Deep Dives
Articles
Longform stories and essays exploring Phoenix's history, culture, and untold stories.
The Air-Conditioned Dream
Five million people, eight inches of rain, and the absolute conviction that engineering beats ecology
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Phoenix's Mystery Castle: The Father Who Vanished and Built a Castle for His Daughter
When Boyce Gulley was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1927, he vanished from his Seattle family without a word. His wife thought he'd abandoned them. His three-year-old daughter grew up fatherless. What they didn't know: he'd moved to Phoenix and spent 16 years secretly building an 18-room castle from car parts, goat milk, and desert junk — all for the daughter who thought he didn't love her. She inherited it after his death, along with hidden gold, love letters, and a childhood Valentine she'd made for him decades earlier.
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The Phoenix Lights: What Thousands of People Saw
On March 13, 1997, thousands of Arizona residents witnessed a massive V-shaped formation of lights moving silently across the sky. Pilots, police officers, and the Governor all reported seeing it. The Air Force blamed flares. Twenty-five years later, the Phoenix Lights remain one of the most witnessed and documented UFO events in history.
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The Trunk Murderess: Phoenix's Most Infamous Crime
On October 16, 1931, a medical secretary named Winnie Ruth Judd killed her two friends in Phoenix, dismembered one of them, packed the bodies in trunks, and boarded a train to Los Angeles. She was caught when the baggage handler noticed the smell. The trial made national headlines. She was sentenced to hang, declared insane, and spent decades in an asylum — from which she escaped seven times, once living undetected for six years. This is Phoenix's most infamous true crime story.
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