The Cincinnati region has been connected to monumental crimes and criminals in years past. In this column, we’ll look at cases with local ties that were huge news when they happened.
When the first elderly man in Anna Marie Hahn’s orbit died, Cincinnati police didn’t suspect anything nefarious. Ernest Kohler was 62 years old and, Hahn told them, died May 6, 1933, of the esophageal cancer he’d been battling for years. When the coroner’s office received a few calls suggesting that Kohler had been poisoned, the doctor checked Kohler for poison and found no evidence, so his remains were sent to the crematorium.
But then another of Hahn’s elderly male friends died. And another. Soon, all three of the then-existing Cincinnati newspapers were publishing thousands of words a day on what became one of the most historically significant criminal cases in the city’s history. Not only was Anna Hahn accused of multiple murders, making her a serial killer in today’s parlance, but she faced possible execution if convicted, which would make her the first woman in Ohio to die in the state’s electric chair.