In this issue, America’s female Public Enemy No. 1 meets a violent end, a subscriber’s tip leads us to the story of the Stocking Strangler, and the “Witch of Delray” wins her freedom.

We’re Dan Williams and M.J. Van Deventer, co-authors of the forthcoming true crime book Madeline Gets Life, about an Oklahoma model who fell for the wrong guy in wartime New York City and paid a high price. As a bonus this month, M.J. recounts her visit to the prison where Madeline spent a quarter century.

It’s Hard Out There for a Gun Moll

On November 10, 1935, the New York Daily News ran a sensational two-page spread with the headline: “SHOOT HER ON SIGHT!” 

The story recounted the fate of two dozen “gun girls” drawn to gangsters despite the dangers. Most were in prison, a few were still on the run, and three were already dead. 

The article opened with a judge’s warning as he sentenced three women for harboring their fugitive boyfriends: 

“Death or prison is the only ending for that sort of life.”

Reporter Martha Martin likely wrote the feature in response to the murder, just a week earlier, of Vivian Chase—dubbed by the press “Girl Bandit No. 1.”

Arrested in 1932 for a North Kansas City bank robbery, Chase sawed through her jail-cell bars to escape. A year later, she helped her lover, gang leader Irish O’Malley, kidnap a wealthy Illinois banker. 

In 1935, she was a suspect in several holdups in and around Kansas City. Her red hair made her easy to identify. 

At 11 a.m. on November 3, 1935, her body was found in a car left overnight in a Kansas City hospital parking lot. She had been dead only two or three hours—perhaps left there in the hope she’d be found alive and get medical attention. 

Her body lay on the floor in the back of the car. Beneath her was a purse holding a .38-caliber revolver; a five-dollar bill rested under her shoulder.

Police believed she’d been shot during an argument over the division of loot. When she reached for her gun, they said, her partner fired first.

The bullet’s path suggested she was twisted or turning when it struck—entering the right side of her neck, angling downward through her chest, then cracking the car’s window before falling to the floor. 

Chase was 33. At her funeral, only a handful of mourners appeared—none would give their names. An anonymous donor paid for the service and the burial.

Three mobsters were named as suspects, but the case was never solved.

City in Terror: The Columbus Stocking Strangler

In the late 1970s, fear gripped Columbus, Georgia, as a killer targeted elderly women in their homes. It would take years — and one stolen pistol — to unmask him.

Read the full story of Carlton Gary, the “Stocking Strangler,” on the Vintage Crime Vault blog.

Hats off to subscriber Marcia Ludgood for pointing out this vintage case. Email dan@danwilliamsauthor.com if you have a case you’d like the Vintage Crime Gazette to check out.

Co-author M. J. Goes to Prison

Editor’s note: Madeline Webb, subject of our forthcoming book Madeline Gets Life, was an Oklahoma beauty who got caught up in a sensational murder in 1942. She spent a quarter century in a prison north of New York City known as Westfield State Farm. It is now called Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. M.J. Van Deventer recalls a visit in the early 1980s:

It must have been 1981. Madeline Webb died the year before, and I was working on a book about her. I knew I needed to visit the prison in Bedford Hills to see where she spent 25 years of her life. Wasted years! 

At the time, I was a reporter for the Stillwater News-Press, a small-town daily newspaper in Oklahoma. As part of the job, I covered the seasonal fashion shows in New York and other couture capitals. 

On one of my trips, I got permission from the fashion show director to take a day to visit the prison. 

I took the train to Bedford Hills and rented a taxi for the day for $100 plus $25 for the taxi driver’s lunch. 

A prison matron took me on a tour and accompanied me to lunch with “the ladies of the prison.” They wanted to know all about the new fashion trends. They all were dressed in drab uniforms. 

It was an informative day. The prisoners were courteous and wanted to know all about my life — my family, my work, and my interest in fashion. Funny — at the end of my visit, they wanted to know if they would be in the book! 

The matron took me to see some of the prisoners’ cells. One lady reached out and touched my coat, an expensive perk from one of the fashion shows. 

She said, “Lovely – just lovely!” 

The day was almost over. I had to be back in New York City by 6 p.m. – time for dinner and the evening show, the glitzy part of the weeklong event. 

Something I won’t forget — the deafening clank as the steel door to the prisoners’ cells clanged shut. 

I could leave and return to the glamour of the runway. 

The prisoners didn’t have that freedom.

December 1945 in True Crime Infamy

What We’re Reading

If you like your true crime in bite-sized pieces, get a copy of The Best True Crime Stories of the Year 2025, edited by Peter Crooks.

A serial killer stalks the punk rock community in the late 1970s in “Death and the Masque,” by Joe Pompeo. “In Plain Sight,” by Adam Leith Gollner, follows a modern-day Sherlock Holmes as he searches for a stolen Dutch masterpiece.

Ten more stories await the reader, including one about nudists who fought off a man attacking a tourist in San Francisco’s Castro district. Who can resist that?

A new book by justice advocate and podcaster Raven Rollins provides a load of tips and advice for anyone starting out as a true crime writer — and people who have lost loved ones to crime.

This is True Crime takes the reader on a tour of the often-frustrating criminal justice system. It also offers grieving survivors a way to “turn pain into purpose.”

Rollins writes from experience — as the family member of a murder victim and as a survivor of sexual assault.

Full disclosure: I was among a group of early readers of the book. Parts are repetitive and seem rushed, but This is True Crime is a valuable resource for anyone wishing to explore the genre or get involved in advocacy.

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