#The Real-Life Murder That Inspired Double Indemnity

In 1925 Queens, homemaker Ruth Snyder began an affair with married corset salesman Henry Judd Gray. Their adultery turned lethal two years later when they killed Snyder’s husband, Albert. The night of March 20, 1927, the lovers knocked out Snyder, stuffed a chloroform-coated sock up his nose, then strangled him to death with a window wire; they staged the murder as a break-in. To make things extra juicy, Snyder forged her husband’s signature for a $100,000 double indemnity insurance policy. It took only a matter of hours for the plan to fall apart.

The police were immediately suspicious about Ruth Snyder’s claims of a break-in, and when they discovered the jewelry supposedly stolen by the intruders hidden under her bed, Snyder caved and fingered Gray. Gray confessed but tried to shift the blame, claiming Snyder had manipulated him into killing her husband. This blame game did no good, and the two were tried and then executed in 1928.

A media frenzy swarmed in the lead-up to this ghastly conclusion, despite the previous anonymity of its players. This was the era of William Randolph Hearst’s yellow journalism, after all. The papers lured in readers with exaggerated details, recounting the events with the lurid glamor of a Hollywood film. It should be no surprise, then, that the murder made its way to Hollywood.