The Tiger Woman: Clara Phillips, The 1922 Hollywood Showgirl Hammer Murder and Daring Los Angeles Escape

In 1922, a beautiful showgirl named Clara Phillips shocked Los Angeles when she committed a gruesome murder with a hammer. This is the twisted tale of the "Tiger Woman," a name given to Phillips after her crime. The violent act was fueled by a jealous rage over a rumored affair.

The story has all the drama of the roaring twenties: Hollywood, a beautiful, scorned woman, and a violent attack. The case is remembered not just for the brutal bludgeoning, but for Clara Phillips’ audacious escape, which was one of the most daring the city had ever seen. We dive into the mystery, including the fact that authorities had no way of proving whether or not the alleged affair that sparked the rage actually occurred. Listen as we unpack the life and crimes of Clara Phillips, the Tiger Woman of Los Angeles.

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] A beautiful showgirl, a rumored affair, and a hammer. In 1922, Clara Phillips shocked Los Angeles. When she bludgeoned a woman to death in a jealous rage, then staged one of the most daring escapes the city had ever seen. This is the twisted tail of the Tiger Woman. Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast.

A True Crime Podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend, Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi Mandy. How are you? I'm doing pretty well. Gearing up for the long holiday weekend that will be passed by the time this episode comes out. Everybody gets to hear us talking about things. After they've happened, but yeah, before they've happened.

So that's kind of a weird, uh, overlap that we have there. We do. We're talking about the future in the past, uh, no, the past in, I don't know. I'm not gonna do it. Yeah, something like that. Something like that. Mandy, you know what I realized is this month we are coming up on eight years of having this [00:01:00] little podcast.

That's wild. That is, I don't know what I was expecting you to say from there because we should probably mention it when it actually happens. Yeah, but I just remember July and then I never remember the actual date, but yeah, I can't believe it. Eight years. I think it's around like the 19th or something.

Maybe it's exactly the 19th. I just looked it up. Oh wow. Okay. Well go me because I never remember anything and I'm very impressed with myself that I just remembered. The anniversary of our little podcast. Of the little podcast that could, um, this is almost the longest job I've ever had and uh, I'd like to keep it that way.

This might be for me. Yeah, it's a lot of work experience we have here, but yeah, love doing it. So excited we get to still do it. And Mandy, this week's story is, uh, I'd never heard of it and that makes sense actually. Wow, wow, wow. Yeah, it does make sense. But it's one you guys will really enjoy. I'm excited.

Yeah, definitely. We'll get right into it. So the reason why I said Melissa, uh, it didn't surprise [00:02:00] me that she didn't immediately recognize this story is because it is from over a hundred years ago. We are rewinding all the way to the earliest 20th century to meet the woman at the center of today's story.

This is a woman whose life. Seemed almost destined to end in tragedy, and her name was Clara Phillips, born in 1894. Clara was the fourth of five kids born to her parents, John and Anna Laura. She was especially close to her youngest sister Eda, and they maintained a very close bond as their family bounced from one small Texas town to the next.

Finally, they settled in Houston when Clara was a teenager, even though she was just a small town girl, Clara had very big dreams. She had the type of beauty that turned heads everywhere. She went and she ended up becoming a showgirl, a chorus girl, and eventually found work in the movies, which back then was a pretty big deal because it was really just getting started.

I still, I disagree because I think you just had a better [00:03:00] chance then everyone, if you said. I wanna be in the theater. They're like, great Broadway, do it. You're a star, right? I'd like to think that we're more talented today and they just have more opportunities then, and that's why I will never have my star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and other reasons.

I loved that monologue. I thought you had paused. I was like, what? I paused to let you finish. No, I just said I Okay. It was like a a little minty minty bee I had there, but go ahead, continue. That's all right. So, Clara did become a member of the Eclipse Film Company, where she was envied by many of the other women there for her looks and her physique.

She was described by one of her colleagues as being very quiet and reserved and almost had a mysterious air about her. Clara was impossible to ever keep tabs on because she was known for constantly changing her address, her personal life, much like her professional one, was also very intense. When Clara was just 14 years old, [00:04:00] she met 22-year-old Armor Phillips and the two were married on November 13th, 1913 in Houston.

I know, I know. I know that it was a normal thing for women to get married. I can't even say women. 'cause now I would say like that's a child. Right. It was normal for, I guess, children, girls to get married at 14 back then babies. Right. And it just seems so bizarre to me, having. Children that are, that, you know, in that kind of age range.

Yeah. I'm like, no, no, there's no way. I know. There's no way. I know, I know. Their brains are just, but I can't imagine like that's a big responsibility and being so young and having a husband That's an adult. Yeah. That is, that's like two different, that's, that's wild. Like a lifetime difference. Yeah. Crazy. I can't, yeah, exactly.

We, I simply can't even. Imagine it or fathom. I can't even the word story, I just don't even know how. Yeah, I don't know how it would even work, but Clara gave up everything to be with Armor, including her education, her family, and even her sense of self. [00:05:00] She really poured every single bit of love she had into her marriage, and she dreamed of becoming a mother and creating a beautiful family.

That was her dream. That's all she really wanted in life, but sadly, that wasn't in the cards for her. Clara learned that she wasn't able to have children, which ended up leading to her channeling all of this nurturing energy into her husband armor as if he was her baby. And as the story goes on, you'll see just how seriously she took that, right?

She found a lot of comfort and really thrived in spending quiet evenings at home, just mending his clothes while he sat close by reading a book or something. In those early days, Clara was confident that she and Armor had a wonderful bond, and they were both focused on one thing, and that was Armor's success.

When World War, I broke out armor left to serve, and Clara was left alone to survive on his very, very scant military pay. And that's when she took the job as a chorus girl [00:06:00] and learned to dance and perform to keep herself afloat. When the war was over, armor and Clara were reunited and they moved to California.

They brought Clara's mother and sister along with them in hopes of building a golden life in la, which as you said, probably was a lot easier to do then than it is now. You certainly can't just move to LA on a wing and a prayer. Some people do, but you definitely need a plan if you are going that route.

You need a, yeah, yeah. A wing and a prayer, and maybe an agent. Yes. And maybe you have a chance, right? But they bought a cozy bungalow and a shiny new car, and Clara was just really happy and proud to do anything that she could to help make armor happy. As the couple's finances started to improve, the dynamics started to shift within the couple's marriage, and Clara noticed a drop off in Armor's gratitude and affection.

He wasn't really thanking her for all the small things that she did anymore. He used to kiss her goodnight every night and would just kind of say thank you for everything she had done for him. But now he was hardly even looking her way. Clara did her best to keep up with the same [00:07:00] loving way and the routine that she always did.

And the same way she always treated her husband. She continued doing his sewing, all the cleaning, and she would wait up for him every night, but at some point he started staying out until the morning more and more often. Rumors soon began to swirl that armor was having an affair, and there was even speculation about gifts he may have given to this other woman.

Soon, Claire's suspicions turned into a full-blown obsession. The other woman at the center of it all was a young bookkeeper at First National Bank named Alberta Meadows. She was recently widowed after her husband died just seven months earlier, and she was trying to piece her life back together. She became the target of Claire's jealousy and obsession things reached a boiling point.

On Tuesday, July 11th, 1922. That afternoon, Claire went shopping in Long Beach with her friend Peggy Caff. At one point, they even stopped in a speakeasy. But [00:08:00] suddenly Clara said she had another stop to make. She wanted to go to the five and 10 cent store. The what? Yeah, exactly. And if you're like, oh, to get a piece of candy, maybe that's what they're doing.

No, no. There's real things you can buy at the five and 10 store Tencent store. Back then, she was going to buy a hammer and uh, that's what she needed, needed to pick up at the store. So no candy for you friend. I'm getting a hammer. Surely a hammer was 10 cents. I mean, you would hope this is like five below, but like in the beyond area that everything's like $20.

I'm like, this is a piece of crap. So anyway, she was buying a hammer and she actually asked the clerk, do you think this hammer's heavy enough for me to kill a woman with it? And the clerk who definitely assumed she was joking because of course, why wouldn't she be joking, told Claire that it would do the job if she hit hard enough.

Question could she have been. Found an accomplice since she did kind of say, yeah, no, [00:09:00] this, so this is the one you want. Okay. This part of the story actually made me be like, Ooh. Because, and you, and you and I are very similar in the way that we make jokes and say things. Mm-hmm. And I could very easily see myself as a cashier being like, ha ha, ha.

Yeah. As long as you hit hard enough. Not thinking that this person is seriously gonna use this hammer to go kill someone. Right? So, fun story, not really, but I, that backfired on me today where I was visiting someone in the hospital. They have morphine, the nurse is going to give it to her, and I said, leave some for me.

And then she, she was like, I do have to stand here and watch and make sure you take the whole thing. Oh, I, I mean, that's like the, the law, but I was like, I promise I wasn't gonna take it. And I fought the urge to say, can I just lick the, you know, take the last drop. But I was like, Melissa, you're in too deep.

You're gonna be on a list before you get out of here. They're gonna throw you out of there. I know. I was a little worried. Um, but yeah, that's where like and nervous energy especially. [00:10:00] It's like if somebody said that to me, I'd be like, absolutely. You gotta hit 'em right here. Or some stupid thing. You'd be telling them exactly how to do it.

I'd be like, do you wanna practice on me? I would just have the worst idea ever. So poor, poor lady at the five intense 10, 10 cent store. Later that day though, Claire dragged Peggy along to Alberta's apartment. She hoped that she'd be able to confront her husband's mistress, but when she snuck up the back stairs and peered into the window, she realized that Alberta wasn't home.

Claire went back to Peggy's apartment and spent the rest of the night stewing over her suspicions. The next day, Clara put her plan into overdrive. She arranged to meet Alberta downtown at a parking station, and Peggy tagged along When Alberta arrived to meet them, Clara asked if Alberta could drive her and Peggy to her sister's house, and Alberta agreed.

She said that her sister had been sick, so they all get into Alberta's Ford sedan, and Clara was given directions on where to go. [00:11:00] So after a while of driving. Claire then asked Alberta to go into a different direction. Soon they reached the secluded area and Clara's behavior had changed. She suddenly asked Alberta to stop so that they could talk.

When they stepped out, Clara immediately went into a rage and accused Alberta of having an affair with armor and of accepting gifts from him, including tires and a watch. I feel like the affair is bigger than the tires and the watch, but that's just me. Okay. But I don't care how long ago this was. Do you know how expensive tires are?

Oh, you know what? I would be very ticked off if I found out that my husband bought tires for some other woman's vehicle. Okay. The watch. We'll let the watch go. The watch the tire. Have the watch. Too far. Too far. You're right. So Alberta looks stunned though. She says, I beg your pardon. Insisted that she bought the tires for herself and could prove it with a receipt, and she said she had nothing at all to do with [00:12:00] Clara's husband.

Peggy noticed that Clara was holding a hammer behind her back during the confrontation with Alberta. At one point, Alberta walked towards Clara, and that's when things took a deadly turn. Clara pulled the hammer out from behind her back and swung it. The first blow was a miss, and it just grazed off of Alberta's shoulder and Alberta panicked when she realized that she was being attacked and she tried to run for her life.

Clara wouldn't stop though. She chased Alberta down, dragged her back to the car, and then began savagely beating her in the head with the hammer over and over again. Clara's friend Peggy, who was just kind of along for the ride, looked on in horror as blood splattered everywhere. She said she felt sick at the sight of all the blood, and she became weak and felt faint.

At some point, Alberta yelled out for Peggy to save her, but when Peggy tried to intervene, Clara snapped at her and told her to get away, or she'd kill Peggy too. So Peggy really had no choice but to back off. [00:13:00] According to Peggy, the attack was brutal, and each time Clara raised the hammer, the blow was worse than the last one.

Alberta was covered in blood from head to toe. When the attack was over, Clara wiped her face, removed her rings, and placed them into Alberta's bag. She then looked at Peggy and said, anybody that can take my husband from me, I can do that again. Peggy described Clara's demeanor as wild and vicious and said that she was deeply afraid of her.

Eventually, Clara calmed herself and acted unbothered, but Peggy was absolutely terrified. Clara forced Peggy into the car and told her that she'd kill her if anyone found out about this. Peggy was so terrified that she didn't even tell her husband what had happened right away. The next day, Peggy met her husband in Long Beach and she confessed everything.

He was completely shocked and very upset, and just could not believe that his wife Peggy had been involved in any [00:14:00] way. Peggy said that she had delayed going to the police because her husband was being considered for a new job in the oil industry, and she feared that if it became known that she was a witness to this horrible murder, it might jeopardize her husband's chances of getting this job.

So once her husband came home and confirmed that he had gotten the job, she was then able to confide in him, and together they agreed to go to the authorities. After the authorities heard Peggy's testimony, the grand jury returned an indictment to charge Clara Phillips with murder, and we have so much more to get into after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors.

Now back to the episode. So before the break, we introduced Clara Phillips, a beautiful showgirl whose life spiraled from small town dreams to deadly obsession. Clara married Armor Phillips at just 14 years old and poured everything into their marriage. That is until rumors of his affair shattered her entire world.

Clara was convinced that Armor was seeing a young widow named Alberta Meadows, and her jealousy grew [00:15:00] into a dangerous obsession. On July 11th, 1922, Clara bought a hammer arranged to confront Alberta and lured her to a secluded spot. There she snapped and attacked Alberta in a savage frenzy as her friend Peggy looked on in horror.

The next day, Peggy told her husband everything, and soon after a grand jury indicted Clara for murder. As for Clara, after she brutally murdered Alberta, she didn't try to hide. Instead, she drove straight home after the murder and she's in Alberta's car, and she burst through the door in hysterics. She was sobbing uncontrollably and clung tightly to armor and pleaded with him not to leave her.

Then she confessed, she said. I've killed the one you loved best. You'll never see her again. Oh, I can't live without you. Quote, Claire told Armor she'd make him the best dinner he's ever had. And Armor helped Claire clean the blood from herself in her clothing, and together they drove to [00:16:00] Pomona to abandon Alberta's car and hopes that it would throw off any investigation since Claire's mom and sister lived with them.

It was impossible for Claire to simply return home. So Armor helped Clara come up with a plan to check into a hotel under the name RS Jackson, so she could lie low while they figured out what to do next to me. Doesn't it seem like it's more suspicious that she's not coming home? A hundred percent. Like if it was me, I'd be like, okay, we're gonna act completely normal.

You're gonna go home, you're gonna do everything you would normally do, and then you're gonna go to bed and we'll figure it out. But like, I would never be like, let's get you a hotel. 'cause that's surely her mom and sister are gonna have questions about why she's staying in a hotel. She's never stayed in a hotel, ever.

And then this day she does. They'd be like, yeah, no, I remember that. That's the day that Clara stayed at a hotel. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. So while Clara hid Armor spent his night pouring over newspaper articles about Alberta's murder until the guilt and fear finally ate away at him, and he [00:17:00] ultimately confessed the truth to an attorney who persuaded him to go to the sheriff.

Meanwhile, on the afternoon of July 12th, the gruesome aftermath of the attack was discovered when a woman named Mrs. Whites was driving alone. When she spotted something horrifying on a hillside. It was a crumpled bloody body of a woman whose head had been crushed beyond recognition. Mrs. Whites was so overcome with shock that she nearly collapsed, but she managed to run a mile before finding a phone to call the police.

When officers arrived with Lieutenant Hagenbeck, they found a scene straight out of a nightmare. Alberta who was dressed in elegant clothing, laid battered in a ditch nearby, they found a broken bloodstained handle from a hammer in Alberta's tattered blood soaked hat. Bits of wrapping paper entwined that were likely used to carry the hammer were scattered across the hillside.

At first, Alberta's identity was a mystery. She had no immediate family at home to notice [00:18:00] that she was missing, and her sister who worked at the same bank with her was absent that day as well, which left no one to raise the alarm. After the police notified Alberta's parents of her murder, they were able to positively identify her body.

Meanwhile, authorities announced that a warrant was out for the arrest of Clara Phillips who had fled to Tucson, Arizona the next day, armor found himself in a desperate situation. He had sent Clara off on a train bound for Tucson, but his own mind was clouded with fear, guilt, and yet still a deep love for his wife.

He described Clara as being mentally unstable, but said that he would stand by her because she needed him. He admitted that he discarded the murder weapon while turning from abandoning Alberta's car. After being arrested in Tucson, Clara was brought back to LA to face justice for what she'd done. She was formally arraigned on July 21st, 1922, and the courtroom was full of spectators that were just hungry [00:19:00] for every detail of the scandal, Clara pleaded not guilty.

Her trial was set for September, but there was so much chaos around her case. Clara had a really hard time finding an attorney who would even take on her defense, so the trial was pushed back and eventually scheduled for October 20th, 1922. While Clara sat in jail, Alberta's family tried to pick up the pieces of their lives and her grandmother, Mrs.

Tremaine, became a fierce voice for her granddaughter's memory. She was determined to put out the rumors that Alberta was seeing Armor Phillips at all. She insisted that Alberta was a devoted young widow who was still mourning the death of her husband, the only man that she ever loved. She said that all these gifts that Clara claimed her husband bought for Alberta were things Alberta bought for her herself with her own money.

Her grandma said Alberta was independent, moral and loyal, and Mrs. Tremaine wasn't the only one fighting to protect Alberta's reputation. Members of the [00:20:00] community, including Pastor George Hills of the Seventh Day Adventist Church came forward and stood firmly against the rumors about Alberta. He said that she was a good home loving girl who had already faced more hardship than you could imagine.

At the young age of 20, she became a widow after her husband was killed by a high voltage wire. Yet she picked herself up and returned to work at the bank. She was determined to keep going despite the tragedy she was living through. The pastor's wife remembered Alberta as being sweet and responsible.

She said Alberta was unlike the modern girls who stayed out late and chased nightlife. I wonder what they would call. Our generation of girls, they should watch millennials. I wanna know what you would call millennial girls. No. Watch a preview for Love Island. It has really just rocked my world. I made my sister watch it with me and it just, you've never seen anything like Love Island.

Love love island, that make a hate. I'm Get you by next year. I saw somebody write that and I was like, listen, that's basically why I'm watching it. Literally. But [00:21:00] Alberta was not like a love island contestant. She was much quieter. She even planned to move in with her grandmother to help care for her.

Alberta lived a very respectable life. At the time of her murder. She was making plans to visit Montana. Meanwhile, newspapers across the country were just enthralled with the details of this story. Clara was dubbed the Tiger Woman. Which Melissa and I have discussed and still do not quite understand, but they said that it was due just due to the savage nature of her crime.

I assume the fact that she had chased Alberta down like prey before murdering her, had something to do with it. But otherwise, I felt like the Tiger Woman nickname was a little bit out of place. Especially when we're living in the year 2025 and we survived 2020 with Tiger King and Carol Baskin, who I would've considered to be Tiger Woman, right?

So this is, this is, uh, a little different. I agree. I would've thought she attacked somebody with a tiger, owned a tiger. I don't know. Something [00:22:00] like that. Was obsessed with tigers, right? There was something. So Clara's trial began on October 20th, 1922 in Los Angeles. A jury of nine men and three women were sworn in, and soon all eyes were on one of the most sensational murder cases of a decade.

Prosecutors built their case around the testimony of Peggy Caffey as she was the only eyewitness to the murder. When Peggy took the stand, everyone was on the edge of their seat, waiting to hear her recount what she had seen. Her testimony lasted an entire day as she described every harrowing detail about the hammer.

The chase Alberta's desperate pleas and Clara's terrifying rage. As Peggy spoke, Clara tried to project an attitude of defiance when Peggy testified that Clara bought the hammer used to murder Alberta herself. Clara snapped. She jumped up on her feet and pointed a finger at Peggy and shouted, Peggy Cathy, tell the truth.

You bought the hammer. Peggy was visibly shaken, but she [00:23:00] responded firmly. Clara Phillips purchased the hammer on November 2nd. It was Clara's turn to take the stand. She told a wildly different story than Peggy, and in fact, she even tried to claim that it was Peggy's idea to murder Alberta. She said it was Peggy who taunted her and urged her to confront Alberta for stealing armor's love.

Then she took matters into her own hands and beat Alberta to death with the hammer herself. Yes, that's right. She accused Peggy of being the one to actually commit this murder. Wild. Wild. At first, Clara seemed kind of smug as she told her tail, but cracks started to show. When she was cross-examined, Clara finally started to break down and sobbed uncontrollably in front of the jury.

Clara testified that she overheard her husband arguing with Mrs. Julia McElroy, who was known as the backyard gossip. I love that term. Oh yeah. That's like, that would be what I would be, except for not with my neighbors. I don't wanna [00:24:00] talk to them. Right. That's where you lose me. I don't want to, I don't wanna be the backyard gossip.

Yeah. I wanna be the Facebook gossip. I wanna find things on, I wanna be the Instagram gossip. Exactly. But during this argument, armor allegedly said he was going away with Alberta Meadows. Clara said that when she was on her way to go confront Alberta, she and Peggy stopped and had a drink of liquor. She claims that Peggy had consumed heavily before the attack on Alberta.

Clara's sisters testified about their troubled family background, including a father described as an imbu. A brother prone to hallucinations and a general history of mental illness in the family, which. Was probably not much of a commonly recognized thing a hundred years ago. Know? Yeah. I can't imagine.

Yeah. But iole is a word to describe people, and I don't think we used it enough. In 2025, mental health experts at the time did claim that Clara was mentally unstable at the time of the murder. While the jury was [00:25:00] deliberating, Clara said something that Mandy and I can't quite get past. She said, quote, armor l Phillips is my baby.

He has been my only baby. He's my very life. And when I realized he was being taken from me, I fought, fought, fought, so that I might always have him just as one woman died in the midst of that insane rage. So am I living my death behind steel bars today? Oh, how gladly I would trade places with Alberta.

What, rude and wild to refer to your husband as your baby? Ugh, I, you know, and like, yes, like we just said, I don't think that, you know, mental illness, I don't think a lot of these things were very commonly studied. Of course they weren't. We definitely didn't know, you know, we know a lot more now, a hundred years in the future than we did back then, but.

I would be fascinated to hear a mental health expert's take on Clara's, um, view of her marriage and the way that she thought of her husband [00:26:00] as her child. Like that is so strange to me. I've just, I've never come across another case of a person describing their spouse in this way and saying that they took on like a parental, a parental role with their spouse.

Like that's. Just to me, very odd. I think sometimes that happens, but the woman doesn't typically want it to. Like I have a third child, like somebody would say, know, right? My husband's like my child, but not like, it's not something you embraced. Okay, you're mad at his mother. You're not really mad at, or you know, you're not really like, right, I'm so glad I have this baby.

No, learn to do the dishes. Do it yourself. Whatever. So Clara pleaded for understanding and said that if people could see into her heart, they'd realize she was truly emotionally destroyed by what's been done and said about her. She's claimed that she didn't hate anyone and believe that kindness was something all people needed.

Okay. I will say that obviously not to Clara's defense because I'm not defending somebody who went and brutally murdered [00:27:00] Alberta Meadows. But I also go back to the whole thing, like she was 14 years old when she got married. Sure. How old was she when the murder happened? Alberta was only 20, I'm think. I didn't do the math on what the dates were, but Clara couldn't have been.

She may have been around 20, but not much older than that. That is still very young. And I do feel like people's emotions, um, get the best of them a lot easier when they're younger. Not that it justifies murder, I'm definitely not saying that, but I do believe that she said. If people could see into her heart, they would realize that she truly was emotionally destroyed.

I believe that she was absolutely like, I definitely believe that she absolutely was, and that she took an extreme measure because of it. Like I feel like that part of it really made me not sad for Clara, but I was like, yeah, I believe that you truly felt devastated and destroyed when you thought that your husband was cheating on you.

Right. Well, your baby was cheating on you, right? Basically. Yeah. Okay, so after weeks of dramatic testimony, heated arguments, and 23 and a half hours [00:28:00] of deliberation, the jury had finally come to a decision on November 16th, 1922, as the courtroom gathered in silence to hear the verdict. Loud hammering sounds could be heard from a construction site outside, but they were loud enough that they echoed in the courtroom, and it was almost like an eerie reminder of what happened to Alberta Meadows and the murder weapon that Clara had used.

This noise was actually so disruptive that the verdict had to be read twice. Clara Phillips was found guilty of second degree murder. She actually escaped a first degree conviction and was spared the death penalty, but she still faced 10 years to life in San Quentin. As the verdict was read, the courtroom went silent and Clara showed no emotion and just kept a flat expression.

Alberta's family, however, scowled and looked visibly grief stricken. As Clara was led from the courtroom, there were angry crowds, especially crowds of women that were gathered outside, yelling [00:29:00] insults at her and screaming that she deserved to be hanged. After the verdict was read, the jury foreman revealed that the deliberations had really been quite divided On the first ballot, eight of the jurors voted for first degree murder with the death penalty.

Two of them voted to acquit Clara entirely, and two suggested a compromise. The foreman admitted that the three female jurors that were on the panel all supported the death penalty from the start and refused to budge. He said that he himself wanted Clara to be hanged, but he accepted second degree murder to avoid a deadlock.

Some jurors believed that Peggy should have been tried as well since she did have some role in what happened. Even after the trial had concluded some tension remained among the jurors and many of them refused to speak publicly. While others stood firm, that Clara should have received a harsher sentence, and there were others who maintained that she should have just walked free.

Clara was eventually formally sentenced to 10 years to life, and her [00:30:00] attorney requested a 10 day stay of execution to prepare for an appeal that was granted, and Clara was then sent back to county jail to await her fate. Meanwhile, she told reporters that she felt like a new trial could clear her name.

Clara was asked if she thought that she could handle life at San Quentin, and she said she could handle it with the same level of composure she had shown during her time in jail. But she added that she didn't feel life had any meaning for her anymore, which again is truly devastating because you're like, honestly, I do think it's very sad when a person like puts everything into.

One relationship or one. Some people do it not just with a relationship, but with a career, or it could be with anything that you pour so much into that. Like if something happens with that, you feel like you don't have anything anymore. And so it's all or nothing was Wow. Yeah, exactly. And I feel like that was what was going on here with Clara, where she's like.

I literally have nothing at this point, you know, like I was trying to do this to keep my husband and now I don't have [00:31:00] him or my own life or anything, you know? Right. So I, I can't imagine what that must have felt like, like realizing all of that for her. The prosecutors were appraised for dismantling the insanity defense that she tried to present, and they convinced the jury that Clara was fully aware of her actions, and Alberta's family was very happy with the verdict.

They said that it did feel like justice to them. But just weeks after being sentenced, things took an unexpected turn sometime between two and 7:00 AM on December 5th, Clara pulled off a daring escape. She slipped through the bars of her third floor jail cell and vanished. It was soon realized that Clara had spent days, possibly even weeks, sawing her way through three iron bars on her cell window.

It's not clear how she got the saw in, but some reports claim that a sympathetic journalist named Jesse Carson smuggled it in for her. Other versions of the story claimed Jesse actually saw the bars for her. [00:32:00] Some of these details seem like so impossible to believe, but then I'm like, again, 1922, a hundred years ago.

No security cameras anywhere. Exactly. Security is like not what it is today. So it's hard to imagine yourself in that situation. Like why would he, like, how could he have solved the balls bars for her when like somebody have seen him on the surveillance? Oh no. There was no surveillance. Like he literally could have been outside the jail, sawing the bars, and unless a guard walked by, nobody would've known.

Right. Yeah, but in either version, Jesse was convinced that Clara was being railroaded by the authorities and decided to risk it all to set her free. Once the bars were cut, Claire tied bedsheets and other scraps into a long rope, which she secured to the window frame and used to lower herself. Out of the third story cell window, Clara first reached the roof of a two story building next door, and from there she found a fire escape to climb down, and soon she was on the street below.

A car was waiting in a nearby alley to whisk her away. [00:33:00] It said that Jesse himself was with Clara every step of the way for her escape. Clara's escape wasn't discovered until hours later that morning. She was scheduled for dishwashing duty with fellow inmate named Madeline. When Clara failed to report and didn't answer repeated calls, another inmate went to go check on her.

When they got to Clara's cell, they saw that the three iron bars were sold clean through the metal screen had been pushed aside, and there was a narrow opening where Clara had escaped to freedom. Clara's clothes and personal items, including pictures, pressed roses, and a decorative curtain that she had made with Madeline.

Were left behind. Ironically, that curtain was the same one that she had used to cover the hole to escape. It had clearly taken several days of planning and preparing to escape. Faye Smith who shared the cell with Clara that night immediately fell under suspicion as she and Clara had been pretty close.

Faye denied knowing anything about the escape and said it [00:34:00] actually stung a little that Clara may have trusted others with her plan instead of her. That's what you're getting from it, Faye. That's what you're getting from it. I feel if you're in jail though, those bonds are important to you. You know, like that's you.

She thought she was tight with Clara and now she's like, this girl was escaping and didn't even tell me. Didn't bother to tell me. But my question is more fake. Girl. How did you not hear the saw? I do. How did you not? That's what I have questions about. Okay. I do have questions about how people that were in the jail didn't notice that this.

Girl is over here sawing away at bars at in the middle of the night like no one noticed. That's. I don't understand. I don't get that. I know it was 1922, but I feel like our ears worth the same. Yes. You know, I definitely think people could hear in 1922. Yeah. So that's where you, I, I don't even, the guards and everything, like they never noticed that she was just sitting up there sawing away at these metal bars.

You know, it had to have taken forever to do that. Right. I, I have no idea. But we still have more to get into and we will after one [00:35:00] last break to hear word from this week's sponsors and now back to the episode. Before the break, we left off with Clara escaping from prison just weeks after sentencing by sawing through her cell bars, climbing down makeshift ropes, and disappearing into the night with the help of a journalist who believed that she had been wronged.

Authorities discovered the escape hours later when they found her cell empty and her personal items left behind. As the news of Clara's Jailbreak started to come to light, her husband Armor was sitting in a law office in disbelief. He was absolutely stunned at the news. He was confused, and he had a hard time processing that Clara had escaped from jail.

He wondered out loud why Clara hadn't told him of her plan, and a stenographer sarcastically said. She told you something once, you don't think she'd wanna take a chance again. Do you seriously, last time you went to the attorneys, she's not about to do that. But also I love that. That's always like the idea like, oh my gosh, fa mad.

She [00:36:00] didn't know Armor's mad. He didn't know guys, snitches get stitches. She can't afford this. Right? Nobody can be trusted. Yeah. So reports surfaced that Clara had escaped wearing a lavender slip-on dress, no shoes, and just 51 cents in her pocket, which is barely $10 in today's money. I was confused about the lavender dress.

I guess there was no prison uniform back in 1922, and people just had their own clothes, maybe, I don't know. She wanted to escape in style. Somehow she had a lavender dress on. The sheriff's office sprang into action questioning anyone who may have known about Clara's plans. A witness from Clara's trial named Harry Karst had actually seen her the morning she disappeared, but he denied knowing anything about it and insisted that there was nothing going on between the two of them.

One of Clara's former Chorus Companions named Billy Moody, claimed that she hadn't seen Clara in over a week. Meanwhile, Clara wasted no time. She was secretly whisked away from the prison to a remote desert cabin near the [00:37:00] Salton Sea, and soon she crossed the border into Mexico. Eventually, Clara returned to the US and reunited with Jesse Carson and Mrs.

Carson. Clara adopted a new identity of Mrs. RM Young and she boarded a ship with the Carsons to Vera Cruz, Mexico. From there, they fled to San Salvador and finally ended up in Honduras. Life on the run was far from glamorous as it always is. The trio was constantly exhausted, and they lived with the fear of being caught at all times.

At some point, Clara's sister and Ede joined them in Central America. Honduras tensions came to a breaking point when Clara, Jesse and Eme found themselves in a street fight in Mexico that caught the attention of local authorities, which probably not a great idea to go, um, getting into street fights when you're on the run from the US authorities.

No, probably not. I'm sure they didn't plan it that way. It was probably [00:38:00] not, uh, their fault, but. If they were arrested on the spot and just like that, the search for Clara came to an abrupt end. She was extradited back to the US and returned to California State Prison. When the authorities arrived in Mexico to transport her back, there were a small group of sympathizers in Honduras who wanted her freed, which again, I'm like, do you just wanna be involved in something?

Do you even know what's going on in this case? Right? Like, why are you championing for her to be freed? Like, do you even know who she is? Like that was kind of, I was like, what do you mean? How did you, you were only there for five minutes. How did you get a group of sympathizers together? But meanwhile, Jesse, who was also in custody.

Wasn't getting extradited back to the US because Honduran authorities wanted to keep him behind bars while they investigated a suspected plot to start a revolution. Yeah. They actually believed that his scheme to break Clara out of jail was part of a larger conspiracy. So Clara [00:39:00] tried every trick in the book to avoid going back to California.

She even offered bribes to the local police. She promised to match the reward that was being offered by American officials. I don't know how she planned on getting that money, um, because she left jail with like less than $10 in her pocket. Um, so that failed. I guess she probably couldn't prove to them that she could do it either.

But Clara tried to shift the blame and insisted that someone else had killed Alberta and that Jesse had actually tricked her into leaving Mexico, which is where they first fled to. And she. That if she was in Mexico, she would be safe from extradition. Now she's saying Jesse is the one who convinced me to leave Mexico and come here in the first place, and she pleaded with the authorities and Honduras to let her stay.

In the end, Clara was convinced to return to the us. The police, however, did fail to tell her a little bit of important information, which was that her attorney back in California had actually since died while she was out on the, on the la. Um, and [00:40:00] he did not file her appeal paperwork before she died. So there really was no legal path for her to get a new trial.

Maybe that's where the revolution came in. You know, who has it bad in this story? Who I feel the worst for Jesse's wife. Are you kidding me? We are going on the run with some woman who you helped break outta jail. You just drove outta jail. I know. I know. Absolutely not. No. I was hoping people were really committed to their spouses back then.

No kidding. I, I don't think that would, I hope that wouldn't happen in 2025. So, help me. You wanna run off with her? Go, go ahead. Go. I'll give you a saw. Go ahead and see what you can do. So anyhow, as the extradition process dragged on, Clara nearly slipped away. Again, authorities uncovered a plot hatched by a group of young Honduran men described by the media as.

Real troubadours who plan to break her out at 2:00 AM by smuggling messages to her in oranges, [00:41:00] bribing guards, and helping her disappear. This conspiracy was found out just in the nick of time, and American officers quietly escorted Clara out of Honduras on Friday, May 25th, 1923. I give it two more weeks and it would've been called Claris.

Instead of Honduras because this lady was taken over the whole place. She was easily unreal. She's like two days in there and she's like, we've got a revolution. I'm so sorry. Give me an orange. I'm waiting for a note. So on May 26th, Clara arrived back on US soil stepping off a fruit boat in New Orleans.

She showed no emotion and said she planned to keep fighting for justice through the California Supreme Court. She claimed she ran away, not because she was guilty, but to prove that she was innocent. She still blamed Peggy Caffey for Alberta's murder, which the nerve Clara was kept under tight watch and wasn't allowed to communicate with anyone, including the press that was.

Jessie's impact on this story. [00:42:00] But when she arrived back in la, Claire was informed that her attorney had died before filing that necessary paperwork, and there was no hope for her for a new trial. Despite being labeled as the Tiger Woman and being sentenced to a decade or more behind bars. Claire's story took.

Another remarkable turn when three years after her capture in Honduras, a judge granted her temporary release to go visit her dying Mother, Claire's mother's doctor had sent an urgent telegram pleading for her to see her daughter one last time. Some were outraged that Clara was given the chance to go see her mom, but everything went according to plan and she was returned safely to the prison.

Years passed, and Clara faded from the headlines. But in 1931, she was granted a rare jailhouse interview, and the public fascination with her case was just reignited. Clara said in the interview that she didn't know whether she killed Alberta or not, but if she did, it was for. Wait for it. Mother, love she [00:43:00] said quote, oh boy.

I fought with Alberta on the top of Montecito Drive to protect the only love I have ever known. I did what any mother in the world would do if she saw her baby being taken from her man. Which is also weird when you consider that there's like a seven year age gap between them and he's older, right? The whole thing is just wild.

And she's had a long time to sit in jail and come up with a story. And she's going with mother, mother, son, mother, love. Mm-hmm. Mother. Yeah. Oh my gosh. By 1932, Clara had earned a reputation as being a model prisoner, but her impulsive ways still stood. She was caught sending secret love notes to fellow inmate Thomas J.

Price filled with intense. Romantic language. This shattered her good standing in the prison and she lost several privileges and had her parole eligibility pushed back by six months. Clara's life in prison was far from ordinary. At the time, San Quentin [00:44:00] was still a co-ed prison and she quickly became a celebrity within its walls.

She even brought a saxophone. With her to prison and organized an inmate orchestra. She became a star. She was a star. Oh my gosh. And all was well until Clara crossed paths with another notorious killer named Louise. Pete. Some of our listeners may know who she is. I don't know that story super well, but I have heard of her.

The women had this very intense personal feud that was really emotionally devastating for Clara, and she ultimately attempted suicide but was not successful. She did eventually settle into life behind bars and she was later moved to an all women's facility with 125 other inmates. She became a model inmate there as well.

She adapted, she kept the peace, and she stayed out of trouble. On June 17th, 1935, nearly 13 years after Alberta's murder, Clara was paroled [00:45:00] officials argued that she had no inborn criminal tendencies. She came from a good home. She was a dutiful wife, and she had a clean record before the murder. They insisted that her crime was one of passion and not premeditated.

The decision to release Clara was highly controversial. LA District Attorney Buren Fitz, condemned it and warned that it could harm public faith in the justice system. Women's clubs across the city rallied against the decision and demanded to know why the person who brutally murdered an innocent woman was being freed.

Others felt that Clara had served her time and should be freed. After her release, Clara vanished from public life. She changed her name to Ann C. Weaver and lived very quietly, far from the headlines that once told the tale of her crime on June 21st, 1969. Clara died at the age of 74 and was buried under her assumed name in Greenwood Memorial Park in San [00:46:00] Diego.

That's the end of the story, but I do have one more interesting, fun fact for you, Melissa. Great. After Clara's Escape, a law was passed, making prison escapes a felony. Up to this point, it was just a misdemeanor slap on the wrist. No big deal if you escape from prison. But after Clara did it, they decided to make it a more serious crime.

Let me tell you, when you go starting revolutions in Honduras, they're gonna have to change the laws. That is so wild. So here's the thing I don't quite understand and tell me if I'm just an idiot. Did he, did armor ever actually. Say he was having an affair with this woman. That was my one big question mark on this case.

I don't think it's in the research, there is nothing that indicates whether or not he did or did not have an affair with this woman. There's no quotes by him that say, I'm so sorry I did this. Nothing. Right. Nothing at all. The only thing we have is, um, you know, Alberta's family saying there's absolutely no way she was having an affair.

She bought all these things for herself. It was just [00:47:00] Clara that like this idea in her head. Right. There is no nothing that shows proof whether or not this affair actually occurred, which I also did think was interesting in this case because of course in 2025, if we were investigating a case like this, the authorities would find proof was there an affair in the first place?

Mm-hmm. Like they would absolutely have the evidence of it to show you and show the jury. But it's just interesting in a case like this that happened this long ago, they don't have that. They don't have any way of proving whether or not he was having an affair. That is wild. What a crazy story. And the mother boy of it all just absolutely, um, is too much for me.

Wow. I am, I'm lyed. I don't speechless know. Mm-hmm. Yeah, speechless. Now this was definitely a wild one. Hope you guys enjoyed listening. That was it for this week. We will be back next week. Same time, same place. New story. Have a great week. Bye.