Women on death row in the United States are rarely executed. In fact, there have only been 16 women executed by the state, which is just over one percent of the over 1,400 prisoners put to death using current statistics.
The stories of these women have a lot in common. Virtually all came from difficult, broken childhoods filled with abuse, rape, and upheaval. Money was almost always the motive, with most of them killing their husbands for the life insurance money. Others killed random men in robberies. But there was also the senseless murder of children, sometimes for insurance money, and other times simply for the sake of cruelty.
Many of the women claimed they committed their crimes in self-defense, with others saying they were framed or innocent. In many cases, their attorneys argued the women should have been found not guilty for reasons of insanity. But their pleas and appeals were always rejected, and the women went to their deaths. Most executions have taken place in the last 15 years.
Here is the complete list of female death row inmates who were finally executed.
Women Who Were Given the Death Penalty in the U.S.,
Aileen Wuornos
Wuornos became one of the most well known serial killers in American history after her portrayal by actress Charlize Theron in the 2003 film Monster. She had already lived a life of petty crime, fueled by alcohol, when she committed her first murder in 1989. She killed six more men over the next year, and was finally caught and arrested in a bar in Pennsylvania. She confessed to the killings, and claimed they were all in self-defense. Her story changed a number of times in later years, with Wuornos finally saying she killed the men after robbing them. She was put to death by lethal injection in 2002.
Lois Nadean Smith
Smith was convicted of the July 4, 1982 murder of 21-year-old Cindy Baillee, the former girlfriend of Smith's son, Greg. Smith, along with her son and another woman, picked up Baillee from a motel early on the morning of the murder, and they got into a heated argument. Smith choked Baillee and stabbed her in the throat as they drove to the home of Smith's ex-husband. Once there, Smith taunted the young woman with a pistol, and then shot her nine times in the chest and head while jumping on her body. Smith was executed by lethal injection in 2001.
Lynda Lyon Block
Block and her common-law husband George Sibley were arrested for shooting and killing an Alabama police sergeant during a traffic stop. After going on the run, both were caught, and claimed they were fighting a repressive government that intended to kill them. They had destroyed their driver's licenses and Social Security cards, and claimed Alabama didn't have the authority to try them. They were both found guilty. Block was executed by electrocution in 2002, and Sibley by lethal injection in 2005.
Teresa Lewis
Lewis was found guilty of the murder of her husband and stepson in October 2002, as part of a scam to cash in on a life insurance policy her stepson had taken out before deploying to Iraq. She had hired two young men and given them money to buy the guns they used to shoot the victims. The men broke into their home and shot the husband and stepson, after which Lewis waited almost an hour to call the police - but not before robbing her dead husband.
Kimberly McCarthy
Convicted of murdering her elderly neighbor in 1987, McCarthy was already a crack addict and convicted check forger when the murder was committed. Though she claimed she was framed, prosecutors alleged she stabbed Dorothy Booth to death, beat her with a candelabra, and cut off her finger to steal her diamond ring - which she then pawned for crack money. It was also believed she'd murdered two other elderly women for money to buy drugs, and she was given the death penalty.
After numerous appeals and stays of execution, she became the 500th person executed by Texas after being put to death via lethal injection in 2013.
Suzanne Basso
Basso was one of six co-defendants found guilty of torturing and killing a mentally ill man to get his life insurance money. The killing was particularly sadistic, as the man was beaten, burned with cigarettes and acid, and scoured with a wire brush, before his body was dressed and dumped in a park. Her defense attorneys argued she was mentally unfit for trial and suffering from delusions, but she was seen by prosecutors as the ringleader of the group who killed the man, and she was executed by lethal injection in 2014.
Kelly Gissendaner - 2015
Gissendaner was executed by the state of Georgia in 2015 after an extremely controversial trial and sentencing phase. She was found guilty of organizing the murder of her husband in 1997, hiring a man named Gregory Owen to murder him so she could keep his house and cash in his life insurance. Owen testified against Gissendaner in exchange for a life sentence, while Gissendaner, despite not actually carrying out the killing, was given the death penalty.
After numerous delays in her execution, as well as appeals and pleas for clemency, she was put to death by lethal injection. Her own children had appealed for mercy, despite her orchestrating the killing of her father.
Marilyn Kay Plantz - 2001
Plantz was executed in Oklahoma in 2001 for hiring her teenage boyfriend, Clifford Bryson, to kill her husband so she could cash in his life insurance. Jim Plantz was ambushed and beaten with baseball bats while their children were asleep, then Marilyn drove the body out to the desert, and set it on fire. Plantz and Bryson were tried jointly, and Bryson was put to death a year before Plantz.
Frances Elaine Newton - 2005
Newton was put to death in Texas in 2005 for shooting her husband and two young children, one of whom was just 21 months old. Like many of the other murders committed by women, the motive appeared to be life insurance policies, in this case taken out just before the killings. Newton claimed they were shot by a drug dealer, but she was found guilty, and none of her appeals, including to the Supreme Court, were successful.
Lisa Ann Coleman - 2014
Texas executed Lisa Ann Coleman in 2014 after she was found guilty of murdering Davontae Williams, her partner’s nine-year-old son, by starving him to death. Davontae weighed just 35 pounds at the time and had multiple injuries on his body. Coleman and Marcella Williams, her longtime girlfriend, had restrained, beaten, and tortured him before paramedics finally gained access to their apartment. Coleman's attorney argued that she didn't deny what she did, but was only being executed because of her race and sexual orientation. Marcella Williams pleaded guilty and was given life in prison.