Women Serial Killers of the 20th Century (7 page)

Ohio State Penitentiary electric chair

No one replied to Anna
; the officials just hastily fastened the electrodes to her skin and then placed a black mask over her head. Anna continued to cry and haltingly recited the Lord's Prayer. Then Anna abruptly stopped praying; her hands clenched and her body arched straining against the straps that held her. Her body began jerking and convulsing while the electric current raced through her body. Anna Hahn was pronounced dead at 8:13:30 pm on December 7th, 1938.

One of the letters Anna wrote the day before her execution was her confession to the murders of the four men. This she sold to a newspaper in exchange for her son to receive a quality education.

Anna’s son, twelve-year-old Oscar, was placed with a foster family somewhere in the Midwest. The
newspaper kept its promise to Anna and never revealed Oscar’s whereabouts and paid for his education.

CAROLINE GRILL
S

A cure for boredom?

Caroline Grills
née Mickelson was born in 1890 in Balmain, Sydney, Australia to George (a seaman) and Mary Mickelson. On the 22nd of April 1908, Caroline, at the age of eighteen, married Richard William Grills, a real-estate agent. When Caroline’s mother Mary died, her father remarried a woman called
Christina.

During their marriage, Caroline and Richard had five sons and a daughter. Caroline seemed happy and content with life. She had a wide circle of friends and a large extended ever-growing family as her children grew, married, and had children of their own. Caroline was known affectionately as Aunty Carrie. All who knew her liked Caroline; she had a happy-go-lucky character and a smile almost invariably on her face. Physically, Caroline was small, barely just over four feet tall (1.22 meters,) plump, fair-haired, had a fresh complexion, and wore thick-rimmed glasses. She was a typical fifties house-proud housewife
who enjoyed cooking, baking, and helping out with her grand-children.

When her
house became overrun with rats, she immediately set about eliminating them by buying a large quantity of “Thallrat”. Caroline discovered that she rather enjoyed watching the rats writhe around in agony before finally dying. It increased the smile on her face.

In 1948, when Caroline was fifty-eight
, her father died. In his will, he left his house on 13 Gerrish Street in the Sydney suburb of Gladesville to Caroline, with the stipulation that Caroline’s step-mother, Christina Mickelson, enjoy a life-long tenancy. In short, this meant that Caroline was unable to occupy the house until after Christina’s death. Although Christina was in her eighties, for her age, she was in excellent health. To Caroline’s annoyance, it did not look as if she would be able to move into the house any time soon.

Caroline began
frequently visiting Christina, telling other relatives that she worried about Christina living alone. On every visit, she would be laden down with homemade cakes and would make her stepmother endless cups of tea. To friends and relatives, Caroline appeared totally selfless in her caring and concern. Within a few short months, Christina’s health began to fail, her hair began to fall out, her eyesight began to fail, and she eventually died. Because of Christina’s age, no one was suspicious as to her cause of death. Immediately after the funeral, Caroline and Richard moved into the house.

Caroline, as she had with the rats
, had rather enjoyed watching Christina suffer and die. It relieved her boredom and gave her a strange sense of power. She began visiting a relative of her husband’s, an Angelina Thomas. Angelina had a cottage in Leura in the Blue Mountains, which Richard was to inherit upon her death. Once again, armed with home-made cakes and biscuits, Caroline would drop in on Angelina and make her endless cups of tea. It was not too long before Angelina’s health began to fail, with her hair falling out, her eyesight deteriorating, and her eventual death. Like Christina, because of Angelina’s age, no one was suspicious.

Caroline now found herself with a
rather comfortable life: a smart house in Sydney’s suburbs and a weekend retreat in the mountains. Nevertheless, despite the large family of children, grandchildren, in-laws, nephews, and nieces, Caroline was bored.

In the summer of 1949, Caroline and Richard joined John
Lundberg, Richard’s brother- in-law, and his sister Evelyn for a few days break in Woy Woy, a Central Coast resort. This was a resort people visited for the clean air, the bush, the sun, and for general relaxation.  While there John, a fit healthy man in his early sixties, became ill. Upon his return home, his condition steadily worsened. Carline would pop over to the house daily bringing homemade treats and making endless cups of tea. However, John became weaker, his sight became poor, his hair began to fall out, he became mentally confused, and he eventually died in October of 1949.

When Caroline’s
boredom struck again, she chose to lavish her attention on her dead brother’s wife, Mary Anne Mickelson. When Mary Anne became ill, Caroline took it upon herself to visit daily with homemade treats of casseroles and soups to help keep up Mary Anne’s strength. These she would patiently spoon-feed to the weakening Mary Anne, as well as make Mary Anne plenty of warm, comforting cups of tea. The rest of the family looked on with admiration at Caroline’s seemingly un-endless selflessness. Mary Anne, in the months before her death in February of 1950, became bedridden, bald, and blind.

When Caroline’s
boredom next kicked in, she chose as her next victim the newly widowed Evelyn Lundberg, her husband Richard’s sister. Evelyn lived on Great Buckingham Street in Redfern, an inner-city suburb of Sydney. Evelyn’s married daughter Christine and husband John Downey, a tram driver, lived across the street from her. Frequently, Caroline, Richard, Evelyn, Christine, and John would get together to play cards. Evelyn began to feel ill and was alarmed at the fact that many of her symptoms were the same from which her husband John had suffered. Weekly, her condition began to deteriorate, and she began to suffer from cramps in her legs, loss of her eyesight, and loss of hair. Caroline visited Evelyn daily, taking with her plenty of homemade treats and made her endless cups of tea. With the loss of her eyesight, Evelyn also experienced acute depression. Her daughter Christine had her mother hospitalized; here, she began to show slow signs of recovery.

When Evelyn was in the hospital, both Christine and John began to feel unwell. Aunt Carrie began to
visit them daily, seemingly concerned for their welfare. In September of 1952, as John and Christine began to lose their hair and their eyesight worsened, they heard on the radio about a murder case where a woman, Yvonne Fletcher, had killed two of her husbands with rat poison. As John and Christine listened, chills ran up their spines as they realized they were suffering the same symptoms as those being discussed on the radio.

The fo
llowing day, John and Christine reported their suspicions to the police. The police said they needed evidence and asked the Downey’s to bring them samples of the food that had Caroline supplied. This they did but all the tests proved negative.

On April
13, 1953, when Evelyn was home from the hospital, Caroline as normal came to visit. Christine offered to make the tea, and Caroline offered to carry a cup out to Evelyn who was sitting on the porch, still barely able to walk and blind. It was then that John saw Caroline remove something from the pocket of her dress and drop it into Evelyn’s cup. John managed, without Caroline noticing, to swap Evelyn’s cup for his. He poured the contents into a sealed jar and delivered it to the police. The police analyst confirmed that the tea had a deadly dose of the poison thallium.

Thallium is
fatal to humans in doses as small as one gram. Its salts are colorless, odorless, tasteless, and soluble in water. It attacks the nervous system, lungs, heart, kidneys, and liver. The symptoms of thallium poisoning include hair loss, muscular cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea. Poisoning by thallium can be treated if it is identified within six hours of ingestion.

On May
11, 1953, the police arrived at Caroline’s house in Gladsville and arrested Caroline for the attempted murder of Mrs. Evelyn Lundberg, her sister-in-law, and Evelyn’s daughter Mrs. Christine Downey. As the police investigated further, they charged Caroline Grills with four murders and another attempted murder.

Police found traces of thallium in the pocket of the dress Caroline had worn on the
day she had attempted to give Evelyn the cup of tea containing the fatal dose. 

Caroline went on trial in Sydney’s Central Criminal Court at the beginning of October
of 1953 at the age of sixty-three. She pleaded not guilty and argued that she, “helped to live, not kill.”

Her defense team told the jury
, “that she was a woman of excellent character who went around helping people and never visited her friends empty handed.”

The prosecution had
an exceptionally strong case and a line of convincing witnesses. The main witness was Evelyn Lundberg who entered the court hobbling and tapping a white walking stick with her eyes unseeing.

Caroline’s behavior in court did little to help her case.
Throughout the trial, she sat looking matronly, smiling all the while. She appeared to find the court proceedings amusing and continuously laughed and joked with the guards to such an extent that her defense team reprimanded her and advised her not to laugh in court.

On October
15, 1953, the jury took just twelve minutes to find her guilty of attempted murder. The Judge, who referred to Caroline’s ‘motiveless malignancy,’ agreed whole-heartedly with their decision and sentenced Caroline Grills to death.

Caroline appealed. In April
of 1954, the appeal was dismissed by the Court of Criminal Appeal, but her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. She was incarcerated at the State Reformatory for Women at Long Bay Jail.

While
in prison, she became extremely popular with the other inmates who affectionately called her “Auntie Thally”.”. In October of 1960, she was rushed to the Prince Henry Hospital, where she died from peritonitis on  October 6, 1960.

It is not known where she was buried.