Welcome to the Top 10 Most Notorious Female Gangsters to have ever existed, we show you how these crazy gun molls, took no prisoners and caused total and utter chaos!
10 – Virginia Hill
Notorious mainly for being the girlfriend of Brooklyn’s infamous mobster Bugsy Siegel, Hill was known by several nicknames including Queen of the Gangster Molls and Flamingo.
Originally telling people she grew up in poverty, she claimed that she did not even own a pair of shoes until she was seventeen years old.
After moving to Chicago from Georgia, she initially worked as an accountant for Al Capone before later moving to Los Angeles where she met Siegel.
After becoming both his lover and courier, Siegel met his end after being assasinated in her home in 1947.
She was out of the house at the time of the hit, but always denied ever knowing that he was in the crime business.
She ended her days in suspicious circumstances, the victim of what some speculate to be an apparent hit, after being found in a snowdrift, the victim of an apparent overdose of sleeping pills.
9 – Ma Barker
Remembered as one of the godmothers of crime, Ma Barker, also known as Kate Barker and Arizona Donnie Barker was merciless.
Head of the infamous Barker Crime Family, she married George Barker and the couple had four sons together.
Highway robberies began as early as 1910 and many of these led to murder that led to one of her sons taking his own life to avoid capture.
After he other sons ended up in jail, Ma went cold turkey from crime and later reunited with Fred Barker upon his release from jail in 1931.
This led to an almost instantaneous crime spree that ended both her life and his, when the FBI stormed her hideout in Lake Weir, Florida.
She was named by J. Edgar Hoover as the most vicious, dangerous and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade.
8 – Bonnie Parker
Another one of the most famous female gangsters, Bonnie Parker became one part of the famous duo, Bonnie and Clyde.
Both notorious bank robbers, she became public enemy number one between 1931 and 1934, practically becoming both an outlaw and celebrity at the same time.
Born in Texas, she was a smart and outspoken member of the Rowena community she lived in and met Clyde in 1930 while still married.
While the robberies and killings made the couple both famous, a photoshoot close to their Joplin, Missouri, hideout became infamous as part of their story.
Parker died alongside Clyde when she was just 23 years old in 1934 during a shootout with police but she has been portrayed in a number of movies and TV series.
7 – Stephanie St. Clair
Known as Madame St. Clair in Harlem, St. Clair was called “Queenie” in much of Manhattan and was a force to be reckoned with, taking down corrupt cops and preventing mobsters from making money on her turf.
Along with a number of enforcers that included Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, she had alliances with a number of gangsters including Lucky Luciano.
One of her most famous moments came when she sent a letter to the deathbed of a wounded Dutch Schultz gloating over his injury’s.
St Clair retired later in life and handed her empire over to Ellsworth who later became known as the Harlem Godfather.
She has been immortalized in the 1984 movie, The Cotton Club and was portrayed by Cicely Tyson in Hoodlum, a 1997 film.
6 – Opal Long
A famous member of John Dillinger’s Terror Gang, she was presumed to have been born in Texas and went by the nickname, Mack Truck, thought to have been coined from her size.
Often going by the name Bernice Clark, Long would clean the hideout and cook for the gang on a regular basis.
After the arrest of Russell Clark, her husband, her life went downhill severly and she would end up not only begging the gang for money but also attacking police, a move that led to her arrest and imprisonment.
She never told anyone about the other members of the gang and was paroled in November 1934, spending the rest of her days in Chicago.
5 – Griselda Blanco
Officially the first-ever criminal to become a billionaire, Griselda Blanco went by a number of nicknames including La Madrina, the Black Widow and the Cocaine Godmother.
One of the many feared drug lords of the Medellín Cartel, this Queen of Narco-Trafficking not only killed killed her first three husbands, but also earned roughly $80 million per month.
Smuggling unbelievable amounts of cocaine from Colombia to the US in the 1970’s and 80’s, she developed a way to move the drug using specially designed women’s underwear.
She is thought to have ordered the deaths of over 2,000 people, including children and never actually carried out the hits herself.
Thought to be akin to the legendary Pablo Escobar, Blanco was shot dead outside a butchershop aged 69 years old during a motorbike assasination in Medellín, Colombia
4 – Sister Ping
Thought to be responsible for trafficking over 3,000 illegal immigrants from China to the United States, Sister Ping was the leader of the feared Chinatown Underground Crime Group of the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Nicknamed The Snakehead, Cheng Chiu Ping was her real name and she made a considerable amount of money, literally charging $40,000 per person moved from country to country.
Thousands died on the dangerous journey between Hong Kong, Guatemala and New York and the travel time sometimes took over 100 days.
Ping died in prison aged 65 after being convicted of immigrant smuggling, money laundering and trafficking but never quite lost her fearsome business reputation.
She was, and still is described by immigrants as both good and honest, something the U.S immigration authorities would strongly disagree on.
3 – Maria Licciardi
Becoming head of the Licciardi Clan after the death of her husband, Maria Licciardi became one of the founders of the strategic Secondigliano Alliance.
One of the most powerful bosses of the Camorra in Naples, she went by several names including Little Girl, Princess and Godmother.
Her choice of crime included cigarette smuggling, protection rackets and drugs, while she also instigated the sex trade into the gangs profile.
After a crime spree that lasted eight years, she was arrested in 2001 after a shipment of Heroin came into Naples too pure resulting in the deaths of many people.
She was added to the list of the 30 most wanted Italians with investigators knowing very little about either her or the operation she was running.
After her arrest, a bitter turf war ensued with over 120 people killed in the gang wars that followed.
After being imprisoned she became known as “The Scarlet Pimpernel of Italy” and continued to run parts of the operation from her cell.
She was released in 2009, but became a fugitive again in 2019 after being accused of running protection rackets and trying to flee to Spain.
2 – Pearl Elliott
One of the most notorious madams of the 20th century, Elliot owned a brothel in Kokomo, Indiana that also served as a hideout for gangs committing bank robberies.
It did not take long for her to earn a place on the Public Enemies list, something that turned her police protection into quite the opposite, with a shoot to kill policy in effect.
She had close ties to both John Dillinger and Harry Pierpont, notorious gangsters in their own right and was treasurer for Dillinger at one point.
Desite running one of the biggest illegal operations in Indiana, she escaped punishment and died on August 10, 1935, likely from Cancer.
1 – Sandra Ávila Beltrán
One of the most powerful drug kingpins in Mexico, Sandra Ávila Beltrán earned her nickname as “La Reina del Pacifico” translated to The Queen of the Pacific by the media.
The niece of a famous drug trafficker Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, known as The Boss of Bosses, she rose to power through intimate connections.
Along the way, she seduced many drug kingpins and upper-echelon police officers, becoming a powerful force in the cocaine world through a combination of ruthless business sense.
She was finally caught in 2007 and arrested for drug trafficking, later being extradited to The United States.
After being deported back to Mexico, she was sentenced to five years before being released in 2015 and now lives in the city of Guadalajara.
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