At the outset of the trial, Hoodin indicated he would call fifty-three witnesses for the defense. He came up fifty-one short.
Oscar, neatly attired in a natty striped tie and a double-breasted brown suit—his first with long pants—was the first witness called Monday morning in opening the case for the defense. This came as somewhat of a surprise, for when the trial adjourned Friday afternoon, Hoodin didn’t have “the slightest idea in the world what the defense would be.” He talked about calling expert witnesses and conferring with experienced criminal defense attorneys, namely William A. Thorndyke and Arthur C. Fricke, both of Cincinnati. He even mentioned that the defense might rest its case without calling a soul to the stand. “It’s a delicate, technical problem,” he allowed.
On Saturday morning the defense sought from Judge Bell a directed verdict of acquittal, arguing at length that the state had not proven its case. Hoodin noted that the bottle of arsenic Captain Hayes found was not proven to be Anna Marie’s, her purse passed through many hands before being examined, Wagner could have committed suicide, and the prosecution failed to produce evidence that the defendant administered poison to anyone. “Unless that is proved, there is no case!” Hoodin loudly proclaimed. The state had “no evidence that a crime was committed!”
Outcalt addressed the court on Hoodin’s suicide supposition. “If accident or suicide happens once, that may be considered by the jury, but when you add three other similar deaths, the suggestion of defense counsel becomes a mathematical impossibility.”
Hoodin concluded by arguing that it was “a hard enough job to defend ourselves against one charge of murder, but that job is magnified five-hundred-fold when we are called upon to defend ourselves against five crimes. It’s a job nobody can handle.”
Judge Bell thought otherwise and on Monday morning denied the defense motion for a directed not-guilty verdict.
Now Oscar, whom reporters variously described as “wide-eyed,” “precocious,” “mannerly,” and “nice looking . . . with an alert, intelligent face,” sat in the witness chair. Hoodin began by asking Judge Bell if he wanted to test Oscar to be sure he understood the oath he took.
“How old is he?” the jurist asked, peering over his pince-nez at the handsome youth in the witness box.
“Twelve,” said Hoodin. Curiously, Oscar later testified that he was eleven.
“Oscar, do you go to Sunday school?” asked Judge Bell. “Yes.”
“Do you know it is wrong for little boys not to tell the truth?”
“Yes.”
“You know they are punished if they don’t?”
“Yes.”
“You understood the oath you just took?”
“Yes.”
“You understand if you don’t tell the truth, you will be punished?
“Yes.”
Little did the court know that for years Oscar had told lies, many at the behest of his mother, to whom he clung.
Hoodin began his careful, gentle questioning, first about Oscar’s chemical set in the basement of the Hahn home. Oscar said he and some neighborhood chums, including Junior Thornton, Jack Glazel, and Billy Johnson, played with chemicals. According to the witness, they salvaged bottles, test tubes, and hypodermic needles from the trash of nearby doctors, a hospital incinerator, and a funeral home.1 Some bottles he stored in the basement rafters, Oscar said, which is where Captain Hayes testified he found a bottle of arsenic trioxide. The prosecution maintained that Anna Marie had put it there.
At Hoodin’s prompting, Oscar next recalled the trip to Colorado with his mother and Obendoerfer. On the train from Cincinnati to Chicago, his mother handed out some sandwiches she had purchased in Cincinnati. She gave Obendoerfer two, Oscar said, and he served their travel companion some water and beer. After an overnight stay in Chicago, the trio continued on to Denver by rail.
During the train ride, Obendoerfer began to feel poorly. Several times Oscar brought him cups of water, although on the stand he continually used “we” to account for the actions he and his mother took.
“Oscar, did you hear any conversation between your mother and Mr. Obendoerfer on the way from Chicago to Denver, about his money?”
“Yes. . . . My mother asked him how much money he had to buy the [Colorado chicken] farm, or how much it cost or something like that, and he answered that he only had three or four dollars, and I just started to laugh. So my mother says, ‘Why, farms cost more than that. We will have to see in Denver about a check or something, to send from Cincinnati to Denver.’ So, in Denver my mother sent for the check, and she wrote his name down on a piece of paper.”
By the time they arrived in Denver, Obendoerfer “wasn’t feeling very well,” Oscar admitted. He went for coffee and watermelon, which Anna Marie gave to the old cobbler in the room of the hotel. Oscar watched as Obendoerfer vomited and dirtied the bed after eating the watermelon. Oscar said he never saw his mother put anything in Obendoerfer’s food, though.
Hoodin asked about the next train journey, to Colorado Springs. Oscar said he occupied his time by writing, cutting out paper, and drawing. “I drew a skeleton head, and . . . he [Obendoerfer] picked it up and hollered, ‘Witches! Witches!’ and I started to laugh . . . and everybody on the train started laughing.” Obendoerfer, clearly disturbed, folded up the paper and put it in his pocket.
“Now, Oscar,” Hoodin asked, “what did he do on the way from Denver to Colorado Springs, do you remember?”
“Well, he wasn’t feeling very good, and mother and him would talk every once in awhile and ask him how he was feeling . . . and he wanted a lot of water then, too. So I went and got him some more water and brought it up to him, and this was six or seven glasses I brought him [on the trip] from Denver to Colorado Springs. . . . He was beginning to feel worse, and he would sleep and wake up and look out at the scenery.”
Upon arrival in Colorado Springs, Anna Marie sought out the Park Hotel, and she registered the three of them there.
“I went up to the [nearby] Antlers Hotel, there is a delicatessen in the basement, and I got [Obendoerfer] a sandwich and some coffee.”
“Did you go up to his room with the sandwich and coffee?”
“Yes, I gave it to him.”
“And were you there when he ate it? “Yes.”
“At that time did you see your mother or did you, put anything in the coffee or the sandwich?”
“No,” the boy responded, adding as if coached, “The sugar was put in down at the café.”
Arsenic in white powder form is odorless, virtually tasteless, and dissolves quickly, imperceptibly, in hot coffee, much the same as sugar.
Oscar again testified that he never saw his mother give medicine to Obendoerfer at that time. Mother and son undressed Obendoerfer and put him into bed before heading to dinner at a café the boy described as “a Manhattan.” They returned after dark to find Obendoerfer asleep. The following night, after he and his mother had spent much of the day sightseeing, Anna Marie finally decided Obendoerfer needed medical attention, at the urging of the hotel proprietor, Pell Turner.
“Mr. Turner and Mother helped him downstairs to the cab, and we took him to the hospital,” the boy testified.
On cross-examination, Outcalt attacked Oscar’s story, particularly his time with Obendoerfer in the Denver and Colorado Springs hotels. Oscar recalled under questioning bringing the old man “six or seven glasses of water” at one time while at the Oxford Hotel. “I went and got them because I didn’t want to run back . . . so often, but he didn’t drink them all at once. He drank them slow.”
“And then, when you got to . . . the second hotel in Denver, he was pretty sick, wasn’t he?” the prosecutor inquired.
“Yes.”
“In bed?”
“Yes.”
“And you were there about five days, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You say you brought the food up some of the time?”
“Yes.”
“You say you brought up the watermelon?”
“Yes.”
“Did your mother bring up some of the food?”
“Well, she went down with me when we got the watermelon. She walked down to the café with me.”
“How about the other meals?”
“The sandwiches I brought up.”
“You brought up every meal?”
“Not every meal. Mother carried the plate, and I the coffee and cream, and took it upstairs.”
“He was drinking a lot of water there, wasn’t he?”
“Well, he wanted a lot of water.”
“And it was after the watermelon that he threw up, and lost control of himself?”
“Yes.”
“That room was pretty dirty, wasn’t it?”
“No, not exactly.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Well, you were there when the hotel man [Straub] told your mother that Mr. Obendoerfer was dying.”
“Did you realize he was dying?”
“No.”
“I object!” Hoodin said loudly, trying to break the pressure Outcalt was applying to the boy.
“The answer may remain,” said the judge. “Well, when he walked out of the hotel, it took your mother and the cab driver to get him into the cab, didn’t it?”
“I know it.”
“And he couldn’t walk at that time, could he?”
“Not very well.”
“Well, how did he get into the car—wasn’t one on each side of him, to push him in?”
“They didn’t exactly carry him, but he couldn’t hardly stand up, and they had to hold him.”
Outcalt returned to the evening arrival in Colorado Springs and getting the ill Obendoerfer into bed.
“And you laughed about that, did you, Oscar? “Yes, I thought it was pretty funny, because he believed in witches.”
“He was pretty sick then, wasn’t he?”
“Well, he wasn’t feeling very well.”
Over Hoodin’s objection, the prosecutor turned to the day Oscar found the bottle of croton oil under the cushion of a chair in his home. The boy was asked to describe the bottle.
“Could you see what was said on it?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
“Well, I just seen the skull and crossbones, and I gave it to my daddy [Philip]. I knew it was poison right away.” Several times the boy referred to his stepfather as “daddy,” and Outcalt asked a question about “your father.” All in the courtroom knew that Oscar was an illegitimate child.
Outcalt asked if Anna Marie was home when the bottle was found.
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Your father came home first?”
“Yes, and I gave it to him.”
“And she was pretty mad about it, wasn’t she?”
“Not exactly.”
“That’s what you said, wasn’t it, Oscar?” Outcalt said, picking up a transcript of the interview Oscar gave the police in August.
“Well, she wasn’t exactly real mad about it. She asked him where he got it, and I said I gave it to him.”
Outcalt read from the police report. “Isn’t this just exactly what you said down there [police headquarters] ‘My mother got peeved when I gave the bottle to daddy’?”
“I didn’t say that. I just said my mother—she didn’t get exactly real mad, but she didn’t like it because I gave the bottle to daddy. She didn’t get real mad.”
From her seat at the defense table, Anna Marie smiled at her son.
Outcalt also asked if Oscar hadn’t told the police that he and his mother met Obendoerfer initially on the train to Chicago.
“Yes, sir.”
“And the reason you told them that was because your mother told you to, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
With one question, the prosecution had all but negated the testimony of the first witness for the defense.
Next up, Anna Marie. Hoodin bravely told reporters his client was “eager and anxious to testify. She is going to be an excellent witness,” he promised, adding that Anna Marie was “really happier than she has been in days and days. I have no worries in the world about her standing up under cross-examination. If she didn’t wilt under the examination we have been giving her in private, and if she didn’t wilt under the burden of seeing all those state exhibits piled up before her, as any guilty person would, do you think she ever will?”
Most observers thought not. Throughout her trial, Anna Marie appeared calm. At times she evidenced disinterest in the trial, some thought, but such was not the case. She spent many hours with her attorneys, reviewing her testimony and that of the prosecution witnesses. During some of the legal wrangling between the defense and the prosecution, she examined the law books on the defense table, following the cases Hoodin and Bolsinger cited.
“She has her emotions,” Hoodin told the press. “I will say simply this: She is a woman, Anna Hahn is. She’s just like any other woman. She’s nervous. She never has been calm. She has her feelings, you can bet on that.”
At the afternoon court session, her composure would be tested to the utmost.
1. Shortly after Oscar’s testimony, Frank E. Busse of the Busse & Borgmann funeral home near Oscar’s home vehemently denied having disposed of any bottles that could have been picked up by the boys. “Inasmuch as the alleged testimony casts a reflection in the manner in which our funeral home is kept, the writer offers his services as a witness to entirely discredit such testimony,” Busse wrote to Outcalt. Busse was not called upon to testify.