh out the story deserved deep and empathetic editing attention. Mr. Kelly's work was rather slapdash over all. Both Sunny and Janet deserved better.
So, will this book really give you the chance to know either Sammy or Sunny? Probably not. Much of the portrayal of Sammy is eulogy-esque, filled with platitudes about her friendliness, beauty, popularity, etc. Only late in the book do we gain some access to Sammy's mind through excerpts from her letters and journals. We learn, among other things, that she had a romantic, literary view of life and saw the world through the lens of favorite poems and stories. We also learn that she had an intriguing penchant for melodrama and no small amount of talent at manipulation. Other conclusions about her wishes and feelings drift briefly by. Make of them what you will. Sunny hated such speculation, and the memory of her anger is still too fresh in my mind for me to violate her wishes.
Sadly, just when we begin to enter Sammy's private world, the story is engulfed by the presence of Winnie Ruth Judd, the woman who ultimately killed Sammy and Anne LeRoi. Even having traveled thousands of miles in following Sammy's journey through life, Sunny could not escape the shadow of the murders. I saw the effect that shadow had on her with my own eyes. Perhaps if we take nothing else from this book, we should at least think twice about ever using the phrase, "murder victim." A person should never be defined by how she or he died. I applaud Sunny, and admire her as I always have, for making a brave attempt to tell a story of life in spite of the public's fascination with death.
January 14, 2016
Interesting story but oddly written. Sunny was a good friend of my good friend so I decided to get this book after her sudden early death. If you didn't know Sunny then I don't this book is for you.
February 17, 2025
thank you for this
I am deeply sorry to hear about your daughter’s passing and so young. You did a beautiful, masterful job of compiling her hard worked research into not only an informative story but one bursting with details and acquaintance accounts that really do humanize your Aunt Sammy. I’d just read the Notaro novel about the incident after not really knowing more than the basic details and then read the phx New Times article about the 2002/2009 Arizona archives receipt of the anonymously donated 1933 confession letter apparently proved to have been written in Judd’s own hand. I’d already sized up your aunt and her friend Anne as dissolute party girls or prostitutes. Your book showcasing your daughter’s truly outstanding research and investigation showed your aunt to be a much more faceted person than the one dimensional version portrayed by media and others in the past especially by those authors championing her murderer. My Aunt was a psych nurse at the Arizona State Hospital during Judd’s tenure there. She had a very high opinion of Judd and didn’t believe she’d killed or dismembered your aunt and her friend. after reading the article listed above and your daughter’s painstakingly researched and beautifully displayed investigation into your aunt; I see Sammy as the kind person your daughter described and a poor soul worthy of much empathy not only for having her life taken from her so tragically but from having been forced to remain in bed due to her tuberculosis when she’d been so active and full of life before. How hard that must have been to be so diminished and have to watch everyone else make the world go round from her place in bed day after day. I have zero doubt they prosecuted the right person in 1933. thank you for the great service you and your daughter have done for your aunt and for the public interest.
I am deeply sorry to hear about your daughter’s passing and so young. You did a beautiful, masterful job of compiling her hard worked research into not only an informative story but one bursting with details and acquaintance accounts that really do humanize your Aunt Sammy. I’d just read the Notaro novel about the incident after not really knowing more than the basic details and then read the phx New Times article about the 2002/2009 Arizona archives receipt of the anonymously donated 1933 confession letter apparently proved to have been written in Judd’s own hand. I’d already sized up your aunt and her friend Anne as dissolute party girls or prostitutes. Your book showcasing your daughter’s truly outstanding research and investigation showed your aunt to be a much more faceted person than the one dimensional version portrayed by media and others in the past especially by those authors championing her murderer. My Aunt was a psych nurse at the Arizona State Hospital during Judd’s tenure there. She had a very high opinion of Judd and didn’t believe she’d killed or dismembered your aunt and her friend. after reading the article listed above and your daughter’s painstakingly researched and beautifully displayed investigation into your aunt; I see Sammy as the kind person your daughter described and a poor soul worthy of much empathy not only for having her life taken from her so tragically but from having been forced to remain in bed due to her tuberculosis when she’d been so active and full of life before. How hard that must have been to be so diminished and have to watch everyone else make the world go round from her place in bed day after day. I have zero doubt they prosecuted the right person in 1933. thank you for the great service you and your daughter have done for your aunt and for the public interest.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews