Women in the Mob
In Starr Sign, my second novel in the Candace Starr Crime Series, Candace infiltrates her estranged Detroit mafia family, the Scarpellos, in search of her mother, Angela. In honour of the fictitious Scarpello clan (and Candace), I bring you some real-life women who made their mark in the male-dominated world of organized crime. Virginia Hill…
Elizabeth Báthory, the Blood Countess
It’s Halloween and as such my mind turns to the macabre, which when I think about it, isn’t an event exclusively restricted to Oct 31st. I mean, after all, l wrote a book about a spiritual pilgrimage across Northern Spain and put walking dead people on it (Petra’s Ghost). But even my deep affection for…
Searching for a Hitwoman
When I set out to write an article about famous hitwomen from history, I didn’t think I’d have such a hard time finding any. When I googled it, I ended up with a lot of grainy black and white photos of dour women who poisoned people they didn’t like. Legend has it that Lucrezia of…
The Forty Elephants Gang
If you think girl gangs are something new, you should know that sisters have been doing it for themselves in the criminal world since Victorian times. The Forty Elephants gang was an all-female organized crime collective active in London’s Elephant and Castle District from at least 1873 right into the 1950’s. They specialized in shoplifting,…
True Crime – Nannie Doss, the Giggling Grannie
Nannie Doss, born Nancy Hazel in Blue Mountain, Alabama in 1905, murdered so many people I had to make a chart to keep it all straight. Dubbed the Giggling Grannie and the Jolly Widow due to her gleeful laughter as she recounted her crimes, at first look she doesn’t look the part of a serial…
How could you Mrs. Dick?
A very dear friend of mine asked if I would look into the story of Evelyn Dick because she had such fond childhood memories of the schoolyard chant: You cut off his legs … You cut off his arms … You cut off his head … How could you Mrs. Dick? How could you Mrs.…
Hélène Jégado – The Pious Poisoner
Hélène Jégado was born in 1803 on a small farm in Brittany just after the end of the French revolution, which you might remember had a lot of peasants revolting and killing rich society types for suggesting they eat cake. But by twenty-four years of age, Hélène began staging her own little coup in the…
Phantom of Heilbronn
The Phantom of Heilbronn, also known as “The Woman without a Face,” stumped German law enforcement from 1993 until 2009. Her DNA was found at multiple crime scenes ranging from murder to petty theft in both France and Austria, as well as Germany. Her list of accomplices included everyone from Slovaks to Serbs, Albanians to…
Lizzie Borden took an Axe
Lizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one. Ah, everyone loves Lizzie Borden and her notorious whacks. She was young, pretty and loaded, a combination that has always been catnip to the American public. Without it, the Kardashians would…
