7 Notorious Women Criminals

Female pirates? Murderers? Gangsters? Conspirators? Yes. Throughout history women have had their share in all of it. Here is a list of seven notorious female criminals of the 17th through early 20th century who wreaked havoc on land and sea.

• Belle Starr

  
  

  

  Starr, BelleBelle Starr jumping bail; illustration in The National Police Gazette, May 22, 1886.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; neg. no. LC USZ 62 63912

  
  

  A Texas outlaw in the 19th century, Belle starr (born Myra Belle Shirley) lived a bandit’s life, associating with unsavory folk such as Jesse James. She and her husband, a Cherokee Indian named Sam Starr, were known for housing outlaws on their ranch in the Oklahoma Indian Territory and for preying on travelers and cowboys passing through. She and her husband were convicted of horse stealing in 1883 and served time in a federal penitentiary. She was charged with a handful of other crimes before being shot and killed on her ranch in 1889. The killer was never identified.

• Moll Cutpurse

  Moll Cutpurse, born Mary Frith, was notorious in 17th-century London. She began her life of crime as a common pickpocket. Then she expanded her territory and became a highway robber dressed in men’s clothing. Finally, after a stint in jail, she opened a shop in London that she used as a cover for selling stolen items.

• Anne Bonny

  
  

  

  Bonny, AnneThe Print Collector/Heritage-Images

  
  

  Anne Bonny was an Irish pirate who trolled the Caribbean Sea with pirate John (“Calico Jack”) Rackham in the 18th century. Rackham was wise to go against common thinking that women were bad luck on board a ship. Bonny and the crew had a successful run hijacking and pillaging merchant vessels. When they were captured in 1720, Bonny escaped execution because she was pregnant. When she was released, she went to live in South Carolina, where she proceeded to lead the rest of her life in an uneventful domestic fashion.

• Charlotte Corday

  
  

  

  Corday, CharlotteCharlotte Corday, engraving by É.-L. Baudran after a portrait by J.-J. Hauer.Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

  
  

  Charlotte Corday became an assassin at age 25. The daughter of French nobles, Corday’s allegiance during the French Revolution lay with Girondins—French republican politicians—and the French constitution. She took the conflict into her own hands and set her sights on Jean-Paul Marat, a leader of the French Revolution and enemy of all she stood for. Corday lied her way in to meet with Marat face-to-face and stabbed him to death in his bathtub on July 13, 1793. She was arrested and sent to the guillotine four days later.

• Mary Surratt

  
  

  

  Surratt, MaryMary Surratt.National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  
  

  Mary Surratt ran a tavern with her husband in Maryland, where they welcomed Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War. When her husband died, Surratt moved to Washington, D.C., and opened a boardinghouse. The boardinghouse became a meeting place for John Wilkes Booth and his fellow conspirators. Surratt herself became entangled in the plot to kill U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln. She is thought to have been in regular conversation with Booth about his plans and assisted in concealing the weapons used for the murder at her tavern in Maryland. She was tried and found guilty of conspiracy and became the first woman to be sentenced to death by the United States. She was hanged with the other conspirators on July 7, 1865.

• Ma Barker

  Kate (“Ma”) Barker led the Barker gang of her sons and rose to infamy as the FBI’s Public Enemy Number One. She and her gang orchestrated a slew of robberies, murders, and kidnappings throughout the American Midwest during the early 1930s. On January 16, 1935, she and her son Fred met their deaths in what was the longest shootout in FBI history, in the home that they had made their hideout in Florida. Ma was the subject of the 1970 movie Bloody Mama starring Shelley Winters.

• Bonnie Parker

  
  

  

  Parker, Bonnie; Barrow, ClydeBonnie Parker teasingly pointing a shotgun at Clyde Barrow, c. 1933.New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital ID cph 3c28669)

  
  

  Half of the legendary duo Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie Parker met Clyde Barrow in 1930, and, when he was sent to jail soon after on burglary charges, she smuggled in a gun that he was able to use to escape. She partnered with Barrow in 1932 during the Great Depression in what became a 21-month–long crime spree. The two stole cars and robbed gas stations, small-town banks, and restaurants throughout Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Missouri. They evaded the FBI and the police until 1934 and in the process set free five prisoners from Eastham State Prison in Texas, killed three police officers, and kidnapped a police chief. They were eventually caught and killed by the police in Louisiana when a friend revealed their whereabouts.

The Story Of Shina Rambo – The Most Notorious Armed Robber In Nigerian History

Shina Rambo is a former bandit who terrorised South-West Nigeria in the 1990s. After serving jail-time for his crimes, he was converted by an evangelist and became a Christian evangelical pastor. Shina Rambo now Mathew Oluwanifemi was a name that sent shivers down the spine of people who lived in the South West of Nigeria and even outside Nigeria, like Benin Republic and neighborhood, in the 1990s.

He was a hardened criminal, a terror and killer, one whom men of the security agencies will never forget in a haste.

A man mountain, towering about 6 ft 5inch, well built, dark skinned and sweltering eyes, he carried out his operations, like a movie, in the broad day light, with sophisticated weapons, and bullet belts and explosives strapped roundabout him. He specialized in robbing exotic cars on highways and robbing banks. Nothing could stop him, not even security operatives, he was totally invincible. He was Shina Rambo!

He was born in the year 1958 to a military man who was a bad egg in the service. His father was from Abeokuta in Ogun state, but his mother was a native of Sabongida–Ora in Edo state. His father had over 18 wives, as was the norm for soldiers to impregnate virtually every woman they met where they were posted to. His father used his military influence to rob innocent citizens, and always brought huge amount of money home. This used to entice little Shina. He recalls, “I remembered when I was about 7 years old, my father came home with a lot of money, foreign currencies, with blood on it, and they were using something like a woman’s scarf to wipe it, then I asked him, is this an animal’s blood, or human blood? But he wouldn’t answer me, they were just drinking, smoking, and merry making.

”Shina was already indoctrinated into the underworld by his father at a tender age of 7 without him knowing it, as he would sit in front of his son, to dismantle and assemble all sorts of weapons and then polishing them in preparation for an operation. This went on for so long till one day, little Shina, entered into his father’s room while he had stepped into the toilet, and saw a dismembered gun on the floor. He sat down in front of it, and bit by bit, he had assembled it effortlessly in no time at all. His father came out of the toilet, and saw his son, with a loaded gun in his hands. Shina flashed back and said, “That day my father was so disappointed, that he wanted to kill me, he grabbed the gun from my hand and shot straight at me, but I miraculously escaped out of the room. Then he waited for me to be less alert at night he came to my room with a machete and tried to behead me, but once again, I escaped, but the machete caught my left leg (he rolled up his trouser to show us the large scar, that made everyone sighed in pity). It cut me so deep I thought I was never going to walk again.

That day I knew I had graduated, all that was left was to pull the trigger, and I was so eager. Shina Rambo became so notorious in no time, and was hell
bent on succeeding in his career as an armed robber, that he went through any length to secure spiritual powers for fortification.

To the extent of pounding over 27 live new born babies in the mortar with a pestle, cutting off about 100 human tongues and cooking them to eat, visiting the spiritual river called river of life in Ogoja, Cross Rivers State, living in an Iroko tree for days, and sleeping in the cemetery.

He was given a spiritual wife who always followed him for any operation, she dressed like an Alhaja, people thought she was human, but she was a spirit, that was why they never saw her face. He said she was his personal driver, that she could drive from Nigeria to Cotonou, in the speed of light.

Hear him. ”I was involved in so many rituals, that I can’t start naming them now, I was so powerful, I went underground, inside trees that looked like a city, a lot of beautiful houses inside the tree, I had my own too. I went into a river called River of life in Ogoja, where a lot of politicians and wealthy men used to come. I had several personalities, I could change my form whenever I wanted to, that’s why the police were busy killing innocent people, and thought they were killing Shina Rambo.

The 9 herbalists that gave me that power, I became stronger than them, one day I went to their shrines, and killed all of them, so that they don’t reveal my secrets. I had too many powers; my spiritual wife could drive any car in this world or out of it, no police vehicle, or anyone for that matter, could ever chase and catch me during an operation. She was out of this world, and when she had completed her operation, they took her away from me. I could give anything to get powers, and the elders knew, so they also gave me anything I wanted. I once beheaded hundred men, and gave them the heads fresh, they were so happy with me that they made me invincible.

No matter the kind of bullet you shot at me, it was just like pure water on my body. I could give anything to get power, but of all the things I did to get power,
the one that still breaks my heart the most, is sleeping with my mother. My father is dead now, but my mother is still alive, and she lives with me she is 85 years old. Whenever I set my eyes on her, I just start crying. I can’t bear it.

Shina Rambo was a raging terror, he was infallibly dangerous, the police dreaded him, both in Nigeria, and Benin Republic, his place of interest for business. He would go to police stations, in broad daylight and kill every policeman there, drive to check points and open fire on every policeman on duty, he didn’t like the police at all, and was never afraid of them, he operated in broad day light armed to the teeth looking like Johny Rambo, in the popular Sylvester Stalone movie, “First Blood”.

He once robbed 40 exotic cars in one day and drove all of them in a convoy, from Lagos to Cotonou, unstopped. He was powerful; he was wealthy, and impenetrable. He was a tin god, apparently belched from the very arroyo hell, we all dreaded him. He had a wife and three children, but he lost all of them in one day during a bloody police raid whilst he was away on operation. His wife was his stabilizing factor his life changed afterwards. He says “my wife was everything to me, I was forbidden by the elders to sleep with any other woman apart from her. I could gather about 50 women around me in a hotel, and they will just be playing with me. We would smoke, drink, and sniff cocaine, I will give them money but I will never sleep with them. I will go back home to my wife and sleep with her. That was why the police never caught me. She knew my job, she knew what I was and I never left them alone at night, I operated in the day time and go back home to my family at night.

I had everything, I was very wealthy, I sometimes spent 50 million naira in a day, I did that a lot. There was one day that we were coming from an operation and it seemed as if my powers were going to fail me, the police and the army were almost closing in on us, so we had to drive into a crowd and threw millions of naira in the air, there was commotion, everybody was busy picking naira notes even the police, until we escaped.

I was too rich, but anything the devil gives you never lasts, he will collect more from you, it’s only the devil that will give you Fila, (cap) and ask for Iro and Buba (wrapper and top). I lost everything, all the money, my family; I was so powerful the police couldn’t catch me but I lost it all. I had to surrender myself to the police and I was arrested and jailed for 11 years.

While I was serving my jail term in Agodi prisons, Ibadan, Prophet T.O Obadare came visiting, and having been encouraged several times by the Christian brothers and sisters in the prison to give my life to Christ, he prayed for me and converted me, and changed my name to Oluwanifemi, and it was so miraculous, the next day I woke up and started speaking in tongues. It was during the time of President Olusegun Obasanjo, that we were granted freedom.

At this point, I was glued to my seat, the revival where Shina Rambo gave this exclusive confession was on an open ground revival in the ancient city of Ibadan. Right in front of me, on stage, was Evangelist Mathew Oluwanifemi, the once feared Shina Rambo, clad in a loose fitting shirt, black pants and a pair of leather sandals with a black Holy Bible in his hands, gigantic dark skinned and bald headed, still had those fiery looks, and stealth movement.

I was more transfixed than focused, God is indeed awesome, he picked the offering basket raised it to the congregation prayed and asked who had anything
to give to God, at first I was reluctant, my mind was occupied and out of an innate compulsion, sheer curiosity I stood up, dipped my hand in my pocket walked towards him briskly and calculatedly brought out my offering, dropped it into the basket, and looked deep into his eyes, I had too many things to ask him, there were too many questions unanswered. He looked back at me, and spoke in Yoruba, saying “God bless you my brother; we know your type when we see them”. The congregation broke into a mild giggle, as all eyes were on me as I went back to my seat, with a lot of things on my mind, and the red light on my midget still blinking, in the breast pocket of my jacket.

God is indeed wonderful. He has sent many people to their early grave without repentant of their sins. They will go to hell and him having given his life to Christ will go to heaven when he die. How do will judge that?