“Please don’t let me fall,” Mary Surratt said

as she was about to be hung. Surratt was the

first woman to be executed on federal death
row in the U.S. She was involved in the
assassination of Abraham Lincoln and was
charged with conspiracy. Meetings took place
in her home with the man that killed Lincoln,
John Wilkes Booth. She denied knowing who he
was but evidence in her home, including a
portrait of him, proved otherwise. She pleaded
innocent until she was hung in 1865.
 ETthel .Rosenburg was the second woman to ever
be executed on federal death row. Not only was
she the second but she also is the only woman to
be executed for a crime that wasn’t murder. She
was a spy sending private information about the
US’s atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Her
husband, Julius Rosenburg, was also a spy. He
was arrested on suspicion of espionage after being
ratted out by Ethel’s brother. To follow, Ethel was
arrested about two months later. She was found
guilty and put to death by the electric chair on
June 19, 1953.
Ethel Rosenburg
 Bonnie Brown-Heady and her boyfriend, Carl
Hall, were charged with kidnapping and murder.
Bonnie picked up six year old Bobby Greanlease
from his school, pretending to be his aunt. The
couple later shot Bobby multiple times until he
was dead. After, they called his father,
demanding $600,000 in ransom. At the time this
was the largest ransom paid. Later, they were
arrested and sentenced to death. On December
18, 1953 they died together in a gas chamber.

Bonnie Brown-Heady
 Lisa Montgomery was the most recent woman
to be executed on federal death row. It had
been almost seven decades since a woman was
executed on federal death row in the U.S.
Montgomery was charged with kidnapping
resulting in death. She murdered a pregnant
woman named Bobbie Jo Stinnett and took her
baby. Fortunately, the baby survived and is alive
and healthy to this day. On January sixteenth,
2021 she was put to death by lethal injection.

Lisa Montrgomery
 Sources
Chilling Crimes. “Bobbie Jo Stinnett.” Chilling Crimes, www.chillingcrimes.com/blogs/news/bobbie-jo-stinnett. Accessed 21 Sept.
2023.

Hrenchir, Tim. “Lisa Montgomery, a Kansan Who Cut a Baby from a Mother’s Womb, Faces Execution Soon. Here Is
Her Story.” Lisa Montgomery’s Federal Execution Nears, Killed Woman, Cut out Baby, Topeka Capital-Journal, 7
Jan. 2022, www.cjonline.com/in-depth/news/2021/01/07/lisa-montgomery-federal-execution-bobbie-jo-stinnett-cut-out-
baby/4137632001/.

“Bonnie Emily Brown Heady (1912-1953) - Find a...” Find a Grave, www.findagrave.com/memorial/22906/bonnie-emily-
heady. Accessed 21 Sept. 2023.

“Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (d 1953).” Julius and Ethel Rosenberg | Biographies,
www.atomicarchive.com/resources/biographies/rosenbergs.html. Accessed 21 Sept. 2023.