Was This Denver Waitress Really "the Most Dangerous Woman Alive"?

In 1951, fugitive Eleanor Jarman was dubbed "the most dangerous woman alive" by the Chicago Tribune. She was still on the run eleven years after she'd escaped from an Illinois prison where she was serving 199 years as an accomplice to murder.

She might have been serving pancakes at Pete's Kitchen in Denver.

Jarman, also known as "the Blonde Tigress," was allegedly implicated in 37 robberies committed in Chicago during the summer of 1933. She was arrested after one of her partners-in-crime fatally shot a 71-year-old storekeeper during a holdup.

But Jarman served only seven years of her 199-year sentence before she scaled a fence and hitchhiked to freedom wearing a polka-dot dress, never to be seen by authorities again.

Police hunted the infamous outlaw in vain for over a decade; she's believed to be among the longest-sought female fugitives in American history. Now, Colorado author and historical researcher Silvia Pettem thinks she has finally found Jarman — right here in the Mile High City.

Pettem believes that sometime after her escape, Jarman moved to Denver under the alias Marie Millman and worked at restaurants around East Colfax Avenue from 1951 until the mid-1970s, including the Kitchen (now Pete's Kitchen), Super Chef and Sam's Cafe. Millman died in 1980 and is buried in Fairmount Cemetery.

"She just went back to being an ordinary person," Pettem says. "Any of us who were born before 1980 may have passed Eleanor as Marie on the street or been served by her in a restaurant."

Pettem published this conclusion and the details of her research in her 2023 book, In Search of the Blonde Tigress. She says she is "99.9 percent certain" of her findings, noting that no one has come forward to dispute her claim since the book was published. However, she's still looking for one final piece of the puzzle: someone who knew Millman to confirm or deny her identity.

"There's got to be somebody around who remembers her," Pettem says.

Tigress Family Folklore

Pat DeOliveira kept the secret of the Blonde Tigress from her children for as long as she could. She didn't want her kids to know that her grandmother — their great-grandmother — was a notorious criminal. She didn't want them to worry that they would somehow lose their mother, as DeOliveira had lost her parents, and as DeOliveira's father had lost Jarman.

But when DeOliveira's adult son handed her a newspaper with Jarman's face on it in 1993, the truth finally came out. Her son had saved the paper to bring to their family gathering in Santa Clara, amazed and amused at the uncanny resemblance between his mother and this random Chicago outlaw from the '30s.

"My face turned red because I'd never talked to the kids about it," DeOliveira, now 78, recalls. "At that point, I couldn't deny it."

DeOliveira had never met Jarman. Her father and Jarman's son, LaVerne, was only eight years old when Jarman was sent to prison in 1933. He didn't speak much about his mother. The first time DeOliveira heard anything about her grandmother, LaVerne had already abandoned the family. DeOliveira's older brother told her about the legend of the Blonde Tigress when she was eight years old, living in an orphanage.
"The family had its own lore, but when you heard about her, it was all of the negative things. She was the leader of this gang and the most vicious woman in the world. That's all that I knew," DeOliveira explains. "The family didn't want anyone to know about it."

"I thought it was super cool," says DeOliveira's daughter, 56-year-old Christine Camara. "This woman who looked just like my mom, but was the complete opposite, very unlike our normal rule-following family."

Some of their extended family members claim to have information about what happened to Jarman — half-siblings who think she lived on the run until she was over 100, cousins who insist she was smuggled into a bomb shelter and stayed there — but the truth is obscured by interpersonal conflicts and contradicting accounts, DeOliveira says.

LaVerne and his brother, LeRoy, were adamantly against anyone digging into their mother's whereabouts. After LeRoy passed in 1993, his son asked the governor of Illinois to grant Jarman clemency (an act inspiring the newspaper article that DeOliveira's son found). The clemency request was unsuccessful.

At the time, LeRoy's son said he believed Jarman was still alive, but that he had never met her and wasn't in contact with her. He claimed Jarman used to communicate with his father using coded classified ads in newspapers like the Kansas City Star, and that LeRoy dug a tunnel beneath his garage, hoping to one day sneak Jarman inside, but she never came.

Another family member, Jarman's sister-in-law, once told reporters that she had met up with Jarman in 1975 at a bus station in Sioux City, Iowa. She said Jarman asked about how her sons were doing and reported that she was unmarried and working as a waitress in another town, but that Jarman didn't want to let them know where she was going.

None of her relatives have ever revealed where Jarman ended up — if anyone even knows.

"You have to go back to the sons. They controlled it," DeOliveira says of her father and uncle. "LaVerne and LeRoy would not have divulged anything. They were super protective, just dead set against any publicity or any research at all. LeRoy's son waited until his dad died before he went for clemency because his dad would not allow it."

But once they learned about the Blonde Tigress, DeOliveira's children and grandchildren wanted to know more. For decades, they asked DeOliveira questions about her grandmother, and for decades, she re-read the same old articles and re-heard the same family stories, trying to find answers for them. One day, her search yielded a new result: Pettem's book.

Finding Marie Millman

Pettem and two assisting researchers spent more than two years combing through newspaper archives, court transcripts, prison records and genealogical databases to piece together Jarman's life, crimes and possible final whereabouts.

The grandson who requested clemency for Jarman told reporters in 1994 that she used the alias "Marie Mellman or Millman." Pettem searched for records of every woman named Marie Mellman or Marie Millman in the United States within Jarman's general age range. She then eliminated those who were recorded in the federal 1940 census, as Jarman was recorded while in prison. Finally, she removed the Maries with documented parents or siblings, and who married into the last name Mellman/Millman.

That left only one candidate: Marie Millman of Denver, Colorado.

She fit the profile in many ways. According to Pettem's research, she lived alone and had no known family. She was unmarried and worked as a waitress, matching what Jarman's sister-in-law said about their 1975 meeting. Her social security number was issued in Missouri, aligning with the grandson's claim that Jarman communicated with LeRoy using coded ads in the Kansas City Star. And she had no employment or housing records prior to 1951, fitting the timeline from an FBI wanted poster, which said a complaint made in January 1952 alleged that Jarman had fled Illinois.

DeOliveira says she fully believes that Millman is her grandmother. Beyond that, she adds that she is "grateful" for Pettem's book because it is the first thing she's ever read about Jarman that showed her compassion.
Jarman was a 32-year-old mother of two in the midst of the Great Depression, separated from her alcoholic husband who had previously been arrested for nonsupport. She met her lover and eventual partner-in-crime, George Dale, the winter before their 1933 robbery spree. He helped support her and her sons after she had lost her job. The couple soon turned to crime to make ends meet.

During the dozens of robberies, a man named Leo Minneci reportedly drove the getaway car as Jarman stood lookout and Dale acted as the gunman. In their final caper, Dale shot and killed an elderly storekeeper, though media coverage of the murder case disproportionately revolved around Jarman. A Colorado headline from the time reads, "Woman Bandit is Sentenced to 199 Years in Prison," relegating Dale's death sentence to a subhead.

"I believe that she was a victim," Pettem says. "She was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong guy. ...Nobody cared about reading about George, so she got all the press. They sensationalized everything to sell newspapers."

Jarman's "Blonde Tigress" moniker came from newspaper reports that said she attacked the storekeeper "with the savagery of a tigress," accusing her of beating him as he lay dying and naming her the leader of the gang of robbers. Pettem disputes those claims, pointing to their absence from police records and official witness testimonies during Jarman's trial.

"She wasn't this horrible, most dangerous woman in America," Pettem says. "I believe that she was just an ordinary woman. She went along with George to go on these robberies for survival. She was trying to support her kids."

"The Blonde Tigress sells. Ordinary does not sell. But for me, ordinary was just such a blessing," DeOliveira notes. "It was a relief to actually hear that she was a good person. She was a good mother. ...And if it turns out that it wasn't her, Marie, I'm still satisfied because I found out what kind of person she was."

There are some potential holes in Pettem's theory. Millman was supposedly born in 1908, while Jarman was born in 1901. Millman died in 1980, thirteen years before Jarman's grandson petitioned for her clemency under the belief that she was still alive. Pettem's conclusion also rests entirely on the accuracy of the alias, which came second-hand from the grandson, who said he got the name from his father, LeRoy.

Pettem argues that the differing birth years are fitting for a woman on the run. "If you're faking your ID and you're living under an alias, you're not going to use your exact birthdate," she says. "By the time that she was an adult and out being a waitress, a few years difference on her age wouldn't have made any difference."

As for the 1993 clemency request, LeRoy's son said he believed Jarman was still alive because she told LeRoy that she would arrange for someone to notify him when she died. But Jarman could have failed to make the arrangement, or LeRoy could have kept the news from his son. The grandson later said he received a letter claiming to be from Jarman — though it may have been a hoax, as it was sent after his widely-publicized clemency request and began with the phrase, "This is your notorious grandmother, 'the Blond Tigress.'"

After Millman's death in 1980, no one filed for her death benefits and the Denver Probate Court was unable to identify any heir. The court used $25 from her estate to pay a pastor for funeral expenses. If Millman really is Jarman, she would have been 79 at the time of death.

Did You Know the Blonde Tigress?

Millman's grave in Fairmount Cemetery is easy to miss. The small marker lies flush against the lawn, partially obscured by leaves and overgrown grass. The only decoration is a bouquet of lilies and chrysanthemums left by Pettem. She's made the two-hour drive to the grave around eight times to pay her respects; each time, there have been no signs of any other visitors.

"I really think this woman would have been forgotten," Pettem says. "But I am very intrigued with pulling forgotten women out of the past."

Pettem discovered the Blonde Tigress while browsing an online list of missing fugitives never caught by police. She had become fascinated by missing persons cases after writing Someone's Daughter: In Search of Justice for Jane Doe. Pettem's investigative work for that book resulted in the exhumation and eventual identification of a woman found murdered near Boulder Creek in 1954.

Pettem was struck by Jarman's reputation as "the most dangerous woman alive," but as she looked further, she was even more struck by the lack of merit for that title. Jarman was the lookout for the trio of robbers, but the media dubbed her the leader. Her lover shot the storekeeper, but Jarman was called a murderer.

"I was trying to make sense of it all," Pettem says. "I was trying to humanize Eleanor."

She's tried contacting Millman's former employers, neighbors and even the pastor at her funeral to prove whether she really was Jarman, but she's come up empty-handed each time. It has been 45 years since Millman's death, and many of the people who might have been connected to her have since passed away.

Pettem has considered pursuing DNA testing to confirm Millman's identity, but because her death was not a crime like the Boulder murder, she'd need permission from Millman's next-of-kin to exhume her remains. Without definitive proof that Millman is Jarman, there is no known family to give approval.

"I've exhausted the known," Pettem explains. "If I'm wrong about Marie being Eleanor, I'm hoping that the book will lead to her true identity."
Last summer, DeOliveira and Camara traveled from California to Colorado to visit Millman's grave with Pettem, as well as to see the various places Millman worked and lived in Denver; downtown apartments along Stout, Welton, Vine, Pearl and Pennsylvania streets, many of which were demolished and replaced long ago. For the last ten years of her life, Millman lived in an apartment at 330 East 16th Avenue.

The women say the experience made them feel closer to a relative they never got to meet.

"To be there in the diner, to see where her apartment used to be, to go to the cemetery, it made it feel that much more authentic," Camara says. "I am so grateful for that experience. It felt like this is who she was. ...I would be surprised if it turns out to not be her."

DeOliveira and Camara say they are satisfied with what they've learned about Jarman, though they still hope someone who knew Millman may one day reach out with information to "seal the mystery" for good.

Perhaps a long-time regular at Pete's Kitchen will recognize their waitress when they read Jarman's story in Westword, the same way DeOliveira's son discovered his great-grandmother in another newspaper all those years ago.