Wise was born in 1884 and lived on a farm in Medina County, Ohio. She was a widow in her forties, disliked in her own family, and had begun a relationship with a younger man that her relatives ridiculed and opposed.
In December 1924 her mother, Sophie Hasel, died. In February 1925 her uncle Fred Gienke and his wife Lily died, and other members of the Gienke household became gravely ill. Arsenic was found. Wise had bought it, and she had also been setting small fires in the neighbourhood, which is what first drew attention to her.
She confessed to the three killings and to giving arsenic to as many as seventeen people in total, most of whom survived. The Ohio press called her the Borgia of America.
She was tried in May 1925, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Her defence attempted insanity and was rejected.
She died at the Ohio Reformatory for Women on June 28, 1971, having served forty-six years. Among the longest terms served by any prisoner in this archive. She was eighty-seven.