Anna Marie Hahn | |
|---|---|
 Mugshot of Anna Marie Hahn
| |
| Born |
Anna Marie Filser
July 7, 1906 |
| Died | December 7, 1938 (aged 32) |
| Cause of death | Execution by electrocution |
| Other names | Marie Felser, Marie Fisher, Arsenic Anna, The Blonde Borgia, Angel of Mercy |
| Criminal status | Executed |
| Conviction(s) | First degree murder |
| Criminal penalty | Death |
| Details | |
| Victims | 5 |
Span of crimes |
May 6, 1933 – August 1, 1937 |
| Country | United States |
| State(s) | Ohio, Colorado |
Date apprehended |
1937 |
Anna Marie Hahn (born Filser; July 7, 1906 – December 7, 1938) was a German-born American serial killer.
Biography
Early life
Anna Hahn was the youngest of twelve children though five of her siblings had died by the time Anna was born. Her father, George Filser, was a furniture manufacturer, and the family was considered to be well-off financially.
At age 19, she became pregnant with her son Oskar, and told her family that the father was a Viennese physician, Dr. Max Matscheki, a well-known cancer researcher. However, no record of a Dr. Matscheki has ever been found; to this day, the identity of Oskar's real father is unknown. Hahn's scandalized family sent her to the U.S. in 1929, while her son remained in Bavaria with her parents. While staying with relatives Max and Anna Doeschel in Cincinnati, Ohio, Hahn met fellow German immigrant Philip Hahn; they married in 1930. Hahn briefly returned to Germany to retrieve Oskar, then she and her husband started a family.
Murders
Hahn allegedly began poisoning and robbing elderly men in Cincinnati's German community to support her gambling habit. Ernst 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 alleged victim, Albert Parker, 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, 78, 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 on July 6, 1937, she received $17,000.
Hahn killed her last victim, Georg Obendoerfer, on August 1, 1937, after he traveled to Colorado Springs, Colorado, with her and her son. Police said that 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". Hahn's 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.
Investigation
An autopsy revealed high levels of arsenic in Obendoerfer's body, which aroused police suspicions. Exhumations of two of her previous clients revealed that they had been poisoned. Hahn was a prime suspect, and was soon arrested.
Hahn was convicted after a four-week trial in November 1937. Sentenced to death, she went to the electric chair at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus on December 7, 1938. She was buried in Mount Calvary Cemetery in Columbus.
See also
Further reading
- Franklin, Diana Britt (2006-10-30). The Good-bye Door. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. ISBN 978-0-87338-874-0. OCLC 63116896.
- "Anna Marie Hahn", Mind of a Killer (DVD), Kozel Multimedia, 1998.
- Peter Vronsky: Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters, Berkley Books, New York (2007), p. 441