Today we're exploring those rare and hopeful instances where victims managed to break out of their captors' clutches and flee to freedom. We'll dive into clips from shows across the Parcast Network, and discuss all the ways in which a victim might escape and the psychological effects their traumatic experiences might have had on them.

She was a turn-of-the-20th century medical practitioner who preached starvation as a method of curing disease.

Anne Bonny and her lover Calico Jack Rackham tore through the Caribbean together from 1718 to 1720, plundering loot from smaller ships.

Today we're taking a closer look at women who subverted their maternal expectations to lead a life of crime.

She never wanted to grow up. Treva Throneberry did everything she could to delay adulthood,

Today we explore the idea of Psychological Manipulation—the tactics criminals use to deceive, coerce, and exert control over their victims.

By the winter of 1924, Celia Cooney had robbed 10 stores with her husband across Brooklyn. "The Bobbed-Haired Bandit" eventually ran out of luck, only to find that her capture and trial made her a nationwide star.

Also known as the “Bobbed-Haired Bandit,” Celia Cooney and her husband became a media sensation during the winter of 1924 when they pulled off ten robberies in just under three months.

Stories of her exploits on Rum Row in the early 1920s made Gertrude Lythgoe a tabloid darling. As books and article series were published,

During Prohibition, while most young women were focused on getting married and having a family, Gertrude Lythgoe was busy running her wholesale liquor empire in the Bahamas.

Up until 2001, Ana Montes led a double life as a Cuban spy and a high-ranking analyst in the U.S. intelligence community.

Ana Belen Montes was a smart, ambitious Puerto-Rican American with a passion for defending the sovereignty of Latin American nations. In 1985, her drive for social justice found an outlet when she was recruited as a spy for Cuban Intelligence.

By the late 1960s, Valerie Solanas tried to start an underground feminist movement using Andy Warhol to publicize her vision for a new world.

A radical feminist writer who overcame a childhood of poverty and sexual abuse to put herself through college.

In 1726, Mary Toft seemed to birth a series of strange creatures: rabbits, cats, and never-before-seen hybrid animals.

By 1997, Mary Kay Letourneau's affair with her 13-year-old student seemed doomed to be exposed when she found herself pregnant with his baby.

After a troubled childhood, Mary Kay Letourneau always thought she had to be perfect: the perfect daughter, the perfect wife, the perfect mother.

The trials continue: Tituba’s devilish confession sends chills through the town of Salem.

Massachusetts 1692-1693: Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne—the three women at the center of the Salem Witch Trials.

With a not-so-promising future in Victorian England, Mary Ann Cotton embarks on a journey of seducing, marrying, and killing her spouses and children to collect her insurance policies.

A career gold-digger with a penchant for arsenic, and a trail of murders that would make headlines.

In 1920's New York City, policy bank queen Stephanie St. Clair was sitting on the top of the world.

In 1911, 13-year-old Stephanie St. Clair left the Caribbean for America and never looked back.

On Easter Sunday, 1903, Marie Sukloff awoke in her Russian prison cell to the sounds of a massacre.

As the grip of Tsar Nicholas II loosened at the turn of the 20th century and the wave of Communism started to rise in Russia, a young girl named Marie Sukloff dutifully took her place in the revolution.