R. Barri Flowers

From award-winning criminologist R. Barri Flowers and bestselling author of Murder During the Chicago World’s Fair, Murder of the Doctor’s Wife, Murder at the Pencil Factory, and The Pickaxe Killers, comes the gripping historical true crime short, Murderess on the Loose: The 1922 Hammer Wrath of Clara Phillips. On the evening of Wednesday, July 12, 1922, Los Angeles, California, was the scene of a shocking and deadly assault. The victim was an attractive twenty-one-year-old widow named Alberta Meadows. Her death came as the result of a vicious hammer and boulder attack on a twisting dirt road at the bottom of a hill in the subdivision of Montecito Heights on the city’s northeast side. The violent act was perpetrated by a romantic rival named Clara Phillips, who lured the unsuspecting victim to the unlikely crime scene. The twenty-three-year-old murderesses’ actions were spurred by jealous rage as Mrs. Meadows was the mistress of Clara’s husband, Armour Phillips, an oil stock salesman who was three years her senior. The heinous crime was witnessed by Peggy Caffee, a friend, who was too frightened to lift a finger to stop the attack. Afterward, Clara and Peggy fled the murder scene in the victim’s brand-new Ford automobile. Surprisingly, the killer’s husband Armour came to her aide in ditching the vehicle and fleeing Los Angeles by train, before self-preservation kicked in and he reconsidered his own actions after the fact, alerting authorities as to her whereabouts, leading to an arrest. Clara Phillips was given the moniker, “Tiger Woman,” by the overzealous L.A. press of the day after a police detective on the case suggested that Alberta Meadows looked like “she had been mauled by a tiger.” But Clara didn’t go away quietly, proving to be not only a cold-hearted killer, but a fabricator and masterful escape artist before justice for the victim finally had a chance to be served in what proved to be one the 20th century’s most disturbing acts of homicidal violence. Included are bonus excerpts of R. Barri Flowers’ bestselling historical true crime book, The Dreadful Acts of Jack the Ripper and Other True Tales of Serial Murder and Prostitutes, and historical true crime shorts, The Pickaxe Killers, Murder at the Pencil Factory, Murder of the Doctor’s Wife, and Murder During the Chicago World’s Fair.

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