The first trip of any distance Johan Georg Obendoerfer took in more than forty years was also his last.
A cobbler of German descent, Obendoerfer and his wife, Gretchen, arrived in Cincinnati from Russia in 1892. Before she died twenty years later, they raised a son and two daughters while he worked for a number of local shoe companies. After twenty-five years at the Duttonhoefer Shoe Company, he retired and operated a small cobbler shop in his home part-time, keeping busy helping neighbors and making shoes for his eleven grandchildren. Shortly after he turned sixty-seven in early 1937, he sold his modest frame house at 2150 Clifton Avenue for $2,600 because he could no longer afford the taxes or the upkeep. He remained a resident there, though, securing a five-year lease on two rooms in the attic. His little shoe shop was on the steeply slanted street, tucked underneath the front porch of the house.
It was a warm June day when Anna Marie arrived at Obendoerfer’s shop for the first time. A friend, she said, had directed her to him because while out shopping she had broken the heel on her shoe. Obendoerfer did little repairs like that and immediately the very pleasant Hausfrau in his home was his friend. He invited her to sit a spell, and in German they talked the afternoon away.
Over the next few weeks and into July, the couple spent considerable time together, or so it seemed to family, neighbors, and friends. In fact, when talking about Anna Marie, Obendoerfer allowed words like Verlobung (engagement), Hochzeit (marriage), and Hochzeitsreise (honeymoon) to creep in. To appear younger, he shaved off the full and flowing mustache that he had cultivated and combed for years. His daughter, Louise Nau of Cincinnati, was surprised how infatuated her father had become with this woman less than half his age, but she did not admonish him. Good daughters did not do that, but neighbors told her that her father “was talking like a young man, talking of a honeymoon” with Anna Marie.
For the Bavarian woman July was another busy month. After all, she had a husband with whom she had been fighting; a son she usually took on assignations; a hospitalized Mrs. Koehler; Gsellman anxiously waiting to take her hand; and now Obendoerfer, whose home was within a half-dozen blocks of Gsellman’s in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Somehow she was able to keep all her affairs sorted out and out of sight.
Anna Marie delighted Obendoerfer to no end when she said she and Oscar had planned a train trip to the mountains of Colorado and invited the shoemaker to come along. He accepted and told friends—Henry Fuhs for one—that his Liebchen (sweetheart) owned an $18,000 home on a Colorado cattle ranch, and if they found the setting to their liking, they would spend the rest of their lives in Colorado. Fuhs said his friend was in love.
After her last visit to Gsellman on the evening of July 5, Anna Marie devoted all her energies to Obendoerfer and the trip. The “honeymooners” put their Colorado travel plans in motion on July 16 when they visited Obendoerfer’s bank. He withdrew $350, which he gave her to buy his train ticket and sundries for the trip. Two hundred and fifty dollars went into her bank account, perhaps to cover a final check to Osborne, but she never paid her remaining debt to Consolidated Coal. When questioned later about the $250 deposit, she would vehemently deny that the money had been from Obendoerfer, insisting that she had won it betting on the horses that day.
On Tuesday afternoon, July 20, a happy, healthy Obendoerfer packed a small, rather dilapidated wicker satchel, stopped for a beer at the Albert H. Schell Restaurant at 1732 Elm Street, and then, with a spring in his step, jauntily walked to Anna Marie’s home where he spent the night. She prepared a special dinner for him, so special that by 11 o’clock Wednesday morning he needed help to get into Otto Walke’s Yellow Cab. Obendoerfer leaned on Anna Marie’s arm as she led him to the taxi, which Oscar had directed to the back of the house, out of sight from the street. Oscar carried Obendoerfer’s bag to the taxi.
“Depot.” That simple directive was the only word spoken by Anna Marie on the ride to the Union Terminal. Once there, she paid Walke 50 cents, bought some sandwiches and coffee for her son and the shoemaker, then left them in the station’s large, domed rotunda while she returned home. She told Obendoerfer and Oscar, however, that she had an errand to run downtown before the train left for Chicago at 4:40 P.M.
Before she left the house, Anna Marie had put a note on the kitchen table for her husband, telling him that she was going to Colorado for a few days. They had not seen each other since they argued violently on July 1, which arose after Oscar found a small bottle, marked “Croton Oil—Poison X,” in the cushions of an easy chair and showed it to Philip. When Philip asked Anna Marie about the bottle and its contents, she hurled abuse at him, demanding that he give it to her. Despite her screaming, which was loud enough to be heard by a neighbor, Philip refused to hand over the bottle. He left the house with it and didn’t come back.
On July 21, Anna Marie, Oscar, and Obendoerfer arrived in Chicago. She registered Obendoerfer at a 25-cents-a-night flophouse near the train station while she and Oscar secured a room for $8 a night at what was for many years the world’s largest hotel, the Stevens on Michigan Avenue. When she helped the elderly Obendoerfer check out of his hotel the next morning, she failed to notice that she had left her camera in his dingy room.
The day-and-a-half trip west was uneventful, save for Obendoerfer’s growing discomfort. He complained of being “dry,” so Oscar kept getting him glasses of ice water.
On July 23 their train arrived at Denver’s Union Station. From there the trio walked one block to the venerable, five-story Oxford Hotel on busy Seventeenth Street. Built in 1891, it recently had been remodeled into an art deco showcase. Anna Marie and Oscar secured a room for $1.50 a night; Obendoerfer’s nearby single room cost $1 a night.
The following day a hotel porter saw Obendoerfer’s door slightly ajar and peeked in. Obendoerfer was writhing on his bed. “He appeared awfully sick and was in agony,” the young man said.
Anna Marie didn’t like anyone nosy like that, so on July 25 she checked out and moved, with Obendoerfer, to the much smaller Midland Hotel at Arapahoe and Seventeenth streets, five blocks away. There, too, the staff could not help but notice Obendoerfer’s poor condition and commented on it to the proprietor, Louis Straub, who also was a Denver city councilman.
When Midland Hotel chief clerk George Mathews asked Anna Marie about her elderly companion, she assured him, “He’ll be all right in a few days. I just gave him a good dose of croton oil.” She also fed him watermelon, which was, at the time, a well-known agent for feeding arsenic to rats. With little apparent concern for his mother’s friend, Oscar watched blindly as Obendoerfer repeatedly vomited after eating the watermelon.
In the Mile High City, Anna Marie penned a letter on Oxford Hotel letterhead to Harry H. Becker, director of the Clifton Heights Savings and Loan in Cincinnati. In hindsight, it revealed her scheme to secure money from Obendoerfer’s savings account and abandon him in Colorado, dead or alive. Her inadequacies with the English language are evident:
Dear Mr. Becker, inclosed you find Mr. Obendorfer pass book. I adviced him to the Denver Nat. Bank, they will take care of him. I am leaving for Newcastle tomorrow to take care of my own business matters, then I will return to Cinc by Saturday or Sunday. Mr. Obendorfer is going to stay in Colo. With his sister-in-law or whatever relative she is to him. He also has quite a number of friends here from the old country and he’ll enjoy life more than he ever did before. He was thinking of buying a little chicken farm, he has one in mind if he can get the right price for it he’ll take. Mr. Obendorfer wants the Building and Loan to send him a check for $1,000 and sent to the Denver Natl. Bank where he is going to deposit the money; he would like to have it as soon as possible in case he would find a nice place so he could take it right away; as soon as I return to Cinc. I’ll stop in and see you about some property.
Anna Marie signed it, “Respectfully, A. Felser,” using a form of her maiden name, Filser. The letter was dated July 24, the day after her arrival in Denver. That Saturday she also visited the Denver National Bank, posing as Mrs. Obendoerfer. She asked Edward J. Weckbach, assistant vice president, to transfer $1,000 from Obendoerfer’s account at the Clifton Heights Building and Loan so she and her “husband” could “buy a little farm” in Colorado. Weckbach asked that Obendoerfer himself show up to complete the necessary paperwork, since it was his account, not Anna Marie’s. She explained that at the moment, he was visiting family out of the city and unable to come to the bank. Actually, Obendoerfer was writhing on his bed at the Midland, less than three blocks away. She returned to the bank the following Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, becoming more agitated each day when the funds did not arrive. She exhibited little concern for Obendoerfer, who by now was unable to control his bodily functions.
By July 29 the stench in Obendoerfer’s room at the Midland had become so bad that housekeeping refused to enter it. Straub asked Anna Marie about the condition of the old man and the room when she and Oscar returned from the bank.
“Are you traveling with that old gentleman?” he asked.
“I met him on the train,” she said. “I don’t know who he is, but he is very sick, and I was taking care of him. He’s not as bad as he was.” She said if Straub provided her with clean linens, she would clean up Obendoerfer’s room herself.
The following day, when Anna Marie and Oscar were out again, Straub visited the old cobbler’s room to see for himself. He immediately saw the watermelon on the table, then Obendoerfer. He was alone, sitting in a large chair in a fetal-like position, and in agony. The chair, the bed, the floor—all were fouled with excrement and vomit. Straub covered his nose and mouth with his handkerchief, thinking it couldn’t have been much worse.
Upon her return, Straub confronted Anna Marie again.
“This man has to have a doctor,” he said. “He is going to die.”
“Oh, I don’t think it is that serious, is it?”
“From the looks of him, yes. He has to go to the hospital, or see a doctor,” Straub insisted. When she said Obendoerfer had no money, he offered to use the weight of his city position to get the distressed man into a local charity hospital.
“I promised his people in Cincinnati I would see him to Colorado Springs,” Anna Marie said, not realizing she had contradicted her story that she had only just met Obendoerfer on the train.
Another nosy person was getting too close for Anna Marie’s comfort, so she immediately went upstairs, packed the bags and called a taxi to take the three of them to the train station. Anna Marie and the cab driver almost had to carry the wobbly Obendoerfer to the taxi. The three travelers barely made the 4:40 P.M. train to Colorado Springs.
Had she had the patience to wait, Anna Marie might have had $1,000 in her pocket. The money from Obendoerfer’s account in Cincinnati arrived at the Denver National Bank that day, but Weckbach was suspicious and decided not to send the funds on to a bank in Colorado Springs, as Anna Marie had requested.
On the train Obendoerfer again asked for water, a lot of it, which Oscar got for him. After arriving in Colorado Springs about 7 P.M., the threesome walked across the street from the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad depot to the Park Hotel, run by Rosie Turner and her husband, Pell. Anna Marie again registered “Gg. Obendoerfer, Chicago, Illinois.” She secured two rooms at $1.50 and $1.00 per night, and she, Oscar, and Pell Turner helped the feeble Obendoerfer upstairs and into bed. Then mother and son went for dinner in downtown Colorado Springs.
During what was a brief stay in the western city, Anna Marie sent a postcard to her brother, Hans, in Fuessen. She said she and her husband were on vacation and “all was well by us.” The next morning she scored again when she noticed the door to the Turners’ private rooms was ajar. Anna Marie walked in, looked around, swiftly pocketed two diamond rings she spotted on a dresser, and was leaving when confronted by Mrs. Turner.
“These are our private quarters,” Mrs. Turner said, testily. “What are you doing here?
“Oh, it’s very nice. I was just curious, that’s all.” Mrs. Turner did not notice her rings were missing, but when she did, her discovery would turn Anna Marie’s life upside down. No other single act—not the lies, the forgeries, the previous thefts, or the murders—contributed more to her date with the electric chair than the theft of those two rings.
Although the Turners expressed concern for Obendoerfer’s health, Anna Marie and her son left him alone and in agony again most of the day Saturday while they went sightseeing. Upon their return, however, his miserable state caused Anna Marie to call a cab to take the doubled-over Obendoerfer to the nearby Beth-El Hospital.
While she escorted him inside, Oscar remained in the taxi and launched into a long conversation with the driver, Charles Mundy. “I don’t understand why mama did not get rid of Mr. Obendoerfer, as he was sick and took much trouble and had a very bad odor about him,” Oscar said, wrinkling up his nose. The loquacious lad also revealed that Obendoerfer had “a lot of money” in Cincinnati and that he had planned to buy a Colorado chicken ranch with it. Actually, Obendoerfer at the time possessed no money or papers. Anna Marie had picked him clean of both before checking him into the hospital as an indigent.
At 6:30 P.M. Sunday, August 1, Obendoerfer died. In Cincinnati that same day, authorities authorized the exhumation of Jacob Wagner’s body, buried at the Baltimore Hill Cemetery.
A simple death notice placed in the Colorado Springs Gazette on August 2, 1937, by the Law Mortuary, noted, “Mr. George Obendoerfer passed away at a local hospital Sunday evening. Funeral announcement later.” The announcement was terse because the mortuary knew nothing more about the deceased. When the hospital reached Anna Marie at the hotel to inform her of Obendoerfer’s passing, she responded, “Why notify me? I don’t know him. I met him on the train between Denver and Colorado Springs, and I got to talking with him because he was Swiss, and I am Swiss, and we both were from Cincinnati.”
About 7:30 that evening, Pell Turner saw Anna Marie in the lobby of his hotel. Two Colorado Springs police detectives had visited him earlier, making inquiries about Obendoerfer and his traveling companion.
“Did you hear that Mr. Obendoerfer was dead?” he asked his guest. Once again Anna Marie professed no interest, stating that the old man was just someone she met by chance on the train.
Anxious now to get out of town, she checked out of the Park Hotel early the next morning and, holding Oscar tightly by the hand, walked to the railroad station across the street and boarded the train to Denver. Just before doing so, however, she checked Obendoerfer’s wicker grip at the depot. Inside were a few items of clothing, a pipe, and two salt shakers, one empty and the other containing eighty-two percent arsenic trioxide that she had hidden inside. She certainly never expected local police to recover the bag two weeks later.
When she and Oscar arrived in Denver on the afternoon of August 2, she returned to the Midland Hotel. “How’s Mr. Obendoerfer doing?” Straub inquired as she registered.
“Oh, he’s getting along nicely,” she replied with a smile, knowing full well that Obendoerfer was lying in a mortuary, dead for more than twenty-four hours.
The following morning Oscar and his mother visited the Curtis Jewelry Company, a Denver pawn shop, where she received $7.50 for Mrs. Turner’s two diamond rings. She pawned them under the name of “Marie Fisher, Steffens Hotel, Chicago,” misspelling the name of the Windy City hotel where she and Oscar stayed thirteen days earlier.
“If anyone ever asks you where we got those rings,” Anna Marie told her son, “you say you found them in the street.” Oscar nodded.
The pair headed back east, traveling to Chicago on the sleek Burlington Zephyr, and arrived in Cincinnati Monday, August 9. Since she failed to reap a financial bonanza from Obendoerfer, Anna Marie immediately sought new opportunities. The following day she spotted a classified ad in the “Female Help Wanted” columns of the Cincinnati Times-Star that called for a white woman, about thirty, to care for an elderly gentleman for $10 a week, but she didn’t have time to apply for the position. In the early afternoon there was a knock on her door.
It was the police.