Women Behind Bars

Bios

Dawn Amos

Dawn Amos was born in 1970 and grew up in the small town of Haysville, Kansas. Although she was close with her mother, she never knew her father, who was sent overseas during the Vietnam War...

Lourdes Valdes-Fuerte

Lourdes Valdes-Fuerte was born in 1943 in Cuba to a very loving family. By the mid 1950’s, Cuba was in the throes of the Communist revolution but the 15 year old still found time for love...

Angela Ferguson and her twin sister were born in 1966 in North Carolina. As a child, she moved frequently because her father was in the army. When Angela was a young teen, she went scuba diving with her dad under the Narrows Bridge...

Virgina Warden

Virginia Warden was born in 1950 and grew up in Seattle, Washington. She describes her childhood as happy. Her parents were upper middle class and she and her sister never wanted for anything...

Courtenay Savage

Courtenay Savage was born in New York City in 1975 and shortly after moved to New Jersey. She grew up an affluent neighborhood, but was not wealthy herself. By the age of 13, Courtenay developed a fixation on making money that would haunt her as an adult...

Lorri Worley

Lorri Worley was born in Mississippi in 1961 into a close-knit family. The youngest of three, Lorri looked up to her older sister Stephanie. In high school, Lorri joined the gymnastics team but her athletic pursuits were cut short when she became pregnant in her junior year...

Alice Knestaut

Alice Knestaut was born in 1965 and grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana. According to Alice, her parents were very loving but allegedly her grandfather and a family friend molested her on a continual basis...

Sarah Allen

Sarah Allen was born in 1978 and grew up in Florida. During her school years, Sarah struggled to fit in because her multi-racial origins caused confusion in the young student...

Helen Shreves

Helen Shreves grew up Huntington, West Virginia. She was adopted at a young age. According to her daughter April, she slept on the porch and was subjected to verbal abuse...

Jennifer Latham

Jennifer Latham was born in 1968 and grew up in Florida. She didn’t have a lot of friends but was very close to her sister Penny. While other kids were dreaming of college and careers, Jennifer wanted nothing more than to have a family of her own...

Gwen Hendricks, Emi Masih

Gwen Hendricks was born in 1955 in Tennessee. Her father was a naval officer and the family moved every few years. She developed a strong faith in God and an appetite for adventure...

Jocelyn Cantu

Jocelyn Cantu was born in 1985 and grew up in San Antonio, Texas. Jocelyn’s mother was just 16 when she gave birth and began experimenting with heroin. Before Jocelyn turned two, she was left in the care of her grandmother...

Angela Rocka

Angela Rocka was born in Houston, Texas in 1969. According to her attorney, Angela was given up for adoption because her birth mother was a habitual drug user...

Melissa Dean Harris

Melissa Harris was born in Tyler, Texas in 1967. She had a sister Kim who was seven years older, who Melissa says, was almost like a mother figure. According to both sisters, their grandfather sexually abused them as children...

Evelyn Jackson

Evelyn Jackson was born in 1981 and grew up in Harvey, Illinois. Her father and grandparents raised Evelyn and her three brothers when her mother left, to save herself from her father’s alleged abuse...

Roberta Jeannie Moore and Donna Duggins

Roberta "Jeannie" Moore was born in 1958 in Dallas, GA. Her sister Donna Jean followed 6 years later in 1964. Donna was the youngest of the five children...

Lori McLuckie

Lori McLuckie grew up in Old Bridge, New Jersey in 1961. Her father was an executive at a telephone company and money, Lori says, was never a concern for her family...

Teresa Roever

Teresa Roever was born in 1956 and grew up in Mule Shoe, Texas. She has fond memories of her parents and her childhood. At age 15, Teresa dropped out of school to give birth to a son...

Patricia Sexton

Patricia Sexton was born in Duncanville, Texas in 1975. Her biological father was in prison for murder and her young mother, Linda, turned to her parents for help...

Willie Mae Hampton

Willie Mae Hampton was born in 1957 and grew up in the projects in Fort Pierce, Florida. In addition to the stress of crime and drugs in the neighborhood, Willie Mae claims she was physically and sexually abused...

Holly Coomber

Holly was born in upstate New York in 1969 and was adopted by the Coomber family at 18 months old. She lived in Newark and was a self-proclaimed tomboy. Holly claims that she was physically abused by her mother and sexually abused by her brothe...

Renay Lynch

Renay Lynch was born in 1956 into a large family in upstate New York. Renay claims that although her mother raised her children alone, she was an alcoholic...

Jennifer Freels

Jennifer Freels was born in 1960 and lived in Aurora, Colorado. She was the second child of four; her childhood, she says was one in which she and her siblings were routinely beaten with belts and a broomstick...

Teresa Deion Smith Harris

Teresa Deion Smith Harris, known as Deion, was born in 1970 in Tennessee. Her mother struggled with chronic health issues so Deion spent much of her time with her grandmother...

LaSonya Larry

LaSonya Larry was born in 1971 and grew up in Clearwater, Florida. It was primarily her grandmother who cared for her as her mother was on drugs, and living on the street with different men...

Natasha Cornett

Natasha Cornett was born in 1979, and grew up in the small, religious mining town of Pikeville, Kentucky. Her mother divorced her husband when Natasha was young, and raised her daughter as a single mother...

Anita Gonzales

Anita Gonzales was born in 1959, and grew up on the coast of northern Florida. From an early age, Anita tested her parents and defied their rules. She dropped out of high school before graduating...

Lutrische Dancy

Lutrische Dancy was born in 1962, and grew up in a working class neighborhood near Miami, Florida. She was one of nine children in a church-going family...

Diane Fleming

Diane Fleming was born in Colorado in 1957. When she was four, her parents moved back to Fredericktown, Missouri. Her grandfather had some horses, pigs and cows, and for Diane, it was like growing up on a farm...

Shelby Carano

Shelby Carano was born in 1965 and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. When she was seven, her parents separated and she lived with her father. She spent a lot of time with her aunt, who introduced her to alcohol at the age of nine...

Angela Turner

Angela Turner was born an only child in Southern Alabama in 1978. Angela’s mother remarried several times and her grandparents helped to raise her...

Sharon Mabry

Sharon Mabry was born in 1956 and grew up in a middle class community in Detroit, Michigan. Although her mother was a devout Jehovah’s Witness, as Sharon became a teenager, she rebelled against her religious upbringing...

Karen Mullally

Karen Mullally was born in 1952 and grew up in Syracuse, New York. Although Karen’s father left the family when she was very young, her mother soon remarried, providing a stable childhood during her early years...

Linda Pillius

Linda Pillius was born in 1958 and grew up in Orange County, New York. As Linda tells it, although she was close to her mother, her father’s constant alleged abuse was a major contributor to her problems as an adolescent and an adult...

Jessica Gentry

Jessica Gentry was born in Dallas, Texas in 1976. Both of her parents were allegedly alcoholics and by the time Jessica was six, she had two brothers whom she took care of...

Shannon Buard

Shannon Yvette Buard was born in 1969 and grew up in the tough Oak Cliff section of South Dallas. She dropped out of school in the eighth grade when she discovered she was pregnant...

Marion Faye Cason

Marion Faye Cason was born in 1978 in Boaz, Alabama. Her family says she was a happy and adventurous child. Her brother was born when Marion was 11 and the following year the Casons’ moved to Live Oak, Fla...

Donna Buchanan

Donna Buchanan was born in 1962 and grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia. When she was 12 years old, her relationship with her father began to deteriorate...

Patricia Donnelly

Patricia Donnelly was born in 1976 and was raised in El Paso, Texas. She grew up believing that her grandmother was her mother and her mother was her sister...

Alicia Williamson

Alicia Williamson was born in 1965 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her mother was a teenager when she had Alicia and her younger brother Willy. The family lived in the projects west of downtown Birmingham...

Deborah Rolle

Deborah Rolle was born in Miami, Florida in 1960, into a large family of 12 children. She says she always wished she could have had more attention from her mother and father...

Gena Shaughnessy

Gena Shaughnessy was born in Louisiana in 1968. She was the eldest of three daughters, and when she was three years old, her family moved to the working class neighborhood of Canaryville in Chicago...

Heather Frango

Heather Frango was born in Virginia in 1980. Relatives say Heather’s mother separated from Heather’s father a month before Heather was born...

Jackie Alexander

Jackie Alexander, the eldest of five children, was born in 1962 in Charlotte, North Carolina. When Jackie was a young teen, her mother died of cancer. Her inner turmoil became a big problem, and she began a lifelong pattern of acting out her anger...

Dolly Mae Clapp

Dolly Mae Clapp was born in Lackawanna, New York in 1959. When Dolly was very young, her father died, and Dolly and her three brothers were put in foster care for several years...

Shaniqua Brown

Shaniqua Brown was born in Queens, New York in 1983 and was raised by a single mom. When Shaniqua was 11 years old, her mother moved the family to an apartment complex in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where gang members hung out...

Denise Holsinger

Denise Holsinger was born in Lexington, Missouri in 1964. Her parents separated when she was a still a baby. Her mother remarried twice and two younger brothers were born...

Vanessa Crawley

Vanessa Crawley was born in rural Virginia in 1985, the middle daughter of Roy and Robbie Gail Johnson. After ending the marriage, Vanessa’s mother moved to Kentucky, where Vanessa and her sisters visited every summer...

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