3 cases tagged “assassination”
Convicted: Lynette Alice 'Squeaky' Fromme
Lynette Alice 'Squeaky' Fromme was a member of the Manson Family, a cult led by Charles Manson. Although she was not directly involved in the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders, her criminal legacy stems from a separate incident. In 1975, Fromme attempted to assassinate US President Gerald Ford. The assassination attempt was unsuccessful, and she was consequently sentenced to life in prison. She was paroled in 2009 after serving approximately 34 years. She also published a book about her life in 2018.
Convicted: Griselda Blanco Restrepo
On the afternoon of September 3, 2012, a gunman dismounted from a motorcycle outside a butcher shop in Medellín, Colombia, and shot a 69-year-old woman twice in the head. He was gone before anyone could stop him. The woman was Griselda Blanco Restrepo, and the method of her killing was one she had invented herself. In the 1970s and 1980s, Blanco built a cocaine empire that shipped 1,500 kilograms of product into Miami every month, generated an estimated $80 million monthly, and left dozens if not hundreds of people dead on both sides of the Atlantic. She mentored Pablo Escobar. She pioneered motorcycle assassinations. She named her youngest son Michael Corleone, after the Godfather character, because she saw the parallel and felt no shame in it. She was convicted of federal drug trafficking in 1985. She beat a capital murder case when her star witness was caught having phone sex with prosecutors' secretaries. She served nearly two decades in prison, suffered a heart attack, was deported to Colombia, and allegedly became a born-again Christian. None of it was enough to save her. The killers who found her outside the Carnicería Cardiso that September afternoon were never identified. She was buried at Jardines de Montesacro cemetery in Medellín, in the same ground as Pablo Escobar. The Godmother of Cocaine, who had ordered the deaths of husbands, rivals, and at least one two-year-old child, ended her life on the same streets where she had built her legend: in Medellín, violently, by surprise. This is her story.
Convicted: Locusta
Locusta, also known as Lucusta, was a notorious poison maker in the 1st-century Roman Empire. She was active during the final two reigns of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and is believed to have been involved in the assassinations of Claudius and Britannicus. Emperor Nero favored her and had her train other poisoners in his service. After Nero's death, Locusta was executed by his successor, Galba.
