From The Cocaine Godmother To "Sister" Snakehead: Notorious Female Gangsters

By Sponsor in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 1, 2013 6:00PM

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Organized crime is predominantly a men's world, but there are some women whose penchant for violence, drug laundering and more that have made them infamous crime figures. Here are a few notable ones over the decades:

STEPHANIE ST. CLAIR: The French-African immigrant ran a numbers bank in Harlem in the 1920s. By the 1930s St. Clair, known as "Queenie," became so successful that she was squaring off against Dutch Schultz over the territory, with Schultz demanding she pay a "protection fee." She resisted paying, which angered the mob and made her a marked woman. Eventually, with the help of her protegee/future mob figure Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, she brokered peace with Schultz and agreed to pay a "Mafia tax." However, when Schultz was assassinated, St. Clair sent a telegram to his hospital bed, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap," signed, "Madame Queen."

BONNIE PARKER: Romanticized in the 1967 film, Bonnie Parker and her boyfriend Clyde Barrow were the focus of one of the most spectacular manhunts the country had seen. Between 1932 and 1934, the couple and their gang robbed gas stations and stores—and also kidnapped and killed civilians and lawmen alike. Parker became famous when a photograph of her smoking a cigar was found at one of their hideouts. The picture was published in newspapers, and made her a celebrity.

But on May 23, 1934, the law caught up to them near Sailes, Louisiana. Police officers from Louisiana and Texas waited in bushes and when Parker and Barrow got in their car and were trying to drive away, the officers opened fire, killing them instantly.

ARLYNE BRICKMAN: Born to a Jewish auto dealer/racketeer in 1933, Brickman threw herself into the world of New York's Italian Mafia, having romances with various low-level gangsters and eagerly helping them run drugs. Brickman, who moved into loansharking and bookmaking herself, was raped in the basement of a mob hangout. Her gangster friends refused to avenge her.

The last straw was when a crew threatened to rape her daughter if Brickman didn't pay drug debts from her daughters and gambling debts from her bookmaking partner. She became a government informant in the 1970s and 1980s, wearing wires in exchange for the government paying off the debts. Her work helped convict numerous members of the Colombo crime family. Jessica Biel may star in a film about Brickman's life.

JUDY MORAN: Matriarch of one of Australia's most notorious crime families, Moran's life has been full of murder and mayhem. Her first husband, Leslie John Cole was killed in 1982 and their son Mark was killed in 2000. Her second husband, Lewis Moran, head of the Moran crime family, was murdered in 2004—and their son Jason Moran was killed in 2003.

The killings of her sons and second husband were related to the gangland killings in Melbourne, where dozens of crime organization figures were killed as various factions fought for power. Judy Moran was eventually convicted of killing her brother-in-law Desmond Moran in a cafe. Prosecutors say that she plotted the crime in her home and also hid the disguises of the hit men there. Moran apparently acted out of "retribution, hostility, financial retribution, or all of those reasons."

JULIE LUCAS: The wife of "American Gangster" Frank Lucas, the former beauty queen helped him with his heroin trade in 1960s New York City. When he was taken down in 1975, Frank Lucas was sentenced to 40 years in prison while she was sentenced to five years. More recently, in 2010, Julie Lucas was arrested for trying to sell 2 kilos of cocaine to a federal agent in Puerto Rico. The 70-year-old told a judge, "I am ashamed that at my age I am standing in front of you," and was sentenced to another five years.

SANDRA AVILA BELTRAN: Forget a drug kingpin—Sandra Avila became so powerful as the head of a Mexican drug cartel that she was called "La Reina del Pacifico" ("The Queen of the Pacific"). Her love of high fashion and attractive features has hurt the media's fascination with her. Beltran, the niece of a famous drug trafficker, also supposedly rose to power, thanks to some intimate connections: The NY Times reports, "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, a mobster’s wiles and her sex appeal, prosecutors say." Arrested in 2007 for drug trafficking, Beltran wasn't extradited to the U.S. until last year.

CHENG CHUI "SISTER" PING: On June 6, 1993, a ship ran aground in New York City's Rockaway Beach. It turned out the ship's cargo was 286 illegal Chinese immigrants, being smuggled into the U.S. That smuggling incident was one of many planned by Cheng Chui Ping, known as "Sister Ping," the head of the Snakehead gang, which specialized in human smuggling. The FBI estimates that Cheng smuggled as many as 3,000 illegal immigrants and collected over $40 million by charging them $40,000 each. The immigrants would then be forced to work off their balance, and Cheng and her crew would threaten them with violence.

However, Cheng denied she had anything to do with the smuggling, insisting that she was trying to protect herself and her children from threats from a violent gang. During her sentencing, Ping told a pregnant federal prosecutor, "Once you become a mother you will understand me." Cheng was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

GRISELDA BLANCO: Known as a "The Cocaine Godmother," Griselda Blanco was a Medellin drug lord and helped establish the drug trade between Colombia and Miami in the 1970s and 1980s. At her height, Blanco organized the shipment of over three tons of cocaine into the U.S. each year. Part of her legend is that she killed another child at age 11 when his parents refused to pay ransom and that she was responsible for between 20 and 40 murders, including the killing of a three-year-old child.

Blanco also plotted to kidnap John F. Kennedy Jr., opened up a factory to make female undergarments—better to smuggle drugs in the U.S. that way—and gave a hit man a vintage World War II bayonet to kill a rival. Killing her husband was apparently no problem—Blanco shot him when she believed he stole millions in drug money profits (she survived the shots from the Uzi he fired at her).

Arrested numerous times, Blanco was deported back to Colombia in 2004. On September 3, 2012, while leaving a butcher in Medellin, Blanco was shot in the face twice by a man on a motorcycle.