Dovie Dean

Blanche “Dovie” Dean was a 55-year-old grandmother and mother of six children, who lived in Clermont County, Ohio.

She admitted to killing her 69-year-old husband, Hawkins Dean, after she put rat poison in his milk. Dean had originally tried to frame her son by a previous marriage for the murder, but eventually confessed when the sheriff commented that “any woman who could accuse her son of such a crime could easily have done it herself.” Dean said the murder took place after a number of violent arguments with her new husband Hawkins (her third), who she felt could not “perform his husbandly duties.” Dean said: “He wanted a housekeeper and I wanted a home.”

On the 15th January 1954, Dovie Dean was executed in Ohio’s electric chair wearing a “simple green dress buttoned down the front, white anklets and brown shoes.”