Phyllis McClinton, a 25-year-old Black woman, was found deceased in a vacant lot in South Los Angeles on November 4, 1980. Authorities did not provide an exact address or additional details regarding the circumstances of her death, but her case was believed to be connected to an unidentified serial killer active in the South Los Angeles area at the time.
Investigators later linked McClinton’s murder to that of another victim, Sonia Smith, who was also 25 years old and had been killed on August 19, 1980. Both women were discovered in abandoned fields with their wrists and ankles bound, suggesting a pattern in the killings. A person of interest emerged in McClinton’s case when another woman, assaulted in a similar manner in November 1980, survived and identified her attacker as Larry D. Hubbard. Hubbard, who had escaped from a Florida prison in 1977 after a robbery conviction, was living in Los Angeles at the time.
Hubbard was eventually arrested and charged with false imprisonment in connection with the assault on the surviving victim. He was sentenced to six months in prison and four years of probation. Years later, investigators connected Hubbard to multiple unsolved murders in Southern California, including those of McClinton and Smith, through DNA evidence. Hubbard was extradited to Florida in 2007, where he attempted to hang himself and later died from complications on January 13, 2008. Authorities believe he may have been responsible for additional murders.
