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| Johann Hoch (The Herald. February 22, 1905) |
The Chicago police suspected Johann Otto
Hoch of killing between fifteen and fifty women in the ten years between 1895
and 1905. If that were true, he was a conman extraordinaire, with a foolproof
method to keep his victims from talking. He married them, and then he snuck
off, killing the ones who might talk.
Johann Hoch, real name John Schmidt, was
born near Horweiler, Bingen, Germany, in 1860. He started life as a wine
merchant, married and had three kids. And then, something inside must have
snapped. He turned to petty theft, swindling, and various schemes to make a
quick buck. Hoch left Germany in 1895 to escape charges of embezzlement and
common swindling.
He landed in New York, made his way to
Chicago, and ran a saloon at 1108 Western Avenue for a year before taking up a
newer, more deadly method of employment.
Hoch kept himself busy in 1895 and 1896 as
he perfected his new trade.
He married Mary Steinbucher in 1895. Four
months later, she was dead. But before she died, Mary told several people she’d
been poisoned. Unfortunately, no one believed her because she had been
delirious much of the time. Hoch made a $4,000 profit selling her property.
He married Mary Rankin the same year, then
disappeared the next day, taking all her money. In April 1896, he hooked up
with Martha Hertzfied. Four months later, Hoch took off with all her money. He
married another woman in November 1896, then ran off the next day after
clearing out her bank accounts.
That same year, he married Barbara Brossert in San Francisco and Clara Bartel in Cincinnati. Bartel died mysteriously three months after marrying Hoch.
A long string of victims followed over the
next half-dozen years. The lucky ones just lost their money. The others lost
their lives and belongings.
No one knows why Hoch killed some and let
the others live. It might have been blood lust or something as simple as
the fear of getting caught.
The strange thing was that Johann Hoch had
been arrested many times for scamming women. In 1896, Janet Spencer married C.
A. Crawford (aka Johann Hoch). He disappeared a short time later, after taking
all her money. The police caught up with him, but released him after he
returned her property.
Not long after that, Hoch got arrested for
scamming Sallie Charlotte Andrews. He married her, then deserted her two hours
later after taking $500 from her. This time he went by the name De Witt C.
Cudney.
Hoch was arrested for
selling leased furniture in April 1898 and sentenced to a year in the house of
corrections at Bridewell. He was released on July 31, 1899, and was quickly
rearrested and charged with a similar crime. He spent another year in Bridewell
and was released in October 1900.
Johann Hoch was back in
the marriage game a year later, wandering from city to city. He married women
in Cincinnati,
Milwaukee, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Wheeling, and a dozen other cities.
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| Victims of Johann Hoch. (The Herald. February 22, 1905) |
Hoch married Anna Schmidt Hendrickson in Hammond, Indiana, in 1903. Two days after they married, Hoch showed her a letter from his brother in Germany that said his father had died and left him $21,000. There was only one catch; he needed $500 to pay for their passage to Germany to claim his inheritance. Anna gave him the money, and that was the last she saw of him.
A few days later, Hoch was in Milwaukee,
where he married a woman named Lena. Three weeks later, she was dead, and Hoch
was $1500 richer.
Hoch married Caroline Streicher in
Philadelphia in June or July 1904. Eleven days later, he returned to Chicago,
searching for better pickings.
Hoch published a personal ad in the Chicago
Abend Post, a German language paper, on December 3, 1904.
“Matrimonial—German;
own home; wishes acquaintance of widow without children; object, matrimony.”
Marie Walcker, a 46-year-old widow,
answered the advertisement.
“I am a lady standing alone,” she said. “I
am forty-six years old and have a small business, also a few hundred dollars.”
Hoch met Marie at her candy store the next
day. He said his wife had been dead for about two years. He had $8,000 in the
bank, a cottage, and several vacant lots near it, and he stood to inherit
$81,000 from his father in Germany.
They married within a week. Marie sold her
candy store for $75 and gave the money from it and $350 in savings to her
husband.
She took sick a week later, complaining of
stomach pains and tingling sensations in her extremities that she compared to
“ants crawling through her flesh.” She was also vomiting nonstop.
The family called Dr. John Reese on
December 20. He diagnosed it as Bright’s Disease, an inflammation of the
bladder, and told Hoch that Marie would need around-the-clock nursing.
“Get your nurse,” said Hoch, waving his
hand. Expenses meant nothing to him. He had $10,000 in the bank.
So, Dr. Reese sent Gussie Holzapfel, and
Marie seemed to get better. A few days later, Hoch dismissed her, and
Marie declined just as quickly.
Hoch flirted with Marie’s sister, Emelia
Fischer, while Marie lay dying. He told Emelia he would have married her if
they had met four weeks earlier.
Marie died on January 12, 1905.
Immediately after she died, Hoch asked Emelia to marry him. She hesitated at
first, thinking he must be toying with her. But three days after Marie’s
funeral, they married secretly in Joliet.
When they returned, Hoch suggested they
travel to Germany to visit his aging father. There was only one problem, he
needed $1,000 to settle his affairs and secure tickets. Emelia gave him what
she had, $750.
When they returned to her home, Emelia’s
other sister, Bertha Sohn, was there. She accused Hoch of being a bigamist,
conman, and murderer.
Hoch snuck out while the two women argued.
That convinced them that what Bertha said was true, so they called the police.
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| Johann Hoch (The Inter Ocean. May 19, 1905) |
Marie’s body was exhumed, and the post-mortem exam found 7.6 grains of arsenic in the woman’s stomach and another 1.25 grains in the liver. The police were convinced Hoch was the killer and published his picture, hoping someone would turn him in.
Catherine Kimmerle, a boarding house
operator in New York, contacted the police on January 30, 1905. She said a man
called Henry Bartels had taken a room at her boarding house. He helped her in
the kitchen the first day. The next day, he asked her to marry him.
“He was so anxious to talk,” said Mrs.
Kimmerle, “that I did not know what he was after.” Then, “all of a sudden, he
told me he wanted to marry me.”
She “remembered reading in the papers
about that awful man. It suddenly flashed across my mind that this man who
wanted to peel potatoes after being twenty minutes in my house and wanted to
marry me after knowing me a day or so was the same man they wanted in Chicago.
So, I ran to the station house as quickly as I could.”
The police arrested Hoch at Mrs.
Kimmerle’s boarding house a short time later.
What stood out to the police after
searching Hoch’s rooms was that everything he had was new. He was wearing a new
suit, had six new handkerchiefs, a new razor and a trunk, and six crisp
hundred-dollar bills in his pocket.
The day after his capture, the New York
Tribune ran a headline calling Hoch the German Bluebeard. Soon, papers
would rename him the Chicago Bluebeard.
A slew of former wives popped up while
Hoch was arrested in New York.
Marie Goerk said Hoch answered an ad she
placed for a boarder. They got married a week later. Then he took out an
insurance policy on his life and demanded she do the same. Goerk refused.
A few days later, she became violently
ill. Hoch offered to care for her, but she declined.
“I did not like the looks of things,” said
Mrs. Goerk, “so I refused, declaring that if I did not get better soon, I was
going to a hospital. Then he kept away, and I got well.”
She led the police to a shed on her
property where Hoch had left a trunk. Inside it, they found several wigs, false
beards, and gadgets used by magicians. There was also a diploma showing that he
was a trained hypnotist.
By the time Hoch returned from New York,
the Chicago police had strengthened their case against him. Several dozen women
had stepped up, claiming to be former wives.
Professor Haines of Rush Medical College
had a chance to further analyze the arsenic found in Marie’s stomach.
Hoch’s attorney was unconcerned with the
finding, saying he would introduce no evidence at the inquest. But he had a
plan. “We are prepared to show that the body of Mrs. Hoch was embalmed with
lethiform fluid,” said attorney Isodore Plotke. “It contains both arsenic and
benzoin. I have had the embalming fluid analyzed and find both of these poisons
in it.”
The Chicago police didn’t buy into his
explanation. The coroner’s examination determined that no arsenic was found in
the embalming fluid or the instruments. So, “the arsenic found in the stomach
was apparently given before death.”
They wanted an explanation of why the New
York police found a fountain pen on Hoch containing 58 grains of arsenic. Hoch
tried to explain it away, saying it was just a white powder. But after tests
proved it was arsenic, he said it was for himself—just in case.
While they collected evidence, the police
paraded several of Hoch’s former wives before him in the interrogation
room.
Hoch “had no love for any of his wives,”
testified Inspector Shippy. “When he advertised for them, he mentioned his
preference for middle-aged women because it was easier to separate them from
their money.”
That caused a lot of speculation in the
press.
Hoch shrugged the question off, telling reporters: “I am not a Romeo. I did not love my wives. I have no use for women. It was purely a business proposition with me. When I found they had money, I went after them. When I got it, I left it. The older the woman, the easier she was to separate from her money. Flattery was my chief stock in trade. That is the quickest and surest way to win a woman.”
Besides, he said, “all these women married
me because they thought me wealthy, not because they loved me.
And that was true. Johann Hoch wasn’t the
Don Juan type. He was a short, heavy-set man, bald, with a few shocks of hair
on either side of his head. He had a long nose, a blonde mustache, and rotten
teeth.
His best feature was his personality. He
flattered the women he met, telling them how much he needed them to complete
his life, and treated them like they were beautiful beings, even if they
weren’t. And the women believed him.
Hoch went to trial in May
1905. He sat calmly, almost unconcerned with the proceedings. And then, as the
jury retired to ponder his fate, Hoch whispered to his lawyer, “I will bet you
I will be acquitted.”
He was wrong.
Then he brushed off the comments that he
was a Bluebeard. “Such talk is foolish,” he said. “All that can be said against
me is that I have committed bigamy.”
He never admitted to
killing anyone. “I married them, yes,” he said. “Not all, but nine. But kill
‘em, never. Why should I.”
When asked what all his
wives died from, Hoch chuckled and said, “kidney problems, I suppose. Ask the doctors. They know better than I do.”
The jury deliberated for
two hours and twenty minutes before finding Johann Hoch guilty of
murdering Marie Walcker-Hoch. He was scheduled to be hanged on June 23, 1905.
Just before his date with the hangman,
Cora Wilson, a Chicago furrier, raised the money for Hoch to stage an appeal to
the Illinois Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court sustained the lower
court’s decision, and Hoch was scheduled to hang on April 25, 1905. On the day
before his execution, Hoch won another hearing with the Supreme Court. However,
he lost that appeal and was executed on February 23, 1906.
The Chicago Bluebeard would swindle no
more women.
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