MURDER IS CONFESSED: THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES, MARCH 19, 1925

It took two hours. On March 19, 1925, in the office of Prosecutor Joseph Seymour at Medina, Ohio, Martha Wise stopped denying it and admitted, in the words of the United Press, "putting arsenic in the water buckets at the Gienke home." The Indianapolis Times had the story on page 5 the same day. The wire did not wait for a trial to supply an explanation. Its first sentence blamed "A psychological monster that gripped the brain and warped the soul of Mrs. Martha Wise," and it called her by the name of the farm district she came from: "the Hardscrabble widow."

Three people were dead. The first was her own mother, Sophie Hasel, who fell ill with several of the family on Thanksgiving evening 1924 and died on December 13. On New Year's Eve the same sickness went through the household of Martha's aunt and uncle, Lily and Fred Gienke, and by February both of them were dead. The paper counts "A dozen other relatives" made critically ill; seventeen fell sick in all that fall and winter, and four of the Gienke children were left partly paralyzed. Sheriff Fred Roshon found her signature in a local drugstore's register beside a run of large arsenic purchases, and an autopsy found arsenic in Lily Gienke.

The "psychological monster" of the lead was the line her defense would take. When she came to trial in May, her lawyer argued that she was criminally insane, and she had already told investigators that the devil had come to her in the kitchen while she was baking bread. The jury deliberated for an hour and on May 12, 1925, found her guilty of the first-degree murder of Lily Gienke, with a recommendation of mercy. She was sentenced to life. Apart from a parole in 1962 that lasted three days, she spent the rest of her life in prison and died there on June 28, 1971, at eighty-eight.

These three paragraphs went out by wire within hours of the confession, and they are a report of what the prosecutor's office let be known, not a transcript of what Martha Wise said. The paper gives her age as 43; she was born on April 18, 1883, and was 41. It spells her mother Sophie "Hazel" for Hasel, prints her aunt as "Mrs. Lillian Kienke" without saying she was the aunt, and writes the family name three different ways. She was convicted of one murder, Lily Gienke's, and the trial record goes no further than that.

Printed in 1925, more than ninety-five years ago, this issue of The Indianapolis Times is in the public domain in its entirety. The whole page, United Press item included, falls under that statement. The scan is the Library of Congress copy from Chronicling America, and the citation and the Library's rights statement sit directly below it.

Short as the item is, it was set in haste, and the transcription keeps every slip exactly as printed: "admited" with one t, "reseulted" for resulted, and the family name as "Giencke," "Gienke" and "Kienke" within three paragraphs. No word on the page needed an illegible mark. The story is complete in the one column and does not continue.

Transcription

Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.

MURDER IS CONFESSED

Woman Admits She Poisoned Family With Arsenic in Water.

By United Press

MEDINA, Ohio, March 19.—A psychological monster that gripped the brain and warped the soul of Mrs. Martha Wise, 43, was blamed today for the Giencke wholesale poison plot. Mrs. Wise has confessed.

After two hours of relentless grilling in the office of Prosecutor Joseph Seymour, the Hardscrabble widow admited putting arsenic in the water buckets at the Gienke home.

These deaths reseulted: Mrs. Sophie Hazel, mother of Mrs. Wise, Fred Gienke, her uncle, Mrs. Lillian Kienke. A dozen other relatives were made critically ill.