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Gesche Gottfried (1785–1831)

Gesche Margarethe Gottfried, born Gesche Margarethe Timm (6 March 1785 - 21 April 1831), was a serial killer who murdered 15 people by arsenic poisoning in Bremen and Hanover, Germany, between 1813 and 1827. She was the last person to be publicly executed in the city of Bremen.

Gottfried's victims included her parents, her two husbands, her fiancé and her children. Before being suspected and convicted of the murders, she garnered widespread sympathy among the inhabitants of Bremen because so many of her family and friends fell ill and died. Because of her devoted nursing of the victims during their time of suffering, she was known as the "Angel of Bremen".

Gesche Gottfried's victims

• 1 October 1813: Johann Miltenberg (first husband)
• 2 May 1815: Gesche Margarethe Timm (mother)
• 10 May 1815: Johanna Gottfried (daughter)
• 18 May 1815: Adelheid Gottfried (daughter)
• 28 June 1815: Johann Timm (father)
• 22 September 1815: Heinrich Gottfried (son)
• 1 June 1816: Johann Timm (brother)
• 5 July 1817: Michael Christoph Gottfried (second husband)
• 1 June 1823: Paul Thomas Zimmermann (fiancé)
• 21 March 1825: Anna Lucia Meyerholz (music teacher and friend)
• 5 December 1825: Johann Mosees (neighbor, friend and advisor)
• 22 December 1826: Wilhelmine Rumpff (landlady)
• 13 May 1827: Elise Schmidt (daughter of Beta Schmidt)
• 15 May 1827: Beta Schmidt (friend, maid)
• 24 July 1827: Friedrich Kleine (friend, creditor; murdered in Hanover)

External links

• Gesche Gottfried in the German National Library catalogue (German)
• Gesche Gottfried
• Detention House (in German)
• Gesche Gottfried in Stade (in German)
• Gesche Gottfried's death mask
• Article about the execution (in German)
• Willibald Alexis / Julius Eduard Hitzig: Kriminalfälle des neuen Pitaval - Gesche Margaretha Gottfried (in German)