Anna Marie Hahn…Killer of the Elderly

Happy Women in Horror Month!  This month we celebrate the women in the world of horror.  I have done a number of articles on serial killers, mass murderers and other horrific people, but this moth I turn my focus to the world of female terror.
Anna Marie Hahn (Filser) was born in Germany in 1906.  She was the youngest of 12 children and started her scandalous life at a very early age.  At 12 years old she had an affair with a married physician and birthed a son named Oskar.  Her horrified family sent her to the States without her child to live with relatives there.  While in America, she met and married fellow German immigrant Philip Hahn.  After this marriage, she was reunited with her son.

Anna, however was not the doting mother that fairy tales are made of.  She had a severe gambling habit and began a life of robbery to pay her debts.  On May 6, 1933 Ernst Kohler, an elderly man whom Anna had befriended, died by poison administered by the deadly woman.  He left al he had to Anna in his will.
After this murder/robbery worked so well, Anna began a career as a nurse and focused her attention of caring for rich, old men.  Albert Parker, Jacob Wagner, George Gsellman, and Georg Obendoefer all fell victim to the poison-administering nurse.
Autopsies of each man showed lethal amounts of arsenic in their bodies and Anna was arrested on suspicion of murder.

The four-week trial was in 1937 and Anna was easily found guilty of all charges.  She had a final seat in the electric chair on December 7, 1938.