Anna Marie Hahn was 31 when a Cincinnati jury found her guilty, in November 1937, of poisoning Jacob Wagner, a 78-year-old German-American, with arsenic and croton oil. Time magazine described her as a Bavarian immigrant who had taken about $50,000 from elderly friends over eight years, much of it to bet on horse races. The jury of eleven women and one man returned its verdict without a recommendation of mercy, which meant death. She was the second woman sentenced to death in Ohio, Time reported, and on December 7, 1938, she died in the electric chair.
She was indicted for two murders and convicted of one. Investigators in 1937 looked at many more deaths among the old people she had known, and the Supreme Court of Ohio's own history of the trial judge says the evidence showed she had killed three more men and disabled another. Those other deaths were never tried.
Hahn was born in Germany in 1906, according to a 2020 column in the Clermont Sun, and Time called her Bavarian-born. Her maiden name was Filser; Time named her at the verdict as Mrs. Anna Marie Filser Hahn. The Clermont Sun column says she had a son in Germany and left him with her family when she moved to Cincinnati, where she stayed with relatives, and that she later went back for him.
She came to the United States in 1929, at 23, WOSU reported in 2006, drawing on the Ohio author Diana Britt Franklin, who spent five years studying her life. She lived for a short time with a distant relative in Over-the-Rhine, the old German neighborhood of Cincinnati. According to the Clermont Sun column, she married a German telegrapher, and the couple saved enough to open two delicatessens.
Franklin told WOSU that Hahn bet on horses and that, to feed the habit, she found ways to get money from old men and women, especially men. In Franklin's words, she often took every nickel they had before she killed them. Time put the sum she had taken from her elderly friends at about $50,000 over the eight years before her trial, and reported that by the end of the trial she had barely enough left to pay her lawyers.
The Clermont Sun column says she sought out sick elderly men in Cincinnati's German community although she had no nursing training. It says she was believed to have poisoned her first victim, a man it names as Ernest Kohler, in 1933, and that Jacob Wagner left her $17,000 in his will. The same column says there were insurance payments after fires at one of the delicatessens and at the Hahn home, and that her husband was believed to have been poisoned after he refused to raise his life insurance. None of these points was tried in court.
Her husband survived her, Franklin told WOSU. The two were estranged, and among other things he was afraid of her.
The case came apart far from Cincinnati. In August 1937, Time reported, a hotel in Colorado Springs, Colorado, told police that $305 worth of diamond rings had been stolen. Hahn had visited the hotel with George Obendoerfer, an aging cobbler from Cincinnati, and he died the next day of arsenic and croton oil poisoning. The police inquiry into the rings became an inquiry into his death.
The Clermont Sun column gives a different account of how she came to police notice: that a pawn shop worker refused to buy jewelry she offered and then described her to police, and that she tried without success to withdraw $1,000 from Obendoerfer's bank account. It also says that she denied knowing him and that the authorities learned the two had been in a relationship.
Back in Cincinnati, Time reported, the bodies of several of her elderly German-American friends were exhumed and found to contain the same poisons. She was arrested on her return to the city, the Clermont Sun column says, and tests found arsenic in Wagner's remains.
By August 19, 1937, she was under indictment for first-degree murder in the deaths of two elderly Cincinnati residents, according to an Associated Press report printed the next day in the Michigan Daily. At her arraignment she pleaded innocent to the charges of killing two elderly Germans; a news photo caption on the same page described her sitting through the short hearing with her feet crossed, a handkerchief clenched in her hands.
The same Associated Press report said the inquiry had reached at least eleven deaths. The prosecutor, named in that report as Dudley Miller, called it "the biggest mass murder in this country." That day Assistant Prosecutor Loyal Martin asked for a post-mortem examination of a 79-year-old woman who had died after several weeks of illness. Her sister believed Hahn had poisoned her.
The trial opened on October 11, 1937, before Judge Charles S. Bell of the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas, and lasted more than three weeks, WOSU reported. Bell, born in Carthage, Ohio, in 1880, had been elected to the Common Pleas bench in 1930 and re-elected in 1936, according to the Supreme Court of Ohio; he later sat on that court from 1942 to 1947.
The jury was made up of eleven women and one man. The state's case was the death of Jacob Wagner. Time reported that the most damaging testimony came from a man in his sixties who had survived a meal she prepared for him and who testified against her.
Her defense took an unusual line. According to Time, her lawyers admitted that she was guilty of thefts, adultery and forgery, in order to argue that she was not guilty of poisoning anyone. Her counsel was Hiram Bolsinger, a 58-year-old German-American lawyer. Time reported that his partner, named only as Joe, stayed away from the courtroom at the end because he did not think he could stand the finish. Franklin told WOSU that the defense team was inexperienced in capital cases and that the trial drew heavy publicity, but that in her view Hahn still got a fair trial.
The jury deliberated for three hours, according to the Supreme Court of Ohio, and found her guilty of first-degree murder without a recommendation of mercy. The court's history page says no such verdict had been returned before in Hamilton County. Judge Bell sentenced her to die in the electric chair. Franklin told WOSU that no one had expected a death verdict, least of all from a jury with eleven women on it, and that Bell broke down and cried after he passed sentence.
Time placed her in Ohio's short history of women sentenced to death. The first, in 1931, was Julia Maude Lowther, who at a second trial pleaded guilty and received a life sentence. Hahn was the second. Bolsinger told Time that the defense would appeal, and that when asked who would pay the costs, his answer was that the lawyers would.
The Supreme Court of Ohio's page sums up the case against her in a sentence: she was accused of killing an elderly man with arsenic to steal his money, and the evidence showed that she had also killed three more men and disabled another the same way. Only the Wagner death was put to a jury.
Ohio had no death row for women when she was sentenced, WOSU reported, and she became the only woman among about 4,200 prisoners at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. Franklin described the cell built for her as large, with a bed, a desk, a rocking chair and curtains. Hahn did not see the men on death row until the day guards walked her to the electric chair. As she passed, Franklin said, the prisoners stood at their cell doors and called goodbye to her.
The prisoners called the door to the death chamber the goodbye door, and Franklin used the phrase as the title of her book. When the door opened and Hahn saw the chair, Franklin told WOSU, she collapsed and screamed, and the warden said he had never seen anything like it.
Anna Marie Hahn was electrocuted on December 7, 1938, and pronounced dead at 8:13 p.m., according to the Clermont Sun column. WOSU put the time from her arrest in Cincinnati to her execution in Columbus at sixteen months. In 200 years Ohio has executed more than 400 men and four women, WOSU reported in 2006; the Clermont Sun column calls her the first woman executed in Ohio.
She had always maintained her innocence. After her death, Franklin told WOSU, a confession was found in her cell in which she admitted four killings. Franklin believes she probably poisoned a dozen or so people, all with arsenic. The Clermont Sun columnist wrote that he had seen reports that she might have killed at least 15 elderly men. Neither figure was tested in court.
Victor Streib, a law professor at Ohio Northern University, told WOSU that women facing the death penalty usually have more sympathetic records and lives and are shown more mercy than men, and that Hahn was the exception because she killed more than once.
In September 2006 WOSU reported that Franklin's book on the case, The Good-bye Door, would be published the following month. Asked what she made of Hahn after five years of research, she told WOSU: "She was just an evil person."
Judge Bell, who sentenced her, served on the Supreme Court of Ohio from December 1942 until he resigned in 1947, citing failing eyesight, and then returned to the Hamilton County Common Pleas bench, where he served until his death on May 6, 1965.
Proven by a jury verdict in 1937, carried out by her execution: the first-degree murder of Jacob Wagner, 78, by arsenic poisoning, in Cincinnati.
Charged but never tried: a second first-degree murder indictment for the death of another elderly Cincinnati resident, to which she pleaded innocent in August 1937.
Stated but never tried: that the evidence showed she killed three more men and disabled another (Supreme Court of Ohio history page); that she confessed in writing to four killings, found in her cell after her execution (Franklin, via WOSU); that she poisoned George Obendoerfer, who died of arsenic and croton oil poisoning in Colorado Springs (Time reports the cause of his death but no charge); that a 79-year-old Cincinnati woman was poisoned (her sister's belief, reported by the Associated Press in August 1937).
Estimates only: about a dozen victims (Franklin) and at least 15 (Clermont Sun column); at least eleven deaths under investigation in August 1937.
Details that vary between accounts: how she came to police notice in Colorado (a hotel's report of stolen rings, in Time; a pawn shop worker's description, in the Clermont Sun column); the day of the verdict (Time's issue of November 15, 1937, reports the verdict and sentence as the previous week's news; the Clermont Sun column dates the conviction November 10, 1937); and the spelling of Obendoerfer (Time) or Obendorfer (Clermont Sun).
1906: Anna Marie Filser is born in Germany (Bavaria).
1929: at 23, she comes to the United States and lives briefly with a distant relative in Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati.
1933: the death of the first man she is suspected of poisoning, according to the Clermont Sun column.
August 1937: a Colorado Springs hotel reports $305 in stolen diamond rings; George Obendoerfer, who had visited the hotel with her, dies the next day of arsenic and croton oil poisoning.
August 1937: arrested in Cincinnati; exhumations follow.
By August 19, 1937: under indictment for first-degree murder in two deaths; pleads innocent; at least eleven deaths under investigation.
October 11, 1937: trial opens before Judge Charles S. Bell, Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas.
November 1937: after three hours, the jury finds her guilty of first-degree murder without a recommendation of mercy; Bell sentences her to death.
1937 to 1938: held at the Ohio Penitentiary, Columbus, the only woman among about 4,200 prisoners.
December 7, 1938: electrocuted; pronounced dead at 8:13 p.m.
After her death: a confession to four killings is reported found in her cell.
September 18, 2006: WOSU reports that Diana Britt Franklin's book on the case, The Good-bye Door, is due out the following month.