Murder victim. In 1933, 54-year-old housekeeper, Anna Kiffe, was stabbed to death with a butcher knife by a crazed, female psychiatrist at 3578 7th Avenue, San Diego, California, the posh home of Anna's employer, another prominent female psychiatrist, who had brought the killer home under false pretext for "treatment and recuperation" from the mental hospital where she had been involuntarily admitted. Nationwide, newspapers covered the sensational crime and trial, wherein the murderer was acquitted by reason of insanity.

Anna Kiffe (Kee-fee) and her twin brother, Aloysious (Louis), were the youngest of twelve children born to German immigrant parents, George, Sr. and Gertrude Kiffe. The children were raised in Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minnesota, where their father farmed. Anna never married, and following her father's death in 1904, she remained at home to care for her elderly mother. Anna worked most of her adult life as a retail sales clerk . As early as 1906, she is listed as such in the Mankato city directory. By 1909, she had moved to Boise, Idaho and two years later was living at Portland, Oregon.

From 1912-17, she lived in Umatilla, Oregon and by 1922, she had moved to Everett, Washington. The next year, Anna moved south to San Diego. Over the next ten years she worked her way up from sales clerk to manager at the fashionable Marston Department Store on C Street in downtown San Diego. A devout Catholic, whose older sister, Mary Aquina Kiffe was mother superior at a convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame, in Milwaukee, Anna was active in the church and a member of various lay organizations. In 1933, Anna tragically accepted temporary employment as the housekeeper of Anita Muhl, M.D., 47, a well-known psychiatrist, criminologist and author on the subject of "automatic writing", while Muhl's regular housekeeper was away on vacation. The 1933 San Diego city directory shows Anna living at Muhl's home, 3578 7th Avenue, and working as a maid.

Anna Kiffe was stabbed to death at Muhl's upscale residence on the evening of August 25, 1933, hours after Muhl had brought another psychiatrist, her "intimate friend" Virginia A. Wilson, M.D., 36, to her home from a mental hospital in San Diego, where Wilson was an inpatient. Wilson, a New York resident, was a 1928 graduate of Washington University Medical School in St. Louis and regarded as an expert in psychiatry and hygiene. At the time of the murder, Wilson had just completed teaching a summer course in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley Medical School. Wilson suffered a nervous breakdown shortly after the course ended. She had come south to San Diego to recuperate and was voluntarily admitted to Mercy Hospital there.

While a patient at Mercy Hospital, Wilson had gone to the chapel where she removed her shoes. When one of the nuns working there asked Wilson to leave, she refused. The situation escalated, and San Diego Police were called. After the police surgeon, Dr. Paul R. Brust M.D., interviewed Wilson, he ordered her transferred to the county hospital's psychopathic ward on a temporary involuntary, psychiatric hold for observation.

Muhl had obtained Wilson's discharge from the facility where she was being held, by falsely stating that she was taking the deranged woman to another institution for rest and treatment. In fact, Muhl brought Wilson to Muhl's home, recklessly exposing herself and her housekeeper, Anna Kiffe, to the murderous rampage that unfolded hours later.

The story made national news in August 1933. Newspaper accounts of the crime varied. The "Southern Cross", the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, reported, "The patient, a Dr. Virginia Wilson, had suffered a nervous breakdown and was a guest in Dr. Muhl's home, when she suddenly went insane after dinner Friday evening and attacked the doctor, inflicting 15 knife wounds. Hearing the struggle, Miss Kiffe rushed from her room to aid Dr. Muhl and was fatally wounded with one thrust of the knife, dying almost immediately. Dr. Muhl, who is a member of St. John's parish, is reported recovering at Mercy hospital."

The San Diego Union Tribune, the major city paper, wrote a differing account. The article stated that police had reconstructed the scenario that Anna Kiffe was alone having dinner in the kitchen, when she was attacked from behind by Wilson with a butcher knife that she had grabbed from a kitchen cabinet. Muhl was upstairs drawing bath water for Wilson's bath, and hearing the commotion, rushed downstairs where she engaged in a struggle with Wilson, who stabbed or slashed her 15 times on her front and back. The San Diego Police concluded that both Anna and Muhl had engaged in a "terrific hand- to- hand struggle" (or knife to hand) with the insane psychiatrist. Anna's body was sprawled in the doorway between the kitchen and hallway, her blood splattered on the floor, walls and furnishings in the kitchen, hallway and entry foyer of the residence. Muhl told police that after struggling with Wilson, she was able to overpower her sufficiently to push her out the front door and lock it.

Police responded to Muhl's home within a few minutes and put out a radio call with Wilson's description to all "prowl (patrol) cars". Half an hour after the killing, detective sergeant Hugh Rochefort and patrolman (Clarence) William Pierson confronted the blood soaked Wilson, clad only in a bath towel and shoes, sitting on the front steps of a house at Fourth Ave. and Hawthorn St., still clutching the bloody knife. When the two men approached Wilson, she brandished the knife and threatened to attack them if they came closer. Rochefort stepped back and was able to persuade Wilson to toss the knife aside. Pierson grabbed her from behind and she was put in a squad car and taken to police headquarters for questioning.

Under questioning by police lieutenant Jack LeRoy Berg , Wilson showed no remorse for her crimes. She claimed to have been detained forcibly for the last 24 hours (not a few hours) at Muhl's residence, and only permitted to leave when accompanied by designated persons. Wilson claimed when she tried to walk out the front door, the maid tried to stop her, and a scuffle followed during which the maid was stabbed. The account does not state how or at what point in the struggle, Wilson claimed to have gotten the butcher knife. When Berg told Wilson that Miss Kiffe had died, she replied, "I don't care if she has gone." "Gone where?" Berg asked. "Gone to hell where they both belong", Wilson answered.

The Southern Cross news article stated about Anna, "That Miss Kiffe was well loved and had a host of friends in San Diego was shown by the great crowd of friends and acquaintances attending recitation of the Rosary for her at Goodbody's Ivy chapel Tuesday evening and the Requiem Mass Wednesday. Mass was celebrated by the Rev. William O'Shea who preached a beautiful eulogy on the deceased's life saying that she could have shown no greater love than to lay down her life for her friend. He was assisted by the Rev. John B. Cotter as deacon and the Rev. E. T. Howard as sub-deacon."

Muhl was taken to Mercy Hospital, and was not expected to survive the knife wounds inflicted by Wilson; however, she recovered from her injuries. Muhl faced no consequences for having falsified Wilson's psychiatric record by stating she was transferring her to another "institution", and instead brought her to her own home, which directly lead to Anna Kiffe's murder and Muhl's own life-threatening stab wounds. In fact, a colorable case for involuntary manslaughter could have been filed against Muhl under California's "involuntary manslaughter" law, Penal Code section 192(b), for her criminal negligence that resulted in the death of Anna Kiffe.

Instead, Muhl continued her psychiatric career, and frequently travelled around the world to lecture in her professed expertise of "criminology". In the late 1930s she spent a couple years in Australia writing and lecturing before returning to San Diego. Muhl died of cancer there in 1952 at the age of 66. She never married and is buried next to her parents in her native Indianapolis, Indiana. Biographies of Muhl, conveniently make no mention of her reckless dishonesty that resulted in the murder of Anna Kiffe.

In September 1933, a month after Anna's murder, Virginia A. Wilson, M.D., was adjudged criminally insane, thereby avoiding trial for her crimes. Instead, she was committed to a California state hospital for the criminally insane in Mendocino, CA. The next month, Wilson, who came from a prominent Rome, NY family and had once been the psychiatrist for the Utica, NY school district, became the first criminally insane mental patient in California to be transferred back to her home state under a new California law that had recently been enacted. It is unknown how long Wilson remained confined to a mental hospital after she was returned to New York, or whether she was confined at all. Wilson died in 1967 at the age of 69 and is buried in her family plot at Rome Cemetery in Rome, NY.

Before her death in 1933, Anna's testamentary will bequeathed her entire estate of $3,000 ($60,695.54 in 2021 dollars) to various Catholic charities. She is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in San Diego.

Anna Kiffe was the youngest sister of my great-grandmother, Barbara Kiffe Hund, who herself tragically died on July 4, 1900 following a house-fire, where she had gone back in the house to save her youngest child, my two-year-old grandmother, who had accidentally knocked over an oil lamp and started the fire.