Goold, Maria Vere (1877–1908)

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Goold, Maria Vere (1877–1908)

French murderer. Name variations: Lady Vere Goold; Marie Vere Goolde; Marie Girodin. Born Marie Girodin, 1877, in France; died at the French penal colony at Cayenne, 1908; married at least 3 times, the last to Sir Vere Goold.

Married twice, was widowed twice, with husbands dying under mysterious circumstances; at 30, married an Irishman who called himself Sir Vere Goold; insolvent from gambling and other excesses in Monte Carlo, borrowed money from a wealthy widow, Mme Emma Levin (1907); as chief plotter, killed Levin with husband, packed the body parts in a trunk, and attempted to mail it from Marseilles to London; after odor from trunk caught attention of clerk, was tried with husband in Monaco; received death sentence (commuted to life imprisonment) while husband received life sentence; within a year, died in the penal colony known as Devil's Island of typhoid fever (1908); husband committed suicide (1909).