On this date in 1803, robber Mathias Weber was guillotined.
“Fetzer” made a scintillating career in brigandage in 1790s Rhineland — whose west bank Prussia had been forced to cede to revolutionary France. (The legendary bandit Schinderhannes plied his trade in the same unsettled environs; the two men shared a ride to Mainz as prisoners.)
Fetzer’s gang robbed liberally and violently on the roads; their pinnacle capers were twice raiding the river town of Neuss.
Tried (and eventually executed) in Cologne, he was persuaded to confess — albeit not regret — his considerable career in villainy by a prosecutor named Anton Keil, who made use of his access to this notorious figure to print a little biography of his famous prey. Fetzer, for his part, amused himself by sketching guillotines on his cell wall and building a tally of the distinct robberies he could recollect, eventually cataloguing 178 of them. He wowed the standing-room crowd at his trial with his nerve in the courtroom, joking and sparring and readily revealing all without any expectation of trading admissions for leniency.
On this day..
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- 1951: Jean Lee, the last woman to hang in Australia
- 1329: The effigy of Pope John XXII, by Antipope Nicholas V
- 2009: Abdullah Fareivar, by the rope instead of the stone
- 1861: The Bascom Affair hangings, Apache War triggers
- 1878: J.W. Rover, sulfurous
- 1762: Francois Rochette and the Grenier brothes, the last Huguenot martyrs in France
- 1836: Giuseppe Fieschi, Pierre Morey, and Theodore Pepin, infernal machinists
- 1790: Thomas de Mahy, Marquis de Favras
- 1388: Robert Tresilian, former Chief Justice
- Daily Double: The Merciless Parliament
- 1858: Chief Leschi
- 1942: Frank Abbandando and Harry Maione, mob hitmen