Peter Niers

Peter Niers
Died	16 September 1581
Cause of death	Execution
Other names	Peter Nirsch, Peter Niersch, Peter Nyers, Peter Nyersch
Criminal penalty	Broken on the wheel, then quartered while still alive
Killings
Victims	544
Country	The Palatinate, Holy Roman Empire
Date apprehended	September 1581

Peter Niers (or Niersch) was a German bandit and reputed serial killer who was executed on 16 September 1581 in Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, some 40 km distant from Nuremberg. Based on confessions extracted from him and his accomplices under torture, he was convicted of 544 murders, including 24 fetuses cut out of pregnant women—allegedly, the fetal remains were to be used in magical rituals (he was believed to be an extremely powerful black magician, with many supernatural abilities) and for acts of cannibalism.

Information about Niers is based on the contemporary ballads, "true crime" reports, and official warrants circulating, as well as the aforementioned confessions extracted under torture.

Peter Niers was one of the leading figures in a loosely knit network of robber-killers roaming the countrysides, a network constantly changing in its composition—sometimes joining together for major raids, at other times splitting up into smaller groups to pursue robberies and killings on smaller scale over different areas. Historian Joy Wiltenburg writes:

Of course the profession of robbery required some roving, whether the principals had been itinerant beforehand or not. It was in the spaces outside cities that these bands operated, particularly in woods and mountains and along unfrequented roads. The gang led by Niers and Sumer reportedly started in Alsace, but after gathering a group of twenty-four (...) near Pfalzburg, they separated to rob and murder. Accordingly, they were caught in different places- one in the imperial city of Landau, one at Kirchweyler am Rhein; four at Strasbourg; nine at Pfalzburg; and six at Koblenz.

This way of operating does not seem to have originated with the gang led by Niers and Sumer; apparently, Niers had a mentor in crime called Martin Stier, who from the 1550s until his arrest and execution in 1572 had led a gang of 49 bandits ostensibly working as shepherds, murdering and robbing their way from the Netherlands to Württemberg. Wiltenburg adds that, "Shepherds were widely regarded as dishonourable, especially in the thinking of urban guilds." She proffers an example of such thinking from a novel published in 1554, where the young antihero gradually slides down the social scale to that of a herdsman, and finally hits the bottom as a wandering minstrel. "Far from civilized society and alone with the animals, he has time to think over his misdeeds. Members of such a group were unsurprising suspects".

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