Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
The story of Marie Margarethe Beier—known simply as Grete—could easily have come straight out of a penny dreadful. She was a woman just 5 feet tall and extremely cunning, whose love for a petty criminal proved to be her undoing. Grete was the daughter of Brander Mayor Ernst Theodor Beier and his wife Ida Karoline. In 1905, at the age of 19, the young woman from a good family met and fell in love with the 24-year-old traveling salesman Johannes Heinrich Merker at a masquerade ball hosted by the Commercial Association in Freiberg. The two secretly became engaged after only 12 days, as Merker was considered beneath her station. When he cheated on her, Grete broke off the engagement. Shortly thereafter, she met 34-year-old chief engineer Heinrich Moritz Kurt Preßler at a carnival ball in Chemnitz. The educated man not only had a good income but also possessed a considerable fortune. He was the perfect prospective son-in-law, to whom she even became engaged in February 1906. Preßler was a good catch, but also quite domineering, and soon Grete longed for Merker again. She rekindled her affair. Grete even became pregnant by Merker, but had an abortion. In April 1907, Grete’s uncle Kröner, who was the administrator of the poorhouse in Freiberg, died. She forged his will and, without further ado, made herself the sole heir in order to give Merker the money from Kröner’s estate, as he was blackmailing her over the abortion. She emptied his bank account and took a cash box belonging to Kröner that her parents kept in the house. On May 13, 1907, one day before her planned wedding to Preßler, she visited him at his apartment. Preßler, who was very happy to see Grete, had no idea that she was carrying out a diabolical plan. For Grete had drawn up a forged will that made her the sole heir. When Preßler was distracted, she mixed cyanide into his eggnog, then toasted him. Once Preßler was unconscious, she held a napkin over his eyes and shot him in the mouth with her father’s revolver to make it look like suicide. Three days later, Preßler was buried and cremated. Everyone believed he had committed suicide. To ensure no one even remotely suspected Grete, she had forged letters from Preßler’s alleged wife, a woman named Ferroni from Italy, who had threatened to expose his double life. Grete Beier believed she had committed the perfect murder. But after six weeks, Grete was arrested because the forgery of her uncle’s will had been exposed. Kurt Preßler’s brother had the will and the letter from the alleged Italian wife examined. Both were forgeries, which is why Preßler filed a complaint against Grete Beier. In addition, an acquaintance named Schlegel knew about the theft and was supposed to get Merker out of the way. Grete informed him of this from prison via a secret letter, which, however, ended up with the investigating judge and became the basis for the murder charge. Faced with overwhelming evidence, Grete Beier confessed to forging the wills, murdering Preßler, and performing an illegal abortion. On June 29, 1908, the trial against Grete Beier began. After two days, she was sentenced to death for the murder of Kurt Preßler. She was also sentenced to eight years in prison for forgery, abortion, and grand larceny. A petition for clemency was rejected by King Friedrich August III. On July 23, 1908, Grete Beier, aged 22, was beheaded by the state executioner Moritz Brand on the scaffold in the courtyard of the District Court at Albertpark in Freiberg. Grete Beier was thus the last woman to be publicly executed in the Kingdom of Saxony. She was laid to rest in the family grave at the Johannisfriedhof cemetery in Dresden. Her lover, Merker, was sentenced to 20 months in prison for embezzlement and subsequently emigrated to Argentina.
