Top 15 Most Dangerous Women Serving Prison Time In The USA

15 - Lisa Jo Chamberlin

Heavily involved in the manufacturing and use of methamphetamine, Lisa Jo Chamberlin and her boyfriend, Roger Gillett, traveled from Missouri to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to stay with Gillett’s cousin, Vernon Hulett.

They traveled to Mississippi with the intent of finding a place to "cook" the drug and, eventually, to rob Hulett of his perceived wealth and a stash of drugs.

On or about March 20, 2004, the situation inside the Hattiesburg home turned lethal with Gillett and Chamberlin attacking Hulett and Linda Heintzelman also ambushed when she arrived at the house.

After the murders, they cleaned the house with bleach, stole Hulett’s vehicle and several items of value, and drove the freezer containing the bodies back to an abandoned farm in Russellville, Kansas.

The crime came to light on March 29th, 2004, when Kansas authorities followed a tip regarding a suspicious vehicle at the abandoned farm where police discovered the chest freezer.

Chamberlin and Gillett were apprehended shortly thereafter and while Gillett remained largely silent, Chamberlin eventually gave a detailed confession to the FBI and local investigators, admitting her role in the killings.

Chamberlin was tried in Forrest County, Mississippi, in 2006 and sentenced to death by lethal injection, becoming the only woman on Mississippi’s death row at the time.

Chamberlin has spent nearly two decades at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility with a 2017 sentence overturn, a 2018 reinstatement and all her primary appeals currently exhausted.

Her legal team continues to file petitions based on claims of ineffective counsel and her history of mental health issues and childhood trauma are a current factor in the time she has left.

14 - Stella Nickell

Stella Nickell lived in Auburn, Washington, with her husband, Bruce Nickell and despite a public image of a stable marriage, she was heavily in debt and looking for a way out.

Bruce came home from work with a headache and took four Extra-Strength Excedrin capsules but collapsed and died shortly after with doctors initially attributing his death to emphysema.

This was a problem for Stella, as Bruce’s life insurance policy paid a $100,000 indemnity only if his death was accidental and she decided to make Bruce’s poisoning look like part of a larger, random serial tampering event.

She laced five additional bottles of Excedrin with cyanide and placed them on store shelves in the Seattle area with a second victim, 40-year-old bank manager Susan Snow taking two capsules and dying instantly.

During her autopsy, a medical examiner detected the faint scent of "bitter almonds," the telltale sign of cyanide, and after Snow's death was publicized, Stella called the police, claiming she had two bottles of Excedrin that she believed had killed her husband.

Out of thousands of bottles tested in the region, only five were found to be tainted and the fact that Stella "accidentally" purchased two of them, from different stores on different days, made the FBI immediately suspicious.

FBI chemists found tiny green crystals mixed in with the cyanide in the tampered capsules, later identified as "Algae Destroyer," a chemical used in home aquariums.

Investigators discovered that Stella had checked out several books from the local library, including human poisoning and deadly harvest with 84 fingerprints found on the pages, specifically in sections detailing cyanide.

On May 9, 1988, a federal jury found Stella guilty of five counts of product tampering, including two resulting in death and she was sentenced to 90 years in federal prison.

Stella Nickell has spent nearly four decades in the federal prison system and has since admitted to her crimes for the first time, but her request for early release has been denied and she resides at a Federal Correctional Institution in Minnesota.

13 - Genene Jones

Jones worked as a licensed vocational nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit at Bexar County Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Often using medications that were common in a hospital setting, Jones began administering the drugs in lethal amounts before she moved on to a private clinic in Kerrville, Texas.

It was here that she murdered 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan during a routine immunization where she injected her with a rapid-acting, depolarizing neuromuscular blocker.

When the child stopped breathing, Jones pretended to be shocked and attempted to "rescue" her, but the child died en route to the hospital and the investigation into Jones began.

The investigation into Jones revealed a staggering institutional scandal that uncovered destroyed medical records from Bexar County after she had been asked to leave.

Jones was eventually tried for the murder of Chelsea McClellan and the injury of another child, Rolando Santos with her found guilty and sentenced to 99 years for the murder and 60 years for the injury.

Under a mandatory release law in Texas designed to manage prison overcrowding in the 1970s, Jones was scheduled to be automatically released in March 2018 after serving only a third of her sentence.

To prevent her release, prosecutors in San Antonio scrambled to find evidence for "old" cases the hospital had previously buried and eventually indicted her for five additional murders from the early 1980s.

In January 2020, Jones, pleaded guilty to the 1981 murder of 11-month-old Joshua Sawyer in exchange for the dismissal of the other four new charges and she is is currently one of the most high-security female inmates in the Texas system.

12 - Holly Elkins

Holly Elkins, who began dating Andrew Beard in April 2020, quickly became obsessed with removing his ex-wife Alyssa from the picture so she could step into the role of mother to their young child.

Elkins and Beard began a relentless campaign to sabotage Alyssa’s life and even placed a GPS tracker on her car and made false 911 calls claiming she was driving erratically.

In a more sinister move, they conspired to plant a gun and drugs in Alyssa's vehicle and then called the police to report her for drug dealing at the apartment complex where she worked.

In August 2020, Elkins falsely reported to police that Alyssa’s mother had attacked her, even going so far as to scratch her own chest to provide "evidence" for the lie.

When the harassment failed to strip Alyssa of custody, the plan turned lethal and Elkins purchased Maybelline "Java" foundation so Beard, who is white, could disguise himself as a Black man.

On the morning of October 2, 2020, Beard—dressed in a black rain-suit and wearing the dark makeup—ambushed Alyssa in her work parking lot in Carrollton, Texas, shooting her in the head.

While the murder was taking place, Elkins stayed at Beard's home with Alyssa's daughter to create a "normal" facade and later lied to detectives, swearing that Beard had been home with her the entire morning.

The investigation took nearly three years to fully implicate Elkins as the orchestrator while Beard eventually pleaded guilty and received 43 years, but not before providing testimony that Elkins was "running the show."

A federal jury in Dallas convicted Elkins of conspiracy to stalk, stalking using a dangerous weapon resulting in death, and brandishing a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.

A U.S. District Judge sentenced Holly Elkins to two consecutive life terms in federal prison, a sentence notably longer than that of the actual killer but one life sentence was later vacated by the appeals court.

Despite this technical legal win on one count, her first life sentence for stalking resulting in death was affirmed, and, as of 2026, she remains incarcerated for the rest of her natural life.

11 - Kristen Gilbert

Kristen Gilbert was a seemingly highly competent nurse at the Northampton Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the early 1990s, but she soon turned her workplace into a personal hunting ground.

Gilbert would inject patients' IV bags with massive, lethal doses of adrenaline, a heart stimulant that is nearly untraceable in the blood after death and induces sudden, violent cardiac arrest.

Gilbert craved the thrill of "Code Blue" emergencies and by inducing the crisis, she could showcase her medical proficiency during resuscitation efforts.

She was also having an affair with a hospital security guard, James Perrault and hospital rules required security to be present at all medical emergencies with Gilbert always sending codes so he had to come to the ward.

Her coworkers noticed that patients dropped dead so frequently on her shifts that they jokingly nicknamed her the "Angel of Death," unaware of how real that title actually was.

The case against Gilbert was built on a groundbreaking use of statistical evidence and Gilbert's trial was a landmark because it took place in Massachusetts, a state that had abolished the death penalty.

However, because the crimes occurred on federal property, the federal government was able to seek the death penalty.

She was convicted on three counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder, and two counts of attempted murder but the jury could not reach a unanimous decision on the death penalty.

She was sentenced to four consecutive life terms plus 20 years and has remained in FMC Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas for a quarter of a century.

10 - Aafia Siddiqui

Born in Pakistan in 1972 and moving to the United States in 1990, Siddiqui appeared to be the epitome of the "American Dream" for over a decade.

She earned an undergraduate degree from MIT and a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Brandeis University and was highly active in Islamic charity work, yet all this turned out to be a cover for extremist fund-raising.

Following the 9/11 attacks, Siddiqui came under intense FBI scrutiny and interrogations of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reportedly identified her as a high-level courier and financier for al-Qaeda.

In March 2003, Siddiqui disappeared in Karachi, Pakistan, along with her three young children and her whereabouts for the next five years are a subject of intense international debate.

Supporters and human rights organizations claimed she had been abducted by Pakistani intelligence and turned over to U.S. forces, where she was allegedly held and tortured at Bagram Airbase as "Prisoner 650."

The U.S. government has consistently denied these claims, asserting that she was in hiding with al-Qaeda operatives and had even married Ammar al-Baluchi, Khalid's nephew, during this time.

Unlike many terrorism suspects of the era, Siddiqui was not sent to Guantanamo Bay but was flown to New York City to face trial in a federal civilian court.

Charged with attempted murder and armed assault of U.S. officers, she was was found guilty on all counts and made several outbursts, blaming "Israel" and "Zionists" for her predicament.

The Pakistani government has officially requested her repatriation multiple times, and she is often referred to as the "Daughter of the Nation" in Pakistani media.

9 - Kimberly Clark Saenz

Another licensed vocational nurse, this time working at the DaVita Dialysis Clinic in Lufkin, Texas, her professional facade hid a deeply troubled personal life and a checkered employment history.

At the time she was hired by DaVita in 2007, Saenz had been fired from at least four previous healthcare jobs and this included a dismissal from a local hospital after she was caught stealing Demerol.

Saenz struggled with prescription drug dependence and a volatile marriage in the year leading up to the murders with her husband filing for divorce and obtained a restraining order against her following domestic disturbances.

In April 2008, an alarming spike in medical emergencies occurred at the Lufkin clinic with emergency services called to the facility 30 times in that month alone, compared to just twice in the preceding 15 months.

Saenz had utilized common cleaning supplies found in the clinic and would draw a solution of bleach into syringes, which she then injected directly into the dialysis lines of patients while they were undergoing treatment.

She was soon caught and eventually convicted of murdering five patients while also convicted of injuring five others who survived the initial poisoning.

A search of Saenz's computer revealed a chilling history of Google searches, including queries about "whether bleach could kill" and "could bleach be detected in dialysis lines."

In March 31, 2012, she was found guilty of capital murder and aggravated assault with the jury opting for Life in Prison without the possibility of parole and three consecutive 20-year sentences for the assaults to ensure she would never leave prison.

Kimberly Saenz remains one of the most notorious inmates in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

8 - Christine Paolilla

Born in 1986 on Long Island, Paolilla’s early life was marked by hardship and her father died in a construction accident when she was two, and her mother struggled with drug addiction.

Paolilla suffered from alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder that caused her to lose all her hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes, with her wearing ill-fitting wigs and thick makeup, making her a target for relentless bullying.

Two popular girls, Rachael Koloroutis and Tiffany Rowell befriended her, teaching her how to apply makeup and choose better wigs.

By her senior year in 2003, Paolilla had been voted "Miss Irresistible" by her classmates and was no longer an outcast, but she remained deeply insecure, a vulnerability that led her to Christopher Snider, a 21-year-old with a criminal record.

Snider and Paolilla’s relationship was fueled by heroin and mutual toxicity and they decided on a summer afternoon, to both travel to Tiffany Rowell’s house, reportedly to steal drugs.

Inside the home were Paolilla’s friends, Tiffany and Rachael, along with Tiffany’s boyfriend, Marcus Precella, and his cousin, Adelbert Sanchez when an argument broke out.

Snider and Paolilla opened fire with a 9mm pistol and a revolver with all four victims shot multiple times and Paolilla turning up for her shift at Walgreens as if nothing had happened.

For three years, the "Clear Lake Murders" remained unsolved with Paolilla living a double life, attending the victims' funerals, crying alongside their families, while secretly continuing her drug-fueled downward spiral.

In 2006, a tip came from a man who had been in drug rehab with Paolilla saying she had confessed the murders to him in a moment of heroin-induced guilt and police tracked her to a motel in San Antonio.

He told police that Paolilla had admitted to the killings, describing her as a "maniac" during the attack and Christopher Snider fled to South Carolina where he took his own life.

Paolilla’s trial focused heavily on her defense's claim that she was a "timid follower" who had been manipulated and coerced by Snider which the jury rejected and she was convicted of capital murder.

Because she was 17 at the time of the murders, she was ineligible for the death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison, currently serving her time at the Christina Melton Crain Unit where her parole date is 2046.

7 - Reta Mays

Born in Reynoldsville, West Virginia, Mays was a United States Army West Virginia National Guard veteran who served from November 2000 to April 2001 and again from February 2003 to May 2004.

She deployed to Iraq and Kuwait with her engineer battalion and after returning, she worked as a corrections officer at the West Virginia Department of Corrections at North Central Regional Jail in Greenwood, West Virginia.

Mays began working as a nursing assistant at the Louis A. Johnson Veterans Medical Center in 2015 where she had no certification or license to care for patients.

Assigned to work nightshifts on ward 3A, the elderly patients on the ward began suffering mysterious acute drops in their blood sugar level with several passing away from acute hypoglycemia.

However, many of the deaths were of individuals who were not insulin-dependent with one patient found to have been injected with insulin four times and the hospital began an internal investigation.

A total of 112 patients on Ward 3A died while Mays was employed there as a nursing assistant with 21 of these thought to be suspicious in the event finding investigation.

In July 2020, Mays was arrested and charged with the murders of eight individuals but these charges were later reduced to seven second-degree murders and one count of intent to commit murder.

On July 14th, 2020, Mays pleaded to seven counts of second-degree murder and one count of attempted murder and waived her right to a grand jury trial, later sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences, plus 20 years.

Mays was ordered to pay $172,624.96 to the victims' families and is currently serving her sentence at FCI Aliceville in Alabama.

6 - Angela Johnson

In the early 1990s, Dustin Honken was a chemistry wizard who ran a massive methamphetamine operation in Iowa, but he was arrested in 1993 after two of his distributors began cooperating with federal authorities.

While out on bond, Honken met Angela Johnson who became his girlfriend and his most loyal foot soldier who he tasked with eliminating the federal governments witnesses.

Johnson played a crucial role in the disappearances of five people and famously posed as a saleswoman to get inside Greg Nicholson's home to scout the location.

Honken and Johnson abducted Greg Nicholson, his girlfriend Lori Duncan, and Lori’s two daughters, Kandi and Amber who were executed in the woods near Mason City.

Terry DeGeus, Honken’s former dealer and Johnson’s ex-boyfriend, were lured to a meeting where he was beaten and shot multiple times, and his body was buried in a separate remote location.

For seven years, the five people were listed as missing and Honken was eventually convicted on drug charges, but the murders remained a mystery until Johnson was arrested in 2000.

While in jail awaiting trial, Johnson shared a cell with a government informant named Robert McNeese and, to impress him, she drew a map of the locations where the bodies were buried.

Using Johnson’s map, the FBI exhumed the remains of the five victims in late 2000 and the discovery of the two young girls, turned public sentiment fiercely against her.

Johnson was sentenced to death for the murders of the two children and life in prison for the adults, but, in 2012, a judge vacated her death sentence, ruling that her lawyers failed to present enough evidence regarding her mental health.

She is currently serving her sentence in Minnesota and Dustin Honken was executed by the federal government on July 17th, 2020.

5 - Holly Ann Grigsby

Holly Grigsby, a 24-year-old from Oregon, had a history of drug use and minor criminal offenses when her life took a dark turn after becoming involved with Joey Pedersen, a man deeply entrenched in white supremacist ideology.

Both Grigsby and Pedersen were members of white supremacist groups and their relationship was fueled by a violent, "revolutionary" fervor, with the couple claiming they wanted to "purify" the country through targeted violence.

The spree began in Everett, Washington, and moved south through Oregon and into Northern California, fueled by Pedersen's long-standing personal resentment toward his family and a desperate need for resources to fund their "revolution."

On September 26, 2011, the couple went to the home of Pedersen’s father, David "Red" Pedersen, and his stepmother, Leslie "Dee Dee" Pedersen, gunning them down.

After stealing their car and credit cards, the couple fled south, encountering 19-year-old Cody Myers at a gas station and kidnapped him, drove him to a wooded area, and shot him to death.

On October 4th, the couple murdered 53-year-old Reginald Clark in Eureka, California before the spree ended when a California Highway Patrol officer spotted their vehicle on a remote road in Yuba County and they were detained.

Inside the car, police found a stash of weapons, including a rifle and several knives with Grigsby expressing no remorse and detailing the murders with a chilling detachment.

To avoid the death penalty, both Grigsby and Pedersen eventually pleaded guilty to multiple counts of murder and racketeering, later sentenced to life without parole.

4 - Blanche Taylor Moore

A staple of her community in Burlington, Blanche Taylor Moore was a deacon at her church and worked as a supervisor at a Kroger grocery store.

To her neighbors, she was a selfless caregiver who spent her time nursing sick friends and family members, but in reality, Moore was a calculating poisoner who eliminated men once they no longer served her financial or emotional needs.

It wasn't until 1989 that authorities realized Moore’s life was surrounded by an impossible number of "unlucky" deaths, when her boyfriend, Reverend Dwight Moore, fell deathly ill and doctors finally looked for a sinister cause.

Blanche's first husband, James Taylor, died in 1973, with the cause given as a massive heart attack, but an exhumation revealed he had the highest level of arsenic ever recorded in a human being in the state of North Carolina.

Even her own father wasn't safe. P.D. Kiser died in 1966 after a brief, agonizing illness characterized by severe gastrointestinal distress and it was later revealed he had also been poisoned.

Several more murders of men who dated Blanche, revealed poisoning on an untold scale, with hair loss, skin peeling, and severe neuropathy all reported before death.

Detectives searched Blanche’s home and found a bottle of an arsenic-based pesticide and also discovered she had been "treating" the Reverend with homemade food during his hospital stay.

Blanche Taylor Moore was tried in 1990 for the murder of Raymond Reid, was found guilty of first-degree murder and on January 18th, 1991, she was sentenced to death.

Blanche Taylor Moore is currently one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the United States and is currently serving her sentence at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women.

3 - Celeste Carrington

In early 1992, over the course of just six months, Carrington transformed from a woman struggling with financial instability into a cold-blooded murderer who terrorized the Silicon Valley and San Carlos areas of California.

Carrington worked various low-level jobs, including as a janitor for several businesses in San Mateo County, buildings she would later target in a chilling crime spree.

On January 19th 1992, Carrington entered the Palo Alto office of a janitorial service where she had previously worked and encountered Victor Morgan, a 34-year-old worker before shooting him twice.

Just a week later, Carrington struck again at a cellular phone company in San Carlos where she confronted Caroline Loftus, a 36-year-old woman working late, shooting her in the head.

Carrington's final attack involved Allan "Mitch" Saunders, a 34-year-old man working at a medical office in Redwood City, who was shot in much the same fashion as the others, but he survived the attack.

His ability to provide a description and details about the shooter became a cornerstone of the investigation and a break in the case came through a combination of forensic evidence and Saunders' testimony.

When police arrested Carrington, they found the .357 Magnum used in the killings, but During her interrogation, Carrington was eerily calm while she confessed to the murders on video.

She admitted that she enjoyed the feeling of power that came with holding a gun and deciding who lived or died, was tried in San Mateo County and found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder.

On November 23rd, 1994, Celeste Carrington was sentenced to Death, becoming one of the few women on California’s death row at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla.

2 - Cynthia Lynn Coffman

Coffman was born in 1962 in St. Louis, Missouri, but was divorced by the age of 24, having given birth to a daughter and drifting through life with a history of minor drug use.

In 1986, she met James Marlow in Barstow, California, shortly after his release from prison who had been nicknamed the "Folsom Wolf" due to his time spent in Folsom State Prison and his intimidating, tattooed appearance.

Under Marlow's influence, Coffman underwent a radical change, becoming heavily tattooed, including a prominent piece on her back that read "Property of Folsom Wolf."

Together, they embarked on a methamphetamine-fueled journey across the Western United States with crimes that were characterized by kidnapping, assaults, and cold-blooded murder.

Between October and November 1986, three people lay dead and they were apprehended on November 14th, 1986, just two days after the murder of Corinna Novis, their third victim.

During interrogation, Coffman initially tried to portray herself as a victim of Marlow's abuse, claiming he had brainwashed her and forced her to participate but police saw above her lies.

Coffman and Marlow were tried separately for the murder of Novis and Coffman was found guilty of first-degree murder with special circumstances, but still sentenced to death.

She has spent half her life on death row and was convicted of another murder in 1992, for which she received a sentence of life imprisonment.

1 - Cherie Lash-Rhoades

Cherie Lash-Rhoades was once a woman of significant standing, a former chairwoman of a federally recognized tribe of people in Alturas, California, she was a central figure in her community’s governance and daily life.

By 2014, however, the atmosphere had soured and Rhoades was embroiled in a bitter internal struggle with federal and tribal authorities investigating allegations of financial misconduct involving federal grants.

The tribe was in the process of evicting her and her son from tribal housing and disenrolling them, a move that would strip them of their tribal identity, voting rights, and financial benefits.

The tension reached a breaking point on a cold Thursday afternoon during a tribal council meeting intended to address the eviction and disenrollment proceedings when Rhoades arrived at the tribal office.

She had not come come to negotiate and in a matter of seconds had shot and killed four people, including her own sister, her nephew, her niece and the tribal administrator before running out of ammunition.

She then grabbed a butchers knife from the kitchen and attacked two other people before fleeing the building as the weapon was wrestled away only to be apprehended by police in the parking lot of a nearby covered walkway.

In 2017, to avoid a lengthy trial and the possibility of a death sentence, Rhoades pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder.

She was sentenced to Life in Prison without the possibility of parole and currently resides at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, the states highest security unit for women.

Thanks for watching, if you enjoyed the video then make sure to check out more women's prison videos including the Bedford Hills correctional center on the right and the closed Holloway women's prison in the UK on the left. We will see you in the next video.