Though their male counterparts tend to reap more cinematic portrayals, the stories of these infamous female criminals and killers are just as monstrous.
Infamous Female Criminals: Bonnie Parker
One half of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde duo, Bonnie Parker was a member of the Barrow Gang that shot its way through numerous thefts before its demise in 1934. According to some historians, there is actually no proof that Bonnie ever shot a person during the Bonnie and Clyde crime spree, but rather it was her good looks that drove the unsavory duo into national notoriety.
Nevertheless, Bonnie met her end when a posse of Texas and Louisiana police officers ambushed their automobile and shot them. When her former husband learned of her death while in prison he said, “I’m glad [she] went out like [she] did. It’s much better than being caught.”
Source: Wikimedia
Patty Hearst
Source: Wikimedia
At the time of her kidnapping, Patty Hearst was a wealthy heiress and actress who was targeted by the radical left movement known as the Symbionese Liberation Army. After she was kidnapped, Hearst was later shown to have renounced her parents and to have joined the SLA in order to support their cause and rob banks with them.
Despite the defense’s courtroom claims that she was brainwashed, Hearst was later imprisoned for her role in the SLA robberies. Eventually, though, Hearst was released; President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence and President Clinton wiped her record wiped clean via a Presidential pardon.
Source: Wikimedia
Source: FBI
Infamous Female Criminals: Stacey Castor
Source: Murderpedia
Stacey Castor is the woman the media dubbed “The Black Widow” for the murder of her two husbands and the attempted murder of her daughter between 1999 and 2007. Investigators believe that she murdered her first and second husbands through anti-freeze poisoning and had even force-fed her second husband the liquid using a turkey baster.
When she realized that the police may have discovered that she had killed her husbands, she attempted to poison her daughter with painkillers in an alcoholic drink and frame her for murder by placing a suicide note next to her comatose body. Unfortunately for Stacey, her daughter survived and Castor was sent to prison.
Source: Dig Planet
Aileen Wuornos
Aileen Wuornos was a serial killer who was executed in 2002 for the murder of five men over the course of a year. Before she began to kill, Wuornos had worked as a prostitute for years until she met a hotel cleaning lady named Tyria Moore with whom she began a relationship.
The two started robbing and murdering her clients after they decided that the money she made from prostitution alone was not enough to get by on. During her trial, she claimed that all the men she killed had been either rapists or had attempted to rape her. Just before she was to be executed, she requested that her final meal be a simple, black cup of coffee.
Source: WordPress
Andrea Yates
Infamous for the murder of her five children, Andrea Yates currently resides in a minimum security psychiatric hospital after being found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006. After years of depression and multiple suicide attempts, she was eventually left alone with just enough time to draw a bath and drown each of her children one by one.
After drowning them, she placed her youngest sons in their beds while leaving her oldest one in the tub with her only daughter in his arms. Before being arrested for the murders, she called her husband at work and simply repeated the phrase “It’s time” over and over again.
Griselda Blanco
Known as The Cocaine Godmother, Griselda Blanco was one of the most brutal and notorious drug lords in the history of the cocaine trade. After a violent upbringing that was strung together by a series of criminal acts, Griselda eventually found her way into the cocaine business where she played a key role in what would become known as the Cocaine Cowboy Wars of the 1970s and 1980s in Miami.
Blanco was well known for ordering brutal assassinations when warring with other drug lords and for running her business even while serving prison terms throughout her life. After being deported to Colombia, she spent the remainder of her days plying her trade until she was shot twice in the head by a gunman riding a motorcycle on September 3, 2012.
Enjoy our article on the most infamous female criminals? Next, read up on the “blood countess,” Elizabeth Bathory. Then, check out our other articles on amazing facts. Finally, read up on the murders committed by Lizzie Borden.
