There was a rare survivor. George Heiss grew suspicious after Anna gave him a mug of beer. A few flies landed on the beer and promptly died. He asked Anna to take a sip, and when she refused, he swished it down the drain and ordered her from the house. But he didn’t go to the police about his suspicions, so Anna was free to continue her grisly business.
The deaths were becoming more frequent. Less than a month after Gsellman’s death, Georg Obendoerfer took a trip with Anna and her son to Colorado and got sick en route. He passed away in agony, and initially she tried to claim that she did not know the man. When it became clear that she had traveled with him, police began to look at her affairs and noticed a suspicious bank transfer from the dead man to her account. An autopsy was ordered. When the medical report indicated high levels of arsenic in Obendoerfer’s body, two previous victims of the Blonde Borgia were exhumed. They were found to have died of arsenic poisoning too. It was too much of a coincidence: Anna was arrested and charged with multiple murders.
Justice moved swiftly in those days. She had escalated her killing spree to one a month in mid-1937; by November of that year her trial was underway. It was a sensation, reported in the press all over the country. It lasted four weeks and Anna tried to claim that she was carrying out mercy killings, saving her beloved charges from long, lingering deaths. But at the end there was no hesitation on the part of the jury. Eleven women and one man found Anna guilty and refused to recommend mercy. This meant an automatic death sentence. It would be the first time a woman would be executed in Ohio.
There was little public sympathy for Hahn. She had killed at least five elderly men, but the number was suspected to be as high as thirteen. She had tried to poison her husband, and the relatives she stayed with in Cincinnati when she came from Germany had also died suddenly, leaving her their home. There was a pattern, and it was a disturbing one. The execution was set for March 10, 1938.
That date passed in the inevitable appeals morass but eventually all avenues were closed. On Tuesday, December 6, Ohio Governor Martin Davey said he would not offer a last minute reprieve and the execution was scheduled for eight o’clock the following evening.
On hearing final confirmation that she was to face the chair, Hahn was allowed to meet a number of newspapermen the day prior to the execution. During the meeting she maintained her poise and still claimed to be nothing more than an angel of mercy. She also gave a letter to her attorneys in which she confessed to a number of the killings.
That evening guards came to her cell and cut one of her blue pajama legs to permit the attachment of the electrodes, and a spot on the back of her head was shaved in preparation.
The following day, she was in hysterics as the enormity of what was to come hit her. She was an emotional wreck, pleading for one last sight of her son Oscar. He saw her for a while, about three hours before the execution. He tried to be brave but could not stop himself from crying. After the visit Hahn needed to be supported by two female guards on her walk to the death chamber. As they walked along death row, there were eleven condemned men whom they passed. Each man stood as the women led Hahn along the corridor, and as she passed they called out: “God bless you.”
Then they approached the death chamber.
“Oh heavenly father! Oh God! I can’t go!” she screamed.
“There was stark terror in her eyes as she looked from side to side, with the attendants half-dragging and half-carrying her across the floor,” the Pittsburgh Press reported.
She passed out and collapsed on the floor and had to be revived with an ammonia capsule then dragged into the chair, where she was secured with leather straps. The Pittsburgh Press went on:
The final minutes of her life were spent pleading for a last sight of her twelve-year-old son Oscar, who tried vainly all day to see Governor Martin Davey and make a last plea for her life.
She writhed as the guards adjusted straps to her legs. Warden James C. Woodard and a guard held her in the chair until she sank with a moan and did not move again until the shock of electricity hit her.
As the horrified witnesses looked on, she screamed, “Don’t do this to me. Oh no, no, no no. Warden Woodard, don’t let them do this to me. Please don’t. Oh, my boy. Think of my boy! Won’t someone, anyone, come and do something for me? Is there anybody to help me? Is nobody going to help me?”
Despite her crimes, the warden was moved to tears, but he said, “I am sorry, Mrs. Hahn. There is nothing I can do.”
As the black mask was lowered over her face, Catholic priest Father John Sullivan, the prison chaplain, approached Hahn and the two began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. He held her hand for a moment, but she said, “You might be killed too, Father,” and he let go.
Here is the Pittsburgh Press account of her final seconds:
Father Sullivan began slowly saying the Lord’s Prayer, phrase by phrase, as the straps were buckled on her legs, and as the electrode, clamped over a shaved spot on her head, was adjusted to the electric wires.
The woman repeated after him—‘Our Father, who are in Heaven—’
There was a sharp catch in her voice as she intoned the words. Phrase by phrase, while a hushed silence fell over the chamber, she said the prayer.
The attendants tied down the black mask. From its depth came her final words—‘But deliver us—’
A red light over the chair flashed on. The current raced through her body as she jerked convulsively once, and then was still. The current cut off the final few words of the prayer.
For one minute the red light glowed, and then went out. Dr. Keil pressed a stethoscope against her heart. He listened for several seconds, then put the stethoscope in his pocket and turned and faced the crowd in the chamber.
‘Sufficient current has passed through the body of Anna Hahn to cause her death,’ he said, and glanced at his watch. ‘At 8.13 and a half.’
It had taken the State less than two minutes to claim the life of Mrs. Hahn.
She was buried in non-sanctified ground at the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio.
The Cincinnati Enquirer bought her last confession, promising to fund Oscar’s education as payment. What became of Oscar is not known, though he was fostered in the Midwest and served in the navy in the dying days of World War II, before returning home to complete his education. The newspaper kept their side of the deal.
MURDER, INC. THE MEN OF THE MAFIA KILLING MACHINE
Everyone thinks of serial killers as the most depraved and evil people on the planet. They are not. They are damaged people who kill out of compulsion, unable to control their impulses. But far more chilling are the cadre of professional hit men who thrive in the world of organized crime. These monsters kill for a living and place the value of human life at $500, or $50,000, or whatever the fee is at that time and that place. They show no compassion—killing women and children if the price is paid. They will even turn on colleagues and friends if the bucks are right. And they are quite willing to make the victim suffer—if that is what the client requests.
For a while the hit men even became organized, with top mafioso hiring out jobs to the sociopaths who ran and staffed Murder Incorporated. One of the hit men clocked up one hundred kills while on a retainer from Murder Incorporated during the 1930s. He was on a wage and got a bonus for each kill carried out.
It was one of the most lawless periods in American history until the FBI, with the aid of Old Sparky, began to crack down on the crime families.
It all began with an idea of Johnny Torrio, a Brooklyn gangster who had moved to Chicago and risen high in the ranks during the profitable prohibition years. In the late 1920s he conceived the idea that the five main Mafia families of New York and the various crime syndicates throughout the rest of the country should get together and work for the common good. A meeting was convened in Atlantic City in May 1929, attended by leading underworld figures such as Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Frank Costello, Dutch Schultz, Louis Buchalter,
and Albert “Mad Hatter” Anastasia. What emerged from the three-day conference was a loose confederation of mainly Italian and Jewish organized-crime groups nationwide. The National Crime Syndicate (a name given to the loose body by the press) would act as a mediator among different factions, deciding on matters such as territories and resolving disputes. Gang wars such as the one in Chicago that culminated in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre were bad for business. The Syndicate would provide an alternative that was more cost efficient. The group needed to enforce its rulings, so an enforcement wing was established, dubbed by the press as Murder Incorporated, or Murder, Inc. Essentially, this was a group of gunmen, leg breakers, and hit men embedded in the Brooklyn Mafia, who were on call throughout the country. The members, from the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brownsville, East New York, and Ocean Hill, were paid a retainer each week and were given bonuses for jobs carried out. The group was initially headed by Louise “Lepke” Buchalter, and later by Albert “Mad Hatter” Anastasia.
They were active throughout the 1930s and were responsible for between four hundred and one thousand murders—many unsolved to this day.
Murder, Inc. consisted of two factions. The Jewish Brownsville Boys were headed by Abe “Kid Twist” Reles, reporting to Louis Buchalter and Jacob Shapiro. The Italian Ocean Hill Hooligans were led by Harry Maione, reporting to Albert Anastasia. But there was close cooperation between both groups.
One of their most feared killers was Abe Reles, a psychopathic product of the slums of Brownsville. He had no conscience, killing on the least provocation. Stories of his savagery abound. Despite his small size, he was fearless. His favorite method of killing was with a narrow ice pick, which he would ram through his victim’s ear, right into the brain. In the days of less sophisticated forensic pathology, these deaths were sometimes put down to natural cerebral hemorrhage. It is not known how many hits he carried out for Murder, Inc., but he killed frequently. Several of his kills had nothing to do with business. According to the legends that grew around him, he once killed a car-wash worker for leaving a smudge on his fender. On another occasion, he killed a parking lot attendant for failing to fetch his car fast enough. Once he brought a guest to his mother-in-law’s home for supper. When she left after the meal, Reles and another gang member murdered the guest and removed the body. He was never worried about being caught; who would cross him?
But in 1940 he was arrested and charged with a string of murders. Knowing he faced the electric chair when convicted, he decided to break the Mafia’s code of Omertà (code of silence) and snitch on his colleagues. It was the break the authorities needed and the end of Murder, Inc.
Reles’s testimony brought seven hit men to a comfortable seat on Old Sparky. The Department of Justice’s electricity bill rose sharply as the gangsters fried. It would take several books to outline the life and crimes of the men Reles snitched on, but here are the highlights.
Louis Buchalter was a labor racketeer and one of the bosses of Murder, Inc. His idea was that those ordering a kill could not be connected with the kill afterward because it would not have been carried out by one of their gang. Instead, they would contact Anastasia, who would pass the contract to Buchalter. Buchalter would then pick one of his Brownsville thugs and pass the assignment along. That meant that the killer had no idea who he was working for and the man who hired him had no idea who had carried out the hit, making subsequent investigations difficult.
Buchalter rarely took part in the murders. He was the facilitator and paymaster. But under the law, a party organizing a killing is guilty of murder. He was also heavily involved in other crimes and was indicted and convicted in 1936 on a charge of violating Federal antitrust laws. The trial took place in his absence, as he was on the run at the time. Convictions on drugs charges swiftly followed. He remained on the run until 1939.
In 1941 he went on trial for the murder of candy store owner Joseph Rosen. Reles testified that he had overheard Buchalter ordering the hit and the mobster was convicted, along with two lieutenants (Louis Capone and Mendy Weiss), and sentenced to death. The three men went to the chair in Sing Sing on March 4, 1944.
Harry Maione—nicknamed “Happy” because of his perpetual scowl—led the Ocean Hill Hooligans and was a leading Murder, Inc. hit man. He was implicated in several murders. His right-hand man was Frank Abbandando, a handsome man who liked fancy clothes, fast cars, and women. Abbandando was a sexual predator who favored rape over conventional dating and committed thirty killings around Brooklyn—at a fee of $500 per hit. His favorite method was to drive an ice pick through his victim’s chest.
In 1937 Louis Buchalter was worried that prosecutors were moving in on the group, so he ordered several people killed whom he feared were potential witnesses against him. One was a petty loan shark, George Rudnick. A three-man hit squad took him out in 1937. Maione and Abbandando were joined by Harry Strauss for the job.
The three men cornered the loan shark in a garage and beat him to death, crushing his head during the attack. At least they thought they did. When they opened the trunk of their car to put the body in, Rudnick began to cough and tried to sit up. So Maione picked up a meat cleaver and began hacking at his head, while Strauss took out his trusty ice pick and stabbed at their victim’s chest. He became frenzied, inflicting sixty-three stab wounds.
This was the crime for which Maione and Abbandando went on trial in 1941, and Reles’s evidence sent them to the chair on February 19, 1942.
Reles even testified against one of his closest friends, Martin “Bugsy” Goldstein. This thug had grown up in East New York, Brooklyn, and worked closely with Reles for many years. Reles testified that he had been one of the killers of Irving Feinstein. Feinstein was small fish, a gambler and loan racketeer, who had crossed a local crime boss and moved into territory that he should not have. Murder, Inc. took him out as a favor to the crime boss.
A three-man team arrived at Feinstein’s home on East 91st Street—Reles, Goldstein, and Harry Strauss. Reles and Goldstein subdued the gambler, while Strauss got out his ice pick. But the man struggled and managed to bite a chunk out of Strauss’s finger. This infuriated the hit man, who decided that Feinstein had earned a harder death. So the three men tied him up with a loop of rope around his neck and the end secured to his feet so that as he struggled he would slowly strangle himself. Then they stood back and laughed as he slowly and painfully expired. But Strauss was still unsatisfied, so they took the body to a vacant parking lot and set it on fire. Resisting the urge to roast marshmallows over the fire—they did consider this—the three men instead retired to a fish restaurant nearby to celebrate the successful hit.
This was the crime for which Reles’s testimony sent his friend Goldstein and also Harry Strauss to the chair. Both men were electrocuted on June 12, 1941. Asked if he had anything to say after being convicted, Goldstein, ever the joker, said, “Judge, I would like to pee on your leg.”
Strauss had been involved in a few of the murders Reles had testified about, and that is no surprise. Of the seven men sent to the chair by the informant, he was by far the worst. He was responsible for more than a hundred hits at a conservative estimate. That makes Ted Bundy look like an amateur in comparison.
Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss was born in Brooklyn and never did visit Pittsburgh. He just liked the nickname. His associates called him “Pep.” He developed a taste for killing at an early age and saw violence as a way of getting noticed. He believed that if it was known how good he was at the job, he would eventually move into crime’s big league. The call to work for Murder, Inc. was the big league for the young thug.
Once established in the group, he quickly earned a name as the most prolific of them all. His total kills exceeded the combined total of his nearest rivals, Abe Reles, Frank Maione, and Frank Abbandando. He didn’t wait to be asked, often volunteering to carry out jobs, and he was the mobster of choice for out-of-state hits. He packed simply for these hits—a clean shirt, a gun, and an ice pick. When
not working he never carried a weapon, and often he would use impromptu weapons to carry out kills. That way he could not be caught with something incriminating on him.
His favorite methods included shooting, stabbing with an ice pick, and drowning. But he used a variety of murder methods, including strangulation, beating, and live burial. Some historians believe he may have killed as many as five hundred people (a figure that seems too high), but during all the years that he was active, he was arrested just eighteen times and never convicted of anything. He took care to leave no clues.
However, the testimony of Reles finally proved the undoing of the pint-sized killer. He went on trial with Goldstein for the killing of Irving Feinstein.
Knowing that the mood of the jury would be against him, and the testimony of Reles would be very damaging, Strauss decided upon a risky trial strategy. A dapper dresser always, he abandoned his good clothes and began wearing T-shirts. He stopped washing and grew his hair and beard out—not grooming either. He pleaded insanity and played it up to-the-full in the court, often babbling incoherently. Frequently he grabbed the briefcase of his lawyer and chewed on it. Finally it got too much for the court, and his hair was cut and his beard forcibly trimmed. It didn’t fool the jury either, and he was convicted of murder and sentenced to the electric chair.
He maintained his insanity pose through the entire appeals process, but shortly before his death he realized it was hopeless. He asked for a shave and a haircut and resumed his dapper dress. He would go out as himself, the Beau Brummell of organized crime. One of his last visitors was long-time girlfriend Evelyn Mittleman. He looked his best for her. He had always put forth an effort for the Brooklyn beauty; to win her affections in the first place he had murdered her previous boyfriend.
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