Quick Facts
Biography
Marie Dean Arrington (born August 8, 1933, died May 10, 2014 at Lowell Annex, in Ocala Florida) was an American criminal. In 1969 she became the second woman to be placed on the list of FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.
Originally sentenced to death for the murder of Vivian Ritter, a Florida legal secretary who worked for a public defender who unsuccessfully represented her two children on felony charges. Arrington escaped from prison in 1969 while awaiting execution by cutting through a window screen and fleeing in her pajamas.
After she was caught, she was sentenced in 1972 to 10 additional years for escape, but her death sentence was commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down capital punishment as unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia (1972).
Arrington died on May 10, 2014 in Lowell Correctional Institution in Marion County, Florida, the same institution she had escaped from. She was 80 years old.
