The FIRST Woman Executed in Ohio’s Electric Chair — Serial Killer Anna Marie Hahn’s Final Confession

Ohio State Penitentiary, Columbus, Ohio, December 7th, 1938, 8:00 in the evening. A single electric chair sat in the middle of a cold, silent room. A group of witnesses stood still, watching. Nobody spoke. Then she walked in, 5 ft tall, blonde hair, 32 years old. Her name was Anna Marie Hahn, and in a matter of minutes, the state of Ohio was about to do something it had never done before in its entire history, execute a woman.

 Five men were already dead. She had moved freely for four full years without a single arrest. But here is the part that will stop you cold. The night before her execution, Anna Marie sat in her death row cell and wrote a 20-page handwritten confession. Every name, every victim, every poison. So ask yourself this, why would an innocent woman do that? That answer changes everything.

 But before we get to that chair, you need to know who she was and who she destroyed. Welcome to the Execution Archive. If this is your first time here, hit that subscribe button right now, because this story goes places you will not expect. These men were not strangers picked at random. They were chosen carefully, quietly, and none of them ever saw it coming. Ernest Coke was 73 years old.

 He was well-known and deeply respected inside Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine district. Before Anna Marie Hahn walked into his life, he had no serious medical history. He was a healthy old man with a home and a community that knew his name. He died on May 6th, 1933. He left Anna his house. Albert Parker was 72, a retired railroad worker, quiet, decent, and deeply trusting.

 He loaned Anna $1,000 and signed a document to prove it. When he died, that document was gone. Jacob Wagner was 78. A gentle gardener. He grew so fond of Anna that he rewrote his will, leaving her $17,000 in cash and calling her his beloved niece. He was not her uncle. He was her next victim. He died on June 3rd, 1937.

Georg Gesselman was 67. He died on July 6th, 1937, less than 5 weeks after Wagner. Anna walked away with somewhere between 15,000 and 17,000 dollars. Georg Obendorfer was also 67, a cobbler. In the summer of 1937, he boarded a train to Colorado Springs with Anna and her young son. He never came home.

 Every single one of these men was aging, living alone, with nobody watching closely enough. That is exactly why she picked them. Ernest Coke, Albert Parker, Jacob Wagner, Georg Gesselman, Georg Obendorfer. Remember those names. So, who exactly was Anna Marie Hahn? She was born on July 7th, 1906 in Füssen, Bavaria, Germany. She was the youngest of 12 children.

 By the time she came into the world, several of her siblings had already died. Her father, Georg Filsinger, was a furniture manufacturer. The family was financially comfortable, respected, religious. From the outside, it looked like a good home to grow up in, but Anna was different. From a young age, she was described as spoiled and restless, always pushing against boundaries, always wanting more than what was in front of her.

 She never finished high school, though she would later claim otherwise. As a child, she spent close to 5 months hospitalized with blood poisoning. She later had surgery for a goiter. She survived both. Most people around her assumed that made her strong. They had no idea what that survival would eventually cost others.

 Then came the scandal. As a teenager, Anna became pregnant. She told her family the father was a well-known cancer researcher from Vienna named Dr. Max Macheki. Court records later confirmed that no such doctor existed under that name. Oscar’s real father has never been identified to this day. Her family was mortified.

 In 1929, they made a decision. They sent Anna to the United States. Oscar stayed behind in Bavaria with her parents. In Cincinnati, she moved in with relatives Max and Anna Doschel. She met a fellow German immigrant named Philip Hahn. They married in 1930. To everyone around her, she was a devoted mother, a warm neighbor, and a tireless caregiver.

That image was built entirely on performance. And what investigators eventually found inside her Cincinnati home would leave an entire police department speechless. After the wedding, Anna briefly traveled back to Germany to bring Oscar home to Cincinnati. On the surface, everything looked right.

 A husband, a son, a fresh start in America. But things were already falling apart behind closed doors. Not long after the marriage, Philip Hahn became seriously ill. He was hospitalized. He survived, but the marriage never recovered. And the full significance of that illness would only become clear much later.

 The bakery they ran together in Cincinnati’s German District was struggling. The Great Depression had tightened its grip on everything. Money was disappearing faster than it was coming in. Court records point to a growing gambling problem. Horse race betting, heavy losses, debt that kept climbing with no honest way out. Prosecutors allege that before poison ever entered the picture, Anna tried to burn down the family home, then the bakery, to collect insurance money.

 When that did not solve the problem, she found another way. She positioned herself as a live-in caregiver for elderly men inside Cincinnati’s German immigrant community. A community held together by shared language, shared roots, and deep trust between neighbors. She walked straight into that trust, and then she used it as a weapon.

 But there was one man who saw something he was not supposed to see. He watched flies land on a drink she had brought him, and dropped dead on the spot. What he chose to do next would cost four more men their lives. We will get there. Here is something that makes this case even more disturbing. Anna Marie Hahn had no accomplices, no partner, no help.

 Court records confirmed that no co-conspirators were ever identified or charged alongside her. Every step of what she did, she planned it, prepared it, and carried it out entirely by herself. Her weapons were arsenic and croton oil. Both were accessible in the 1930s. Both were nearly impossible to detect at the time.

 She administered them through food, drink, and medicine. Things she personally prepared and personally delivered to men who trusted her completely. Her targets were never chosen by accident. Elderly men living [clears throat] alone, modest savings, little to no family checking in regularly, and a deep cultural trust in a fellow German immigrant.

 She made herself the person who controlled their meals, their medications, and in many cases their money. She rewrote wills in her favor. She borrowed money and made the paperwork disappear after each man died. She even brought Oscar along on trips. A mother traveling with her young son looked completely ordinary.

 That was the point. When police eventually searched her home after her arrest, what they found inside was enough to kill an entire city. If you are still with us, hit that like button right now, because this story is only getting darker from here. Now, let us walk through exactly what she did and how she got away with it until she didn’t.

 Ernest Coke, May 6th, 1933. Anna worked her way into Ernest’s life slowly. She made herself useful. She cooked. She checked in. She became the person he depended on. By the time she was done, he had left her his house in his will. Then he died. No investigation was opened. No questions were asked. An old man had passed away, and a kind woman had been remembered in his will.

The community mourned. Anna moved on. Albert Parker, Albert had loaned Anna $1,000. A signed document existed to prove it, an IOU written and witnessed. Court records note that after his death, that document was either discarded or simply disappeared. The debt went with it. Another quiet funeral. Another clean exit. Nobody looked twice.

Jacob Wagner, June 3rd, 1937. With Jacob, Anna went further. She had spent enough time around him that he genuinely believed she was family. He rewrote his will and left her $17,000 in cash, referring to her as his beloved niece. He was not her relative. He was her next victim. Jacob Wagner’s death would later become the formal murder charge that put Anna Marie Hahn in the electric chair.

 George Gesselman, July 6th, 1937. Less than 5 weeks after Jacob Wagner died, George Gesselman was gone, too. Before his death, Anna had worked her way into his finances and walked away with somewhere between $15,000 and $17,000. Still, no alarm was raised. No pattern had yet become visible to authorities. As far as anyone could tell, another elderly man had simply died in the care of a devoted woman.

 Georg Oberndorfer, August 1st, 1937. This is the one that ended everything. In the summer of 1937, Anna convinced Georg Oberndorfer, a 67-year-old cobbler, to travel with her to Colorado Springs. She brought Oscar along. Two adults and a young boy boarding a train, nothing unusual about that. But according to Oscar’s own testimony at trial, Oberndorfer began getting sick on that train before they even reached Colorado.

By the time they arrived, he was deteriorating fast. He died in agony in their hotel room. When Colorado authorities came to ask questions, Anna looked them in the eye and told them she did not know the man. She had just crossed state lines with him, sat beside him on a train, watched him get sick every mile of the journey, and then she did something that nobody expected.

 She offered to pay for his funeral. That single offer raised immediate suspicion. Authorities ordered an autopsy. The results came back with no room for doubt. Arsenic poisoning confirmed. Investigators sent word back to Cincinnati. The clock on Anna Marie Hahn had finally started. George Heiss, the man who walked away.

At trial, George Heiss took the stand and told the court what had happened the day Anna brought him a mug of root beer. He watched flies land on that drink. They died almost immediately. He grew suspicious. He sent her away. He survived, but he never went to the police. And four more men paid for that silence with their lives.

 When Anna Marie Hahn returned to Cincinnati from Colorado with Oscar, she walked off that train as if nothing had happened. She was wrong about what was waiting for her. Detectives were already there. Arrest warrants had already been prepared. The moment she stepped back into Cincinnati, law enforcement moved in.

 And here is what stood out to everyone in that room. She was composed, well-dressed, completely calm. She gave investigators nothing. Not a tremor, not a crack, not a single word that helped them. The same charm and confidence she had used to walk into the homes of five elderly men, she turned directly on law enforcement. It did not work this time.

When police searched her Cincinnati home, one detective later stated that the amount of poison found inside that house was enough to kill half of Cincinnati. Philip Hahn, her estranged husband, played no role in what followed. That chapter of her life was already over. Across Cincinnati’s German-American community, the reaction was complete and utter disbelief.

These were people who had welcomed her, trusted her, and placed their elderly in her hands. Prosecutors would later argue that her motive was never complicated. It was plain financial theft. Wills manipulated, debts erased, estates quietly taken from men who never saw it coming. The arsenic found in Georg Oberndorfer’s body did not just close one case.

It blew four years of silence wide open. Investigators began pulling records on every elderly man Anna Marie Hahn had ever cared for inside Cincinnati’s German community. What they found was a trail of deaths stretching all the way back to 1933, four full years. And not one of those deaths had ever triggered a formal investigation.

The reason was painfully simple. She was a caregiver. Elderly men in her care fell ill and died. That was not shocking. That was not suspicious. That was expected. Her role gave her the perfect cover, and she knew exactly how to use it. Authorities ordered the exhumations of her previous clients.

 One by one, the toxicology results came back. Poisoning confirmed, then confirmed again, then again. Court records show that the poison stockpile discovered inside her Cincinnati home removed every last shadow of doubt. This was not a woman who had made one terrible decision in a moment of desperation. She had been stocked, prepared, and running an active poisoning operation across multiple years.

 Four years, five men, all dead, and not a single alarm raised until a hotel room in Colorado changed everything. Then came the testimony that nobody in that courtroom was prepared for. And it came from inside her own family. If Georg Oberndorfer had died in Cincinnati, Anna Marie Hahn might never have been caught. But he did not die in Cincinnati.

He died in Colorado Springs, a different state, a different jurisdiction, and one where authorities ordered an autopsy almost immediately. That single decision changed everything. The exhumation results from Cincinnati began arriving one by one. Poisoning confirmed, then confirmed again.

 Prosecutors now had a documented pattern written in black and white stretching back four years. The poison stockpile found inside her home removed the last possible defense she had. Then came the moment that silenced the courtroom. Oscar, her own son, approximately 12 years old, took the stand. He testified that he, his mother, and Georg Oberdorfer had traveled together by train from Cincinnati to Colorado, and that Oberdorfer had begun getting sick on that train before they even arrived.

Those words, spoken by her own child, carried a weight that no prosecutor could have manufactured. George Heist followed. He told the court exactly what he had seen. Flies dropping dead from a drink she had brought him. Anna Marie Hahn was formally arrested and charged. When news spread across Cincinnati that enough poison had been found in her home to kill half the city, the public reaction was one thing and one thing only, absolute disbelief.

In the fall of 1937, Anna Marie Hahn walked into a Cincinnati courtroom, and the entire state of Ohio stopped to watch. The trial ran for four weeks. The press called it the greatest mass murder case in the history of the country. Every single day, more than 1,000 people crowded outside the courthouse, not to attend, but just to catch a glimpse of her.

The jury was unlike anything Ohio had seen before, 11 women and one man. That composition alone made national headlines. Anna came to court every day looking completely put together. Clean clothes, neat hair, calm expression. She sat through every piece of evidence against her and performed innocence like it required no effort at all. The prosecution was not fooled.

Their argument was straightforward. This was mass murder for profit. Every victim had been financially drained before he died. Every death had been made to look natural, and Anna Marie Hahn had walked away richer every single time. Two testimonies hit harder than anything else. George Heist describing the flies dropping dead, and Oscar, her own son, confirming the train ride and Oberndorfer’s sickness along the way.

The jury deliberated for less than 3 hours. Guilty. No recommendation for mercy. Under Ohio law, that meant one thing, an automatic death sentence. On November 10th, 1937, Judge Charles Bell formally sentenced Anna Marie Hahn to death by electrocution. She maintained her innocence as every word of that sentence was read aloud.

 She became the first woman ever sentenced to death by electrocution in the state of Ohio. Her attorneys appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The court refused to intervene. On December 1st, 1938, Anna Marie Hahn was transferred to Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus. For months, she had told herself that Ohio would never actually execute a woman, that someone would step in at the last moment, that the state would back down. Nobody backed down.

 In her final hours, the performance finally stopped. She picked up a pen and wrote 20 pages, a full handwritten confession. She named her victims. She admitted to the poisonings. She expressed deep confusion about her own actions. And above everything else, she poured out her fear about what would happen to Oscar when she was gone.

She requested no last meal. She was too consumed by grief and panic to eat. Oscar, approximately 12 years old, spent most of that final day with her at the prison. When the time came to take her to the execution chamber, he was brought to the death house door and turned away. He walked to the prison chapel and sat down alone.

 Anna was dressed in blue pajamas and a brown top, her blonde hair disheveled. Guards led her down the corridor past the cells of 12 condemned men. Every single one of them stepped forward to the bars and stood in silence. She looked at them and said, “Goodbye all of you, and God bless you.” At the execution chamber door, she collapsed.

 Guards carried her to the chair. Strapped in, she stretched her arms toward the witnesses and cried, “Mr. Woodard, don’t do this to me. Think of my boy. Is nobody going to help me?” She turned to prison chaplain Father John Sullivan and whispered, “Be careful, Father. You’ll be killed.” Father Sullivan began the Lord’s Prayer. Anna recited every word with him.

In the middle of that prayer, the switch was thrown. At 8:13 in the evening on December 7th, 1938, Anna Marie Hahn was pronounced dead. She was 32 years old, the first woman ever executed by the state of Ohio. After her death, Anna’s attorney sold the 20-page confession to the Cincinnati Enquirer under one condition: Every dollar earned would go into a trust fund for Oscar. That promise was kept.

 Oscar eventually settled with a foster family in the Midwest. He lived a relatively quiet life and later served in the United States Navy during World War II. Ernest Kock, Albert Parker, Jacob Wagner, George Gesselman, Georg Obendorfer, five men who trusted someone they believed was there to help them. They deserved so much better.

 Anna Marie Hahn spent years poisoning men to secure money and freedom. In the end, the only thing she secured was her own place in history and somewhere in a prison chapel, a 12-year-old boy sat alone waiting for a mother who would never walk out. Which moment in this story hit you hardest? Drop it in the comments below.

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