March is Women’s History Month, a time that we set aside to celebrate women’s contributions and achievements in all spheres of society. There are so many amazing women we would love to acknowledge that the list is simply too long to count, so we decided to recognize a few special ones through the lens of our themed rooms. Accordingly, we wish to honor some extraordinary women who have left their mark throughout history and offer you a different type of list that you may not find anywhere else. These women come from very different walks of life, and some even found themselves on the wrong side of the law, but their incredible feats remain worthy of awe to this very day.
Our Prison Break room inspired us to recognize Deborah Gavin, a young woman with a troubled childhood who found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time back in 1972. After a night of partying, she got into a car with a couple of young men whom she had met that night, little to know they would commit an armed robbery of a local gas station with her still in the car. Following a wild police chase they were all arrested, and Deborah was convicted as an accomplice and sent to a women’s prison in Georgia.
To make matters worse, she became a victim of continuous sexual abuse at the hands of the male prison guards, as did many other inmates at that prison. This drove her to escape the prison an incredible six times! Five times she was captured, but on the sixth escape she disappeared without a trace. U.S. Marshals finally found her 33 years later, living a quiet life in a small town in Texas as a loving wife and a dedicated nurse at a local hospital. Deborah Gavin’s case along with hundreds of other similar cases across the US have led to prison reform and the adoption of new laws protecting inmates from sexual abuse. Can you be skillful and elusive enough like Deborah to reach freedom?
In our Zodiac room, you must escape from the clutches of a serial killer. It inspired us to celebrate Stacy Galbraith and Edna Hendershot, two amazing detectives who captured a serial rapist who was terrorizing women in Colorado and Washington. Det. Galbraith was investigating the case of a young woman in Golden, Colorado who was assaulted and raped by a man who broke into her apartment while she was sleeping, took photos of her during the gruesome attack, and forced her to take a shower before he left.