12 Female Crime Lords Who Reigned Over Empires With An Iron Fist

Griselda Blanco, also known as "The Cocaine Godmother," grew up in the Colombian slums, working her way up the crime ladder, first as a sex worker and pickpocket. It didn't take her long to make her first kill - she was rumored to have committed her first murder at the age of 11. It was the first of many. 

Blanco was thought to have run a coke ring that moved 3,400 pounds of product a month, but her murder rate was equally as prolific. Low estimates suggest that she was behind 40 to 50 murders, but some estimates go as high as 200. She was only convicted of three murders but spent 13 years in federal prison for drug charges. 

Her lovers and husbands were often among her victims, thus, she was also nicknamed the "Black Widow." 

Known as Queenie or Madame St. Claire, Stephanie St. Claire started her own numbers racket in 1923 and was soon making over a quarter of a million a year - a substantial amount of money in those days. 

Aside from partaking in the illegal activity of racketeering, St. Claire was very supportive of her community, regularly publishing newspaper ads to educate community members about their rights, agitate for voting rights, and arguing against police brutality, even getting corrupt cops fired. When the mob tried to move in on her uptown territory during the Depression, she had those sent to intimidate her "taken care of," then tipped off the police about mob businesses and had their storefronts attacked. She then took out newspaper ads bragging to the mob about what she'd done and daring them to stop her. In reference to her arch-rival, she said, “I’m not afraid of Dutch Schultz or any other man living. He’ll never touch me.”

When her nemesis Schultz was eventually assassinated with a shot in the stomach, she promptly sent a telegraph to his deathbed that read “So You Sow - So Shall Ye Reap," signed “Madam Queen of Policy.” 

Guatemalan drug lord and "Queen of the South," Marllory Dadiana Chacon Rossel was eventually jailed after she surrendered. But that was only after an extensive life of crime. 

Her organization supplied cocaine to Mexican drug cartels including Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel and laundered tens of millions of dollars a month. The US Treasury named her husband as an accomplice, but there was no denying that Rossel was the one in charge. Authorities classified her as “the most active money launderer in Guatemala” and as one of the most prolific drug traffickers in all of Central America.

She eventually surrendered and has been working with the DEA and the US Attorney's Office in Florida since 2012, providing information in exchange for the authorities agreeing to keep her sentence and release date secret for five years, to protect herself from rivals. 

Drug lord Charmaine Roman used a concert promotion business as a front for her illegal activity very successfully for a time. She was the head of a violent Jamaican drug ring, responsible for bringing thousands of pounds of marijuana into Florida. It took years of surveillance for the police to finally catch her with a 400-pound shipment, eventually seizing over 3,000 pounds of marijuana, $200,000, 15 guns, and several cars.

She was also found with various passports and ID cards with many different identities. Besides being a drug kingpin, she had a love of lottery scratch cards, reportedly winning almost $200,000.

Maria Licciardi became the "Boss of Bosses" when she took over Sister of Secondigliano Alliance (SA) following the death of her husband and brothers. Not limiting to herself to extortion and drug trafficking, Liccianrdi was one of the few females bosses that supported prostitution. And she was ruthless - her sex workers were often kept drugged and when they were no longer making money, were killed. 

Though she occasionally gave back to the community, when an ally and partner, the La Russo Clan, sold heroin so pure and potent it killed customers, Licciardi started to get the wrong kind of attention. The two groups turned on each other and over 120 people died in car bombings, shootings, and other violence. 

Fearing investigations, she had the district attorney's office bombed, however, that didn't stop them from eventually imprisoning her. She is thought to still be running the business from behind bars. 

When former Camorra boss and Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO) head Raffaele Cutolo was incarcerated, it was up to his older sister, Rosetta, to take over the family business. She negotiated trade deals with cartels, was in charge of billions of dollars, and was rumored to have attempted to blow up a police station.

Though she successfully reigned for 15 years, a raid brought her down - she spent 12 years on the run before eventually being found by police. In the end, she served five years in prison.