18. A Medieval Monster
Peter Niers set himself apart from other bandits with his extreme bloodthirstiness and gratuitous cruelty. He was not content to simply rob his victims, or even simply kill them. Instead, Niers enjoyed torturing those who fell into his hands, and got a kick out of murdering them in a variety of fiendishly inventive ways. He was captured in 1577, and under torture, confessed to 75 murders during the previous eleven years. However, before he managed to escape before his scheduled execution.
Niers returned to his criminal activities, and resumed them with even greater cruelty and bloodthirstiness. Indeed the majority of his murders and depravities occurred in the four years following his escape. In the eleven years before his arrest, Niers had murdered 75 people. Authorities estimated that he murdered an additional 569 people in the four years from 1577 to 1581, when he was arrested for a second, and final time.