In last week’s case, Richard Crafts murdered his wife and used a woodchipper to dispose of her body. The State of Connecticut convicted him of murder anyway. This week, our case is from California in the Roaring Twenties. There, in 1922, Clara Phillips used a hammer and a boulder to kill a supposed rival for her husband’s affections.
Armour and Clara Phillips
Clara Phillips had been a showgirl when she met Armour L. Phillips. Phillips was part of the über-wealthy Mellons of Pittsburgh, but his was a poor branch of the family from Texas. Nor did he have any of the business or financial acumen of his moneyed relatives. Instead, he was a grifter and a con man. Nonetheless, Clara adored him.
Clara had a volatile temperament. She invented a story about being kidnapped as a child in Los Angeles and frequently fought with other showgirls. She also fought with her husband but that apparently didn’t diminish her ardor.
Trouble started when Clara overheard a neighbor gossiping that Armour was having an affair with one Alberta Meadows. Meadows was a young widow who worked as a bank teller. She had been married less than a year when her husband died in an accident at work. Hearing that Alberta was dallying with Armour (she wasn’t), Clara hatched a plan.
Clara Phillips’ Murder Plan
On July 10, 1922, Clara visited a local five-and-dime. There, in the hardware department, she selected a claw hammer. She asked the clerk if it was heavy enough to kill a woman. Thinking she was joking, he replied “Yes, it is, if you hit her hard enough with it.” Clara bought the hammer for fifteen cents.
After buying the murder weapon, Clara spent most of the afternoon in a Long Beach speakeasy. With her was her friend, another former chorine named Peggy Caffee. After bending Peggy’s ear about Alberta’s “affair” with her husband, the two went to Meadows’ house. There they made up a story about needing a lift across town. For some reason, Alberta agreed. When they reached a lonely stretch of Montecito Drive, Clara asked Alberta to pull off the road. She said she wanted to have a private conversation with Alberta. Clara then proceeded to pummel Alberta about the head with the hammer until it broke. She finished off her supposed rival by rolling a 50-pound boulder onto her chest.
With Alberta now dead, the two women fled in the victim’s brand-new Ford. Clara came home to Armour, still covered in Alberta’s blood, and promised to cook him “the best dinner he’d ever eaten.”
Clara Escapes—But Not for Long
Peggy Caffee, who had witnessed the whole scene from the car, was too frightened to intervene. Not wanting to end up like Alberta, she followed Clara’s advice and kept silent.
For his part, Armour Phillips helped dispose of the car and put Clara on a train for Texas. However, he reconsidered his position the next day and went to the cops. She got only as far as Albuquerque before police hauled her off the train and arrested her.
At trial, Clara accused Peggy Caffee of killing Alberta. That strategy didn’t fly, as the jury (and everyone else) saw a timid, terrified Peggy Caffee when she testified. Convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 10 years to life, Clara didn’t wait for her transfer to San Quentin (the women’s prison at Tehachapi didn’t open until 1932). Instead, she bribed her way out of the county jail on December 5, 1922 and escaped to Honduras.
Epilogue
Clara Phillips stayed on the run for four months before the law caught up with her. Extradited back to Los Angeles, she had no choice but to begin serving her sentence in San Quentin. She was released on parole from Tehachapi on June 21, 1935. By then she had divorced Armour Phillips. She told reporters she was going to San Diego to live with her family and work as a dental assistant, a skill she learned in prison.
Clara continued to insist that Peggy Caffee was the one who killed Alberta Meadows. As before, nobody believed her.
A detective on the case said Meadows looked like “she had been mauled by a tiger.” As a result, the L.A. press promptly dubbed Clara the “Tiger Girl” or “Tiger Woman.”
Crime writer R. Barri Flowers wrote about the case in Murderess on the Loose: The 1922 Hammer Wrath of Clara Phillips.
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What a horrible woman. She should have been sentenced to death. It was premeditated.
She also was butt ugly to have been a showgirl! She must of bribed them as well! Ugly inside out! She is where she should be eternally! Mandatory life in hell!! The “media “ lying as always, and on the side of criminals!!
Your comment isn’t quite fair. Keep in mind that standards for “beauty” evolve over time.
The media didn’t necessarily take her side, but she was a hot story, just like any sensational crime today.