5. Susan Edith Saxe – added October 10, 1970; captured 1975
Susan Edith Saxe was Katherine Ann Power’s roommate and accomplice during the 1970 armed robbery of a National Guard armory and bank.
Both women were also in love with Stanley Bond, one of the ex-cons that helped commit the crimes. However, her fate was the same as her roommate’s. Saxe was recognized by a Philadelphia police officer five years after the incident and was arrested. She was convicted and served eight years in prison for manslaughter and armed robbery. Saxe was paroled in 1982 and later ran a computer company.
In 1993, the New York Times released an article about Power in which her therapist stated, “They are so appalled at what’s going on in Vietnam that they want to do something. They decide to rob a bank and give the money away. But they don’t know anything about robbing a bank.”
4. Bernadine Rae Dohrn – added October 14, 1970; charges dismissed December 7, 1973
A graduate from the University of Chicago Law School, Bernadine Rae Dohrn was a leader of the radical organization Weather Underground by 1970.
In March of the same year, Dohrn went into hiding because three other members accidentally blew up a townhouse and killed themselves in Greenwich Village in New York as they were trying to make bombs.
District Court Judge Damon Keith dismissed her charges three years later and she was dropped from the list. The case against the Weather Underground was obtained by illegal means.
Dohrn and her fiancé William C. Ayers resurfaced in 1980. He, too, was a leader of the revolutionary movement. She was found guilty of separate crimes including aggravated battery and skipping bail, but only received fines and three years of probation.
In 1982, she refused to cooperate with the Grand Jury in regard to an investigation of a 1981 armed robbery in Nanuet, New York. The robbery resulted in the death of two police officers and a Brink’s guard. Members of the Weatherman and the Black Liberation Army were responsible for the attack; Dohrn spent seven months in jail for not cooperating.
Just before the turn of the century, the ex-con began teaching at the Northwestern University School of Law as a clinical associate professor.
3. Angela Yvonne Davis – added August 18, 1970; captured October 13, 1970
The addition of Angela Davis to the list was controversial. A former philosophy professor and revolutionary, she was charged with kidnapping and murder in 1970. Davis evaded arrest and, in turn, was wanted by the FBI.
However, Davis was not at the scene of the crime, as the New York Times reported just one day after her capture, “The charges against Miss Davis do not allege that she was at the scene of the kidnap-murders…Miss Davis was charged under a California law that makes an accomplice equally guilty for having purchased the guns used.”
The weapons Davis bought were used during the infamous trial of the Soledad Brothers. The three men, George L. Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Wesley Clutchette, were accused of murdering a white police guard at Soledad Prison in retaliation for the death of two fellow inmates at the hands of police brutality.
During the trial, four men were killed including a judge with the guns associated to Davis’ name. In 1972, she was acquitted and cleared of all charges.
Davis is a famous political activist and continues to fight for prisoners’ rights and advocate for criminals. She is an influential scholar at the University of California Santa Cruz.
2. Marie Dean Arrington – added May 29, 1969; captured December 22, 1971
Career killer Marie Dean Arrington was convicted of manslaughter for the death of her husband and awaiting sentencing when she murdered again.
While she was out on bail in 1968, Marie Dean Arrington killed Vivian “June” Ritter, a 37-year-old secretary for Bob Pierce, a public defender for Arrington’s children. Her son was sentenced to life in prison for armed robbery and her daughter was serving time for fraud and forgery. Arrington demanded justice from the Florida lawyer.
She angrily drove to Bob Pierce’s office, but he was not there. She then proceeded to take his secretary hostage, shoot her several times, and run her over with a car. Arrington thought this plan would set her children free.
It was not until 1971 that Arrington was captured. She was working as a waitress in New Orleans. She was charged with murder and sentenced to death, but that was deemed unconstitutional. After her conviction was transferred to life in prison, Arrington escaped the penitentiary.
Once again, she was captured and another 10 years was added to her previous life sentence. That did not stop her from accruing over 60 violations in prison over the years including inciting a riot, possession of weapons, battery, and more. At age 80, Arrington died in 2014 at the Lowell Correctional Institution in Florida, which was the same one she escaped from decades before.
1. Ruth Eisemann-Schier – added December 28, 1968; captured March 5, 1969
The first woman to ever be considered dangerous enough to make the FBI’s Most Wanted list was Ruth Eisemann-Schier. She was 26-years-old when she kidnapped a young girl with her accomplice Gary Steven Krist.
She and Krist decided to take Barbara Jane Mackle hostage to demand money. Mackle was the 20-year-old daughter of a millionaire land developer. Her father was friends with Richard Nixon, who was the President-elect at the time of the kidnapping.
In hopes of a hefty paycheck in return, Eisemann-Schier and Krist kidnapped Mackle on December 17, 1968. They took her from a motel in Atlanta and buried her alive. In fact, they kept her alive on purpose. Mackle was put in a box that was a foot and a half underground. However, they supplied her with an air pump, food, water, and even a small battery-operated light.
The kidnappers successfully received $500,000 in small bills for her return. Mackle was buried for 83 hours when she rescued on December 20, 1968. Krist was captured soon after, but Eisemann-Schier escaped and was put on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. She was found the following year in Oklahoma after trying to apply for a nursing job under the alias Donna Sue Wills. A routine fingerprint check revealed her true identity.
She pled guilty to her crimes and admitted that she was in love with her partner in crime. Eisemann-Schier ended up serving just three out of the seven years she was sentenced. In 1979, she was paroled because of the fact that the Georgia Parole Board argued the victim was alive, and Eisemann-Schier never intended on harming her in the first place.
The first women to ever make the FBI’s Most Wanted list was then deported to Honduras.