10 Famous Female Bank Robbers

10 Famous Female Bank Robbers

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow were well-known outlaws, robbers and criminals. The couple themselves were eventually ambushed and killed in Louisiana by law officers.

Law enforcement officials had dubbed Sylvete Phylis Gilbert the “Church Lady Bandit” as a witness said she looked like someone who had just come from church.

Heather Johnston and Ashley Miller quickly became known as the “Barbie Bandits”.

Kate “Ma” Barker was the mother of several criminals who ran the Barker Gang.

Martinez was dubbed the “Cell Phone Bandit” for chatting on the phone with her boyfriend during the heists, which netted the couple $48,620.

1. Bonnie Elizabeth Parker

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow were well-known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the “public enemy era” between 1931 and 1934. Though known today for his dozen-or-so bank robberies, Barrow in fact preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. The gang is believed to have killed at least nine police officers and committed several civilian murders. The couple themselves were eventually ambushed and killed in Louisiana by law officers. Their reputation was cemented in American pop folklore by Arthur Penn’s 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde.

2. Sylvete Phylis Gilbert

Sylvete Phylis Gilbert, 46, finally got caught after a long string of bank robberies in the Columbus, Ohio area. Law enforcement officials had dubbed her the “Church Lady Bandit” because a witness in one of her early robberies said she looked like someone who had just come from church. She was charged on 12 second-degree felony counts of robbery and 12 counts of robbery in the third degree for robbing numerous banks and businesses between January, 2006 and December, 2010.

3. Cora Hubbard

Cora Hubbard was a 19th century outlaw who participated in the August 17, 1897 robbing of the McDonald County Bank in Pineville, Missouri. Hubbard, who was compared at the time to the more prolific female outlaw Belle Starr, was one of only a handful of women who actively participated in the actual bank robbery process during that era.

4. Starlet Bandit

In just one week in April, she robbed five banks in Los Angeles County, including two in one day. Law enforcement authorities gave the glamorous nickname despite her frumpy appearance — a casually dressed, hefty woman in sunglasses, carrying a shoulder bag and holding a cell phone to one ear. In May, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told the Los Angeles Daily News that two women were in custody in the case and investigators believe that the Starlet Bandit may have actually been several women, not just one.

5. Barbie Bandits

Heather Johnston and Ashley Miller quickly became known as the “Barbie Bandits” after their February, 2007, holdup of a Bank of America branch in Acworth, Georgia. The girls, who met while working at a strip club, plotted with Johnston’s boyfriend, Michael Chastang and a bank teller to pull off the heist. Miller was sentenced to two years in jail and Johnston to 10 years probation, getting a lighter sentence because she was the first to cooperate with the investigation.

6. Bank Robbin’ Mama

Erica F. Anderson was apparently trying to multitask on the day she was arrested for robbing the Umpqua Bank branch in Grants Pass, Ore., in September, 2010. The 37-year old mother of five pleaded guilty Dec. 17 to robbing two banks in Temecula. That’s when she was sentenced to two years in prison. She was released on $25,000 bail and ordered to surrender to authorities in January.

7. Kate “Ma” Barker

Kate “Ma” Barker (born Arizona Donnie Clark; October 8, 1873 – January 16, 1935) was the mother of several criminals who ran the Barker gang from the “public enemy era”, when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the U.S. Midwest gripped the American people and press. Ma Barker certainly knew of the gang’s activities, and even helped them before and after they committed their crimes. This would make her an accomplice, but there is no evidence that she was ever an active participant in any of the crimes themselves or involved in planning them. Her role was in taking care of gang members, who often sent her to the movies while they committed crimes.

8. Candice R. Martinez

College student Candice R. Martinez was 20 when she was sentenced to 12 years in prison in March, 2006 for robbing four Wachovia bank branches in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. Seven years of that sentence were for pulling a revolver during one of the robberies. Martinez was dubbed the “cell phone bandit” for chatting on the phone with her boyfriend during the heists, which netted the couple $48,620. Martinez, who had worked for Wachovia prior to the robberies, apologized to the bank tellers when she was sentenced.

9. Beauty Salon Bandit

Beauty salon owner Norma Balderas-Dehernandez started holding up New Jersey banks in January, 2009. By May of that year, the mother of three had hit three bank branches, netting a little over $8,000. In each robbery, she’d hand a note written in Spanish to a Spanish-speaking teller, demanding money. he was sentenced in July, 2010 to 30 months in federal prison.

10. Patricia Hearst

Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw, the granddaughter of publishing titan William Randolph Hearst, made headlines in 1974 when an urban guerrilla group, the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped her from her Berkeley, Calif., apartment. Two months later, she was caught on surveillance cameras robbing a San Francisco bank while brandishing an assault rifle, having apparently taken up her captors’ cause. At her trial, her attorney claimed Hearst had been brainwashed by her captors, but the effort didn’t work and she was convicted in March, 1976. She served almost two years before President Jimmy Carter commuted her seven-year sentence. President Bill Clinton granted her a full pardon on the last day of his presidency.