Blonde Rattlesnake cover art

Blonde Rattlesnake

Burmah Adams, Tom White, and the 1933 Crime Spree That Terrorized Los Angeles

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Blonde Rattlesnake

By: Julia Bricklin
Narrated by: Callie Beaulieu
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About this listen

Nineteen-year-old Burmah Adams, a hairdresser and former Santa Ana High School student, spent her honeymoon on a crime spree. She and her husband of less than one week, White, an ex-con, robbed at least 20 people in and around downtown L.A. at gunpoint over an eight-week period. But the worst of their crimes was the shooting of a popular elementary school teacher, Cora Withington, and a former publisher, Crombie Allen, who was teaching her how to drive his new car.

A few days later, a watchful pair of patrolmen in a Westlake neighborhood called their detective colleagues at the Los Angeles Police Department; they had spotted a car that looked like one the duo had stolen days before. Two of these detectives dressed as mechanics and kept an eye on the apartment building until Burmah and Thomas appeared one afternoon. As police swarmed the building, Burmah tried to hurl herself out of a third-story window, while Thomas shot at officers and was immediately gunned down and killed.

Blond Rattlesnake reveals the events that brought Adams and White together and details the crime spree they committed in the sweltering hot days and nights of Los Angeles in the height of the Great Depression.

©2019 Julia Bricklin (P)2019 Tantor Americas State & Local True Crime United States High School

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All stars
Most relevant
Blonde rattlesnake. How the heck did she get so little time in jail. Weird the same is happening right now almost a century later.

Blonde

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Didn't know about this case
Fascinating to see how society and the media treated and wrote about females who broke the law. It still holds true today, if you get a female who has commited a crime and is attractive , she will become almost a darling of the media
Really enjoyed this

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