The wife of legendary Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas, Julianna Farrait lived large alongside her husband in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Memorably portrayed in the film “American Gangster” by Denzel Washington and Lymari Nadal, the couple were known as the “Black Bonnie and Clyde” in their heyday. And Farrait made sure that they looked the part — which may have helped lead to the downfall of Lucas’s empire.
Farrait famously gifted her husband a $125,000 chinchilla coat with a matching $40,000 hat to boot. And when Lucas wore the eye-catching ensemble to the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier prize fight at Madison Square Garden in 1971, many believe the outfit attracted the attention of the authorities — who would close in on Lucas just a few years later. Remarkably, though Farrait and Lucas were arrested multiple times and at one point placed in the witness protection program, they stayed together for decades to come.
