Award-winning crime writer Jane Ann Turzillo recounts the stories of
Ohio's most notorious vixens, viragoes and villainesses.
The Buckeye State produced its share of wicked women. Tenacious madam
Clara Palmer contended with constant police raids during the 1880s and
'90s. Only her death could shut the doors of her gilded bordello in
Cleveland. Failed actress Mildred Gillars left for Europe right before
World War II. Because she fell in love with the wrong man, she wound up
peddling Nazi propaganda on the radio as Axis Sally. Volatile Hester
Foster was already doing time at the Ohio State Penitentiary when she
bashed in the head of a fellow inmate with a shovel. The sinister Anna
Marie Hahn dosed at least five elderly Cincinnati men with arsenic and
croton oil and then watched them die in agony while pretending to nurse
them back to health.