Hill was born in 1916 into the first American generation to emerge from the 1920s, when women started their “liberation” from their late Victorian-era mothers’ harsh rubrics about dating and sexual mores. While on assignment in Mexico, she flashed her pricey furs, jewels and body to seduce wealthy and powerful men to seal heroin deals for the syndicate and secure the cash. It didn’t seem to matter much to her – it was merely what had to happen at the moment. Some, or many of them – such as Adonis and her obsessive love, Siegel – she slept with, but others she did not. These men employed her as a money launderer, cash courier, Mexican heroin trafficker and informant on Mob activities. From the 1930s to the late 1940s, her beguiling ways and steely nerves enticed, and inspired the confidence of, top-flight hardened mobsters such as Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, Anthony Accardo, Jake Guzik, Murray Humphreys, Charles Fischetti, Jack Dragna, Joe Adonis, and, of course, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. With a larcenous streak and willingness to use sex to get what she wanted, she reached the highest heights of any woman in America’s national syndicate, then or since. She also engaged in an array of organized crimes, including laundering money, delivering illicit cash and trafficking heroin from Mexico.Īny list of women in organized crime, at least in America, has to include Virginia Hill. Virginia Hill Virginia Hill was more than a Mob mistress. As a result, we did not consider such recognized female offenders as Bonnie Parker of the Barrow gang and Ma Barker of the Barker crew for this list. Since we consider “organized crime” to be multi-layered, structural criminal organizations, smaller teams of bandits from the 1930s “Gangster Era” are not included. Here are descriptions of five women who broke the glass ceiling and gained a measure of success, if temporarily, in organized crime. In the United States, where crime is less organized and the La Cosa Nostra is only a shadow of its former self, that hasn’t proved true – with some notable historical exceptions. They’re very good at mapping out strategy, even sharper (than the men).” “They are either widows or wives of husbands who have been put in prison. “There is a growing number of women who hold executive roles,” Gaetano Maruccia, an Italian police commander in greater Naples, told The Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2009. Women have served as acting bosses in Italy’s major crime families, including the ’Ndrangheta and Camorra. Even though women made up only 2.5 percent of those sent to prison for Mafia-linked crimes, they controlled a third of Mafia financial resources. Recent research by TransCrime shows that male bosses headed for prison commonly hand their assets over to their wives or sisters. According to the investigative news website TransCrime, while Italian courts indicted only one female boss in 1989, they indicted 89 of them in 1995. These limitations, along with the increase of bosses sent to prison, induced the Mafia to transfer its illicit funds and control of criminal rackets increasingly to women. The rules include no phone use and tight restrictions on prison visits and recreation to restrain communication. Another imposes precise rules on selected prison inmates convicted of murder, extortion or other Mafia-type crimes. One national statute gives the government the right to seize the assets of suspects who intimidate, exploit or use codes of silence to obtain businesses, or to sway elections. In Italy, where its ubiquitous organized crime is seemly entrenched for good, this reality has presented opportunities for a number of women to substitute for or replace men as crime bosses.Īnti-Mafia crackdowns by Italian police started in the 1980s with stringent new laws. These men receive lengthy prison terms, creating the demand for outside help to run their rackets. However, that history has changed to a limited but important degree within the past couple of decades, as law enforcement agencies across the globe arrest more and more male Mob bosses and drug kingpins. American crime families have been men-only clubs, and women can’t be “made.” In Mob movies, females typically portray mothers, wives, siblings, girlfriends, “molls” and, at best, crime-wise, low-level smugglers. America’s La Cosa Nostra and Sicily’s Mafia are old-style patriarchies. They traditionally relegated women to servile roles as prostitutes, shills, dancers and servers. Men have dominated the history of organized crime as bosses, capos, soldiers and associates.
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