This week in 1938

“Good-bye all of you and God bless you . . . Mr. Woodard [the warden], don’t do this to me. Think of my boy. Can’t you think of my baby? Isn’t there anybody who will help me? Is nobody going to help me?”

— Anna Marie Hahn, convicted of murder, electric chair, Ohio.
Executed December 7, 1938

Hahn was convicted of poisoning four elderly people, prosecutors claimed, with the motive of stealing their money after a series of losses at the horse track. She had been found with crystallized poison in her possession, the same substance that crime scientists found in the stomach lining of all the victims. Authorities described Hahn as calm throughout her trial and incarceration, but she began to break down when led to the death chamber, collapsing and crying frantically for her life.