A MURDERESS EXECUTED.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9152, 27 July 1908, Page 5

A MURDERESS EXECUTED.

BERLIN, July 25. Two hundred spectators witnessed the guillotining of Crete Brier, for the murder of her betrothed. Ihe execution took place in th-3 courtyard of the gaol at Friberg.The murderess met her doom in a penitent, composed attitude.

Grete Beyer, the daughter of the late burgomaster of Brand, Saxony, who killed her fiancee in order to secure possession of £SOO he had willed her as a marriage gift, was as nonchalant a prisoner as German gaolers have ever watched over. Al though charged with murder, forgery, and embezzlement, in collusion with her mother and another lover, a Dresden merchant named Meiker, her manner was ore of utter indifference, bordering on light-heartedness. She was a strikingly a good-looking girl, a typical blonde, blue-eyed Saxon, of somewhat buxom figure. She was noted in Brand for her good humour, friendly disposition, and tasteful clothes, in which she dis played a'partiulifcy Iji- light coloured silks. She was always accompanied by a powerful St. Bernard dog. Her father, once a coal-miner, became head of the town savings bank, and eventually burgomaster. He left a considerable fortune; but, fullowing his death, irregularities were discovered which caused some suspicions as to his business integrity. The mother, who was seriously involved in her daughter's embezzlement and forgery accusations, came from a* cobbler's family.

Although Crete was engaged to J the engineer Pressler, whom she shot in May, 1907, after blindfolding him on the pretence that he was to have a pleasant surprise, she had continued since 1906 a former intimacy of some years standing with Meiker, as the result of which two dead children were born. In September Crete, her mother, and Meiker were arrested on charges of forgery of a will in connection with tJhe mysterious death of Herr Pireaner, superintendent of the local poorhouse, a wealthy relative of the Beyers. Grete subsequently confessed that she had killed Pressler, after having forged his will, written a letter indicating that he had taken his own life, and left the pistol beside his body in a position suggesting suicide.