The Shocking Crime of "Tiger Woman" Clara Philips
Since it's Halloween, I thought, why not get into something a little deeper and darker in honor of spooky season? I'm not sure if any of you have ever heard of this story before, but in case you haven't, that makes it all the more worthwhile cause I love to bring up stories/subjects that have not reached the ears of many. A little forewarning though, it's about to get deep.
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| The former showgirl in her now-remodeled bathing beauty attire. |
Naturally, we all adore the Mack Sennett Bathing Beauties. There was something about them that was so colorful, enticing, and picturesque. Some of these women became famous actresses, some of them didn't end up too well, and others gained a lot of publicity. Well, this one did to a certain extent. She did not become a big movie star by any means, but she gained a lot of publicity when she did something shocking -- especially for a woman at the time.
Her name was Clara Phillips. Clara Anne Weaver at birth, that is. She was born on June 23, 1898, in Waco, Texas, to John Weaver and Anna Jackson as the second youngest of their five children. Clara's early life has not been well documented like her high-profile case, but what we do know is that her family moved around a lot and she was a very temperamental young lady. Her temperament could have stemmed from her abrupt childhood. After all, a majority of chorus girls in the 1920s had unstable upbringings -- coming from abusive families or immense poverty. Clara herself was reported to have been manipulative and an attention-getter. When she was a child, she fabricated a story that she had been kidnapped because she became so attention-hungry at one point. Other accounts report that she often got into fistfights with other showgirls and even attacked a stagehand with a knife. When Clara was in her teens, her family settled down in Houston, Texas. It was then that she met her casanova, a young man named Armour Phillips. His name sounds like it came straight out of a Fitzgerald book to me...I don't know why.
Philips came from a wealthy, well-connected background. Now whether it was his charisma or good looks that lured Clara in, is uncertain, but he sure was able to win her affection and she fell hard for him. The two were married in November 1913 when Clara was 15 and he was 20. Shortly after their wedding, the pair moved to Los Angeles to pursue their dreams. Armour landed a job in oil so you can imagine they profited pretty well. Clara too, desired a career, particularly an acting one, so she sought a job in the chorus at Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Her work on the stage ultimately led to a modeling job as one of Mack Sennett’s Bathing Beauties.
In the beginning, the marriage was all happy and gay, but over time things started heating up. Nevertheless, Clara remained fiercely independent of him. Since their jobs often prohibited them from seeing each other, Clara gave up her career to focus on being Mrs. Philips. Only he eventually started to spend time elsewhere…
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| Clara’s rival, 19-year-old Alberta Meadows. Image courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library. |
When Clara overheard some backfence gossip about Armour possibly having an affair with a young bank teller named Alberta Meadows, she flew into a rage and became increasingly paranoid. Clara started following her husband around everywhere to confirm if the rumor was true, and when she saw him hanging out at the bank with Alberta, she impulsively hatched a brutal plan.
On July 10, 1922, 28-year-old Clara Philips and her showgirl friend, Peggy Caffee, stopped at a hardware store and picked out a 15-cent clawhammer. When Clara went up to the woman at the register and asked if it could kill a person, the woman assumed she was joking and responded that it could if you hit someone hard enough with it. Without any hesitation, Clara purchased it.
The following night, Clara showed up at the bank with her friend Peggy. As Alberta was on her way to her car, the two women approached her pretending to be drunk, and managed to talk her into giving them a lift home. At some point during the drive, Clara asked Alberta to pull over at a cliff. Once they both stepped out of the car, Clara confronted Alberta about her suspicions -- which Alberta denied. But Clara believed she was lying and reacted fiercely by battering her down uncontrollably with the hammer until it apparently broke. Clara had reportedly swung that hammer at Alberta at least 50 times, and once her body was completely lifeless, Clara rolled a heavy boulder over her dead body. Peggy, who sat in the car horrified, said not a word to keep herself from ending up like Alberta.
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| Newspaper article detailing the infamous murder. From the Pensacola Journal archives. |
Clara felt no remorse or shame after murdering Alberta. She enthusiastically confessed everything to her husband, and promised that she would "cook him the best dinner he's ever eaten." Armour was left entirely speechless until he decided to send her on a train back to Texas. He later contacted the cops. It wasn't too long when they finally caught her and arrested her. When Clara arrived back in LA to face trial, she found herself in the midst of the media spotlight. The publicity she had craved her whole life made her feel all the more satisfied. When she faced trial, Clara dumped the blame on Peggy, claiming that it was she who killed Alberta, but without a doubt, no one believed her. Either way, Peggy testified the truth and it caused Clara to completely lose her cool sometime during a trial and scream at her.
Apparently, Armour wasn't too mad about Clara killing Alberta. While Clara stayed mostly silent throughout each trial, innocently smiling, she had her husband's defense. He told reporters, "I would give my life to undo the wrong I have done this little woman." But clearly, there was no wrong done against Alberta.
On November 16, 1922, she was convicted of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years to life. The press dubbed her "Tiger Woman" because the body of Alberta Meadows was so savagely beaten that it looked as if a tiger had attacked her. However, Clara was fortunate enough to be saved from the death penalty due to her good looks, which many reporters admired. One reporter even went far enough to believe everything she said because he was so infatuated with her.
Now here is when the story took a sharp turn...On December 5, 1922, her prison cell was found empty with the window bars sawed clean and the window open. Rumour had it she was on the loose to get revenge on Peggy...Luckily, she had already left town. The police's first suspect was Armour, but he denied any form of contact with her. The truth was discovered eventually. It turned out that the couple fled to Mexico, only to be arrested in Honduras on April 23, 1923. While in Jail, Clara tried to convince a group of teenage boys to help her break free, but the plan did not follow through. After being transferred to San Quentin State Prison in California, a deeply distressed Clara attempted suicide. During her time there she looked for many excuses to get out. None of her tactics worked other than her objective to see her dying mother -- which they allowed to set her free temporarily.
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| Armour and Clara embrace during a trial conference. |
“I don't know whether I killed Alberta Meadows or not, but if I did, I did it for love. I fought with Alberta on the top of Montecito Drive to protect the only love I have ever known. I did what any other mother in the world would do if she saw her baby being taken from her. Armour L. Phillips is my baby. He has been my only baby. He is my very life, and when I realized he was being taken from me, I fought, fought, fought — so that I might always have him.” -- Clara in a 1931 interview with Los Angeles Times.
Well, so much for fighting for him. The two stopped communicating after a while and the marriage ended in divorce in 1934, just one year before her release. While in prison, Clara had set her hopes up for another man who was also in prison, but she ended up being punished once authorities found out she was exchanging love letters with Thomas Price, a burglar. There were also claims that she became a born-again Christian during her time in prison, but considering the fact that she unapologetically regretted killing Alberta -- probably not.
After her release on June 17, 1935, Clara changed her name and pursued work as a dental assistant. She was never heard from or seen again, apart from being spotted in Texas in 1961. She died in 1969.
It has not been confirmed whether Armour was having an affair with 19-year-old Alberta Meadows or not, but either way, she was an eager young soul with a zest for life, cut off from her world too soon. This quote from her diary concludes -- "I wonder where I will be one year from today, March 7, 1923. Jesse [her widow] told me that we would surely spend our next Christmas together, and maybe we will."