Ep. 8 - Evil Crime Queen Annie Cook

The city of Chicago is notorious for crime. Even as a frontier town, Chicago was known for rape, theft, arson and murder. Today, the city is plagued with shootings. These details put into perspective how bad crime was in the town of North Platte, Nebraska during Prohibition. Many may not think of a place in Nebraska as being a hub of intense crime, but it was so bad in North Platte, that it came to be known as Little Chicago. North Platte would become a base of operations for an evil woman. There really is no other way to describe Annie Cook. Her crimes were mind boggling. The effects of her deeds have continued on to our present era through supernatural activity.  

North Platte had been founded in 1866 and was named for the North Platte River. This town was established as the western terminus for the Union Pacific Railway. The railway would extend further west the following year to Laramie, Wyoming. Small towns with a railroad were attractive to criminals, particularly gangsters. Prohibition in America spawned years of criminal activity that strengthened the power of the Mafia and encouraged citizens to take up crime. Crime bosses and gangsters occasionally needed to find a place to lay low and small towns provided a respite. Especially small towns with a railroad. North Platte in Nebraska was at a crossroads after World War I because the farming economy had dropped out. Residents needed to find more ways to make money. They turned to illegal gambling, prostitution and eventually illegal alcohol. Crime flourishes in a town where city officials are easily manipulated and bought off. 

North Platte would be the place where a woman named Annie Cook would open up a brothel. Annie was born in 1875 to a Russian Jewish couple who had immigrated to Denver, Colorado. The family was moderately wealthy and Annie and her siblings were expected to pitch in and help out by working. Annie despised the fact that her parents made her work and she wanted to be rich. She needed a way out of Denver, so when a young farmer from Nebraska came through Denver to get supplies, Annie saw him as her ticket out. That young farmer was Frank Cook and he owned an 80-acre farm in Hershey, Nebraska. Annie married Frank and moved back to Nebraska with him. Things were good at first and the couple had a daughter they named Clara in 1896. Motherhood didn't seem to fit Annie and neither did farming. Frank clearly was not the answer to Annie's dreams of the big life. Fate would come in the form of a kidney infection.

This kidney infection led Annie to seek out care from a doctor in Omaha. Treatment took several weeks and during her stay, Annie became friendly with a Madame that ran a brothel in the city. The idea of running a brothel seemed intriguing to Annie and she picked the Madame's brain, inquiring about how much money she made and how she went about running the business. Annie saw prostitution as an easy way to make money. She started making regular trips to Omaha, claiming that she needed medical treatment. Frank and Clara stayed on the farm, so they were unaware that Annie was not ill and not receiving treatment. Annie had opened up her first brothel and she was making a nice sum of money. So much that she was able to double the size of their farm. One has to wonder where Frank thought the money came from to buy more land. Annie more than likely fed him lies.

Traveling to Omaha on a regular basis was hard, so moving the operation closer to home became imperative. North Platte seemed like an ideal city and it was ripe for the picking with the amount of crime going on within the city limits. Annie opened up a brothel in North Platte and sent Clara off to Omaha to attend a private school. That schooling didn't last long because Annie decided that at the age of thirteen, Clara could help out at her house of ill repute. She had a talent for playing the piano and so Clara became the in-house entertainment. Clara believed she was playing for guests at her mother's boarding house and we imagine this is the story that Annie gave to her husband Frank and to town officials. And city officials did not do anything to stop the operation because they were taking part in the business by frequenting the women there. This not only helped assure that the brothel would not be shut down by the officials, but it gave Annie black mail power.

The men enjoyed the piano playing Clara provided. But they admired more than the music. They liked the look of Clara. Several man began inquiring about what it would cost to have a little time with Clara. The sums they offered must have been too much to resist because Annie soon had her daughter turning tricks. Clara became the star attraction at the house and she eventually dropped out of school. In 1923, Annie came up with a new idea for money. She had earned enough money to buy even more land next to the farm in Hershey and she used extortion and bribes to ensure that she received the Lincoln County contract for its Poor Farm. The contract had been in the hands of a nice widow who took great care of the destitute men who came to work on her poor farm. That was about to change under Annie. Annie built her poor farm on the land next to her and Frank's farm. She also continued to run her house of prostitution in North Platte.

Staying at the farm was its own form of Hell and Annie was the overseer. She worked the poor who stayed on her farm without pay. Annie carried a buggy whip with her and she used it liberally.  She screamed and cursed at them as well. Many of the men on the farm were worked to death. When workers ran away, they would be drowned in irrigation ditches when they were found. Their bodies would be left floating in the ditches. Any deaths were ruled accidental because Annie paid officials off with bribes. Frank did not approve of Annie's treatment of people, and was said to have been kind to all the "guests." He often entertained them with his songs and funny stories. Frank tried to reign in Annie's behavior, but she got the upper hand when she accused him of molesting their daughter. He ran to the farm's barn and lived out his life there.

Two of the first "guests" at the Cook Poor Farm were a woman who was deaf and dumb and her seven-year-old son, Joe. The woman passed away from overwork and Annie and Frank adopted Joe. One year Clara had been working in Omaha and came home for the Christmas holiday. She totally embraced Joe as her little brother and she brought him a Christmas present, two pair of overalls. Joe loved the gifts! Annie watched the interaction between Joe and Clara and she became enraged. It was like joy signaled her evil to arise. She grabbed the overalls and threw them into the potbelly stove, devastating Joe. Joe worked hard on the farm and received a fair share of Annie's wrath, but he managed to grow up without lasting effects of the brutal treatment. The same cannot be said of Annie's niece Mary. She endured sixteen years of torture while living with Annie. She was beaten, starved and Annie even tried to kill her one night with a butcher knife. Mary ran barefoot from the house, through the rain, to town to find help. 

Annie beat Clara and her own sister, Elizabeth, as well. Elizabeth was reported at the time to be feeble minded. In 1934, things between Clara and Annie came to a head and during a heated argument, Annie took a heavy lid lifter from the stove and chased her daughter, finally hitting her in the right side of her head with the item. Clara dropped dead. Annie's sister, Elizabeth, told Annie's biographer years later that "Annie threw the lid lifter at Clara, striking her on the right side of the head. Clara ran around a tree several times, then dropped dead." The Lincoln County Attorney reported that an official investigation was not necessary. Clara's death was ruled an accident. His report stated that Clara had been poisoned by one of the men staying on the poor farm. Clara had asked the man to prepare a dose of medicine for her and he poured poison into the glass by mistake. Clara swallowed the poison and began choking. The death certificate stated, "Death was by suffocation. An accident"

Annie was never convicted of any of the murders she committed. As the years went by, Annie became more greedy and even meaner if that were possible. The community grew to fear her and many would not cross in front of her house, claiming that she was a witch. Over the years, Annie conned some of the braver neighbors into doing work for her and promised that she would will some of the land to them. When she died in 1952, six neighbors came forward claiming that they owned some of the land, but there was no will stating any such thing and these neighbors were left with nothing.

There is now a modern farm sitting on the Cook property where the farm and poor house once had been. People who live there claim that the property is haunted. Items are moved in barns and in the house without assistance. Full bodied apparitions have been seen and strange noises are heard. The apparitions have appeared as not only workers that probably died here, but Annie Cook still seems to be on the property in the afterlife, still carrying her bullwhip, looking for someone to beat. 

How someone can mistreat people who are down on their luck is a mystery to most people. Some people are just plain bad, but others are evil. Crime Queen Annie Cook seems to be the latter.