Women on FBI's most wanted list

Ruth Eisemann-Schier was the first woman to break the Ten Most Wanted list's gender barrier in 1968. Eisemann-Schier and her love, Gary Steven Krist, kidnapped Barbara Jane Mackle, an Emory University student and construction heiress. The pair demanded a $500,000 ransom from Mackle's father, and buried Mackle alive in a ventilated box in the woods of Georgia until the ranson was paid. Upon receiving the money, the criminal pair called the FBI with directions to where Mackle was hidden and fled. Mackle spent over 80 hours underground but was found alive and in relatively good health. Krist was soon caught by police but Eisemann-Schier proved to be harder to find. She finally was found 79 days after appearing on the Ten Most Wanted list. She spent four years in prison and was then deported to her native Honduras.

Marie Dean Arrington

Three months after Eisemann-Schier's arrest, Marie Dean Arrington became the second female resident on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. Arrington was originally on Florida's death row for the murder of the secretary of a public defender who had unsuccessfully defended her two children on armed robbery charges when she cut through a screen in a prison window and escaped in her pajamas in 1969 (her sentence was later reduced to life in prison). Arrington spent two years on the run before law enforcement tracked her down, earning her an extra 10 years on her prison sentence.

Angela Yvonne Davis

Angela Yvonne Davis was placed on the Ten Most Wanted list in October of 1970, after investigators learned that the Black Panther and Communist activist had purchased the weapons used in a hostage situation. Davis had purchase weapons for Jonathan P. Jackson, who stormed a courtroom in Marin County, CA and took Judge Harold Haley and three jurors hostage in order to negotiate the freedom of "The Soledad Brothers," three African-American prisoners accused of murdering a white prison guard. On October 13, 1970, police captured Davis. Unlike most of her female counterparts on the list, Davis was acquitted on all charges and went on to have a successful career.

Bernardine Rae Dohrn

Dohrn joined the Ten Most Wanted list in 1970. A University of Chicago-educated lawyer and the leader of the radical Weather Underground movement, she was put on to the list because of her Weather-related activities which included the 'Days of Rage' in October of 1969. Dohrn was never caught by the FBI while she was on list because of a federal judge's dismissal of the case against her and her fellow 'Weatherman.' Despite eventually serving on the law faculty at Northwestern, Dohrn did spend less than a year in jail after she turned herself in in 1980 for her various radical activities.

Radical roommates Katherine Ann Power and Susan Edith Saxe (pictured in the next slide) took part in a Black Panther planned plot to protest the Vietnam War in 1970. In order to fund the Panthers, the pair successfully robbed a National Guard armory but in the following bank robbery, one of their accomplices murdered a Boston police officer. Power and Saxe escaped authorities during the botched robbery but were added to the Most Wanted list two months later. Saxe avoided the fed for five years before her arrest, but Power remained on the loose for 23 years before surrendering in 1993. She served six years of a sentence for armed robbery and manslaughter.

Radical roommates Katherine Ann Power (pictured in the previous slide) and Susan Edith Saxe took part in a Black Panther planned plot to protest the Vietnam War in 1970. In order to fund the Panthers, the pair successfully robbed a National Guard armory but in the following bank robbery, one of their accomplices murdered a Boston police officer. Power and Saxe escaped authorities during the botched robbery but were added to the Most Wanted list two months later. Saxe only avoided the fed for five years before her arrest, but Power remained on the loose for 23 years before surrendering in 1993. She served six years of a sentence for armed robbery and manslaughter.

Donna Jean Willmott

Donna Jean Willmott along with Claude Daniel Marks, the first man-and woman-team to land a spot on the Most Wanted List, earned a spot in 1987 after schedming to blow up the federal prison in Leavenworth, KS, in hopes of springing a Puerto Rican nationalist leader. While the pair made a critical error by buying fake explosives from an FBI informant, there were able to evade the authorities and go into hiding for seven years. They were eventually discovered and arrested in 1994 in Pittsburgh, where they had settled down under aliases and started families. Willmott was not your standard terrorist though, and had made a name for herself by working tirelessly for local AIDS charities.

Shauntay Henderson

Shauntay Henderson, a reputed Kansas City gang leader, first appeared on the list in March of 2007 after being identified as the shooter in an exeuction-style murder of a Kansas City man. Henderson was tracked down the same day she first appeared on the list; however, she only ended up serving three years for a voluntary manslaughter rap connected to the murder and was freed in 2010. She quickly got back into trouble though-- a federal grand jury indicted her on weapons charges following a September 2010 car chase with police.