4 infamous female gangsters and mobsters
As Sky HISTORY’s Original Gangsters with Sean Bean hits screens, here’s an enlightening look at several of history’s most feared women in organised crime.
Image: A 1997 police mugshot of Griselda Blanco | IanDagnall Computing / Alamy Stock Photo | Background: Shutterstock.com
We’ve all seen crime dramas like The Godfather and Goodfellas, but where are the women? In such films, they are often relegated to the roles of mothers and ‘molls’. In reality, though, many ladies have played the crime game just as well as the boys.
From mob bosses to ‘femme fatales’, select women certainly haven’t been above resorting to illegal means to get what they want. Here are several repeat offenders - starting with just one of the pioneering figures spotlighted in Sky HISTORY’s Original Gangsters With Sean Bean.
Original Gangsters with Sean Bean is available now on Sky HISTORY and HISTORY Play.
1. Stephanie St Clair
Born in the French Caribbean in 1887, Stephanie St Clair faced many obstacles after emigrating to the United States in the early 1910s. This was not unusual for black people in what was, by modern standards, a socially conservative country.
However, through sheer grit and determination, St Clair ultimately broke through the glass ceiling. By the 1920s, she was running a lucrative numbers racket in New York City’s Harlem neighbourhood.
Not that St Clair ever forgot her roots. She fought for black rights, exposed local police corruption (many officers were fired as a result) and created valuable jobs for her black brethren.
In the aftermath of the Prohibition era, mobsters from elsewhere attempted to encroach on her turf. She refused to give an inch, not even to her arch nemesis Dutch Schultz.
St Clair eventually handed her criminal enterprise over to her chief enforcer Ellsworth ‘Bumpy’ Johnson. He became famous in his own right as the ‘Harlem Godfather’. St Clair died in 1969, but continues to be remembered as ‘Queenie’ and ‘Madame St Clair’.
2. Griselda Blanco
Columbian drug lord Griseldo Blanco had many nicknames, including ‘the Black Widow’ and ‘the Cocaine Grandmother’. Over several decades, from the 1970s to the Noughties, Griselda was active in the illicit drug trade between Columbia and the United States.
‘She would kill anybody who displeased her,’ one US attorney later said of Griselda. ‘Because of a debt, because they screwed up on a shipment, or she didn’t like the way they looked at her.’ She did not directly carry out killings, instead assigning these gruesome duties to her henchmen, the Pistoleros.
Griselda was shot dead in her native country in 2012, but it’s not just from the obituaries that you might already know her life story. In 2024, Columbian actress Sofía Vergara played Griselda (to great acclaim) in the Netflix series of the same name.
3. Ma Barker
Ma Barker, born in Missouri in 1873, certainly became infamous, but was she really a ruthless crime matriarch? J Edgar Hoover appeared to think so, branding her ‘the most vicious, dangerous, and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade’.
A closer look at what we actually know about Ma’s life paints a markedly different picture. She did mother several members of the Barker-Karpis Gang, one of the 1930s Depression era’s most fearsome criminal gangs. However, there is no clear evidence that she was directly involved in the group’s lawbreaking.
Instead, it seems most likely that she simply accompanied her sons as they travelled around the United States to commit their kidnappings and bank robberies. Ma was eventually killed by FBI agents in 1935, with Hoover alleged to have exaggerated her sins to justify authorising this lethal shootout.
4. Pupetta Maresca
Assunta Maresca was born on 19th January 1935 near Naples to a prominent local crime family. The Marescas made much of their illicit money from contraband cigarettes.
Nicknamed ‘Puppetta’ (‘little doll’) due to her physical attractiveness, Assunta won a beauty contest while still a teenager. In 1955, she married Pasquale Simonetti, a member of the Comorra, an Italian Mafia-like organisation.
Months later, Simonetti was killed at the behest of rival Antonio Esposito. With the police seemingly unwilling to prosecute Esposito, Puppetta took matters into her own hands. Just weeks after her husband’s demise, Puppetta avenged it by shooting Esposito dead.
The ensuing media frenzy made Puppetta a household name. She was found guilty of Esposito’s murder and went on to serve 10 years and four months of what was originally an 18-year prison sentence.
Puppetta later started a romantic relationship with the drug baron Umberto Ammaturo. She reportedly supported his criminal activities and was accused of two further murders. Puppetta passed away at the age of 86 on 29th December 2021.
Many of our shows take viewers deep into the criminal underworld, providing them with revelatory insights. It’s worth watching out for many other such programmes on the horizon. To keep yourself in the loop, sign up for the Sky HISTORY Newsletter.
