Dovie Dean was executed by Ohio in 1954 after poisoning her husband in an attempt to gain control of his farm and assets. She drew a good deal of media attention as a rare white woman to be executed. Dovie Blanche Smarr was born in Roane County, West Virginia on February 25, 1898 and grew up in poverty. She married her husband Carl Myers, two years younger than her, when she was 20. The couple had six children--Kathleen, Ruby, Carl Jr., Dorothy, John, and Jack.
Carl was convicted of raping Kathleen when she was 17 and was sentenced to seven years in prison. While he was behind bars, Dovie did whatever work she could to support the family, including working as a housemaid and scrubbing floors in a restaurant. Kathleen died in childbirth in 1941 at age 22. John was killed in 1952 at age 22 in a boiler explosion at work. By this point only Carl Jr. was still living at home with his mother.Dovie went to visit Ruby and her husband in Clermont County, Ohio for Thanksgiving 1951 when she met Hawkins Dean, a 69 year old farmer who owned a 115 acre plot. Despite his age, he was still in vigorous health and boasted that he'd never been sick. He'd outlasted two wives and was eager to welcome a third, saying he was a lonely man, especially as he aged. Dovie welcomed the arrangement but for the small catch that she was still legally married to Carl, although they had not lived together for 14 years. A judge granted her a divorce on April 11, 1952 and her and Hawkins tied the knot two days later.
The marriage went seemingly well at first and the couple took several trips together, including a visit to Dovie's other surviving daughter Dorothy, who lived in Missouri. They entertained her relatives and Hawkins's daughter May Perry. In early August, Hawkins became seriously ill with stomach pain and vomiting. May did not learn of her father's condition for a week and when she found out, she asked Dovie if she'd called a doctor. She replied that she had not and it seemed to just be a summer bug going around. Hawkins himself was reluctant to be checked out, but Dr. Joseph Batsche decided he must go to Christ Hospital in Cincinnati.He was discharged after a week. A week after that, he was again ill with terrible stomach pain. May came back to visit her father, but the stubborn old man didn't want to go back to the hospital. She stayed overnight to watch him, then left for home in Owensville. On August 22, Hawkins died. Much of the community turned out for his funeral, but the one thing everyone noticed was Dovie's lack of any visible sorrow at his passing. She explained that she had a hard time crying or expressing emotion and had always been that way.
Two days after the funeral, May Perry walked into the office of Clermont County DA Ray Bradford in Batavia. "You knew my dad pretty well..." she began. "I did indeed. Let me say how sorry I am and..." May began to talk about how her father had always been so healthy his whole life only to develop stomach pain out of nowhere and die. Bradford asked what she was getting at. May told him the doctor didn't know exactly how he could have died, so an autopsy was performed and it found 6.94 grams of arsenic in his tissue, enough to kill several men. One of the medical techs spoke to Bradford over the phone and said it was the largest amount of arsenic he'd ever found in a dead body.Bradford replied that surely Dean was murdered, but who would kill him? May explained that he'd left most of his assets to his new wife in his will, with herself to get whatever was left when she died. His total net worth was $27,000 and the evidence indicated that he'd been slowly poisoned with arsenic over a period of time. Clearly Dovie couldn't wait to get her hands on her new husband's money. Still, she would have to be very stupid to try a stunt like that. Did she not think she would be the first suspect in the case? Apparently not.
When Bradford and Sheriff Clyde Dericks arrived at the farmhouse to give her the bad news, she gave an icy reply. "I don't believe my husband was poisoned," she said. "You can't argue with the lab results," said Dericks. "You got anything around the place with arsenic in it?" She said she didn't know, but that Hawkins had a powdery white medicine he bought himself to steady his nerves. Dovie thought it was probably not prescribed by a doctor as he hated paying for doctors. It was possible he accidentally poisoned himself. "Do you think he committed suicide?" "I don't know. Maybe he had a reason to."Dericks was becoming steadily more annoyed at her answers and told her they believed Hawkins was murdered and she should start being honest with them or she could have time to think it over in jail. Dovie softened her voice and said she really loved Hawkins; there was just one problem. "What problem?" Dericks queried. "Well, he was disappointed. He just couldn't be a husband, a real husband. It bothered him a lot. I told him not to mind. 'Hawk,' I said, 'I've never had anything but a hard life. These are the happiest times I've ever known.' And they were." "You think your husband took his own life because he was impotent?" "It fretted him all the time. I still say all this fuss is about nothing. Hawk was getting old. I figure he just came to the end of his time, that's all."
While they talked to Dovie, two investigators were searching the house for containers with arsenic in them. They collected several bottles to be taken for lab analysis. Coroner F.S. Keen didn't believe Hawkins had intentionally drank arsenic to take his own life. Anyone attempting suicide would choose a quicker and less painful way to die. News traveled quickly around the small community. Dericks searched the car of a family friend, Dave Condon, and found a "Poison" bottle in his car's glove compartment, hidden in some paper cups. Condon insisted he was innocent and someone else put the arsenic there and he had no reason to want to kill Hawkins.Dovie, Condon, and Carl. Jr were all given polygraph exams but the results were inconclusive. But the bottle in Condon's car was arsenate of lead, not arsenic trioxide as was found in Hawkins's body and none of the bottles found in the farmhouse had it either. Another search found a bottle in an outbuilding containing a box of rat poison. The ingredient label was missing, but a lab test found that it did have arsenic trioxide. The big problem for the case was that it was impossible to prove exactly when the arsenic was introduced into Hawkins's system.
Sheriff Dericks wanted to keep details of the case confidential, so he was going to avoid questioning anyone else in Ohio for the time being. Instead, he visited Dovie's daughter Dorothy in Missouri. She had little to say about the get-together with her mother and Hawkins. "It was no party. Nothing except a family gathering. We had a beer or two, that's all." After Dericks returned to Ohio, the three suspects were given a second lie detector test. This time Dovie failed the test, but investigators couldn't get her to admit to anything despite hours of questioning.Assistant DA Dale Osborne accused her of celebrating the murder with a beer party and said there was not a jury in the world that would find her innocent. Dovie then softened her tone and insisted Carl Jr. actually poisoned Hawkins and that he hated him. The investigators didn't buy this claim and Carl also denied it, saying he'd been the one to try and get Hawkins medical help by telling his daughter about what happened. May Perry confirmed this to be true. They resumed questioning Dovie.
At last she said she may have accidentally poisoned Hawkins. Dovie then broke down and confessed. "I've become a Christian. I've told you many stories. Now I want to tell you the truth. I gave the arsenic to Hawk seven times in milk. I placed a few drops of rat poison in Mr. Dean's milk on Thursday noon August 5, 1952 and again on Wednesday morning August 6. I gave Mr. Dean a few drops in some fresh milk from a cow. I gave Mr. Dean a few more drops in about half a glass of milk on Tuesday August 19. Further stated, gave Mr. Dean some more rat poison in milk that evening and some more on Thursday AM August 21."Dovie insisted she did not kill Hawkins out of greed. Instead, she said that he was upset and depressed by his impotence and threatened to kill her and himself in a murder-suicide. "I finished him off before he got me."
He trial in a Clermont County courthouse began December 8. The trial lasted six days during which time Dovie sat in silence and displayed almost no emotion. Her confession was allowed as evidence despite her public defender's vigorous attempts to have it excluded for being made without an attorney present (there were not yet any Miranda rights in 1952). He still disavowed the confession as invalid evidence and instead argued that his client was covering for the real killer, but he could not name this individual. Dovie took the stand in her own defense and insisted she loved Hawkins and had no reason to kill him.On December 13, the jury found Dovie Dean guilty of first degree murder. Although some spectators assumed they would not ask for the death penalty for a woman and instead recommend a life sentence, which in the 1950s meant she could be free in as little as 15 years, there was no such luck. Dovie looked down sullenly at the prospect of facing the electric chair, but did not shed any tears. As she'd said before, she couldn't cry and a psychiatrist who'd examined her believed this to be true.
Her date of execution was set for June 5, 1953, but it could be delayed by an appeal. Until then, Dovie was sent to the Reformatory For Women in Marysville. On death row, she was contacted by Rev. George Wilcher, the young pastor of First Methodist Church in Marysville. The two had once been neighbors in Charleston, West Virginia, although they'd never met before. Dovie's attorneys motioned for a new trial; this was rejected. The date of execution was moved and they appealed to the state supreme court.In her prison cell, Dovie crocheted yokes for her granddaughters' dresses, read the Bible, did jigsaw puzzles, and listened to the radio. As her execution date drew closer, she became more cheerful and less taciturn, saying she was not afraid to die. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Her new execution date was set for January 15, 1954. The parole board refused her appeals. A final appeal was lodged to Governor Frank Lausche. The governor studied her case extensively and consulted with various people, including the trial judge and DA, and finally decided she did not deserve clemency.
The correctional officers at the prison took Dovie's radio from her cell to prevent her from tuning in the news and hearing that the governor had denied her clemency, but she appeared to already know. On January 15, she had her hair done up and ate a final meal of roast chicken, potatoes, asparagus, salad, pie, cake, and coffee.Dovie Dean was only the third female executed in Ohio to date. The first one was a black woman named Hester Foster all the way back in 1844--Foster, a prison inmate, had beaten to death a white woman prisoner with a shovel and was hanged that February 9. It was a dual execution with a white male inmate, William Graham, who'd murdered a prison guard with an axe.
The second, much more recent execution of a woman was Anna Marie Hahn, a pretty 32 year old German immigrant who seduced four men and poisoned them with arsenic to rob their money. Hahn was strapped into the electric chair December 7, 1938 and did not go quietly. She had to be dragged to the chair "while screaming like she was possessed by demons" and was only silenced when the switch was thrown. Hahn's execution was less than 20 years earlier and still fresh in memory. Warden Alvis feared a repetition of that scene, but he'd heard that Dovie Dean was supposedly a woman without nerves who could not cry.She did not disappoint. Dovie was led into the execution chamber at 8:00 PM, sat herself in the chair, and the guards went to work attaching the electrodes. The switch was thrown and Dovie did not flinch the whole time. She was pronounced dead at 8:07 and her body removed from the execution chamber for a funeral in Charleston arranged by her son and her 83 year old father.
>>18724847>>18724845>underage incest rapes>poisoning your husband because he's a boomer and his dick doesn't work anymoreSo this is the heckin based wholesomearino 1950s that /pol/ told me about.
>>18724862OP is a troon who posts these threads to demean middle class white families.
>>18724826shame, he missed Viagra being a thing by a few decades. if only he'd had access to that in the 50s none of this would have happened.
>>18724826my theory is more he just couldn't get it up for his 54 year old hag bride. if she'd been 20 i bet his dick would work perfectly fine.
>>18724824arsenic poisoning is a brutal way to die. it's like having your guts literally ripped out of you.
>>18724820>Carl was convicted of raping Kathleen when she was 17 and was sentenced to seven years in prisonthat's just normal West Virginia stuff though
>>18724845>The first one was a black woman named Hester Foster all the way back in 1844--Foster, a prison inmate, had beaten to death a white woman prisoner with a shovel and was hanged that February 9if their races were reversed they wouldn't even charge her at all
>>18724868This whole board is an elaborate demoralization scheme.
>>18724862>something bad happened to a handful of individuals>the whole era was shitevery single period in history and in the future is shit by that measure. You're on /his/, you're expected to do better than faulty generalization
>>18724836>Although some spectators assumed they would not ask for the death penalty for a woman and instead recommend a life sentence, which in the 1950s meant she could be free in as little as 15 years, there was no such luckNo life without parole pre-80s. Back then, short of the death penalty you always had a chance at getting out.
