Carla Glenn - Ugly as Hell: The True Story of Serial Killer Martha Wise

UGLY AS HELL: The True Story of Serial Killer Martha Wise

CARLA GLENN

The Devil made me do it, she said. He came to me in my kitchen when I baked my bread and he said, 'Do it!' He came to me when I walked the fields in the cold days and nights and said, 'Do it!' Everywhere I turned I saw him grinning and pointing and talking. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I could only talk and listen to the devil. Then I did it! - Martha Wise

M artha Wise was born in Hardscrabble, Ohio to parents who were farmers.

Her life fit the name of the town she was from, as she had to endure a harsh life of manual labor and insults from childhood up until her death.

When she entered school, her teachers immediately labeled her as dull and stupid.

She was the dumbest kid there, one of her teachers said while another recalled that Martha was the dullest child in school. She was even too dull to make trouble.

Throughout Martha's childhood, she never met anyone who greeted her with kindness in the tough luck town of Hardscrabble. One of her classmates remembered Martha as always crying and every time anyone spoke to her she would burst into tears.

With no friends or teachers on her side, Martha created her own little world of imaginary friends. She would have numerous playmates that were invisible only to her and have animated conversations with them.

Labeled feeble minded by her educators and a moron by the even less sympathetic neighbors, Martha's own parents held little hope for her future.

A deep sense of self-pity, not at all unwarranted, grew in Martha, wrote Tom Sellers. Just as she poisoned those who laughed. She learned to see the devil in every leering face she met.

Martha had three brothers and a sister but her family had little faith in her ability to leave the homestead and get married. Martha had deep set eyes that were spread wide across her face. Her putty nose, thin lips and broad cheekbones did little to flutter the hearts of eligible suitors.

Let's face it, her own mother said to her sister Lillie. Martha is ugly. Damn ugly.

In 1906, however, Martha would meet a man named Albert Wise at a box social. These box socials allowed eligible women to cook up a meal for bachelors in the area who would bid on their box. If they won the bid, they would be entitled to a date with the creator of the boxed meal.

That was one helluva chicken sandwich, Albert Wise said as he chomped down on the meal that Martha had prepared for the box social. He was over twenty years her senior and not much to look at himself. Martha was in her early twenties but seemed destined for spinsterhood. She took to Albert's brief courtship all too willingly.

Albert would ask for Martha's hand in marriage and she happily obliged. He did not take the union seriously, however, as he didn't even give Martha a wedding ring.

Let's go, Albert said after they exchanged vows. There's work to be done.

Martha's dream of meeting and marrying Prince Charming soon came to a crashing halt as she arrived at Albert's fifty acre farm.

Get to work bitch, Albert said as he threw a shovel at her. He then led Martha out to the pig sty where he forced her to clean up after the hogs.

Martha drew ridicule throughout the town of Hardscrabble as she was forced to do such harsh manual labor. The women in town worked hard but none of them were forced to slop the hogs.

Albert would work Martha like a rented mule. It became apparent that he married the homely young woman simply because he wanted a domestic slave.

Hurry up! Albert called out as Martha shoveled the pig feces into the compost pile. After you're done, hoe the field and milk the cow. And then get your ass back inside and make me a chicken sandwich!

Despite his advancing age and Martha's lack of appeal, Albert's sexual appetite was voracious. Martha would describe their sex life as joyless and miserable. She would become pregnant but miscarry the baby because her farming duties were so strenuous. She and Albert would have four children, however; Everett, Gertrude, Kenneth and Lester.

Feeling nothing but self-pity, Martha developed an odd habit of attending funerals. She attended any funeral that was held in or near the town. She didn't care if she had known the deceased or not. When people asked what she was doing there she simply replied I like funerals.

Martha's life on the farm continued to grow harsher as the money grew tight.

Work, bitch, work! Albert would cry out as he raked a hickory stick across Martha's buttocks and legs, imploring her to work harder around the farm. He would beat her as if she were a farm animal until one day Martha finally broke.

She would poison Albert in 1923 but would never be charged with the crime. The doctors performed no autopsy and chalked his death up to stomach inflammation.

His death, however, had a silver lining for Martha as she was able to collect on his insurance policy. She obtained some freedom for the first time in her life and would often take long walks around the town, neglecting the farm work.

She also made sure that Albert had an elaborate funeral.

There was music and there were flowers, Sellers wrote. The children were clean and dressed in their best. And from nowhere, almost, there appeared the usual association of bearded ladies who hover about the homes where death has visited to offer consolation and solace. The stream of life suddenly lost some of its drabness.

Martha finally received some long sought after attention and sympathy during the funeral for her departed husband.

I like funerals, she mumbled quietly to herself as the well-wishers slowly milled out of the graveyard.

Despite being free from the yoke of Albert, the now forty-year old Martha had four children to raise by herself. She continued indulging in her funeral fetish, attending services of strangers and making a spectacle of herself.

Martha would arrive at the funeral early and sit in the front row. She would cry and wail, screaming to the heavens, Why! Why! Why!

The theatrics would oftentimes scare other attendees while others would stare at Martha in open-mouthed shock.

Dressed in her weeds, she attended all funerals within reach, her sobs and lamentations rising above the smothered tide of keening by the bereaved women, Sellers wrote. Weeping became sheer joy to her. When the slightest thing went wrong she drew her children about her and sobbed, not the dry, choking sobs of the truly grief-stricken, but the free flood of tears that come easily to those afflicted with self-pity.

Despite being considered one of the ugliest and least desirable women in town, Martha decided to put herself back on the market for a new man.

Problem was that Martha was not a very attractive woman. She was now in her forties and had four young children. Friends and neighbors described her as a woman with a pinched face and sunken eyes.

She would find a friend in Walter Johns, however, meeting the younger farmhand as he worked on a neighbor's property.

Martha would try her best to woo the man whenever she could. She would make him chicken sandwiches, bake fresh cookies and bring fresh lemonade to him on hot summer days when he worked out in the field. Johns was polite and appreciated the gestures but did not return the romantic interest.