Simeon Fleischer
Simeon Fleischer (executed January 18, 1581) was a purported German serial killer who murdered 19 wives in the 16th-century. Life. Simeon Fleischer was a wool weaver, born in Fulda. The following is a report of his life based on his confessions. After he was taken prisoner to Neustadt an der Weinstraße, after several days of torture, he confessed that in the span of six years, he had married 31 women and murdered 19 of them, indicating where most of the crime scenes had happened. On January 19, 1581, Simeon Fleischer was executed. He was impaled, torn to  pieces with red-hot pliers, with hands and feet pinched off. The whole process lasted a total of three days. Origin. Fleischer's murderous acts are only preserved in an undated and unpaginated - probably created after 1581 - without any indication as to who and where printed it, claiming that it was made in Colophon as part of a reprint originating from Basel. The songs include three murder ballads to serial killers executed in 1581. The only known copy is located at the Jena University Library, the unpaginated pages  and  were incorporated in a restoration, and therefore posted online . Genipperteinga and Niers' stories were picked up and retold more than that of Fleischer, who was left in relative obscurity. Evaluation. The historian Joy Wiltenburg undertook critical studies of the ballads handed down in prints from the early modern period, most of which originated from the 1570s and 1580s. In the gray area of oral tradition, there are various possibilities: (1) The crimes were real, but this is impossible to verify today. (2) Or, the confessions were extracted under torture, so the guilt or innocence of the perpetrators couldn't be determined. (3) The crimes were entirely fictitious, and created  for entertainment. It is unknown whether the people named really existed or were executed, including Simeon Fleischer.