For these glamorous beauties, it was only a short walk from the pageant stage to the dock...
Drug dealer
As she competed for the title of Miss Swimsuit UK 2019, Melissa Mikosz sweetly told the pageant judges: ‘The competition’s all about empowering women and it doesn’t matter who you are, how old you are, or where you come from. We all work together to empower women.’ She also spoke of living with Crohn’s disease and a desire to help uplift her local area.
Sadly, the community-minded young woman didn’t land the crown. But she certainly did make a splash in her hometown of Shirebrook in Derbyshire the very next year.
Police raided a series of properties and discovered stashes of cocaine and thousands of pounds in cash. One of the properties, which was found to contain both drugs and weapons, was the home of Melissa and her young son.
Police discovered her boyfriend, Thomas Carlisle, had been running a ‘retail enterprise’ level of cocaine dealing. He’d supplied 4.3kg of the class A drug — worth hundreds of thousands of pounds — to local towns over the preceding two years, even while Melissa had been painting herself as whiter than white and vying for that beauty queen crown.
Derby Crown Court heard the drugs operation was so large, they’d often run out of baggies. Just one of Thomas Carlisle’s dealers had closed 18 sales in a single day.
Melissa herself was seemingly delighted with the way things were going, texting her boyfriend on one occasion: We can go out tomorrow and smash the sales.
As well as helping him stash weapons and drugs in the home she shared with her child, she’d also allowed her kingpin fella to use her bank account.
When police swooped, they’d seized nearly £60,000 from the young mum’s account.
The court heard she’d enjoyed a ‘lavish, holiday-filled lifestyle’ off the back of her activities.
Melissa Mikosz, 32, was jailed for seven years for conspiracy to supply cocaine and money-laundering.
Her boyfriend, Carlisle, pleaded guilty to supplying class A drugs and converting criminal property, and was jailed for 11 years and three months.
During sentencing, Judge Nirmal Shant QC told the former beauty queen: ‘You were a willing and enthusiastic participant, you enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and the trappings of Mr Carlisle’s criminality.’
Hardly a beacon for the community!
Big FAKE
Brandi Lee Weaver-Gates was facing a battle for her life.
She broke it to her family and friends that she’d been diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia in 2013.
Her loved ones did all they could to help, driving her miles to specialist cancer units for treatment, and waiting up to eight hours to take her home.
Fundraisers were hosted to meet her eye-watering medical expenses, raising over £25,000.
Many of the donations came from people who had cancer themselves and wanted to help.
Brandi regularly posted online about her journey as she lost her hair and underwent chemotherapy.
Then miraculously, she had good news.
‘I’m in remission!’ she shared online, beside a picture of her holding a glass
of wine.
In fact, she was so well that in 2015 she competed in the Miss Pennsylvania U.S. International pageant — and won.
Posing with her short brown hair curled beneath her shining crown, a bejewelled sash across her chest, it was hard to believe she’d ever been unwell.
Perhaps that’s why people grew suspicious. For police soon received an anonymous tip-off that Brandi had never had cancer at all.
They investigated and found there was no record of her ever having had cancer treatment.
Brandi admitted she’d faked the illness to get more attention from her family.
She’d shaved her head to make it look as if she’d lost her hair, and then she’d simply hidden while her family waited for her to finish her supposed appointments at the cancer clinics.
She said she was ‘truly sorry’ and pleaded guilty to theft by deception and receiving stolen property in 2016.
The 23-year-old was sentenced to between two and four years in jail followed by five years on probation. She was also ordered to pay back the money she’d stolen.
Where she had once been a representative for her community, Miss Pennsylvania was now in disgrace.
District Attorney, Stacy Parks Miller, said: ‘This was the ultimate betrayal of our giving community.’
Miss Pennsylvania U.S. International revoked her title and demanded she return her sash and crown.
Hired a hitman
For a while, Aurea Vasquez-Rijos and her husband, Adam Anhang, were living a life many could only dream of. He was a multi-millionaire and she was a Puerto Rican former beauty queen who’d come runner-up in Miss Puerto Rico Petite in 1997.
But, before they married, Adam asked his bride-to-be to sign a prenup. He was no fool. He was worth over £20m. She was worth around £50,000.
The document agreed that if he died while they remained married, she would receive approximately £7m. If they divorced, she got nothing.
Like most prenups, the couple likely signed it hoping it would never come into force. But, just six months into their marriage, Adam told Aurea he wanted out.
Desperate not to lose out on the cash, Aurea decided she’d rather see him dead than divorced, and hired a hit man named Alex ‘El Loco’ Pabon Colon, promising to pay him £2.5m for completing the job.
She then tricked Adam into meeting her at a restaurant in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, to discuss the terms of their divorce.
It was a trap.
Adam, 32, was set upon by a complete stranger outside the restaurant, where he was brutally beaten and stabbed, while Aurea only received minor injuries in the scuffle.
‘Run, baby, run!’ Adam is said to have shouted to her.
Moments later he was dead.
Initially, police believed the murder was a robbery gone wrong, and a local kitchen worker was convicted of the murder.
However, this was overturned when witnesses came forward to say they had seen the attacker speak to Aurea before hitting her with only mild force.
The real hitman was tracked down and arrested. In exchange for a sentence of 19 years, he immediately pointed the finger straight at the woman who’d hired him — Aurea Vasquez-Rijos.
But where was she?
With the police on to her, she moved all over Europe, using false names and fake ID cards.
The FBI eventually caught her in a sting operation in Spain.
Thirteen years after her husband was murdered, Aurea Vasquez-Rijos, the beauty queen now dubbed ‘the Black Widow’, was finally convicted of his murder and jailed for life.
Fall from grace
Posing in a tiny bikini and wowing the crowds with the bluegrass music she played on her fiddle, Ramsey Carpenter-Bearse was by far and away the winner of the fiercely contested Miss Kentucky 2014 title.
Ramsey was the full package. As well as being beautiful and an expert violin player, she had a degree in special education with a focus on learning and behavioural disorders.
Suffering from multiple sclerosis herself, she was determined to help children with additional needs.
Her talents took her far on the beauty pageant scene. She had the looks, smarts and, seemingly, a lot of heart.
After being crowned Miss Kentucky, she even competed for the title of Miss America the following year, only losing out in the semi-finals.
Following her successful pageant stint, she started teaching science at a school in West Virginia. But, just a few years after, the parents of one of her former students found disturbing images on his son’s phone.
They were of Ramsey topless, and she’d sent them to the boy when he was just 15.
When arrested, she tried to claim she’d intended to send the first photo to her husband, but had accidentally sent it to her student instead. She then claimed he had requested more photos, and she’d sent them as she was ‘afraid not to appease him’.
Ramsey Carpenter-Bearse, 28, eventually admitted sending the images in court.
‘Since I am an adult, and he was just a teenager, it is my fault and I accept full blame,’ she said.
She was sentenced to two years in prison in July 2020. She will serve a further 10 years on supervised release and will be on the sex offenders register for life.
While wearing a bikini may have landed Ramsey the crown, taking it off lost her everything.
