Billy Gohl
American serial killer
Died when: 54 years 25 days (648 months)Star Sign: Aquarius
William Gohl (February 6, 1873 – March 3, 1927) was a German-American alleged serial killer who, while working as a union official, allegedly murdered sailors passing through Aberdeen, Washington.
He allegedly murdered for an unknown period of time and was a suspect in dozens of murders until his capture in 1910.
Spared from the death penalty by a request for leniency by the jury, he was sentenced to life in prison at Walla Walla State Penitentiary where he died in 1927 from lobar pneumonia and erysipelas complicated by dementia paralytic caused by syphilis.
Recent scholarship has cast significant doubt on the veracity of the accusations against Gohl, with historian Aaron Goings arguing that the numerous bodies discovered in Grays Harbor were the result of accidental deaths caused by unsafe conditions on the docks and in the timber industry, and that Gohl was unjustly blamed for these deaths by influential local businessmen hoping to do away with a powerful figure in the local labor movement.
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