Hammer Time

Hey, stay with us through the end of the episode. We're going to go behind the scenes and give you some more details about this truly shocking story. It had been a bad day for armor Phillips, the creditors were closing in doors that once opened to his easy charm closed, slammed closed and more than one case, his comfortable life, the big house, the fancy suits, the promise of more to come and even more after that all slipping away. Armors American dream of striking it rich off the Los Angeles oil boom of the 1920s was fading fast and he was in trouble, but all wasn't lost. He still had his beautiful young bride, Clara. That must be her now returning from some errand heels clacking briskly on the tile floor and then she appeared in the doorway of the study covered from hairline to heels and blood, bits of bone and gore spattered all over her dress.

Smiling brightly Clara announced, darling, I have killed the one you love the most in this world. Now I'm going to cook you the best supper you've ever had. When you think of Los Angeles, you probably think of Hollywood, the movie business, the entertainment industry. But 100 years ago, Hollywood wasn't the dominant force it is today. 100 years ago, LA was home to just a tick over half a million people, not a small town by any means, but not the mega city we know today. And sure you could see legendary stars of the time like Clark Gable tooling around in the Southern California sunshine. But it wasn't the stars or the promise of stardom that first lured so many people to LA. It was oil. A man named Edward Doheny discovered oil under a private residence in the 92. Quite a few people saw that and were like, I want in. With practically no regulations on the books to stop them, they began drilling oil wells. And a lot of those wells are still there in some pretty unexpected places like on the campus of Beverly Hills High School, for example. When Doheny sold his properties in 1902, he netted the kind of fortune that changes lives and history. It was that sale that triggered the petroleum boom in Southern California. And it was the petroleum boom that turned sleepy, isolated little Los Angeles into America's second largest city and a global economic powerhouse. And what a boom it was. As luck would have it, oil in the Los Angeles basin was close to the surface. And that made it easier to extract. The weather was ideal, and the nearby port of Los Angeles solved the problem of shipping.

As word spread of Doheny's fine and subsequent fortune, people began heading to Southern California to get their share. Black gold, as Jay Clampett called it, Texas tea. Well, the next thing you know, the population of LA more than doubled. And with the people came the rigs and pipes and pumps and tanks, all the ingredients that built the oil industry in California. Everything that became the foundation for LA's industrial economy. So just how much oil was being pumped out of LA's wells? Enough to be the equivalent of Saudi Arabia today. It was like the gold rush all over again. And among the hundreds of thousands of people who flocked to LA to make their fortune was a young newlywed couple from Houston, Texas. Married on November 13, 1913, Clara Ann Weaver and Armour Lee Phillips knew they wanted more from life than Houston had to offer. Clara wanted to be an actress. Armour set his sights on the brand new California oil industry. They packed up and headed west.

Armour had celebrated his 22nd birthday one month before the Clara, the newly minted Mrs. Armour Phillips was just 15 years old. Life in Los Angeles was good for Armour and Clara for a long while. They bought a home at 703 West 53rd Street and embarked on their separate careers. Armour had the persuasive charm and charisma of a born salesman and put it to use selling oil stocks. He did well in his new job so well that he hired servants to tend the house and even sent for Clara's mother and sister to join them in their spacious home. Clara had success too in the burgeoning movie business.

She was a natural beauty. Her dark curls cut in the chin length bob that was all the rage. She had an hourglass figure and a blinding white smile. In no time at all, she was hired by Max Sennett to be one of his now iconic bathing beauties. The Los Angeles Evening Express said in 1921 that being chosen by Sennett was the equivalent of a fast pass to fame. The paper said that to pass the Sennett test, a girl had to have physical perfection, mental aptitude, temperamental fitness, and be a person of outstanding character.

Cripes, but that bar was set pretty high, wasn't it? And Sennett considered himself an outstanding judge of character, a trait he believed the camera could see and reveal with merciless honesty. Sennett believed that the movie-going public would resent and resist any performer who was less than perfectly wholesome. Looks like he made a bad call with Clara Phillips, but to be fair, who could ever have imagined what darkness that sweet young thing was capable of?

So, the bathing beauties wearing swimsuits that today would probably be too modest for your grandma appeared in short films and advertisements and at events like the famous Venice Beach Beauty Contests. Big legendary movie stars like Carol Lombard and Gloria Swanson put their time in as bathing beauties, though Swanson never liked to acknowledge it.

Sennett didn't care about the women's talent. He cared about how pretty they were, especially how pretty their knees were. Knees being the very height of naughty sexual provocation back then. What a different and more innocent time that was, right? When an especially lovely lady kneecap could send a man into a dither. And there was our Clara, knees and all, posing coquettishly in her swim dress, perched right there on the springboard to fame and fortune. What went wrong? It began with the problem of time. Armour's job selling oil stocks was a demanding one for sure, requiring some late nights and weekends and the occasional trip. Clara's job or jobs since show business is a freelance game and Clara went where the auditions took her. Wildly irregular hours. Clara loved her husband, true, but she was also dependent on him emotionally. So much so, and trust me, you really could argue too much so, that she reached a breaking point. Clara could no longer tolerate any separation from Armour. She quit working, abandoned her dreams of stardom and stayed home to take care of her husband. Meanwhile, things weren't going so well for Armour. The mortgage on the big house, paying the servants, those expensive custom tailored suits. It all added up to a picture of roaring success, but every bit of it was bought on credit and the bills were coming due. Armour was spending more and more time away from home. Working, he said, but Clara became suspicious and then paranoid that her husband was stepping out on the marriage. Clara's days had been full, auditions, photo shoots, filming. She was used to attention. Now, home all day, every day, her husband gone from early morning till evening. Clara had nothing to distract her from the simple fact that her beloved Armour was absent and could she really trust that all those hours spent away from home were working as he claimed? So, you know how people like to gossip. Here was this affluent, super attractive, childless couple living what looked like a dream. The neighbors watched the servants come and go. They watched as Clara transitioned from her life as a showgirl to her life as a housewife and maybe they loved seeing the young beauty get taken down a peg. You know how people are. They talked about Clara's appearance. They talked about Armour's routines, how he was so seldom at home and then the gossip turned to all the reasons why a man might choose to be elsewhere regardless of how pretty or sparkling his wife might be. No one ever really knows what happens inside another's marriage, right? And it didn't take long before that neighborhood gossip took an ugly turn. There were whispers about Armour having a mistress and those whispers eventually made their way to Clara's ears and girl, Clara was livid. The alleged other woman was a 20 year old widow named Alberta Meadows. Her husband of less than a year, Jesse Meadows had been killed by a high voltage power line in an accident in his job. He was only 23. Even though Alberta received a $4000 settlement from Pacific Electric, that's the equivalent of more than $70,000 today. She returned to her old job at First National Bank. Alberta was well liked by her co-workers and was very close to her

so much so that she had been making plans for her grandmother to move in with her. Poor Alberta, barely out of her teens and already suffered such a tragic, shocking loss. The last thing she needed was to be the target of malicious gossip, but human nature and all that. It only took one curious neighbor to witness a friendly transaction between the lovely bank teller and the self assured oil salesman for the spark of rumor to catch fire. The fact that there was never any more evidence of an affair than those nasty whispers really doesn't even matter because what Clara heard, Clara believed. Picture it, Clara was barely out of her teens too at this point and suddenly at loose ends in that fancy house all alone and waiting for armor to come home. Gone were the bright and bustling nights where she performed in the chorus line at the Broadway Pantages Theater. Gone was the flattery and the applause and the attention. Instead, she prowled from room to room in the empty house alone with only her thoughts for company. Those thoughts were jealous and turned more and more toward fury and revenge. Clara called Armor her baby and she'd be damned if another woman would take him. On July 10th, 1922, Clara and a friend, Peggy Caffee, also a former chorus girl, spent the day together.

Clara told Peggy that she feared Armor was having an affair and that her suspicions have been confirmed by the And of course, Peggy was sympathetic in the way friends are. The pair shopped and Clara bought a new skirt and new shoes and some new stockings. Then they wandered into a five and dime store, Kress's or Woolworth's, on the stand Peggy couldn't remember. And according to a Mrs. A. W. Crandall, who was also in the store at the time and later testified for the prosecution, Clara told Peggy that she wanted to go to hardware counter to look at hammers. Peggy replied, you go ahead. I'm going to go to the music counter. Hefting a claw hammer, Clara asked the hardware clerk again, according to Mrs. Crandall, is this the heaviest hammer you have? The clerk assured her that it was. Well then, said Clara, if I hit a person on the head with it, will it kill anybody? Mrs. Crandall laughed sarcastically and agreed that it most certainly would. Clara purchased the hammer for $0.15. Then the two friends headed to a nearby speakeasy. Peggy later testified that Clara wanted to have a little talk with Alberta Meadows, just a little conversation about her rumored relationship with Armour Phillips. You know, get the facts, clear the air. Though Peggy said that she didn't think too much about what Clara was getting at, she did finally agree to accompany Clara to the woman's apartment building for a little reconnaissance mission. The two women took a taxi to Alberta Meadows address. They bypassed the front entrance and instead climbed the stairs at the rear of the building. Peggy said that Clara marched straight to the door of Alberta's unit and peered into the keyhole. The apartment was dark and silent. The young widow was not at home.

Toward it, Peggy and Clara returned to the waiting cab and went to Peggy's apartment where Clara spent the night. The next morning, Clara told Peggy that she knew that Alberta worked in the currency department at First National Bank and she also knew where Alberta parked her car. Clara had decided that might be an ideal spot to confront her husband's alleged mistress. But their timing was off and while Alberta's little was tucked into its usual parking spot. Alberta herself was nowhere to be seen. By this point, Clara had confided to Peggy that she had no doubts, none, that her husband was sleeping with Alberta. She insisted that Armour had purchased new tires for Alberta's car, had gifted her an expensive wristwatch. Peggy was less convinced. You can't believe what those neighbors are saying, she urged. You know people gossip and just make up stories. Clara wasn't having it. She persuaded Peggy to accompany her to the First National Bank. And as Peggy later testified, Clara was carrying a package wrapped in dark brown paper and tied up with a bit of string. A little something purchased at that five and dime. Clara marched straight into the bank and asked if Miss Alberta Meadows happened to be working. I'm an old friend from Arizona, she told Molly Swain, the bank's information clerk. Then Clara added, I'd like to give her a surprise. Promising to keep the secret, Mrs. Swain checked and reported back to Clara that Miss Meadows was downstairs in the currency room and do take a seat and be comfortable while you wait. And wait Clara did. Clara waited in the lobby of the First National Bank from 11 a.m. till 4 p.m. Occasionally she'd slip into the ladies room. And in those days, restroom attendants, then called maids, were common. The restroom maid at First National Bank reported that Clara would touch up her makeup and adjust her clothing. The maid said she saw no sign of any package. But then again, she never had the opportunity to peek into Clara's purse. And that same restroom attendant, whose name was Mrs. Colley, was the very last employee of First National Bank to see Alberta Meadows alive.

It was 4.30 p.m. that day, July 12, 1922. As the young widow made her way across the lobby, she beamed at Mrs. Colley saying, we've finished a bit early today. Then she stepped into the late afternoon sunshine, adjusting the felt turban on her head as she walked. The owner of the parking station, Mr. G.A. Cleveland, was very familiar with Alberta Meadows. He described seeing her that very afternoon, speaking to two other women that he later identified as Clara Phillips and Peggy Caffee. He said the women were laughing and chatting. Mr. Cleveland asked Alberta if it wasn't a little early for her to be leaving and Alberta agreed it was. Peggy said something that Cleveland couldn't hear. And he said that Clara turned her face away and avoid it meeting his eyes. What Cleveland didn't know, of course, was that Clara and Peggy had surprised Alberta as she headed to her car. That this was the first time Peggy Caffee had ever seen or met Alberta Meadows. Clara asked Alberta if she'd mind giving the two a lift to the home of Clara's sister. It was a strange request and very much an imposition. But Alberta agreed. She was polite to a fault. And as those of us who watch a lot of investigation discovery know, being polite can get a girl killed. Peggy was insistent that she had no idea what Clara's goal was in this little charade.

She believed yes, that Clara was obsessed with her husband's rumored infidelity, and only wanted to see for herself if this sweet young widow was in fact, a threat to her marriage. It's easy to believe Peggy on this score. Because when you know what happened next, it's hard to imagine that Peggy was on board like, yeah, cool. Let's go do this thing, girlfriend.

The three women set off, sharing the bench seat of Alberta's little coop, Clara in the middle. They drove down Broadway and then on to Montecito Drive until the paved road ended. And Clara directed Alberta to turn right onto a dirt road that wound its way up into the hills. Abruptly Clara said, stop the car. Alberta obediently pulled off onto the side of the road.

Clara nudged Peggy to open the door. And she and Clara stepped out of the vehicle. Confused but not alarmed. Alberta followed. Clara said that she just wanted to talk for a few minutes. The women made their way up the scrubby hillside. Then gesturing back at the car. Clara demanded to know if her husband farmer had purchased those four new tires and that fancy new steering wheel. Alberta looked from Clara to Peggy in bewilderment. No, she replied no. She bought those tires herself with her own money. The trio made for an odd tableau in this lonely spot. Sunset was still hours away but the harsh daylight of summer had begun to soften. The shadows lengthening.

The silence of that deserted stretch of dirt road punctuated by the ticking of the cooling engine of Alberta's car. And then suddenly somehow the claw hammer was in Clara's hand. Peggy stared in shock as Clara struck Alberta on the head with the business end of that 15 cent tool. Screaming Alberta Meadows took off running down the hill. Peggy bolted in the opposite direction uphill. Peggy ran until she was winded and could go no further. Daring to look back she witnessed a horrifying sight. Alberta Meadows was on the ground. Clara kneeling over her, her hand bringing the hammer down again and again and again. Peggy Caffee testified that her knees went weak and she must have fainted. What law enforcement discovered later was that as Peggy lay unconscious on the ground. Clara finished off her love rival by heaving a 50 pound boulder into Alberta's chest. The next thing Peggy recalled was coming to at the sound of a car horn tooting and someone calling her name. Clara Peggy said was behind the wheel of Alberta's car. Her face and hands and dress drenched in blood. Get in she demanded. In her own safety, Peggy stumbled down the hillside and complied.

On the seat between them was Alberta's handbag. On the floorboard the bloody hammer now broken from the force of the blows Clara had rained down on her victim. Steering with one hand, Clara wrenched the rings from her bloody fingers and dropped them into Alberta's bag. And then as the car careened down the unpaved road, Clara gestured at the rings and told Peggy, you will remember that Mrs. Meadows got these from my husband. Peggy knowing it was a lie, dared say nothing in response. The ride back to downtown Los Angeles was tense and silent. A silence broken by Clara Phillips as she let Peggy out of the car at the corner of Pico and Figueroa. Remember what I said don't tell your husband or I'll kill you. Peggy told her husband. And the very next day, Peggy told the police. But that night at the Phillips home at 703 West 53rd Street. Armour was confronted with the bloody spectacle. It was his wife Clara.

Darling, I have killed the one you love the most in this world. Now I'm going to cook you the best supper you've ever had. I don't know what was on the menu that evening, or if it was in fact the best supper Armour ever had. He was too busy sponging the blood off of Clara, disposing of Alberta's car and rushing his wife to the station to get her on the next train east to Texas. And the very next day, Armour told the police.

Maybe his conscience got to him. Maybe as the shock of Clara's bloody homecoming began to wear off. Her husband realized that he was now an accessory after the fact of murder. Whatever his reasons were, law enforcement was now watching that train. Clara only made it as far as Tucson before she was arrested on July 15 1922. And just two days later, a confidential investigative report was provided to the Los Angeles District Attorney, one that cleared Alberta Meadows of having any relationship history with Armour Phillips. The DA declared his intention to not only convict Clara Phillips for murder, but to make her the very first woman to die by hanging in the state of California. Yes, a death penalty case. And California jurors then weren't squeamish about arriving at a Between 1900 and 1921, the state executed 99 people. And Clara, despite her gender, youth and beauty, three things that might have worked in her favor for leniency, at least from the jury, had committed a crime so savage that investigators who found Alberta's body said that it looked like the victim had been torn apart by a tiger. The press ran with that, dubbing Clara, the tiger woman. One blaring headline read, quote, she is a modern homebody one minute and turns into ferocious stone age primitive girl the next, end quote. They called her the prehistoric woman of all things. Reading those stories gives you a kind of Wilma Flintstone gone really bad vibe.

Listen to this from the Los Angeles Evening Post record published October 21 1922. Clara Phillips possesses instincts that are decidedly primitive. Her high cheekbones suggest the Indian. It has been rumored that Indian blood flows in her veins. How many wives are there like her in Los Angeles living in bungalows loving their husbands neat, happy homebodies who only wait the psychological moment to turn into primitive Amazons capable of beating out the brains of a fancy rival? Quite a few divorce court trials would indicate. Okay, first racist much misogynistic much accurately predicting the entire Real Housewives franchise much of the above. And times were very different back then indeed. The sensational and endless press coverage led right up to jury selection which began on September 20 1922. And like everything else about this case was wild and unpredictable. Clara who had been evaluated for her mental fitness to stand trial was seated in the courtroom as the prosecution and defense questioned and dismissed person after person. And those prospective jurors were not shy when it came to reading Clara for filth. The process became so heated at one point that the judge demanded the courtroom be cleared of spectators. As the public filed out. One woman spat in Clara's face. Another struck her in the face. Clara's best effort to float an insanity defense was swiftly shot down by the prosecution. Her defense gamely deposed a number of people in Texas who've known Clara prior to her move to LA.

It was suggested that Clara suffered from a mental defect shared by her family. When that didn't fly. The defense proposed that Clara suffered from periodic spells of mental derangement. And it was while in the grips of one of those spells that she oopsied and beat a woman to a pulp with a 15 cent hammer. You know, as one does. But the prosecution called in a whole flotilla of alienists to examine the tiger woman.

Alienist is what they used to call doctors who worked in mental health back then. The name came from the belief that people with mental illness were alienated from their normal faculties and function. The alienists all declared Clara sane. And with a jury finally seated, which was no small thing, given the complete circus that process was, the murder trial of Clara Phillips, the tiger woman finally began. So enormous were the crowds at the courthouse, each fighting for a seat in the public gallery, that at least four women fainted in the crush of bodies. The star witness was of course, eyewitness Peggy Caffee. As she testified under oath to the events of that terrible evening on July 11 1922. Her voice faltered at times, and she was visibly frightened, twisting a handkerchief in her hands. She sobbed through parts of her testimony and plead it with the prosecution. Please, please don't make me talk about the blood. Clara Phillips stared daggers at her former friend, calling out at one point, tell the truth, Peggy. Tell what you did. But Clara's attempts to pin the murder on Peggy Caffee were no more successful than her attempts at pleading insanity had been. LA Detective Sergeant FL James gave graphic testimony describing how Alberta's body was pinned in place by a heavy boulder. James recounted finding two pieces of string in the road, the same kind of string used by retailers to tie up a parcel, a parcel like the one containing the claw hammer murder weapon. And there was another witness a surprise to Clara. It was a young man employed as a cattle herder. At approximately 5.30pm on July 11 1922. He saw a woman wearing a coat walking along Montecito Drive. The woman was walking up the dirt road from where Alberta's body had been found. As the woman rounded a bend in the road, she spotted the cattleman and swiftly turned back the way she came. The prosecution argued that this was proof of Clara's utter cold bloodedness. Having beaten Alberta to death with the hammer, Clara didn't flee in a panic. She explored the area, making certain the DA argued that there were no witnesses to the crime other than the now unconscious Peggy Caffee. And the coat was an important detail. From the information clerk at the bank to the owner of the parking station. All testimony pointed to only one woman dressed in a coat that day. The defendant Clara Phillips.

At this point, you might be thinking that there's so much premeditation on display here that it seems all but impossible for Clara to escape her final public performance on the The trip to Alberta's apartment building the night before the murder. The day spent powdering her nose at the First National Bank. The very same day bank employee, Alberta Meadows was pounded with a hammer into a mass of battered flesh. A witness who placed Clara in Alberta's car an hour before the killing. An eyewitness and Clara's husband, who told the everything his wife had said. From the moment she strolled through the door of their home on July 11 1922. Darling, I have killed the one you love the most in this world. Now I'm going to cook you the best supper you've ever had. And speaking of armor who've been found to be innocent of any adultery or hijinks with the murdered Alberta Meadows. The man still took a real beating in the press if not in the courtroom. A reporter named Alma Whitaker writing for the LA Times in October 1922 had this to say about armor Phillips.

As he sat in court yesterday hearing Peggy Caffee's sordid testimony. It didn't seem possible that a woman as bright as Clara could have considered him worth all that agony. To me, he looked like a mediocre chump, immeasurably impressed with his important role in the proceedings. As the child proceeded with that mountain of evidence pointing to pre meditation, cool, calculate it. Let me just touch up my lipstick pre meditation. The tiger woman works some kind of twisted magic. Even the jury hostile to the defendant and possibly heavily influenced by the press came to see Clara as less of a monster. And more than just a pretty young thing who gone terribly, terribly astray. This despite utterly brokenhearted testimony from the victim's father, Fred Tremaine, despite graphic testimony from Peggy Caffee, who not only witnessed the murder itself, but who was with Clara when she stalked Alberta's apartment and workplace. At one wrenching moment in the trial, Peggy told of hearing the doomed Alberta's last words, a choked scream, Peggy save me. You can understand why the prosecution was appalled and infuriated by the verdict reached by this jury. Guilty Yes, but of second degree murder, a crime carrying 10 years to life in prison.

Prosecutor Charles Frick would not have the satisfaction of seeing the tiger woman hanged. Clara was to serve her time at San Quentin Penitentiary. The defense vowed to appeal. But before that appeal was even filed, Clara escaped from her third floor cell at the Los Angeles County Jail. She'd managed to cut the iron bars out of her cell window, disguising her work with a set of lovely curtains she'd sewn by hand. The New York Times reported that Clara wiggled through that small opening and managed to shimmy from the roof to the ground via a drainpipe. Footprints at the scene indicated she was barefoot. Police suspected she'd had the help of a few accomplices, and that her first stop might very well be to wreak vengeance on Peggy Caffee. Police also believe that Clara was likely to head for Mexico in an automobile or maybe in a boat departing from Long Beach. They were wrong on all counts.

In April 1923, having received information that Clara Phillips was in Honduras, law enforcement began the process of extradition. One month later, a reporter named Morris Levine declared that not only was Clara in Honduras, she wasn't even hiding. No disguise, no attempt at concealment, just living her life in the company of her younger sister, Etta. Clara boldly informed Levine, when I tell the details of my escape from the Los Angeles County Jail, the story will startle California. Perhaps they won't even want me. Again, hammer time. The state of California very much wanted Clara Phillips, and in May 1923, they got her. Captured by the authorities in Honduras, Clara swore she would rather die in Honduras than serve a life sentence in San Quentin. Yet when detectives and reporters from California finally arrived at her jail cell in Tegucigalpa, she shocked them by not only admitting to being the Tiger Woman murderer, but by declaring that she expected to be fully absolved of her crimes upon returning to Los Angeles.

Wrong. Extradition went forward. In the custody of two California police officers, Clara made the journey from Honduras to San Quentin by train. Waiting in New Orleans for the Southern Pacific Limited that would ferry the Tiger Woman to San Quentin, the officers broke the news that Clara's appeal had been denied. She would begin serving her 10 years to life sentence immediately upon her arrival in California.

They say that she took this news with absolutely no emotion, no reaction of any kind. But Clara had managed to strike one very good deal with the state. In exchange for not fighting her extradition from Honduras, Clara was given a guaranteed parole date for the spring of 1935. Oh sure, she definitely tried to accelerate that release, pleading with California Governor C.C. Young to let her go free so that she might be a good wife. But that went nowhere. Many, many Californians loudly protested the Tiger Woman's parole. Still, a deal's a deal, right? Clara was free. The man she killed for, the man she called her baby, the man she couldn't even begin to imagine in another woman's arms. He was no longer in the picture. Clara and Armour Phillips divorced in 1934. When the press asked her what her plans were now that she was a free woman, Clara declared that she was moving to San Diego to live with family and ply the trade she'd learned in prison. Dental hygienist. Can you imagine being, you know, a little phobic about going to the dentist, and you finally make the appointment. And the person telling you to open wide as she comes toward you with a sharp instrument is the notorious Tiger Woman. Jealousy. That's what this whole nightmare comes down to. Jealousy. Clara was fiercely jealous, fiercely possessive, and young. Remember that? Married at 15, a murderer by 23. Not much life experience, not much perspective. She couldn't bear to be less than the very center of Armour's world. And when she saw that position threatened, it opened up a kind of wound in Clara. A wound bottomless and consuming, one that blinded her to every path but one. Violence. What about that gossipy neighbor?

Jealous maybe of Clara's youth and beauty of her fine house and doting husband? Who knows? Gossip can be motivated by anything. Perhaps the neighbor was critical of Clara being in show business. Perhaps the neighbor was just bored and speculating on what sort of drama might be unspooling in the even if just a little. The press declared that the sharp tongue of the gossip had killed Alberta Meadows just as surely as the blows from that claw hammer. Very melodramatic, but that gossip was a dark, dark seed that bloomed in the fevered imagination of Clara Phillips. How could the neighbors have guessed that hidden behind Clara's blinding smile was this capacity for extreme, brutal, harrowing violence? Because we can't tell just by looking at each other. We can't always see the truth of who we really are. Not until we're backed into a corner. Not until the hammer comes down. Armour Phillips died in Texas in 1972 at age 79. Clara Phillips died in 1969 at age 70. Both managed to mostly disappear into private life and enjoyed the very real privilege of growing old. Something that was ripped away from Alberta Meadows. She's buried in the family plot at Forest Lawn Cemetery in LA. An innocent who did a stranger a favor only to be slaughtered in the dirt.

All over this land. If I had a bell, I'd ring it in the morning. I'd ring it in the evening. And all over this land. I'd ring out for danger. I'd ring out a warning. I'd sing out love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land. If I had a song, I'd sing it in the morning. I'd sing it in the evening. All over this land. I'd sing out for danger. I'd sing out a warning. I'd sing out love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land. I got a hammer and I got a bell. And I got a song to sing all over this land. It's the hammer of justice. It's the bell of freedom. It's the song about love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land.

Next time on True Weird Stuff. He wasn't born a Vladimir. It's a name he chose. He wasn't Dracula. He wasn't a vampire. He was a flesh and blood man. But sometimes those are the very worst monsters of all. Just ask Vladimir's boys. The ones cowering in that dungeon in San Francisco on the next True Weird Stuff. And if you listen to us on Apple podcast, hit the plus button in the top right corner. Now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered. And we really appreciate it if you subscribe, rate and review True Weird Stuff.

Hit our website trueweirdstuff.com for show notes and photos and videos when we have it and bonus content. Everything True Weird is waiting for you at trueweirdstuff.com and follow True Weird Stuff on Instagram and Twitter. True Weird Stuff is a Now! Media production. Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia. The show is written and hosted by me Gary Lynch, along with my deeply weird director Max Sweeten.

Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser. Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call. Our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr. Original graphics by Kevin Nash. Original artworks by Olivia Axland. True Weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Zane Nash. Copyright 2023 Now! Media. All rights reserved. All Hey, Sherry and Max here from our little true weird clubhouse in our fully weird mode. We wanted to talk a little bit about the kind of behind the scenes on the Clara Phillips story and thank you for listening to this episode. For starters, here's something very interesting and I think super important to know how many inaccuracies are on the internet including Wikipedia. There are so many false things that are written about this case. And one person makes a mistake on like the Wikipedia entry and then other people pick it up and follow it like so for example, you will see if you look over and over again that Clara Phillips escaped from jail and was arrested in Albuquerque. And on the one hand you go well that's not that big of a deal to get wrong. It actually is because she was not arrested in Albuquerque. She was arrested in Tucson and the judge made the arresting the Tucson Police Department arresting officers be deposed for her criminal trial.

It's these little details and I see this in a lot of the stories that we do for true weird stuff like Pearl Hart. There were so many inaccuracies in Pearl Hart's story and so it's tricky to tell these stories and I'm really shocked by a phenomenon that existed then that is thankfully very different now. So back in the day, Max, somebody would be brutally murdered, you know, having their brains bashed in with a hammer, crushed with a hammer, and then they would go around the killer. Today, in forensics, criminal science, they do something called victimology where you figure out who committed the crime by fully knowing and understanding the victim. And we position victims at the center of these stories now. We are trying very hard to not make celebrities out of murderers, right? So the victim is at the center of the story. Alberta Meadows, who was widowed at 20, by all accounts, a sweet, compassionate, lovely young girl who had suffered a terrible loss but had her life in front of her.

Good luck finding out anything about Alberta Meadows. And piecing together the correct timeline of Clara's case meant diving back into newspaper and police reports from the 1920s. And the way that people, the way journalism was practiced back then, is completely insane. This thing from the LA Times was written about the husband. It says, I'm gonna read this. It doesn't seem possible about a woman as bright as Clara could have considered him worth all that agony. To me, he just looked like a mediocre chump immeasurably impressed with his important role in the proceedings. The guy did nothing wrong except help her after the fact. He didn't have an affair. He didn't do anything wrong.

He did nothing like when I read that. And that Alma Whitaker, the reporter who wrote that she covered a lot of the the trial and back then journalists. It was a different world. I know that a lot of people now are like, we hate the mainstream media. Okay, no, sis, listen, listen. Back then, a reporter could just say any damn thing and it would be printed. Like you, you wouldn't believe the comments that were made about showgirls and and adulterers like it's just wild.

Or the fact that they were saying that she had Native American blood. And because of that, and we don't know what and we don't even know if that was true. But what I'm saying is that that was the savage part of her that came out. Where did that come from? Somebody, somebody just did that off the top of their head. It's crazy.

No racism, the misogyny. And you know, we have to leave a lot of stuff out of these episodes. Otherwise, you know, you'd be like three hours long. But one newspaper went after the neighbor who started the rumor that armor was having an affair with Alberta Meadows. Yeah. What this newspaper did to this woman. They called her a sharp tongued scold. And you know, just like tore apart, you know, jealous and she was dumpy and frumpy and the tongue of a woman is as sharp as any blade and on and on and on. But but here's here's the other thing that that really surprised us about this case. I don't know what more premeditation we needed to show here to get a first degree murder conviction.

She bought the hammer. She had the hammer with her. She stalked her. She created a ruse that they needed a ride. They got out to a deserted place and she killed her. It all sounds like premeditation to me. I mean, the night before the killing, she's peeping in the woman's keyhole. She spent I will remind you, she was in the lobby of the bank waiting for Alberta from 11am to 4pm.

Oh, oh, and touched up her makeup and lipstick. She was waiting there. The the amount of premeditation in this case has you going like, wait, what? But what it really came down to and the DA, by the way, Charles Frick, he he had Clara Phillips number. He was like, this is a psychopath. This is a person that cannot be walking amongst us. But what worked in Clara's favor? Beauty and youth. And it's 1922. Everybody. She was just a sweet young thing. And she didn't know what she was doing. And so she she didn't get away with murder. She kind of got away with murder.

Yeah. And it also lets you know that just because somebody is a psychopath and commits one murder doesn't mean that they're going to commit another one. Oh, isn't that? I mean, we've talked about that. Yeah. And she didn't. You know, the truth is, the truth is she didn't. And the thing that there are so many aspects of this story haunt me.

Um, you killed an innocent 20 year old woman for the love of what did they call him? A deplorable chump or some media? A mediocre chump, a mediocre chump. The poor guy. You committed savage up close, cold blooded, wet work murder for a man that you divorced. I want you to think about that. The grief and outrage and the entire Tremaine, that's Alberta's maiden name, the entire Tremaine family just destroyed by this for the rest of us.

It's just the amount of time and heartache we spent on somebody who now no longer means anything to us whatsoever. Yeah, I've had me some husbands. Ain't one of them worth killing somebody over. You know, I love my husband. I ain't killing anybody for him. I'm not killing a spider for him. Like I just climbing inside Clara Phillips mind is insane. But I did some research. And again, you know, we can't put everything into every episode. But I did some research on the intersection of homicide and jealousy. And there's a French psychologist who specializes in these kinds of crimes, you know, domestic and relationship violence. And and he said that extreme jealousy is aiming a singular driving factor in homicide. So be very cautious as you head out into that brand new relationship and maybe it's with a person who's a little bit controlling a little possessive, a bit jealous. Be very careful. Because not every jealous person will beat you to death with a hammer.

But you know, it only takes the one max. Just the one. It's just, you've only got the one head and here it comes with the hammer. And so, yeah. So um, yeah, very interesting case and a real glimpse of the beginning of Los Angeles, the end of prohibition, the beginning of the movie business, which was entirely fueled by petroleum and nobody knows that. Like there's so many things happening right around this one woman who loved her baby so much that she was willing to cave your skull in for thinking about him.

A mediocre chump, according to the Los Angeles Times. And hey, if it's in the newspaper, it's gotta be true. So thanks for listening to True Weird Stuff. And thanks for hanging out for this little behind the scenes. We'll catch you on the next episode.