Anna Marie Hahn

Infobox Serial Killer
name=Anna Marie Hahn


caption=Mug shot of Anna Marie Hahn.
birthname=
alias=
birth=July 7, 1906
location=Bavaria, Germany
death=December 7, 1938
cause=Electric chair
victims=5
country=USA
states=Ohio
beginyear=May 6, 1933
endyear=August 1, 1937
apprehended=1937
penalty=Death sentence

Anna Marie Hahn (July 7, 1906 - December 7, 1938), known as "Arsenic Anna", was the first woman to die in the electric chair in Ohio and America's first female serial killer to die in the chair. She was executed for the murder of 73-year-old Jacob Wagner of Cincinnati in 1937. Hahn, an immigrant from Bavaria, was suspected in numerous other poisoning deaths.

Early life

As a teenager, Hahn gave birth to an illegitimate son (the father was purportedly a Viennese physician). Her family shipped her off to America in 1929. She married Philip Hahn of Cincinnati a year later.

Murders

Hahn began poisoning and robbing elderly men and women in the city's German community to support her gambling habit. Enest Kohler, who died on May 6, 1933, was believed to be her first victim. Hahn had befriended him shortly before his death; he left her a house in his will.

Her next victim, Albert Palmer, 72, also died soon after she began caring for him. Prior to Parker's death, she signed an I.O.U. for $1,000 that she borrowed from him, but after his death the document was either discarded or simply "disappeared."

Jacob Wagner died on June 3, 1937 leaving $17,000 cash to his "beloved niece" Hahn. She soon began caring for 67-year-old George Gsellman, also of Cincinnati. For her service before his death July 6, 1937, she received $15,000.

Georg Obendoerfer was the last to die, on August 1, 1937, after he traveled to Colorado Springs with Hahn and her 12-year-old son. Police in Colorado said Obendoerfer, a cobbler, "died in agony just after Mrs. Hahn had bent over his deathbed inquiring his name, professing she did not know the man." Her son testified at her trial that he, his mother, and Obendoerfer traveled to Colorado by train from Cincinnati together and that Obendoerfer began getting sick en route.

George Heis was one of the very few who survived Hahn's ministrations, having ordered her from his home. By then, however, Heis was partially paralyzed from Hahn's previous murder attempts.

After Obendoerfer died, an autopsy revealed high levels of arsenic in his body. Police became suspicious of the spate of deaths around Hahn. Exhumations of two of her previous clients revealed that they had been poisoned.

Hahn was convicted after a sensational four-week trial in November 1937 and sentenced to death in Ohio's electric chair, an execution that was carried out on December 7, 1938.

Resources

* [http://www.thegoodbyedoor.com "The Good-bye Door" by Diana Britt Franklin]
* "Mrs. Hahn Guilty; To Die in Chair," United Press, November 7, 1937
* "State's Testimony is Closed in Hahn Trial," Associated Press, October 29, 1937
* "Anna Marie Hahn," "Mind of a Killer (DVD)," Kozel Multimedia, 1998.