WOMAN POISONER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 December 1938, Page 7

WOMAN POISONER

ELECTROCUTED IN OHIO BRANDED AS “BLONDE BORGIA.” END OF SENSATIONAL CASE. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. COLUMBUS (Ohio), December 7. . Mrs Anna Marie Hahn, a handsome 32-year-old German-born housewife, who described herself as an “angel of mercy,” but whom the State Attorney branded a “blonde Borgia,” was electrocuted tonight for the murder of 78-year-old Jacob Wagner, one of four old men whom she befriended and poisoned for their savings. Mrs Hahn cried for help to the last. She is the first woman, to die in Ohio’s electric chair.

One of the strangest criminals in America’s annals, her case attracted international attention, particularly in Germany, where her aged mother, steadfastly believing in her daughter’s innocence, went into retirement because of shame.

Extraordinary efforts were made to obtain a reprieve. Both Federal and State authorities, however, refused to intervene at the last moment even when her 12-year-old son personally pleaded with the Governor for his mother.

A sensation was caused during her trial by the revelation of her strange vagabond life and her method of encouraging old men to become boarders in her house, after which she gave them poison when she learned that they had sufficient funds to make their deaths profitable to herself. One of the principal witnesses against her was a man hopelessly crippled by poison which she had administered to him.