From Ma Barker to Griselda Blanco: Six Women Who Ruthlessly Ruled the World of Crime

These Ladies Had a Field Day

Public imagination usually connects mobsters with men. But, the reality is far from this assumption. "There is a myth that the Mafia does not involve women or children, but it's not like this," says Franco Nicastro, a journalist in Sicily who has written about Mafia culture for decades, BBC reported. Over the decades there have been many women gangsters who have sent shivers down their victims' spines. Their gender did not stop them from being as bloodthirsty as their counterparts. Here are six female criminals who terrorized authorities with their vicious and violent acts.

1. Ma Barker 

Kate 'Ma' Barker began her criminal life in its full glory after being abandoned by her husband of 35 years, the United States Postal Inspection Service reported. The jilted wife transformed herself into the mastermind of the infamous Barker-Karpis gang of Chicago in no time. Ma Barker married George Barker in 1892 and gave birth to four boys, Herman (1893), Lloyd (1897), Arthur (1899), and Fred (1901). Barker Boys started their criminal activities in 1910. In 1927, Herman Barker perished during a bank robbery. This caused George Barker to leave the family to avoid any connections with their criminal lifestyle. Ma Barker lived in poverty when her sons were in prison. She got involved with the Barker-Carpis gang when her son Fred Barker was released in 1931. The gang was created in collaboration with Alvin Karpis. The gang spread terror throughout St. Paul, Minnesota, and Chicago, Illinois. The gang robbed banks and trains and engineered two major kidnappings of rich business executives in the 1930s, the FBI reported. Ma Barker was portrayed in media as a ruthless killer who would plot and protect the gang at all costs, the United States Postal Inspection Service reported. On January 16, 1935, she was killed along with her son Fred Barker in a shootout with the FBI at Ocklawaha.

2. Bonnie Elizabeth Parker

Bonnie Parker was the outlaw partner of Clyde Barrow, and together, the duo petrified the authorities in the 1930s, TSHA reported. In her childhood, she loved writing poetry and reading romance novels. The future legendary criminal met her partner in crime in January 1930. They quickly entered into a relationship, but their bliss was interrupted when Barrow was taken into custody one month into courting. Parker continuously wrote to Barrow in jail, requesting him to stay out of trouble. In February 1932, Barrow was released and Parker joined him in his criminal activities. They began robbing grocery stores, filling stations, and small banks. The duo started killing people and murdered two officers in Atoka, Oklahoma. Law enforcement agencies from multiple states joined hands and launched a manhunt. Bonnie and Clyde traveled constantly, throughout Kansas, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Iowa, Illinois, and Arkansas. The duo unabashedly committed several murders, with many of the victims being law enforcement officials. They were gunned down by authorities on May 23, 1934, at 9:15 A.M at their hideout in Black Lake, Louisiana. Parker was found riddled with bullets and a sandwich in her hand.

3. Virginia Hill

Virginia Hill had gained the moniker "Queen of the Mob,” for her activities as a courtesan and entrusted cash courier for household-name American gangsters from the mid-1930s through the 1940s, The Mob Museum reported. In the 1940s she was equal in influence to notorious criminals  Meyer Lansky, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Johnny Rosselli, Charles and Joe Fischetti, Tony Accardo, Frank Nitti, Israel "Ice Pick Willie" Alderman, Jack Dragna, and most famously, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.  She started her criminal career as the apprentice of Mob bookmaker Joe Epstein and slowly rose through the ranks using her looks, sexual liaisons as well as talents for laundering money and stolen merchandise. Hill's several affairs helped in establishing her foothold in the mafia world. Hill's affair with Siegel got her the support of New York boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Hill's influence began to wane in the 1960s, as her accomplices broke off their connections with her. On March 24, 1966, a passersby found her body on a footpath beside a picturesque brook near Salzburg, Austria. A possible suicide note read that she was "tired of life." Austrian officials declared that the 49-year-old had died from an overdose of sedatives. 

4. Tilly Devine

Tilly Devine with her looks and wit made the jump from a prostitute to a madame, the Australian War Memorial reported. Devine came to Australia as Jim Devine's wife in January 1920 aboard the "bride" ship, Waimana. Soon after landing, Tilly Devine began working as a prostitute, and Jim Devine became her protector and chauffeur. Before the age of 25, she had more than 80 convictions for prostitution. In 1925, she spent two years in prison for slashing a man's face with a razor. Through, all the brushes with the law, the couple's business kept booming. They created a flourishing brothel, which gained more popularity and business with the arrival of soldiers during World War II. Tilly Devine acquired multiple properties and hired bodyguards to take care of her expanding business. By the late 1920s, Tilly and Jim Devine had firmly established themselves in the criminal underworld, with dealings in drugs, "sly grog" and attacks on rival gangs. In August 1943, Tilly Devine divorced Jim Devine on the grounds of cruelty. She became known in Sydney for her opulent dress style and lavish parties. Her brothel remained in business till 1968. She died in a Sydney hospital on November 24, 1970.

5. Stephanie St. Clair 

In the 1930s, Stephanie St. Clair became Harlem’s ‘Numbers Queen,’ by making millions from the booming underground gambling operating in the city, Smithsonian Magazine reported. Her determination and smarts helped her to take on notorious gangster, Dutch Schultz, and come out alive. St. Clair's criminal career started by becoming a leader of a local gang, that ran extortion and theft rackets, The Mob Museum reported. She slowly rose through the ranks and became a gangster, civil rights advocate, fashionista, and businesswoman. St. Clair used newspapers to declare her intentions, that is what she did when she came at odds against Schultz, Smithsonian Magazine reported. "[I’m not] afraid of Dutch Schultz or any other living man," she said to the media. "He’ll never touch me! I will kill Schultz if he sets foot in Harlem. He is a rat. The policy game is my game." She joined hands with other Black policy owners and destroyed Schultz's attempts at entering Harlem's numbers game. She placed ads encouraging Harlemites to "play black" and only place numbers bets with Black organizers. Schultz did not back down and killed St. Clair's men and also commissioned attacks on her. The war came to a close in October 1935, when Schultz was unceremoniously gunned down while sitting on the toilet at the Palace Chophouse in Newark, New Jersey. St. Clair sent a deathbed telegram that read, "As ye sow, so shall you reap." St. Clair was sentenced to jail for attempting to kill her husband. Her influence waned when she was released. She chose to spend her last days at a Long Island psychiatric facility, where she died somewhere around 1969.

6. Griselda Blanco

Griselda Blanco became "The Cocaine Godmother" of the 1970s and 1980s, with her brutal killings and flourishing drug business, the Independent reported. For the Drug Enforcement Administration, she was a bigger fish to catch than many of her male counterparts like the Medellin Cartel’s founder, Carlos Lehder, because of how she operated. Blanco was known for her violence and tendency to murder people on a whim. DEA stated in their internal magazine titled Drug Enforcement, "She not only killed rivals and wayward lovers but used murder as a means of canceling debts she didn’t want to pay. A particularly bloody massacre that took place in July 1979 in a Miami shopping center became known as the Dadeland Massacre." She was arrested in 1985. Blanco was convicted of three second-degree murder charges in 1998 and was out by 2004. In 2012, she was assassinated in a marketplace at Medellin. Her assailants were never caught.