[1] Martha Wise was born in 1883 in Hardscrabble, Ohio, to Sophia Elizabeth Gienke and her husband Wilhelm Carl Hasel, both of whom were farmers.
Martha moved onto Albert's 50-acre (20 ha) farm, but quickly discovered that he expected a farmhand more than a wife, and life was no less poor as a married woman than it had been when she lived with her parents.
Even when pregnant, she was forced to do farm work that was generally male-oriented (such as plowing fields[2] and slopping hogs[4]) as well as the usual household chores of baking and cleaning.
[4] Within a year of Albert's death, Martha found new male companionship in the form of Walter Johns, who worked as a farmhand on property adjacent to her farm.
Lily Gienke, her husband Fred, and several of their children all began suffering stomach pains similar to those Sophie had experienced before her death.
[note 1] The sheriff of Medina County, Ohio, Fred Roshon, soon discovered that Martha had signed at a local drug store for a series of purchases of large quantities of arsenic.
[8][2] Despite her confession, Martha pleaded not guilty on March 23, 1925, when she appeared before a grand jury that was considering her indictment for murder in Lily's death.
[3] Defense claims included that Wise was criminally insane[11] and that she was ordered to commit the murders by her former lover, Walter Johns.
[4] In 1962, as a result of Martha's good behavior in prison, Governor Michael DiSalle commuted her sentence to second-degree murder and she was paroled at age 79.
[14][2] Martha Wise was featured in a 1930 Toledo News-Bee article series profiling "[w]omen who are paying the price for folly, women who gambled against society and lost".