Domino Harvey with her mother Paulene Stone in 1990

From criminal to criminal-catcher now...

Domino Harvey's life story has all the elements of a Hollywood blockbuster; the beautiful girl from England turned gun-toting LA bounty hunter. The daughter of the late actor Laurence Harvey and model Paulene Stone, Harvey described herself as "a natural ringleader and troublemaker" and was expelled from at least four schools growing up. She quit work as a model to move to the States in 1989, where she developed a taste for weapons and took to walking around with a 10-inch hunting knife. She also built up a collection of samurai swords.

In 1993, she signed onto a bond agency in south central LA and spent her days on the trail of drug deals, robbers and murderers. She was tough and could easily stomach coming face-to-face with violent criminals in the ghettos of Hollywood. "If I was doing this for the money, I'd have stopped a long time ago. The real satisfaction is putting the sleazebags in jail," she once infamously proclaimed. In the end though, the murky life she immersed herself in appeared to overcome her and she was jailed on charges of conspiracy to distribute drugs, possession, interstate trafficking and racketeering. She was released on bail but was found dead in a bathtub a few months later, aged 35, following an overdose. Keira Knightley starred in the 2005 film about her life, Domino. Domino was said to disapprove of the big-screen interpretation of her story because it depicted her as heterosexual, when in reality she was a lesbian.

Words: Anna Brech, Photos: Rex Features

History's most notorious female criminals