According to the State of Ohio, Anna Marie Hahn “unlawfully, purposely and by means of poison killed one Jacob Wagner,” and in doing so violated “the peace and dignity of the State of Ohio.”
With his reading of the indictment against her, Outcalt launched his devastating opening statement to the jury Friday, October 15, in a courtroom overflowing with spectators, journalists, and lawyers. As before, many more patiently stood in the hallways, hoping against hope they would be admitted, too.
After the victim’s body was “brought up from the ground,” Outcalt said, an autopsy “disclosed that Jacob Wagner died from the administration of a poison commonly used for rats!” He forcefully hammered the last word home while staring at the expressionless defendant.
Anna Marie went through the building where the seventy-eight-year-old gardener had lived for many years, the prosecutor said, and identified herself to tenants as Wagner’s niece. Hers was a “plan, scheme and design to enrich herself by the acquisition of Jacob Wagner’s life savings,” Outcalt said, “and as you will see when I talk to you a little later about the cases of other old men, you will see, ladies and gentlemen. . . .”
The entire team of defense attorneys jumped out of their seats to object. Hoodin took the vociferous lead, protesting strenuously the mention of “other old men . . . for the purpose of inflaming the minds of the jury.”
For the first of many times, the jury was excused while the defense and prosecution argued at length whether other alleged crimes should be mentioned. At one point, Outcalt told the court that he would show Anna Marie had “killed so many men that there is not another person like her on the face of the earth.” He convinced Judge Bell that the prosecution had the right to mention in opening argument other acts of the defendant. A distraught Hoodin asked that the jury be dismissed and that he be allowed time to prepare a defense beyond the Wagner case as charged in the indictment. His motion was denied.
When the jury returned some minutes later, Judge Bell carefully explained to the panel that opening statements were not evidence and that in their deliberations, only evidence could be considered in reaching a verdict.
Outcalt continued, describing the defendant’s “very clever schemes” to enrich herself, “to satisfy her greed.” She dealt Wagner “a terrific dose of arsenic” and “he was in agony” before he passed away on June 3. Afterward, she forged Wagner’s will, “which purported to give her every cent that he had.”
The prosecutor also detailed the deaths “in utter agony” of Obendoerfer, Gsellman, and Palmer and then the poisoning of the state’s “living witness,” Heis.
“We will show you, ladies and gentlemen . . . that if arsenic is followed by the administration of croton oil—which in itself is a deadly poison, the croton oil being a violent purgative—[the croton oil] will wash out most of the arsenic from the stomach. The arsenic will remain in the other organs, but if the stomach alone is examined, we will show you, ladies and gentlemen, that there is a greatly increased possibility of evading detection.”
In conclusion, Outcalt said he intended to show “the guilt of this defendant beyond any reasonable doubt, beyond any possible doubt,” demanding that “the supreme penalty be imposed.”
Anna Marie sat stone-faced throughout the prosecutor’s forceful presentation, apparently unimpressed by it. Outcalt’s oratory captivated others. One member of the press from Chicago described Outcalt’s performance as the “greatest opening statement in Ohio court history.” Another painted it as “brilliant oratory [that] charged the courtroom with electric tension.”
In a raspy voice from the cold that still gripped him, Hoodin took his best shot in his opening statement on behalf of Anna Marie. “Our defense is pure and simple,” he said at the outset. “She did not administer poison to Jacob Wagner . . . a very nice person, well versed in reference to flowers.” At no time, defense counsel told the jury, did his client “administer poison to anyone.” She was in court because she sought vindication, he said.
As expected, Hoodin attacked anew “the great Captain Hayes . . . who supposes himself to be another Sherlock Holmes, another great detective who is attempting in this case, I believe the evidence will indicate, to cover himself with glory as having been the person who in this case uncovered this crime.”
Hoodin, who correctly noted that he was not as capable an orator as Outcalt, told the jury that one of its biggest jobs during the trial would be “to watch the witnesses, their attitude and demeanor on the stand. You are to judge whether they are telling the truth [and] whether Mrs. Hahn tells you the truth. All we ask of you . . . is a fair and impartial verdict.”
Casey told his Chicago Daily News readers that the prosecution turned out the whole neighborhood “to tell of [Anna Marie’s] volunteer mercies to old men who seldom lived long enough to express their gratitude.” In backyards and on fire escapes, he reported, the neighborhood “jury” gossiped about local indiscretions, “and some day the whole business will come back to you—when you are receiving the Florence Nightingale medal or sitting on trial for your life—as, indeed, it came back to Mrs. Hahn last night.”
The state opened its case by calling to the stand Wagner’s neighbors, most of whom testified with German accents. The first was Nannie Werks, who lived on the fourth floor of the apartment building where Wagner lived. She recalled that Anna Marie came to her door, and said, “‘I am looking for an old gentleman, a bachelor that lives alone,’ and she had a letter in her hand, and she says, ‘I just received a letter from my mother in Germany, and she gave me this address to hunt him up. He fell heir to a lot of property.’”
Mrs. Werks asked Anna Marie for the name of the relative.
“She says, ‘I don’t know. I would know him if I would see him.’ . . . She never mentioned Mr. Wagner’s name.”
Other neighbors, like Elizabeth Colby and her daughter, Josephine Martin, recounted having a similar visit from Anna Marie. She asked if “any old men were living here,” Mrs. Colby recalled. “I was waiting for her to say a name, and she wouldn’t say a name.” Mrs. Colby identified Wagner as one of her elderly neighbors.
It was at Mrs. Colby’s kitchen table than Anna Marie wrote a note that she placed under Wagner’s door. Two weeks later, on “a really hot day,” Mrs. Colby and her daughter saw the defendant in Wagner’s room from across a small alley. Anna Marie “got up and walked to a table, and there was a glass there, and she poured something in a glass and walked to the other side of the room, handing somebody some liquid stuff,” the witness said. In cross-examination by Hoodin, Mrs. Colby admitted that she didn’t know what was poured into the glass.
Ida Martin, Josephine’s ex-mother-in-law and also a Wagner neighbor, remembered Anna Marie telling her that “I sent the old man to the hospital.” Then, the day before he died, Mrs. Martin said Anna Marie told her that there were things of Wagner’s left in his room. “She said . . . ‘I will give them to you. He’s not coming back.’”
The portly Dr. James A. Clift, uncomfortable in the tight witness chair, told the jury that the defendant summoned him to Wagner’s apartment at about 9:30 P.M. He recalled that she identified herself as a nurse from “the old country,” and that her husband there, in Germany, was a doctor.
“I asked her—see, he talks German; I don’t, you see—I asked Mrs. Hahn, I says, ‘How long has this man been sick?’ She says over a week . . . She said, ‘He has [been] running off of the bowels.’ I says, ‘Ask Mr. Wagner how many times his bowels run off.’ So she asked him in German and then she told me ‘fifteen to seventeen times.’”
In his cross-examination, Hoodin tried to pin Wagner’s poisoning on the physician by intimating the tablets Dr. Clift prescribed for dysentery contained arsenic. Not true, said the doctor.
Judge Bell adjourned the court after what had been an exhausting, long first day for all. In the evening, the jury was taken to see Joan Crawford and her real-life husband, Franchot Tone, in The Bride Wore Red. It was the first of several movie outings the jury would have during the trial.
Assistant Prosecutor Martin called to the stand the second neighborhood physician to visit Wagner, Dr. Richard Marnell. His examination of Wagner was more thorough than Clift’s, and his testimony more precise about Wagner’s condition.
“Will you tell us just what your examination of Jacob Wagner showed?”
“His general complaint was vomiting and pain in the stomach. . . . The patient stated that the vomitus was bloody in color. . . . Eating did not relieve the pain. The patient had been taking some type of liquid medicine. The patient likewise stated that he had disurine and hemaurine. Disurine is painful urination, and hemaurine is blood in urine. The patient stated that he had been drinking large quantities of beer in the past few weeks. The patient also stated that he had fallen and struck his head two days ago. There was an abrasion on the scalp and forehead on the right side. The patient did not lose consciousness at the time of the fall.”
“Those were the statements, doctor, that Jacob Wagner made to you, is that correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Where was Anna Hahn at that time?”
“In the start of my history Mrs. Hahn was in the room, and during the course of obtaining my history she left the room.”
Marnell testified that to him, Wagner appeared “chronically ill. . . . The patient was advised to enter the hospital, to which he gave his consent.”
“And doctor, did you recommend a hospital?”
The physician said Anna Marie had approached him about a hospital “before I had even seen the patient.”
“Mrs. Hahn had approached you about a hospital?”
“She did.”
Marnell confirmed that he had seen Wagner twice on June 2, once in the early afternoon and again about 8 P.M., after Wagner had been taken to Good Samaritan Hospital. Martin asked the doctor to describe Wagner’s condition at the hospital.
“Mr. Wagner was in a semi-reclining position, in bed, semi-comatose; I mean by that semi-conscious, retching with pain, in a state of shock and dying.”
The somber trial was not without some humor. John Decker, another neighbor and friend of Wagner’s, brought smiles while he responded to questions posed by Martin.
“Now, Mr. Decker, do you remember when Jacob Wagner died?”
“Listen. I tell you. I explain. I seen him on Sunday morning about six o’clock, meet him in the hall.”
“That is the Sunday morning before he died?”
“I tell him, ‘What’s the matter?’ in German. ‘What’s the matter, Jake?’”
“You talked to him in German?”
“Yes. ‘Oh,’ he tells me . . .”
Hoodin objected to the response.
Judge Bell reminded Decker that “you are not permitted here to tell what you said to him or he to you. You just listen to Mr. Martin’s questions and answer what he asks you and don’t add anything. Just answer his questions.” Decker nodded affirmation.
“Mr. Decker,” Martin resumed, “when you saw Jacob Wagner on that Sunday morning, just tell us how he looked.”
“On Sunday morning, six o’clock, I tell him, ‘What’s the matter, Jake?’ ‘I am awful sick; awful sick . . . ’”
This time Bolsinger rose for the defense. “Now, if the court pleases . . .”
An exasperated Judge Bell, peering over his pince-nez at the witness seated immediately in front of him, addressed Decker once again.
“Mr. Decker, I just said you are not to tell what he said to you. I have said three times you are not to tell that. The prosecutor will ask you the questions and you just answer them. He [Martin] asked you how Mr. Wagner looked.”
“Well, he had a towel around his neck and, ‘My stomach’ is all he told me,” Decker responded, totally ignoring the court and once again bringing an objection from the defense.
Martin asked if Decker noticed what Wagner was doing with his hands the morning he went to the hospital.
“Yes. He answered me, ‘Awful sick.’” Hoodin rolled his eyes, but did not object. Judge Bell smiled in frustration.
“What did you see about his hands was the question,” Martin continued.
“I can’t understand you,” Decker replied.
“I’ll withdraw the question,” said Martin, done in by his witness, who was excused.
Elizabeth Morabek, the nurse on duty when Wagner was brought in to Good Samaritan Hospital, described the “terrifying” picture of the patient who begged for water. She said she spoke to Anna Marie the day after Wagner died. “She said she didn’t know the man,” Morabek said. Yet the hospital registrar, Laura Boehm, testified next that the defendant told her that she had been “taking care” of Wagner but she “was worn out,” so she brought him to the hospital “because she needed a rest.”
Dr. Francis M. Forster, one year out of University of Cincinnati Medical College, attended to Wagner at the hospital. Outcalt questioned him about Wagner’s condition early in the evening of June 2.
“He was definitely in a state of what we speak of as shock, which means death is imminent unless something is done for the patient.”
“Did you do anything for him at that time, doctor?”
“Yes. I consulted with Dr. Marnell and under his orders gave the customary drugs used in such a condition, which were glucose and strychnine and caffeine.”
“In how many hours did he die?”
“He died at approximately midnight.”
Forster then related how later the following morning he had sought out Anna Marie.
“I requested permission for an autopsy, which is customary, and stated that we were particularly anxious—Dr. Marnell and I were both anxious—to obtain permission because we were not certain of the cause of death of the particular patient.”
“What did she say?” Outcalt asked.
“Mrs. Hahn refused.”
“Then what did you say to her?”
“I told her that since Mr. Wagner had died within the twenty-four-hour limit [for the signing of the death certificate], which is set by the state, it would then become a coroner’s case. If we performed an autopsy at the Good Samaritan by our own men, the report would be furnished to the coroner’s office, but if not, I would have to notify him, and it would be within his discretion for the autopsy.”
“What did she say to that?”
“She said she would like to think it over.”
“Did you see her again that morning?”
“No, I did not see her anymore.”
“Do you know whether or not, as a matter of fact, she did subsequently consent?”
“She did.”
Salesman Frank Kaessheimer drank beer with Wagner, his neighbor, at Kirsch’s restaurant. It was there, on May 29, that Wagner reported that his bankbook had been stolen. He suspected Anna Marie. During the course of their conversation, she arrived at Kirsch’s, too.
“What happened when she came in?” Outcalt asked his witness, “and tell us what conversation there was after she was there.”
“She said, ‘Mr. Wagner, I was looking for you all over. I left a note saying I was coming down this morning. Where was you?’ Mr. Wagner was sitting there with his hands on the table. He said, ‘Yes, my bankbook is gone and nobody else took it but you.’ She said, ‘Your bankbook isn’t gone. Nobody can do nothing with that bankbook, you ought to know that.’ He said, ‘It is gone.’
“Mrs. Hahn said, ‘Where are my two bankbooks?’ He said, ‘They are gone, too.’”
“What did she say when he said, ‘They are gone, too’?” Outcalt asked.
“Mrs. Hahn said, ‘Let’s get up and go to your room and see if we can find it.’” In about ten minutes, the pair returned with Wagner’s “lost” bankbook.
The conversation then took a strange twist, one that clearly demonstrated Anna Marie’s disregard of the facts. She asked Kaessheimer to guess her age. He said he didn’t know. “I am much older than you,” Anna Marie told the thirty-nine-year-old salesman. “I am forty-eight-years-old. You are not that old.” Kaessheimer agreed he was not, but then, neither was she. Why Anna Marie, then thirty, would want to add eighteen years to her age is unknown, but perhaps she wished to appear closer to Wagner’s seventy-eight years.
Kaessheimer also testified that she told him, “‘I was married in Germany already to a doctor, but he died. When I came to the United States I married again.’”
Arthur J. Schmitt, assistant vice president at Fifth Third Union Trust, Wagner’s bank, delivered some of the most damaging early testimony. He recalled for the court a visit Anna Marie paid him June 1, two days before Wagner died. She reported that Wagner’s passbook “had been found in the cupboard at her uncle’s [Wagner] home in the same place where he always kept it [and that] she intended to take her uncle to her home to care for him. She also inquired of me how her uncle might procure some of his funds in the event he could not get down to the bank.”
The chances were, of course, that Wagner would not make it to his bank ever again. Anna Marie already had begun to poison him.
Shortly before 10 A.M. on June 3, Anna Marie appeared at Schmitt’s desk again.
“Did she present anything to you at that time?” asked Outcalt.
“Yes, sir.”
“What did she present?”
“She presented a withdrawal receipt, Mr. Wagner’s passbook and another note from Mr. Wagner,” which the prosecutor introduced as evidence.
Schmitt said he telephoned Deaconess Hospital, where Anna Marie said Wag ner was a patient, only to be informed that Jacob Wagner was not there. “She said she was slightly confused,” the banker said, and said Good Samaritan Hospital was correct. He called there, too.
“What did you say to her then?” Outcalt asked.
“I told her that the Good Samaritan Hospital had informed me that Mr. Wagner had died at 12:15 A.M. that same morning. I also asked her who signed that withdrawal order, and she admitted she had signed it.”
Schmitt said he told Anna Marie that forgery was a criminal offense.
“What did she say about that?” Outcalt asked.
“She got rather excited and begged me not to institute any proceedings against her on account of her son, eleven years old.” She also told Schmitt that she was estranged from her husband, he testified.
The trial adjourned at noon.
Sunday was a day of rest. Some jurors were escorted to morning church services, while others read books or wrote letters and cards, which the bailiffs scanned for content. After the midday meal, the panel took a bus ride through Cincinnati’s northern suburbs. In the evening, both Granda and alternate juror Juergens were visited by members of their families.
Anna Marie spent part of the day knitting in her cell and wandering the corridors of the jail in a plain housedress, chatting with prisoners, guards, and visitors. Asked if she would have preferred an all-male jury, she shrugged and said, “I had nothing to say about it. Anyway, I have nothing to fear.”
“She seems to have her old pep back,” observed Deputy Sheriff Heitzler.