Martha Wise. victims = 3
Born in 1885, by age 40 Martha Wise was an impoverished widow, living alone on a farm near Medina, Ohio. She fell in love with Walter Johns, a man much younger than herself, but members of her family were blunt in their denunciation of the May-October romance, heaping ridicule on Martha for her "cradle-robbing." Furious at her mother's nagging, Martha poisoned the old lady on New Year's Day 1925, waiting a month before she silenced her uncle and aunt, Fred and Lily Geinke, with a double dose of arsenic.
Her efforts to annihilate the Geinke family in a single stroke were futile, other members of the clan recovering from grievous illness after several days and taking their suspicions to the local prosecutor. Under questioning, Martha confessed the three murders, but said, "It was the devil who told me to do it. He came to me while I was in the kitchen baking bread. He came to me while I was working in the fields. He followed me everywhere." She also cleared the books on other felonies, with her confessing to a string of burglaries and arson incidents. "I like fires," she explained. "They were red and bright, and I loved to see the flames shooting up into the sky." At Martha's trial, sensational reports described her as the "Borgia of America."
She pled insanity , and Walter Johns helped out with testimony that Martha had "barked like a dog" during sex, but jurors found her sane and guilty of first-degree murder. Sentenced to life imprisonment, she subsequently died in jail.
Born in 1885, by age 40 Martha Wise was an impoverished widow, living alone on a farm near Medina, Ohio. She fell in love with Walter Johns, a man much younger than herself, but members of her family were blunt in their denunciation of the May-October romance, heaping ridicule on Martha for her "cradle-robbing." Furious at her mother's nagging, Martha poisoned the old lady on New Year's Day 1925, waiting a month before she silenced her uncle and aunt, Fred and Lily Geinke, with a double dose of arsenic.
Her efforts to annihilate the Geinke family in a single stroke were futile, other members of the clan recovering from grievous illness after several days and taking their suspicions to the local prosecutor. Under questioning, Martha confessed the three murders, but said, "It was the devil who told me to do it. He came to me while I was in the kitchen baking bread. He came to me while I was working in the fields. He followed me everywhere." She also cleared the books on other felonies, with her confessing to a string of burglaries and arson incidents. "I like fires," she explained. "They were red and bright, and I loved to see the flames shooting up into the sky." At Martha's trial, sensational reports described her as the "Borgia of America."
She pled insanity , and Walter Johns helped out with testimony that Martha had "barked like a dog" during sex, but jurors found her sane and guilty of first-degree murder. Sentenced to life imprisonment, she subsequently died in jail.
