The woman sitting twenty feet away from me, reading a book, was Beth Greer.
And in 1977, she’d been Claire Lake’s most famous murderer.
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In October of 1977, a man named Thomas Armstrong left work at six o’clock at night and got in his car. He left downtown Claire Lake and drove toward his house at the edge of the lake, taking the smaller roads out of town. He never got home. At seven thirty, his car was found, the lights on and the engine still running as Armstrong lay dead on the side of the road.
Armstrong was a family man, with a wife, two children, no criminal ties, and no debts. It appeared that he’d pulled over on his way home, possibly to help someone who needed aid. He was shot twice in the face, one bullet piercing his brain and killing him instantly. Next to him was left a note written in a woman’s hand that said: Am I bitter or am I sweet? Ladies can be either. Publish this or there will be more.
Murders were rare in Claire Lake, so there was no question the case would receive front-page press. But the note put the local police in a quandary. Keep the note quiet and don’t encourage a possible copycat? Or give the killer what she wanted? There didn’t seem to be a right answer. Finally, they handed the note to the press, who immediately dubbed the murderer the Lady Killer.
No one could understand it. Had a woman really shot a strange man point-blank in the face, like the Zodiac Killer or the Son of Sam?
Thomas Armstrong had no enemies. No one could think of anyone who would have wanted to murder him; he seemed to be an everyday husband and father on his way home from work. No one could see a reason why he was targeted. But there he was, dead by the side of the road, the lenses of his glasses smashed and a note in a woman’s hand left by his body.
And then things got worse.
Four days after Armstrong’s murder, family man Paul Veerhoever left work to go home. He, too, pulled over to the side of the road on the outskirts of town, where he was shot twice—one bullet hitting his jaw and one his right temple. This time a witness walking his dog heard the shot and came out of the trees to find a woman get in a car and drive away. She had red hair and she was wearing a trench coat.
Next to Veerhoever’s body was a note in the same hand as the first one: Catch me!
The town panicked. No one in Claire Lake had ever seen crimes so violent, so brutal, so random. who is the lady killer? was the headline from the Claire Lake Daily. The next day, in the Claire Lake Free Press: police warn claire lake residents to “stay safe after dark.” People—men especially—were warned not to pull over and help anyone on the road. The news wires picked it up, and within days the case had gone statewide, with reporters from Portland and Eugene coming to town to cover it.
It was a great story: two innocent, upstanding husbands and fathers, gunned down execution-style in cold blood. A dark predator on the streets of a quiet seaside town, apparently hunting for victims. The victims, in this case, were men, and the cold-blooded killer was quite possibly a woman.
The witness to the second murder identified the woman he saw as Beth Greer.
In 1977, Beth was twenty-three, beautiful, and rich. Her family lived in a mansion in the city’s wealthiest neighborhood, Arlen Heights. Her father had died in 1973, shot during a home invasion that was never solved, and her mother had died in a car accident two years later, leaving Beth alone in the house with an inheritance of millions. Beth had red hair, and she owned a trench coat. She also owned a car like the one the witness had seen. She said she’d been home at the time of both murders, drinking alone.
Beth was photographed coming out of the Claire Lake police station after an interview, looking beautiful and cold and carefree. No one liked her; her neighbors said she was standoffish, and she tended to have unsavory people at her house. Her car was seized and her mansion searched, but no evidence was found. No one could come up with a reason for a rich girl with no problems to start killing random men. But someone had. And Beth Greer sold papers.