QUEEN PINS
QUEEN PINS
girl gangsters of the 20th century
EXHIBITIONS New York Historical Society
Chicago History Museum
Annenberg Space for Photography
The Mob Museum
October 15– December 8, 2014 January 3– March 6, 2015 March 17– July 24, 2015 August 2– October 20, 2015
Dates and locations of the Queen Pins: Girl Gangsters of the 20th Century exhibition.
ii
CONTENTS V.
Foreword an introduction to the most notorious female criminals of the 20th century.
1.
Bootleggers
Queen Pins
Gertrude Lythgoe
5.
Outlaws Bonnie Parker Ma Barker
iv
15.
Public Enemies Stephanie St. Clair Virginia Hill
25.
Drug Lords Griselda Blanco
Index a list of image sources
Contents
31.
v
Queen Pins
FOREWORD Women have played an integral part in criminal history for many centuries. As early as 3000 BCE, only a couple hundred years after the firstform of writing was developed, evidence of prostitution, a profession historically dominated by women, is linked to the Sumerians, an ancient Mesopotamian civilization. In the early 1500s a young, Muslim pirate by the name of Sayyida al Hurra emerged. Originally from the Kingdom of Granada, she and her family were forced to flee after Spanish Christians invaded. They settled in Tetouan, Morocco, a city where Sayyida would eventually serve as governor. Through this position she was able to meet her husband, the King of Morocco. Though fabulously wealthy, Sayyida turned to piracy to get revenge on the Spanish Christians that had invaded her home. She seized Christian ships and gained even more wealth, and eventually gained recognition as a queen of the Mediterranean Sea. She continued to grow in strength as she would later become a main negotiator of trade between the Portugese and Spanish. Later, in the 1800s Marm, or Mother, Mandelbaum came to the United States and worked as a street performer, but quickly became deserving of her title as “Queen of the Fence.� She set up a small shop as a front and sold stolen goods under
the table. As her business grew so did her penchant for crime. Soon she was financing bank robberies, black mailing officials, theft, bribery, and burglary. In 1870, Mandlebaum opened a school that taught orphaned children to be criminals. Her star pupil was a young girl named, Sophie Lyons who earned the title “Princess of Crime.” However, the most notable girls in crime come from a more recent era. Ranging from bootleggers, outlaws, to drug lords the women in organized crime during the twentieth century take the cake. Names like Bonnie Parker from the dangerous duo and Griselda Blanco, also known as La Madrina, the Black Widow, the Cocaine Godmother, and the Queen of Narco-Trafficking, are still recognized today. These ruthless women, amongst many others, are highlighted in the exhibit Queen Pins: Girl Gangsters of the 20th Century. The exhibition, displayed in museums in New York, Illinois, and California—areas where many of the women carried out their life of crime. Though from different locations all of these women endured the same lifestyle only a few were able to escape. From rough beginnings, the life of crime offered many of these women a quick route to wealth and glamour, however it also meant living a dangerous life and, in most cases an untimely end or a cell in prison.
Foreword
vi
Queen Pins
1
GERTRUDE LYTHGOE
1.
Gertrude Lythgoe, also known
as the Bahama Queen or the Queen
of Rum Row, used her charm and
business savvy wit to send shipload after shipload of the finest
whiskey to America.
Bootleggers
7
3 Rum running is the general label given to illegally moving liquor across bodies of water, but often involves smuggling any number of spirits, from gin to Canadian whiskey. During Prohibition, rum became the cheapest and simplest liquor of choice to ferry between the Caribbean islands (where an abundance of sugar cane made production a breeze) and the Florida coast. This practice brought with it both the risk of getting caught and a fairly consistent fear of death: Ships mostly moved under the cover of darkness (or fog, or both) and would regularly wash up on the banks of a coral reef or embankment, sinking both the vessel and its rummy crew.
But many ships reached Florida’s shores successfully, and many of them were controlled by women. The most prominent of these female rum runners was Gertrude “Cleo“ Lythgoe, who became well-known for her business acumen and highly profitable liquor shipping operation during the 1920s. A stenographer for a British liquor importer in New York when Prohibition went into effect, Lythgoe quickly found a way to capitalize on the situation, setting up a wholesale liquor business in Nassau, Bahamas, and running bootlegged spirits to the US on the side. Her position among rum runners in Nassau was enviable,
2.
Lythgoe sailing aboard a friend’s boat during
the 1920s.
4 as she was the only woman to hold such an extensive liquor license during Prohibition. For years, Lythgoe’s stately beauty, calculated approach to rum running, hard-nosed attitude, and pistol accessory brashness made her the source of both media delight and government frustration. She was arrested (but not convicted) on numerous occasions, and tolerated little funny business from competitors attempting to squash her profits. Her peers included smuggling heavyweights like Billy McCoy, who harbored great respect for her. He had often remembered “the breath taking fury she showed.“
She once, allegedly, threatened to shoot a man simply for speaking ill of her liquor. In 1925, Lythgoe (who never married and loved the color purple) retired from the smuggling life, due in large part to her belief that there was a “jinx“ lurking in the wings to both kill her and destroy her operation. “I just beat my jinx before it got me,“ Lythgoe said in 1926. “I saw the signs [when] I was taking some whiskey from Nassau to another British island.“ Lythgoe successfully escaped her jinx, dying decades later in Los Angeles at age 86. In the wake of her passing, the Nassau flags flew at half-mast for days in honor of their fallen queen.
Queen Pins
10
3.
6
Bonnie Parker was the female half of the notorious crime duo, Bonnie and Clyde. She was born on October the 1st, of 1910, in Rowena, Texas. She and partner Clyde Barrow died in a violent hail of machine gun fire from law enforcement officers on May 23, 1934. Her father was a bricklayer. When he died in 1914, Bonnie’s mother, Emma Parker, moved her, along with her older brother Hubert and younger sister Billie, to the West Dallas community of “Cement City.” In school Bonnie was an honor student. She married childhood sweetheart Roy Thornton. They did not divorce, even after Thornton was sentenced to five years in prison in 1929. Parker had a tattoo above her right knee that said “Roy and Bonnie”. In November of that same year, the Dallas café where Bonnie worked closed.
She met Barrow in January 1930 and they began their romance. He was jailed in March but escaped using a pistol Bonnie smuggled past the guards. The next month he was captured and sent to a prison farm in Crockett, Texas. He was paroled in February 1932 and he and Bonnie began their reign of terror. They robbed all sorts of businesses such as grocery stores, gas stations, and small banks. One robbery attempt failed in March of 1932, allowing authorities to capture Bonnie. She was jailed in the city of Kaufman, Texas, but released in June when the grand jury no-billed her. Reunited, Bonnie and Clyde continued their violent and murderous crime spree throughout Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Missouri. Law enforcement had initiated a massive search for the two, but the hunt was unsuccessful.
Outlaws
BONNIE PARKER
7 They narrowly escaped a local police raid on their hideout in Joplin, Missouri, where they were staying with Barrow’s brother and sister-in-law, Marvin Ivan “Buck” and Blanche Barrow. The shootout had resulted in the death of two more police officers. Recovered from the hide out were six rolls of film. With each containing the now-famous photographs of the criminal couple.
Their murders, robberies, and narrow escapes continued through the year of 1933. Eventually, Clyde’s brother was killed in a shootout in Platte City, Missouri, and his sister-in-law was captured. In January 1934, Parker and Barrow made a daring machine gun raid on Eastham Farm prison to release Raymond Hamilton. By the time of the jailbreak, former Texas Ranger Captain Francis Hamerq and
4.
5.
The vehicle was
shot over 100 times.
Bonnie died shortly
after the shooting
started.
8 his associates had begun to track Bonnie and Clyde. On Easter Sunday, 1934, near Grapevine, Texas, two highway patrolmen stopped to check on the wanted couple’s car, which was stopped by the side of the road. She and Clyde opened fire on the officers and Bonnie walked over to one of the officers, rolled him over with her foot and fired her sawed-off shotgun at the officer’s head. She then reportedly said,
6.
Bonnie and boyfriend, Clyde
Barrows, of famous outlaw duo Bonnie and Clyde.
“look-a-there, his head bounced just like a rubber ball.” On May 23, 1934, Bonnie and Clyde met their own bloody and violent end in an ambush near their latest hide-out in Black Lake, Louisiana. That day, officers waiting for their car on a roadside riddled them with bullets. Their bodies were publicly displayed in Dallas before being buried in their family’s burial sites.
9
Queen Pins
7.
MA BARKER
10 discipline her boys and would fly into a rage at anyone, including her husband, who tried to scold them. After the family had relocated to Tulsa in 1915, George left Kate. In the spring of 1931, Ma Barker's youngest son, Fred, was unexpectedly paroled from Lansing Prison, in Kansas. Fred brought with him a fellow parolee named Alvin Karpis. He and Fred had agreed to become partners in crime. Ma approved of the newly formed BarkerKarpis Gang and let them use her Tulsa shack as a hideout. Living vicariously through the exploits of her boys offered Ma the adventure she always craved. Fred and Alvin quickly went to work, committing a series of burglaries and small time bank robberies. In December 1931, they robbed a department store in West Plains, Missouri. The next day, they shot and murdered the town's Sheriff, C. R. Kelly, at point blank range. Kelly's murder started a pattern of excessive violence and of thoughtless killings that were soon to become the trademark of the rowdy Karpis-Barker Gang. For the first time, Ma Barker had become a wanted woman.
Outlaws
Ma Barker was born Arizona Donnie Clark on October 8, 1873, to a poor family in Ash Grove, Missouri. Her parents were of Irish and Scottish descent. Clark was a headstrong girl with dark penetrating eyes and a nasty temper. Along with her siblings, she attended church regularly and spent her free time singing and playing the fiddle. As a child, Clark witnessed local outlaw Jesse James and his gang ride through her hometown. The sight triggered her thirst for adventure and was a catalyst for her life. In 1892, Clark married a man who would fail to quench that thirst—a poor, soft-spoken tenant farmer named George Barker. Over the next decade, the couple had four sons: Herman, Lloyd, Arthur (nicknamed Doc) and Fred. (Arizona Clark had by then adopted the nickname "Kate," and taken her husband's last name.) As the Barker boys aged, they were constantly in trouble with the law. Herman, the oldest, was arrested in 1910 for petty thievery. By the time Barker's two youngest, Doc and Fred, had reached their teen years, all four of the sons were repeatedly landing themselves either in prisons or reformatories. But Kate Barker refused to
11
12
8.
Ma Barker’s house, where the shootout took place,
killing her and her sons.
Noted are bullet holes on the house exterior.
13 On the day of March 29, 1932, Fred, Alvin and three other accomplices robbed the Northwestern National Bank in Minneapolis, Minnesota and made a clean getaway. The Barker-Karpis Gang got away with more than a quarter of a million dollars in cash and bonds. In September of 1932, Ma's son Doc was paroled from a murder sentence at the same time that his brothers were
free. The Barker gang was back at full strength. With Ma's blessing, they quickly plotted another bank job for December, at the Third Northwestern National Bank in Minneapolis. This time, however, they failed to adequately think the job through. The consequence was a shootout with the police, which only served to solidify their reputation as the most vicious criminal gang in America.
9.
Kate “Ma” Barker, right,
and her son Fred Barker,
in the morgue, their
bodies riddled with bullets, after a six-hour
machine gun battle with federal agents in Flo.,
January 16, 1935.
14 Another shootout between the Barkers and the authorities would occur on the morning of January 16, 1935, when the FBI raided the house in Ocklawaha, Florida, where Ma and Fred were staying. Heavily armed FBI agents spread around the house and ordered the pair to surrender. With no reply, the agents threw tear gas canisters at the windows. Fred fired a machine gun and a shootout began that
left the house riddled with bullets. Fred and Ma fought for their lives, shooting back with everything they had. Finally, the federal agents began to run out of ammunition and the scene became deathly quiet. Ma and Fred Barker were found together, dead, in an upstairs bedroom. There, a stash of weapons and thousands of dollars were recovered at the house.
15
Queen Pins
STEPHANIE ST. CLAIR Stephanie St. Clair was born in Martinique, which is an island in the East Caribbean in 1886 and came into the United States via Marseilles, France. In 1912 she arrived in Harlem. She was known for her deep involvement in the seedy gangster underworld. According to those who knew her, she was arrogant, sophisticated and astute to the ways of urban life. She had reportedly told people that she was born in “European France” and was able to speak “flawless French” as opposed to the less refined French spoken by those in the Caribbean. Whenever people questioned her national origin, she would always respond in French. St. Clair also spoke Spanish. Noted for her fierce temper, St. Clair would also use profanity in various languages when angered or
outraged by some perceived slight or injustice. Her eloquent sense of fashion was well-known throughout Harlem where she was referred to as Madame St. Clair. In the rest of Manhattan and other city boroughs, she was also referred to as “Queenie.” St. Clair developed the first numbers bank located in Harlem. Here she and her partners, including Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, made the first significant criminal fortunes in all of black New York. Initially, they had little competition except for a rival Casper Holstein but by the 1930s their undisputed control over Harlem’s numbers rackets was challenged. After the Great Depression began and Prohibition ended in 1932, a number of
10.
Public Enemies
16
17 white New York mobsters saw their profits rapidly diminish. Then they turned to the lucrative Harlem illegal gambling scene to supplement their loss revenue. Led by Dutch Schultz, a coalition of non-Harlem gangsters engaged in a bloody war with St. Clair and her allies for control of organized crime in that community. Over 40 people were killed in gangland related violence, including the murder of Harlem numbers operators. Despite the violence against their operation, St. Clair and Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson initially refused to surrender to Schultz. Over time, however, their power weakened. St. Clair made several futile complaints to local authorities about harassment from NYPD which she felt
aided Schultz. Without political influence at City Hall, her concerns were ignored. In response, St. Clair took out several ads in Harlem newspapers accusing senior officers of various forms of corruption. Outraged by this, she was arrested by the police on several exaggerated charges. In response she testified to New York State’s Seabury Crime Commission about the large number of kickbacks she had paid police officials to protect her operations. Her charges led to the dismissal of several police officers. As St. Clair realized she could no longer oppose Schultz, she agreed to a truce which transferred the power and profits from her organization to Schultz and the Italian Mafia headed by Lucky Luciano. In 1935, Dutch Schultz was assassinated
18
11.
St. Clair was described
as a woman not afraid to
“kick off her expensive
high-heels and go toe-totoe with anyone insolent
enough to insult her
breeding and character.”
Public Enemies
on the orders of Luciano. Although St. Clair was not involved with his murder, she was remembered for sending an infamous telegram to his bed that stated “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” The telegram had reportedly made headlines across the nation. St. Clair’s former lieutenant, Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, became the Mafia’s representative in Harlem while she slipped into obscurity. Stephanie St. Clair died quietly in Harlem in 1969.
Queen Pins
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12.
5
20
Public Enemies
VIRGINIA HILL
21
13.
Virginia Hill was born 1916 in Lipscomb, Alabama, one of 10 siblings. The family later moved to Marietta, Georgia. Her mother later left her to take care of other children. At the age of 17, Hill moved to Chicago, allegedly to work as a prostitute at the 1933 World's Fair and later became a waitress. During this time, she met a mobster named Joseph Epstein, a ranking associate of Chicago Outfit political corruptor Jake Guzik. Hill allegedly became Epstein's mistress, party hostess, and a co-conspirator in his bookmaking ring. In the process she became a close associate of several high-ranking Outfit mobsters. She was eventually the mistress of Frank Costello, Frank Nitti, Charles Fishetti and Joe Adonis. She also became a "bag woman", and funneled Outfit funds into Swiss bank accounts. She later denied
22 it, but it is known that she bought a new home for her family in Marietta for over $100,000 in cash. In the 1940s Hill moved to California, met Bugsy Siegel and, in turn, became his most steady mistress. Reputedly they fought as much as they made love, but Siegel did not stop his womanizing. There are rumors that they were secretly married in Mexico but Siegel never divorced his wife Esta. Siegel's nickname for Hill was "The Flamingo," reputedly for her beautiful, long legs. Hill had maintained a lavish lifestyle also in Hollywood, bought her own mansion in Beverly Hills and entertained Hollywood celebrities there. Reputedly Hill blackmailed several Hollywood celebrities with information about their vices. Eventually, Siegel got into trouble with his superiors in New York City's Genovese crime family when his Las Vegas project, The Flamingo, did not turn a profit fast enough. Meyer Lansky allegedly suspected that Siegel was engineering construction
woes in order to rip off his Mafia investors for millions of dollars. It was further believed that he was using Hill to transfer the money to Swiss bank accounts, serving as only his courier this time. After one of their many fights, Hill left for Paris on June 10, 1947. Ten days later, Siegel was shot to death inside her LA mansion. When police questioned her, she denied that she was his mistress or that she was aware of his ties to the Genovese crime family. She claimed that "His mistress was that Las Vegas Hotel". When someone later suggested that she had helped the Genovese Family to engineer his murder, she was indignant. In 1951, Hill was subpoenaed to testify before the Kefauver hearings and denied having any knowledge of organized crime. She told investigators that her income came from gifts her boyfriend’s gave her due to her sexual prowess. The IRS determined that Hill had spent $500,000 without paying taxes and sued her. Hill proceeded to marry
23 a well-known Sun Valley ski instructor Hans Hauser (nĂŠ Norman Johann Hauser, 1911-1974) and moved with him to Europe. The IRS seized her house and property and auctioned them off for back taxes. Hill spent her remaining years in Europe. In her last years, when she was separated from her husband, she was supported by their only child, Peter Hauser, who worked as a waiter. She died of an overdose of sleeping pills, an apparent suicide, in Koppel, near Salzburg, Austria on 24 March 1966. Her body was found in a lone area by a bridge crossing the "Alterbach", a small stream. She was only 49 years old. According to Andy Edmonds' biography Bugsy's Baby: The Secret Life of Mob Queen Virginia Hill, Hill's death was suspicious, since her body was found outdoors, near a brook, two days after she met with a former lover, former Genovese family boss Joe Adonis, who reportedly had her escorted home with two of his bodyguards. It was highly speculated by the Austrian media, which were rather exactly informed about her former relationship with Siegel, that she tried to get money by using her knowledge of the Italian-American Mafia and the Mexican drug cartels. She is buried in Aigen Cemetery in Salzburg, Austria.
14.
Virginia Hill sitting in
court for allegedly not
paying taxes.
24
25
Queen Pins
15.
GRISELDA
26
BLANCO
Drug Lords
Griselda Blanco was born in Cartagena, Colombia on February 15, 1943. Raised by an abusive mother, Blanco turned to a life of crime and prostitution at a young age. Not long after, she became involved with Colombia's infamous Medellin Cartel, helping to push Colombian cocaine throughout the United States, specifically to New York, Miami, and Southern California. Members of the cartel were able to smuggle large quantities of cocaine into the US using special undergarments that Blanco had presumably designed and manufactured. In the mid-1970s, Blanco left Colombia for New York. By this time, the infamous drug trafficker, now in her early 30s, was running a massive narcotics ring. But U.S. detectives were soon hot on Blanco's trail: After authorities intercepted a shipment of 150 kilos cocaine in 1975— the biggest cocaine case in history—Blanco and more than 30 of her partners were indicted on federal drug conspiracy charges. The investigation was dubbed "Operation Banshee," and became known to law enforcement officers nationwide. Fearing capture, Blanco fled the country, returning to Colombia. It wasn't long before she came back, this time settling in Miami. Throughout her time in the United States, Blanco's continued involvement in the Colombian
27
16. 17.
Blanco used her feminine insight to her
advantage. She opened a
women’s underwear factory in Colombia that
manufactured undergar-
ments with compartments
to smuggle cocaine.
28
18.
Born in the poverty
stricken MedellĂn moun-
tains,she grew up during La Violencia, Colombia’s
vicious civil war, and
quickly turned to a life
of crime.
29 drug trade led to her participation in several other crimes, including driveby shootings and other murders motivated by drugs, money and power. By the late 1970s, detectives had linked her to dozens of murders. Possibly most notably, she was named a suspect in a drug-rival shooting that took place inside of a Miami liquor store. Blanco would manage to escape authorities, however, until nearly a decade later. In the 1980s, Blanco was livingly comfortably in a newly purchased home in Miami. By this time, the infamous drug trafficker had become a millionaire, and had taken on various nicknames, including "The Godmother," "Queen of Cocaine" and "Black Widow." Blanco's luck finally ran out in 1985, when she was captured by detectives in Irvine, California. Blanco's trial took place in New York, and ended with a conviction: She was found guilty of a drug conspiracy charge but escaped murder charges, despite being accused of several Florida slayings. She received the maximum sentence, according to drug laws at the time: 15 years. In 1994, Blanco, now a federal prison inmate, was transported back to Miami on three murder charges (she had been
named a suspect, however, in more than 200 murders). In a strange turn of events, however, the case was thrown out: The star witness in the case worked for Blanco, had become romantically involved with a secretary in the Florida State Attorney's Office, causing prosecutors to worry about the credibility of Ayala's testimony on the stand. Some speculated that Ayala botched the case on purpose, fearing that he could be killed by members of Blanco's cartel if he testified. Blanco ended up pleading guilty to the three murder charges, and following a deal with prosecutors, she received a 10-year sentence. In June 2004, she was released from prison and deported back to Colombia. On September 3, 2012, at age 69, Blanco was murdered in her hometown of Medellin, Colombia. According to reports, two gunmen on motorcycles shot Blanco after she exited a butcher shop.
30
19.
Following the bloody
Cocaine Wars in Miami,
Blanco fled to Cali-
fornia, where she was
finally arrested by DEA
Agent Bob Palumbo,
who’d been chasing her
for ten years.
31
GERTRUDE LYTHGOE
BONNIE PARKER
1.
3.
http://www.saveur.com/rumrunners
2.
http://allday.com/post/ 8181-througout-prohibition-these-womenused-their-sexuality-toevade-police-and-runrum/ http://allday.com/ post/8181-througoutprohibition-these-women-used-their-sexualityto-evade-police-andrun-rum/
http://www.famoustexans.com/ bonnieparker.htm
4.
5.
Queen Pins
6.
http://a4.files.biography. com/image/upload/c_fit, cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,h_1200, q_80,w_1200/MTE4MDAzNDA5OTM5ODkxNzI2.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bonnie_Parker_BC10.jpg
http://folioolio.blogspot. com/2014/03/wednesday-1922.html
http://en.r8lst.com/ Indefatigably%20handsome%20pictures%20 of%20Bonnie%20Parker
INDEX MA BARKER
STEPHANIE ST. CLAIR
7.
10.
http://www.biography.com/ people/ma-barker-14515515
9.
http://tpa.baynews9.com/ content/news/baynews9/ news/article.html/content/ news/articles/cfn/2015/ 1/16/ma_barker_hideout_ si.html
11.
http://images.popmatters.com/features_art/p/ playingnumb-1queenstclair1.jpg
http://www.findagrave. com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page =gr&GRid=9606386
(AP Photo) http:/www.m.mywebs.su/ blogpeople/20329/
Index
8.
http://nypost. com/2016/10/28/mabarker-isnt-happyabout-her-house-beingmoved/
http://www.blackpast.org/ aah/st-clair-stephanie-18861969#sthash.RqfFx7g4.dpuf
33
VIRGINIA HILL
GRISELDA BLANCO
12.
15.
http://mafia.wikia.com/wiki/ Virginia_Hill
13.
14.
http://picssr.com/tags/ bugsysiegel
http://musicacinetelevisionvivencia. blogspot.com/2016/ 04/virginia-hill-yelvira-hancock.html
http://www.findagrave. com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi? page=gr&GRid=11213
http://www.biography.com/ people/griselda-blanco20965407#trial-and-lateryears
16.
17.
18.
.http://www.vice.com/ read/griseda-blanco-solong-and-thanks-forall-the-cocaine
http://www.univision. com/noticias/la-huella-digital/griselda-blanco/who-is-she
http://www.vice.com/ read/griselda-blanco-solong-and-thanks-forall-the-cocaine
http://www.vice.com/ read/griselda-blancoso-long-and-thanksfor-all-the-cocaine
34
19.
http://www.vice.com/ read/griselda-blancoso-long-and-thanksfor-all-the-cocaine
Created in Typography II at Texas State University in Fall 2016. Typefaces Deutschlander Museo Slab 300 Museo Slab 300 Italic Museo Slab 700 Courier New Bold Color Palette C=7 M=33 Y=18 K=7 C=0 M=0 Y=0 K=11 C=0 M=0 Y=0 K=65 Designer Erin Garrigan
2
“
...These ruthless women, amongst many others, are highlighted in the exhibition titled Queens Pins: Girl Gangsters of the 20th Century. The exhibition, which is displayed in museums in New York, Illinois, and California —areas where many of the women carried out their life of crime. Though from different locations all of these women endured the same lifestyle only a few were able to escape. From rough beginnings, the life of crime offered many of these women a quick route to wealth and glamour, however it also meant living a dangerous life and, in most cases an untimely end or a cell in prison. —excerpt from foreword
$12.95 US | $17.95 CAN
”