The Murder of Albert Snyder

Perhaps because of his small stature and rather wimpy appearance, almost everyone seemed to accept Judds story that Ruth had talked him into murder. As reporter Peggy Hopkins Joyce wrote in the Daily Mirror, Poor Judd Gray! He hasnt IT, he hasnt anything. He is just a sap who kissed and was told on! The Herald Tribune wrote about Judd, All facts now adduced point to a love-made man completely in the sway of the woman whose will was steel.

The couple was often labeled The Granite Woman and the Putty Man. Terms describing Ruth alone included Fiend Wife, faithless wife, blonde fiend, marble woman, flaming Ruth, woman of steel, hard-faced woman, vampire, and Ruthless Ruth, the Viking Ice Matron of Queens Village. She was compared to Lucretia Borgia, Messalina, and Lady Macbeth. Playwright Willard Mack wrote in an essay, If Ruth Snyder is a woman, then by God! You must find some other name for my mother, wife, or sister. 

When Judd Gray and Ruth Snyder went on trial, the courtroom was packed with spectators wanting to glimpse the blonde-haired, slightly plump Granite Woman attired all in black as well as her slightly built Putty Man in his three-pieced pin-striped suit. 

Three different narratives of the murder of Albert Snyder were presented. One was that of the prosecutor, short but powerfully built Richard Newcombe, who pointed his finger equally at Ruth and Judd as co-conspirators and murderers. The fingers of Ruth Snyders lawyers, Edgar Hazelton and Dana Wallace, pointed at Judd who, in their version had committed the murder entirely on his own and was trying to hide behind Ruths skirt. Judd Grays attorneys, William Millard and Samuel Miller, did not deny his part in the slaying but indicated mitigating circumstances because of Ruths powers of persuasion.

Ruth Snyder before
verdict (CORBIS)

Interestingly, both sets of defense attorneys tried to save their clients by draping them in cultural paradigms of gender victimization. Hazelton told the jury that his client was no gay butterfly or woman of many loves but a real, loving wife, a good wife whose husband drove love from that home by pining for his dead love, Jessie Guishard. Poor Ruth was then seduced and manipulated by silver-tongued Judd Gray. Trying to impress these points upon the jury, Hazelton intoned that, Woman is just as God intended her, were it not for some man. And we will prove to you that Mrs. Ruth Snyder is just as God intended her to be were it not for her incompatible husband and the deceiver Gray.

Gray lawyer Willard Millard saw it very differently. Before meeting Ruth Snyder, Judd Gray had not a blemish, not a move outside the normal paths of life. He was a wonderful boy, wonderful, not a mark, not a scratch, not a stain, not a blot, a splendid, ideal character.. Then, Millard said, That woman, that peculiar creature, like a poisonous snake, like a poisonous serpent, drew Judd Gray into her glistening coils, and there was no escape. . . Just as a piece of steel jumps and clings to the powerful magnet, so Judd Gray came within the powerful compelling force of that woman, and she held him fast. . . This woman, this peculiar venomous species of humanity, was abnormal; possessed of an all-consuming, all-absorbing sexual passion, animal lust, which seemingly never was satisfied. Sexy Ruth was Eve and the serpent rolled into one, an irresistible temptress. 

Nearly everyone in the courtroom and elsewhere seemed to buy Judds version of his succumbing to Ruths domination. But it did him no practical good. There was no way to get around the fact that he had willingly participated in a premeditated murder.

The jury found both defendants guilty of first-degree murder. On May 13, 1927, the judge sentenced both to be executed.