‘I ask you not to look. This will not be pretty’
MARCEL ANDRÉ HENRI Félix Petiot was one of the most despicable serial murderers ever to emerge from France. Using the confusion and chaos of war, he preyed on those who feared a terrible fate, posing as a patriot and saviour. Petiot entered the world in the early hours of 17 January 1897. His parents, Félix and Marthe, lived in Auxerre, a pretty Burgundian town 160 kilometres southeast of Paris.
The life of the young Marcel is the stuff of conjecture. It is alleged he had a kitten that he adored until, at the age of five, he discovered it would be more amusing to dip its paws in boiling water. Later the same day he strangled the kitten. Moving on to greater cruelties, he revealed his true nature by blinding young birds with a needle and cheerfully watching as they threw themselves at the bars of a cage in which he kept them.
Throughout his childhood Petiot was cruel to animals, but he developed in many other remarkable ways. Extremely intelligent if diffident, by the age of 11 Marcel could throw knives with astonishing accuracy, occasionally using a terrified classmate as an outline target to demonstrate his prowess.
Marcel’s parents worried about their son, not least because of his sleep-walking, fits and habit of not only wetting the bed but, until the age of 12, his trousers too. Doctors could only assure the Petiots that their son would grow out of his strange behaviour.
At 15, Marcel’s mother died and his father, a post and telegraph worker, moved the family to Joigny, 25 kilometres away. The young Petiot did not settle and his behaviour led to expulsion from two schools in rapid succession. Returning to Auxerre, he was again expelled and began to embark on a career of petty crime, resulting in charges being brought for mail theft and damaging public property in February 1914. A psychiatric evaluation followed at which Marcel was diagnosed as mentally ill, suffering from ‘personal and hereditary problems that limit to a significant degree responsibility for his acts’. The charges were dropped due to the boy’s sickness. Marcel’s father was less sympathetic. Deciding enough was enough, he washed his hands of his unstable and delinquent son.
After a brief stint at school in Dijon, Marcel was again expelled from another school in Auxerre. Tiring of his behaviour, the authorities transferred him to a special school in Paris from which he graduated in July 1915. By this time, war was engulfing Europe and France was fighting for her very survival. Marcel Petiot was conscripted in January 1916 and saw action later that year. On 20 May 1917, he was gassed and a hand grenade exploded near his left foot.
While recovering from his wounds, Petiot once more showed signs of mental illness and was unable to return to his unit. Eventually he was diagnosed as suffering from ‘mental disorder, neurasthenia, depression, melancholia, obsession and phobia’. Despite this, was sent back to the front in June 1918. Suffering a nervous breakdown, Petiot shot himself in the foot and suffered fits when sent behind the lines. Returning to the front once more, he could not adapt to military life and, after yet more time spent in psychiatric care, was finally discharged from the army on 4 July 1919.
More than a year later while living in a psychiatric hospital, Petiot had his case reviewed. He was now considered to be 100% psychiatrically disabled and unable to perform any work physically or mentally. It was recommended that he remain in psychiatric care indefinitely. Incredibly, Petiot, seemingly confused and indifferent to his future, had decided on his future profession and was already studying to be a doctor. Postwar France was reeling. Having suffered over 4.3 million casualties from a total population of less than 39 million, the nation was keen to help its ‘heroes’ return to civilian life. Former soldiers could therefore take degrees shortened to a few months. In Petiot’s case, his medical degree would take not five years but a mere eight months and his internship two years. Thus, despite his psychiatric disability, he would soon switch from patient to practitioner. The Petiot family, even Félix, was proud that Marcel achieved such a prestigious qualification. His father tried to welcome him back into the fold. Marcel dined with Felix, accepted his father’s regrets for having misjudged him and then walked brusquely out of the house. He never returned. In later years, at the Petiot trial and beyond, the insanity of Marcel Petiot would be obvious to all. In the early 1920s no one who entered the circle of Dr Petiot could yet see the monster lurking beneath the seemingly pleasant exterior.
Dr Petiot needed a job. Setting up home in the town of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, 40 kilometres from Auxerre, the practice he started soon attracted patients from those unhappy with the service given by the two existing, older and complacent local physicians. Young and dynamic, Petiot charmed the sleepy town of 4,200 souls and quickly developed a reputation as a sympathetic and diligent healer. Seemingly a workaholic, the understanding young medic would charge little for his consultations, work nights to help the sick and old and listen to the worldly cares that his patients brought to him.
Of course, Petiot was no saint and his competence was questionable too. He would sign up patients to Medical Assistance without their knowledge, ensuring the French taxpayer reimbursed him for the small fees he charged. Prescribing was erratic. Occasionally Petiot recommended nothing. At other times he would prescribe a lethal dose of drugs that the pharmacist would have to alter. On one occasion, when chastised for prescribing a child a deadly dose of narcotics, he replied to the pharmacist: ‘What do you care? Is it not better to get rid of a child that exists only to annoy its mother?’ Still, he remained popular and most of his patients remained in good health.
Although superficially recovered from his mental illness, odd behaviour manifested itself in little ways. Petiot soon became known as a kleptomaniac and no visit to the home of a patient was complete without the minor theft of some utterly valueless trinket. In later years, his wife and son would return such objects, the removal of which hinted at the inner turbulence in Petiot’s mind, an acquisitive one that strove to accumulate and hoard, almost for the sake of it. The villagers tolerated the unorthodox behaviour of their doctor, which they considered for the most part amusing, if baffling. Yet greater crimes were just around the corner.
Petiot rented a house for a year from the Mongin family on the understanding that after the 12-month lease was up they would return. Petiot refused to move out on the expiry of his lease and had to be evicted by court order. The Mongins then threatened to sue on finding that ornaments and furniture had vanished and an antique stove worth 25,000 francs replaced by an imitation. Claiming he was a certified lunatic who could not be held accountable, Petiot forced them to let the matter drop. They believed he had robbed them just for his amusement, as the items (with the exception of the stove) were of no value whatsoever. This minor incident was followed in 1926 by a much more serious one.
Louisette Delaveau was a beautiful 26-year-old employed by Petiot as his cook and housekeeper. She had previously worked for an elderly lady, Madame Fleury. Louisette quickly became the doctor’s mistress, to the general surprise of the locals who believed Petiot uninterested in the opposite sex, having spurned the advances of the many young women who had pursued him. A few days after she moved in, the house adjacent to Madame Fleury’s was burgled and soon after the Fleury home was not only broken into and robbed but also set ablaze. No one was ever held to account, although Petiot was certainly suspected.
Petiot always appeared agitated, distant and was a night prowler who rarely slept yet was so energetic, vibrant and full of life that he appeared almost ‘possessed’. With Louisette in his life, Petiot changed, becoming calmer, more relaxed. After a few short months, Louisette vanished in mid-May 1926. Petiot asked the police if they were worried. His manner was such that the officer concerned reported it to his superior. An anxious citizen then reported seeing Petiot suspiciously loading a large trunk into his car. A few days later a trunk matching that exact description was found in the river containing the body of a headless young woman. She was never identified.
As Petiot was highly regarded and, of course, a doctor, no one seriously suspected that he was connected to the dead girl. As for Louisette, Petiot wept and wailed that she had left him. She was never seen again and her former love moved on with his life.
By now a respected pillar of society and revelling in his prestige, Petiot entered politics. Standing for mayor on a Socialist ticket, he was elected on 25 July 1926 by a landslide. It had been a hard-fought campaign and the new mayor was accused of dirty tricks. At one hustings his opponent was about to speak when a crony of Petiot short-circuited the village power supply, blacking out the hall. Unable to address the villagers, his campaign petered out. Petiot remained popular with most of the people in his new fiefdom for many years. Others saw him as a strange, sinister and thoroughly dishonest opportunist. During his election campaign, Petiot boasted of fooling the army into discharging him with a pension by faking insanity. Monsieur Gandy, an opponent, wrote to the Commission de Réforme to complain of this, only to be informed that Petiot was genuinely ill, despite his boasts. Furthermore, although the doctor’s illness was deemed incurable, it could go into remission for long periods of time so when the ‘madness’ would return was anyone’s guess. Villenueve now had a mayor who was sick enough not to be held fully responsible for illegal behaviour, yet sane enough to run the town. Of this bizarre set of circumstances Petiot would take full advantage.
From the outset, Petiot behaved strangely. He stole municipal funds, the drum of a band he disliked and removed a 600-kg stone cross at the entrance to the town cemetery he considered ‘ugly’. On one occasion, he threw himself from the Paris express train, ostensibly to protest that his village had no station of its own. Such actions might be expected to turn folk against their mayor. In fact, Petiot’s quirks were overlooked because he was actually a very effective politician. Villeneuve would benefit from the installation of a sewer system, the overhaul of its school and the constant lobbying of the state for further resources and improvements, all at the behest of their hard-working and innovative young mayor, Dr Marcel Petiot.
Villeneuve had a 20-member municipal council who seemed in awe of their new leader. When Petiot supported a project they acted as a virtual rubber stamp. When, capriciously, he changed his mind, they did too. Their mayor acted like an absolute monarch and his ‘courtiers’ went along with him. Why? It was rumoured he had a hypnotic influence. Others simply remarked on his forceful personality and powers of persuasion undoubtedly boosted by his supreme self-confidence and vitality.
On 4 June 1927, Petiot married Georgette Valentine Lablais, the beautiful 23-year-old daughter of a wealthy and influential landowner. On 19 April the following year, Georgette gave birth to a son, Gerhardt Georges Claude Félix Petiot, who was to be the couple’s only child. As the months and years passed, the mayor/ doctor was involved in a number of unsavoury incidents. On 29 January 1929, he was sentenced to three months in prison and fined 200 francs for fraud. He had stolen some cans of oil from a railway platform. Pleading insanity, Petiot had the sentence suspended. On 6 February his conviction resulted in his removal as mayor for a month. He appealed and, taking his ‘fragile mental state’ into account, the entire sentence was quashed.
On 11 March 1930, an incident that later pointed to the involvement of Petiot occurred in the town. Armand Debauve, director of a local dairy co-operative, returned home at 8.00pm to find his house on fire and his wife lying in the kitchen, her head smashed in by heavy blows. As the fire brigade struggled to extinguish the fire, the Petiots drove by and stopped for a while to stare. The locals were stupefied when the couple drove on, expecting Petiot to rush in and assist in dealing with the tragedy. Instead, the Petiots headed to the theatre where the doctor was seen to be nervous, distracted and agitated.
The assault on Madame Debauve was an extremely vicious one. Blood spatter showed how she was beaten to a pulp and the house doused in petrol and set on fire to eliminate evidence that could identify the culprit. Footprints led towards the town of Villeneuve and it seemed certain a local must have carried out the crime, someone who knew that Monsieur Debauve did not return home before 7.30pm (the fire stopped the kitchen clock at 7.13) and that the entire takings for the month (235,000 francs) would be in the house. The money was not stolen, having been hidden in the kitchen rather than the family safe. Bloody prints were found on the safe and a hammer covered in blood.
Villeneuvians, convinced a killer lived among them, were shocked that such a murder could take place only a few years after the headless woman’s torso was found. Numerous people were accused and denounced by anonymous letters. Dairy staff were fingerprinted and many bemoaned the decline in law and order in recent years that had not only resulted in murder but also a whole spate of unsolved burglaries. Local newspaper Le Petit Regional published a series of anonymous articles denouncing the police, casting aspersions on the character and moral fibre of the deceased and describing in precise detail the injuries she suffered, even though such information had never been made public by the police or the coroner.
Monsieur Léon Fiscot, himself a suspect, told friends he had seen Petiot, rumoured to be the lover of 45-year-old Madame Debauve, near the house the evening of the murder and was going to inform the police. Before doing so, he visited Dr Petiot to have his rheumatism treated. The doctor had just taken possession of a new miracle drug from Paris that would cure Fiscot. Three hours after being injected, Fiscot was dead of an unknown cause. Petiot then quickly signed his death certificate and burial authorisation.
No one thought to investigate the mayor or take his prints. The Debauve case remained unsolved. Long after Petiot had been guillotined, the prints were checked. Unfortunately, they were taken from different fingers and so the mystery was never conclusively unravelled.
Complaints about Petiot steadily increased in the early 1930s. Municipal property disappeared, public works commenced without funding or authorisation, expense forms were rewritten, there were irregularities in Medical Assistance application payments and town records were found to be in chaos. The mayor’s hand was seen in everything and discrepancies of one kind or another invariably led back to him. Auditors were sent to investigate and, after making a ‘strong protest’, on 27 August 1931, Petiot resigned. The Yonne Departmental Prefect had actually removed the mayor for a month the previous day. He then petitioned Pierre Laval, Government Minister of the Interior (who would be shot as a traitor after the war), for a permanent deletion.
Petiot was not going to surrender his privileged position so easily. New elections were set for 15 and 22 November. Winning in the first round (a process that in France then reduces the field to the two most popular candidates if no one wins outright) Petiot lost to Dr Eugene Duran in the second. He was not too perturbed, having already been elected on 18 October as the youngest of 34 councillors serving the entire Yonne.
In his new role Petiot excelled. Diligent, relentless, intelligent and driven, he could have gone far. Alas, his innate criminality refused to subside. On 20 August 1932, criminal charges were laid against him for the theft of electricity. As mayor he had been provided with electricity free of charge. After his office was revoked Petiot publicly renounced this free service. It did not take long for the authorities to discover he had a private generator and had tapped into the local grid. No crime was too big or too small for Petiot.
Tried for the theft of electricity, Petiot defended himself ferociously, claiming to be a victim of ‘conspiracies’ against him, petty jealousy and vindictiveness by political rivals. Such histrionics cut no ice with the court and on 19 July 1933 Petiot was fined 300 francs and sentenced to 15 days in prison. He appealed and the sentence was reduced to a fine of 100 francs. The conviction was upheld and, as a felon, he was deprived of voting rights and removed from office on 17 October. He had already pre-empted this by again resigning, this time a week before his removal. The political career of Petiot was now over.
In truth, Petiot had become bored with politics and life in the Yonne. In January 1933 he found it expedient to move with his family to an apartment at 66 rue Caumartin in the busy commercial district of Saint-Lazare, Paris. He had to find a new list of patients and did so by extravagant claims that he could relieve pain caused by anything from cancer to childbirth, remove everything from tattoos to tumours and cure diseases ranging from sciatica to syphilis. He announced a range of impressive qualifications and, once again, built up a large, loyal and devoted following. Perhaps this was due to his bedside manner or apparent self-sacrifice because later in 1944, when 2,000 of Petiot’s former patients were interviewed about him, not one had a bad word to say. Even in the 1960s, former patients refused to believe that the wonderful man who seemed to slave away day and night on their behalf for scant reward could possibly be a mass murderer or capable of any crime at all.
But not everyone was fooled. Famed for ‘curing’ drug addicts, it was soon suspected Petiot was actually a supplier. In 1935 a Madame Anna Coquille reported to the police that her 30-year-old daughter had died following a visit to Dr Petiot, simply to have a mouth abscess lanced. Under anaesthetic, she never regained consciousness. An autopsy found large quantities of morphine and the coroner believed the death to be suspicious. Eventually the case was dismissed. Madame Coquille tried to re-open it seven years later without success.
Again in 1935, Petiot was investigated for dealing in narcotics. Charges were eventually dropped and a year later he successfully applied for the position of medecin d’état-civil for the ninth arrondissement of Paris, a prestigious post that gave him authority to sign death certificates. That year proved a difficult one for Petiot. On 4 April, he was caught stealing a book from the Joseph Gilbert bookstore on Boulevard Saint-Michel. Producing papers that proved his identity, Petiot tried to pretend the theft was an absent-minded mistake. Store detective René Cotteret thought otherwise and began dragging Petiot to the police station. Petiot threatened to ‘bash his face in’, tried to strangle Cotteret and then ran off. The incident was reported to the police, who now sought Petiot for assault.
Petiot showed up at the police station on 6 April at 4.00pm. He was weeping and claimed to be depressed and stated that he had previously spent time in psychiatric hospitals. At the time of the ‘incident’, he had been pondering about how to develop a machine he was inventing to help cure constipation. To show his inventive genius, he provided blueprints of this and a ‘perpetual motion machine’ he had also designed. Extravagantly, Petiot explained away the assault in a highly convoluted way and even provided his army discharge papers to prove he was mentally ill.
The police considered Petiot to be a rather strange individual, wholly unsuited to looking after the sick and vulnerable and ordered a psychiatric evaluation. The psychiatrist, Dr Ceillier, found Petiot to be deeply disturbed, unbalanced, neurotic and ‘dangerous to himself and others’. He ordered Petiot to be detained, against his will, in a psychiatric hospital. The assault charges were dropped on the grounds of Petiot’s insanity. Georgette Petiot arranged to have her husband incarcerated in a private sanatorium in the care of Dr Achille Delmas, a famously lax psychiatrist. The court accepted this only if its own doctors could regularly check Petiot.
Petiot was interned on 1 August 1936 and immediately declared himself sane and eager to be discharged. Delmas readily agreed. Other doctors did not. Months passed and eventually, after bombarding the authorities with letters, including the President of France, three doctors were asked to assess Petiot. They found him to be ‘amoral, without scruples or moral sensibilities and unbalanced’, but also ‘free from delirium, hallucinations, mental confusion, intellectual disability, pathological excitation or depression’. He was set free with concerns expressed that ‘should Petiot return to criminality, the nature of his criminal responsibility should be examined in detail from the beginning’.
Released on 20 August 1937, Petiot must have grown tired of pleading insanity, perhaps fearing that the next time the authorities would lock him up permanently. He never used such a defence again, even when the alternative was ‘Madame Guillotine’.
Petiot now tried to act as a model citizen. His only crime over the next few years appeared to be tax evasion, declaring only a tenth of his estimated annual income. For this, he was fined 25,000 francs but not before making all sorts of ridiculous claims as to his poverty. House calls were made on foot; he took no holidays or bought new clothes for three years nor even entered a café in five. In fact, Petiot owned several properties and would regularly bid for expensive jewellery at auction. At his postwar trial, Petiot finally admitted to tax dodging, claiming, ‘It’s a medical tradition. I didn’t want to seem like some kind of dope. Besides, it proves I am a patriot; the French are notorious for tax evasion’.
Germany’s defeat of France in 1940 presented Petiot with an opportunity to feed his avarice by profiting from the death of people seeking to flee from Nazi terror. The German state made its enemies disappear. Why, in the spirit of free enterprise, should Dr Marcel Petiot not do the same?
It took Petiot some months to locate the ideal location to design and build his mini-murder factory. No one would suspect him. He was an upright citizen and family man, a regular church-goer, well respected in Paris. The future charnel house was found at 21 rue Le Sueur, a fashionable old villa in the 16th arrondissement that once belonged to Princess Maria Colloredo de Mansfield and by 1941 had been empty for over a decade. The house had a high wall surrounding it, a large garage and, to Petiot’s fascination, a strange, windowless, triangular room with one door. What the princess had used the room for was unknown. The use it was allegedly put to by Petiot would, in a few short years, reverberate around France.
Petiot’s new house cost him 495,000 francs and was purchased in his son’s name. Even more money was spent converting the house to a very specific use. Most of the work was carried out on the triangular room. A false door and spyholes were installed and the walls were made sound-proof. It was small, with walls only two metres or so long and contained eight heavy iron rings fixed to one wall. The room was lit by a single naked light bulb. The builder Petiot employed was curious, but satisfied when the doctor informed him it was to house ‘mental patients’. A large pit was excavated in the floor of the garage and a furnace placed in the cellar. By the end of 1941, 21 rue Le Sueur was ready for its first victim.
Jacob Guschinow was a Polish Jew and furrier. As both a Jew and a foreigner, he was high up on the list of those for whom Gestapo was combing Paris. Guschinow had no illusions about his fate should he fall into their hands. Desperately, he wanted to escape the city and occupied Europe altogether. It seemed his luck was in. He had heard that a Dr Petiot had contacts with the Maquis and could organise his escape.
Petiot was glad to assist Mr Guschinow. As a patriot, he would gladly help the man for nothing and explained he would secure safe passage to Cuba. Unfortunately, not everyone was as patriotic as the doctor. Bribes would have to be paid to obtain a visa, arrange passage, safe houses etc. Petiot simply did not have the money required. The fugitive understood, liquidated his assets and paid him 50,000 francs, the rest of his money being sewn into his clothing.
The first stop on the furrier’s flight to safety was in the rue Le Sueur. There, Petiot informed him he would require a routine inoculation before the Cuban authorities would let him enter their country. Obligingly, Guschinow agreed. He was believed to have been given a lethal injection in the triangular room, fell into a coma and died. Petiot could perhaps watch his victim expire through his spyhole and then prepare for disposal of the body, although, to the bafflement of investigators, the spyhole was found papered over, somewhat weakening this theory. Was injection even the cause of death? It has been thus conjectured mainly because it seems the easiest and most logical way for a doctor to kill, especially if a victim is strong, tough and resourceful as some of Petiot’s undoubtedly were. Did the victims even die in the triangular room? Guesswork again. It was never confirmed for certain that those murdered were done to death in the strange little room or even, definitively, in the rue Le Sueur.
Was Petiot was a sadist who enjoyed watching his prey die in agony and fear? It’s possible, but more likely he favoured a speedy, painless death that improved the efficiency of his ‘enterprise’. Panic would not deliver quicker results. The German method of scientific, organised killing was more effective.
Once Guschinow was dead, he was treated with quicklime, supplied by Petiot’s brother Maurice. The quicklime masked the smell of burning flesh from the furnace into which Guschinow was shoved after being dismembered. Word got around quickly that Guschinow had escaped and Petiot soon had plenty of applicants, convinced that his ‘underground network’ would spirit them to safety. No one ever got further than 21 rue Le Sueur but not all of those who ended their days at the hands of Petiot were seeking escape. Some were murdered for an entirely different reason – the self-preservation of Dr Petiot.
Jan-Marc Van Bever was a well-educated scion of a celebrated family of artists and poets, fluent in four languages and in possession of a baccalaureat degree. Despite such a promising background, education and a half-million-franc inheritance, he lived an adult life of penury, having squandered his legacy on failed business ventures and endured years of poverty, living on welfare. He did not get his first job, delivering coal, until the age of 41, the age at which he disappeared.
On 19 February 1942, Van Bever and his mistress, Jeanette Gaul, a registered prostitute in a licensed brothel, were arrested on drug offences. The collaborationist government of Marechal Philippe Pétain had replaced the cry of the French Republic from ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ to ‘Family, Fatherland, Work’. Drug abuse had weakened the fabric of the nation and was considered an attack on the state itself. To eliminate it and knowing the borders of wartime France to be virtually sealed, with most dealers now exploiting the black market in other goods, the police were aware that only doctors had regular access to narcotics. The pharmacists of Paris were therefore raided to see who was prescribing drugs to excess and/or illegally. A record was kept by pharmacists of dangerous drug usage and this pointed to Dr Petiot as the supplier of narcotics to Van Bever and Gaul. Doctors could only supply addicts if attempting a cure. Van Bever was no addict, but his mistress was. Although she ‘retired’ from prostitution on meeting her beau in November 1941, 34-year-old Gaul could not give up heroin. Five doctors believed her their patient, whom they were trying to wean off drugs. Only Petiot was prescribing for Van Bever.
In early 1942, Petiot wrote five prescriptions for Gaul and two for Van Bever, who wanted his mistress to kick her habit but felt obliged to obtain drugs on her behalf until she was able to do so herself. Gaul’s receipt of narcotics from a number of doctors, who all thought her their exclusive patient, led to her arrest. As Van Bever lived with her and he too had obtained narcotics, he was hauled in with Gaul. Both immediately revealed that Petiot had illegally supplied drugs to Gaul via Van Bever, knowing full well he was not a junkie. To the authorities this was no surprise. Petiot was one of only 25 Parisian doctors still treating addicts and had 95 on his books, supposedly treated with ever-declining dosages that would steadily wean them off. Petiot was already suspected of infringing the law and this time would be charged. He was not jailed. A trial date was set for 26 May. Meanwhile, Van Bever was released on 15 March while his mistress remained incarcerated.
At 9.30am on the morning of Sunday 22 March 1942, Van Bever was drinking coffee with a friend in the café of the building where he lived, when a man of around 45 came to see him. Van Bever left with the stranger, whom he clearly knew, saying he would return that afternoon. He was never seen alive again. Four days later, Jeannette Gaul’s lawyer received two letters by hand, supposedly from the missing man. One letter asked him to Inform Van Bever’s lawyer that his services would no longer be required, the other that Jeanette Gaul should ‘tell the truth’, that Van Bever was a junkie. It seemed obvious the letters were not from him. The identity of the man who took Van Bever away and delivered the letters was never discovered, despite a thorough police investigation. Ten days after his patient’s disappearance, Petiot ‘found’ Van Bever’s medical file, ‘proving’ he was a junkie. So detailed was the file that even a measurement of his penis was included.
Petiot and Gaul went on trial as scheduled. The doctor was fined 10,000 francs, subsequently reduced on appeal, and given a one-year suspended sentence. Gaul was imprisoned for six months and received a fine of 2,400 francs. Van Bever? He reappeared two years later – at 21 rue Le Sueur.
On 5 March 1942, Raymonde Baudet, a young heroin addict, was arrested for fraud. She had been given a prescription for the tranquilliser soneryl. She erased it and substituted it with ‘14 ampoules of heroin’, a crude forgery that caused the pharmacist to alert the police. Baudet was a patient of Petiot, who had already prescribed heroin for her on four previous occasions. Petiot took drastic action.
Madame Marthe Khait, the 51-year-old mother of Raymonde, received a visit from Petiot who tried to persuade her to falsely inform the authorities she was a junkie and that two of Raymonde’s prescriptions were for her. Khait thought such a proposal utterly ludicrous, but Petiot gradually browbeat, inveigled and coaxed her into agreeing that it would lessen the charges against her daughter and protect him. To maintain the pretence, he even persuaded her to endure a dozen puncture marks, adding authenticity to her story should the police examine her. Petiot then left.
A few days later, Madame Khait informed her son, who had opposed Petiot’s scheme from the start that she would not go along with it. At 7.00pm on Wednesday 25 March just two days after Van Bever disappeared, Madame Khait told her husband she was off to visit her daughter’s lawyer to pay his fee. Petiot had altruistically offered to pay 1,500 francs towards it and even recommended the lawyer concerned, Maître Pierre Veron. Ironically, four years later Veron would be a key player in the prosecution against him. Madame Khait said she would be back shortly and even left a pot boiling on the stove. She vanished completely. Again, two letters appeared, delivered the next morning on the same day as those to Maître Francoise Pavie, Jeanette Gaul’s lawyer. One was addressed to her son, claiming she was fleeing to the unoccupied zone until her daughter’s trial was over the other was to her husband, purportedly confessing that she had been a secret junkie for years. Both letters appeared to be in Madame Khait’s handwriting and her husband, David, was certain she delivered them in person, as the Khaits had a large dog that barked furiously at strangers. The dog did not make a sound when the letters came through the door. In addition Madame Khait had frequently talked of going into hiding in the previous few days.
That same busy day, at 10.00am, Veron’s maid was handed two letters addressed to her employer and Raymonde Baudet. Confusingly, the maid later claimed to recognise Madame Khait and, on another occasion, that a young man delivered the letters. Both announced Madame Khait’s intention to flee to the unoccupied zone and the letter to Veron included 300 francs towards his fee. Handwriting experts analysed the writing on all the letters supposedly sent by Madame Khait and agreed she had written them, albeit under duress. The letters appeared dictated, using names and language unfamiliar to her.
Both Petiot and Veron said Madame Khait had discussed her escape plans with them and her husband remained convinced that is what happened. The police found the circumstances of her disappearance deeply suspicious and similar to those of Van Bever’s. Both cases involved narcotics, letters, a sudden vanishing and the rather unsavoury Dr Marcel Petiot. A search turned up nothing but Inspector Roger Gignoux, in charge of both cases, believed the handwriting in all the letters to be by the same hand.
Petiot and Baudet were tried on 15 July 1942. Baudet was sentenced to time served, four months, and Petiot received the identical sentence as in the Gaul case. His lawyer, Maître René Floriot, managed to have both fines reduced to 2,400 francs in total. Petiot could continue practicing medicine.
The investigating magistrate in both cases, the juge d’instruction (examining magistrate), was Monsieur Achille Olmi. His role was to gather evidence, interrogate witnesses, instruct police investigations and compile a dossier from which a decision to prosecute (or not) would then be made. Both Veron and Gignoux wanted Petiot charged with kidnapping and murder. Olmi resisted. Not until a year later did he even allow 66 rue Caumartin to be searched. By then it was doubtful if anything would be found. In fact, a drawer full of jewellery and gold was discovered, along with papers referring to 21 rue Le Sueur. Petiot complained about the invasion of privacy to which Olmi joked prophetically, ‘Don’t worry, I am not accusing you of killing people and burning them in your stove!’
From the French surrender until November 1942, France was divided in two; an occupation zone controlled by the Germans that included Paris, northern France, the Atlantic and Channel coasts and an unoccupied one, ruled by a collaborationist regime based in Vichy and controlling central, southern and Mediterranean France. It was dangerous to cross the line and papers were issued only in extenuating circumstances. Once in unoccupied France, people in flight required safe houses, food, transport, guides to take them across the Spanish border and a ship to take them overseas from Spain. Those who helped escapees did not always do so for patriotic reasons. Money was all-important and stories abounded of refugees being robbed, handed to the authorities or even murdered. The going rate for safe passage out of France was initially 50,000 francs per person, increasing as the war progressed.
Thousands of French citizens and foreigners found themselves stuck in the occupied zone, fearing arrest, deportation and death. Jews were particularly vulnerable and many would do almost anything to escape. It was from the desperation of such people that Petiot used to line his pockets and, probably more important to him psychologically, accumulate their belongings.
Dr Paul-Léon Braunberger, a 62-year-old Jewish doctor, received a telephone call at his home, 207 rue du Faubourg, St Denis, on the morning of 20 June 1942. It was just 8.30am in the morning. The doctor was instructed to meet a patient in need of urgent medical attention at the metro station Étoile at 11.00am. Carrying only his medical bag, Braunberger set out just before the appointed hour and promptly vanished for ever. Only half-an-hour later, a letter was delivered to the home of Raymond Vallée, a patient and supposed friend of Dr Braunberger. Taking it to the doctor’s wife, Marguerite, it was then handed to the police who noticed the letter was written on the doctor’s stationery and, while apparently in his handwriting, appeared to have been written under duress. The letter stated that the doctor would not return and urged Madame Braunberger to ‘Put all her most valuable possessions in two suitcases and prepare to leave for the free zone’, while telling no one of her intentions. The police smelled a rat. Madame Braunberger informed them that she and her husband had already sent all their valuables to Cannes, as they prepared to head south. Only a few days previously, the Germans had informed the doctor that he was to be banned, as a Jew, from his practice and the couple considered flight essential.
On 22 and 23 June, Madame Braunberger received two similar letters in her husband’s hand, imploring her to leave that forthcoming Saturday. Vallée then received further correspondence asking him to move all Braunberger’s property to the home of Vallée’s cousin ‘the doctor’, near the Bois de Boulogne. Who might this be? Vallée’s wife’s cousin was none other than the ubiquitous Dr Marcel Petiot.
The whole thing made no sense. Braunberger detested Vallée and would never have confided in him. On 30 June, Madame Braunberger’s maid picked up the telephone to hear an unidentified male caller declare that Braunberger was safe and en route to Portugal. The caller, sounding exasperated, declared he would not ‘pass’ Madame as he ‘had not been well paid’. Despite the maid’s protestations that this matter could be resolved, the man hung up. Yet another letter arrived the following day, demanding that Madame Braunberger follow the person who delivered it. This was impossible, as the letter had been mailed. On 12 September, Dr Braunberger’s wife formally reported him missing. Searching for a missing Jew at that time was not considered a priority for the Paris police and there was no investigation.
Petiot had met Braunberger only once, at Vallée’s house, a decade earlier. After their meeting, the latter told his wife that Petiot was, ‘Either a genius or a lunatic’. Undoubtedly, the letters sent to Vallée referring to Braunberger were because this was the only connection to the older doctor Petiot had. This connection would be confirmed 18 months later at 21 rue Le Sueur.
On 16 and 17 July 1942, 12,884 Jews were rounded up during a huge swoop in Paris and corralled into the Vélodrome d’Hiver. After three or four days with no food and only a little water, they were moved to Drancy, the camp from which they would be sent east to their deaths. Of 150,000 Jews deported from France, less than 3,000 survived. Parisian Jews were only too aware of the noose tightening around them. Since commencement of the occupation, laws directed exclusively at them were implemented, depriving them of their rights and livelihoods. In June 1941, Jews were banned from cafés, cinemas, libraries, parks, racetracks, restaurants and swimming pools; they had to obtain permission to use a telephone. From 8 July 1942, Jews were not permitted to enter shops except between 3 and 4pm when most were shut. German propaganda continually sought to poison French minds against the Jews, portraying them as ‘swindlers, parasites and aliens, sucking the lifeblood from the French people’. Such laws brought forth great opportunities for the criminal fraternity to benefit from the Jews’ plight.
At 6.00pm on 18 July 1942, Kurt Kneller, a German Jew, met his doctor, Marcel Petiot, who had promised to help him and his family escape the Nazi depredations. Born in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) in 1894, Kneller left his homeland on 10 June 1933 soon after Hitler’s accession to power. Emigrating to France, he married another German-Jewish refugee, Margaret Lent, four years his junior, in 1934. In France, Kurt Kneller worked in the home appliance and radio industries, joined the French Foreign Legion at the outbreak of war and served until demobbed, following his adopted country’s capitulation. The night he met Petiot, Kneller left his apartment at 4 avenue du General Balfourier with him. Earlier that day, Petiot and an elderly man had arrived with a handcart and carried off the Kneller’s possessions in two large and four small suitcases. The doctor wanted to take Kneller’s furniture too, until the landlady, Madame Christiane Roart, pointed out that it belonged to her. The following morning, Kneller’s wife Margaret and seven-year-old son René were staying in the house of a friend, Madame Clara Noe, when Petiot arrived. Madame Noe stepped out for a few minutes to buy milk for the boy. When she returned, Margaret, René and Petiot had gone.
In the weeks following their departure, Madame Noe and another of Margaret Kneller’s friends received postcards, ostensibly from her. The phraseology was strange and her name was signed ‘Marguerite’, the French way, whereas Madame Kneller always spelled her name ‘Margaret’. On 8 August 1942, only three weeks after the Knellers ‘escaped’, three dismembered bodies were fished out of the Seine near Asnières. The heads of a man and woman in their forties and that of a seven- or eight-year-old child were found, together with their arms, feet, legs and vertically sectioned torsos nearby. In a state of advanced putrefaction, they could not be identified, especially as their fingerprints, faces and scalps had been surgically removed. Over the next few months, six other unidentifiable bodies, disfigured in the same way, would be hauled from the Seine.
Known as Maurice, Moses Maurice Israel Wolff was born to a wealthy timber merchant in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), East Prussia. With his wife Lina, he left for France after the Nazi takeover and subsequently settled in Amsterdam. By the summer of 1942, the Nazis were closing in on the Netherlands’ Jewish community and so the Wolffs, with Lina’s mother Rachel, fled Amsterdam on 12 July. After escaping into Belgium, Maurice was arrested on the French border. The authorities were sympathetic, sentencing him to time served, ten days in prison, and his money and valuables were not confiscated. The Wolffs were then hidden in their lawyer’s house and later a convent, for several weeks before reaching Paris. Their lawyer, Maître René Iung, later arrived in Paris with their identity papers, money and jewellery.
Using the alias ‘Walbert’, the Wolffs moved from location to location around a Paris becoming daily more precarious for Jews. Eventually, a friend put them in touch with a Romanian Jewess, Rudolphine ‘Eryane’ Kahane. An apartment was found in Kahane’s building at 10 rue Pasquier and the Wolffs were put in touch, via her doctor, the convicted swindler and abortionist, Dr Louis-Theophile Saint-Pierre, with Petiot’s associate, Francinet Pintard.
Petiot did not meet and arrange ‘escapes’ on his own. He had a number of accomplices who did much of the dirty work for him. There was Edmond ‘Francinet’ Pintard, a former song-and-dance man and make-up artist; Raoul Fourrier, a barber who recruited from his shop; René-Gustave Nezondet, a friend of Petiot from his days in Villenueve, as well as Eryane Kahane, who found prospective escapees from within the Jewish community.
The Wolffs met a man calling himself ‘Dr Eugene’ the same day, who expressed a keen interest in their state of mind and financial situation. Dr Eugene burst into a rage on finding that Fourrier and Pintard had sullied the noble cause of assisting escapees by quoting double the usual price in an attempt to line their own worthless pockets. Kahane spoke enthusiastically about Dr Eugene, as she knew Petiot, and said she wanted to go with the Wolffs, as she too was a Jew in danger from the Nazis. The doctor refused, as only three could go at a time and Kahane was needed to ‘assist the organisation further’.
The next day the Wolffs were visited by Petiot, whom they found to be ‘highly cultured, magnanimous’ and ‘of fine sentiments’. Over tea he told them to take two suitcases each, the contents of which should be devoid of any identification labels, and as much money as they wished. They would be taken to a ‘safe’ house in Paris for a few days and then depart.
At the close of December 1942, the Wolffs told a friend of theirs, Ilse Gang, that a doctor would come for them that evening. He did and they vanished forever. Two months later Madame Gang was called on by Eryane Kahane and asked if she wished to follow them. The kind offer was politely refused.
Two weeks after the disappearance of the Wolff trio, a new couple, the Bastons, were living in their old apartment and had already been contacted by Petiot. They wished to depart beyond German control with four relatives already in Nice. Petiot was only too happy to arrange it. Marie-Anne and Gilbert Baston originally had the name Basch but changed it, like so many Jews fleeing persecution. They originally left Germany for the Netherlands and, some years later headed to France. Marie-Anne’s parents, Chaim and Franziska, were living in Nice under the pseudonym of Stevens. Her sister and brother-in-law, Ludwika and Ludwig, used the name Anspach.
The Stevens and Anspach couples had already paid over a million francs to move to Nice the previous August and hoped to reach Switzerland or South America. They stayed in the four-star Hotel Rossini with many other wealthy fleeing Jews and possessed a great deal of money, furs and jewellery, although they dressed modestly so as not to attract unwanted attention. Nice in 1942 was under Italian occupation. Mussolini, Italy’s Fascist dictator was not anti-Semitic or racist and at that time had no truck with Nazi policies against Jews, a situation that was to change later. As a consequence, thousands of French Jews fled to the Italian occupation zone where they were protected not only from the Germans, but enthusiastic, pro-Vichy French police, whom the Italians occasionally chased off at gunpoint. The Hotel Rossini even had a number of Italian intelligence officers in residence, sharing the hotel quite happily with Jewish refugees.
One would have thought it prudent for the Anspach/Stevens group to have stayed in Nice or found contacts in that city to assist them in leaving France for nearby Switzerland or Spain. Inexplicably, they took the highly dangerous decision to join the Bastons in Paris, from whence they would then escape together. Using the Thomas Cook Travel Agency, the Anspach/Stevens group travelled to Paris by train on 26 September 1942 and again on 6 January 1943. Why they made the journey from Nice to Paris and back to Nice before returning, finally, to Paris has never been discovered. Their final destination prior to disappearing was 10 rue Pasquier. What happened there is not known. What is certain is that their ultimate fate would be revealed at the rue Le Sueur.
There can be no doubt that while the majority of those murdered by Petiot were innocent and included women and children, a number of unsavoury individuals also disappeared at the hands of Petiot. Joseph ‘Jo le Boxeur’ Reocreux led one such group. Reocreux was a 32-year-old hardened criminal who had served over five years for numerous thefts and pimping. Extremely tough, he could fight and overcome three men at once. A lackey of the Gestapo, he supplied them with prostitutes and information in return for their protection from the French police, who wanted to get hold of him on a series of outstanding warrants.
The Germans discovered that their creature had carried out a number of robberies dressed in Gestapo uniform along with another rogue, Adrien ‘Le Basque’ Estebeteguy, wanted on eight counts of assault, theft, fraud, possession of firearms etc. One such robbery, on 14 December 1942, netted them and two others, a hoard of gold, dollars, francs and silk shirts. It would not be long before their enraged former employers hunted them down. Desperately, the gangsters sought to flee France.
Petiot, using the alias ‘Dr Eugene’, met Reocreux after his accomplices laid the groundwork. The gangsters were told the price was 25,000 francs each. Apparently his colleagues, Fourrier and Pintard, had told Reocreux it would be double this, no doubt hoping to make an extra profit. Petiot lambasted them furiously and they apologised to Reocreux. Having done this previously with the Wolffs, one can only wonder if this was a ruse intended to convince prospective clients of his integrity. If so, Jo ‘Le Boxeur’ was not impressed. Despite being reassured as to the honesty of his apparent saviour, Reocreux later told friends that the intensity of the doctor’s eyes made him feel ‘uneasy’. Accordingly, he no longer wished to leave Paris. This was an astonishing admission from such a hardened, professional criminal. Reocreux decided to send another criminal associate, Francois ‘le Corse’ Albertini, on ahead. The two crooks would swap mistresses, le Corse taking Claudia ‘Lulu’ Chamoux and Reocreux, Annette ‘le Poute’ Basset. Both women were prostitutes. Before travelling, Reocreux would wait for information that Albertini had arrived at his destination safely.
Weeks passed and Petiot began to fret that Reocreux knew too much about ‘the operation’ and should be encouraged to leave. Eventually, he handed a letter to Fourrier that he wanted returned as soon as possible. The letter was apparently from Albertini in Argentina and said he had arrived safely. Confident, Reocreux took the fatal decision to leave, taking with him Basset, an unknown, prostitute, 1.4 million francs sewn into his clothes, some gold hidden in their shoes and a quantity of expensive jewellery. None of them were ever seen again. Fourrier noticed a few days after the ‘departure’ of Reocreux that Petiot was wearing the pimp’s watch. ‘A present’, Petiot remarked casually, ‘to show his gratitude’, an emotion hitherto absent in that particular criminal. Fourrier found it curious, but thought little more of it at the time.
Estebeteguy was next. A telegram from Reocreux was passed around one of his old haunts, the rue de l’Echiquier café, stating his trip had gone smoothly. On the last Saturday of March 1943, Estebeteguey set off with Paulette ‘la Chinoise’ Grippay, the prostitute mistress of a fellow pimp, Joseph ‘Dionisi’ Piereschi and was followed the next day by Piereschi and his own mistress, Gisele Rossmy. Again, none would ever be seen alive again.
One might assume that the four pimps and five prostitutes had left in the dead of night, but all departed from Pintard’s barber shop at 9.00am on a Saturday or Sunday morning, heading in the direction of 21 rue Le Sueur, suitcases in hand. Curiously, no one ever saw them arrive there, something that should have been noticed in such a busy street. Beady-eyed local residents spotted no other unusual people over the years and, had the house been entered at dead of night after the city-wide 10.00pm curfew, it would sooner or later have caught the attention of an informer or German patrol. How the bodies and the vast array of goods found at the house got there was to remain an unsolved mystery. Perhaps the fugitives in Petiot’s power were not murdered at the rue Le Sueur but somehow brought there later. The question would later baffle detectives. In the meantime, the roll-call of victims grew, but not before drawing the attention of the Gestapo itself.
On 8 April 1943 the Gestapo produced a report detailing the workings of an ‘escape network’ operating out of the rue de l’Echiquier café, where associates of Petiot openly touted for business. The Gestapo had all the details. They knew how much money was to be brought to the first interview, the required ten photographs and the escapee’s actual address (to ensure no Gestapo informers were recruited); the escapee being notified three or four days before departure and taken to a secret location in a hotel or doctor’s apartment and after two days in hiding taken to a train station and given a false passport, visa and tickets for a ship usually bound for Argentina.
The Gestapo did not know who was at the centre of the ‘network’, but believed it had connections to a foreign embassy, which supplied documents, and to be ‘highly organised and secretive’. To break it, Robert Jodkum, Gestapo Chief of Jewish Affairs in Paris, resolved to blackmail a Jew who would be beyond suspicion into helping them.
Yvan Dreyfus was a wealthy Jew who had headed a large radio and electronics company before the war. When France surrendered, Dreyfus had supplied the Maquis with transmitters and repaired damaged radios dropped from the air. He was arrested in Montpellier while trying to leave France to join Free French forces and now languished in Compeigne prison awaiting deportation to certain death in Germany or, more likely, Auschwitz.
Still at liberty, Madame Paulette Dreyfus did everything she could to free her husband. Eventually, she was informed that her husband’s liberty could be purchased at a price: 3.5 million francs. A Gestapo agent, Pierre Pehu, told Madame Dreyfus that her husband would have to sign a form indicating that he was released after offering to work for Germany. She refused at first, but was advised that this was only a formality to allow the Germans to cover themselves, should questions be asked regarding Dreyfus’ release.
Madame Dreyfus was bled for another 1.1 million francs before her husband was finally released. Dreyfus met Dr Eugene a few days later on 15 May and on 19 May the two of them left Fourrier’s barbershop together, watched by German agents, whom they successfully eluded on the Champs-Élysées, heading in the direction of the rue Le Sueur. The Gestapo were impressed at the way their quarry had eluded them. No matter, another ‘escapee’ would soon be sent and the organisation broken.
Meanwhile another Gestapo Department, IV-E3, led by Dr Friedrich Berger and responsible for security in occupied France, muscled in. French collaborator Charles Beretta was sent to pose as a possible escapee. He was told to pay 100,000 francs, which he haggled down to 60,000, to cover false papers and instructed to meet Dr Eugene on 21 May, only two days after the disappearance of Dreyfus. He was to bring ten photographs, two suitcases full of belongings, a blanket and ‘all the money he owned’. That day, as Beretta, Pintard and Fourrier met in the latter’s apartment, the Gestapo burst in, arrested them all and wrung from Fourrier the name and address of Petiot. As his home was searched, Nezondet arrived with theatre tickets and he too was arrested. When Berger discovered he had ridden roughshod over the plans of a colleague, the prisoners were sent to Jodkum for interrogation. Petiot was savagely beaten for several days.
Petiot behaved remarkably bravely under the whip. He admitted being part of an escape organisation but claimed the brains behind it was a fictional ‘Robert Martinetti’, who could not be contacted. Beaten solidly round the clock for three days, Petiot had his teeth filed down three millimetres, his head crushed in a vice and was almost drowned in freezing water. A dead man was shown to him and another with his head smashed to pulp. The Gestapo said these were members of his organisation. For months, on and off, Petiot was brutally interrogated. Despite the torture, he never changed his story. Sent to prison at Fresnes, to his cellmates he was a hero, hurling insults regularly at the Germans, smuggling messages out of the prison and talking endlessly of his alleged escape organisation – ‘Fly-Tox’.
Nezondet was released after a couple of weeks, the Germans believing him innocent. As he left, Petiot whispered a message that Nezandot was to pass on: ‘Tell my wife to go where she knows to go and dig up what is hidden there’. He followed the doctor’s instructions, although Georgette Petiot seemed baffled by them. The Gestapo searched Petiot’s home at 66 rue Caumartin and another property at 52 rue de Reuilly. In a remarkable oversight, although bills and documents attesting to its ownership were scattered all around, 21 rue Le Sueur was not investigated.
On 11 January 1944, Fourrier and Pintard were set free. Terrified, they had told the Germans all they knew, which was very little. Petiot was released a few days later, astonishing other prisoners who thought him so openly contemptuous of his captors that he was bound to be shot. His brother Maurice paid only a relatively modest 100,000 francs for Petiot’s release, possibly because Marcel claimed he had terminal cancer and would soon die anyway. In later years, much conjecture was heaped on why the Germans released the leader of Fly-Tox. Perhaps they were aware of his murderous activities and thought of him as doing their dirty work for them. More likely they hoped to find out more by placing Petiot under surveillance. The infernal activities of Dr Petiot were soon to become public knowledge.
On 6 March 1944, dirty, thick, slimy, foul-smelling smoke was witnessed belching from a chimney at Petiot’s house at 21 rue Le Sueur. For five days the smoke continued, the lack of even a slight breeze ensured that the evil stench emanating from the chimney continued to pervade neighbouring homes. One of the residents across the street, Madame Andréa Marcais, could stand it no longer and sent her husband, Jacques, to complain. He knocked the door to no avail, eventually observing a note that stated, ‘Away for one month. Forward mail to 18 rue des Lombards in Auxerre’. Unwilling to tolerate the stench any longer, Mr Marcais called the police.
Two police officers, Émile Fillion and Joseph Teyssier, arrived and tried to access Petiot’s house by door and shuttered window. After enquiring of neighbours, the police discovered who owned the building and were even given the owner’s telephone number, Pigalle 77.11. Teysier rang and Madame Petiot answered. Her husband then took the call, asked the police to wait and said he would be along ‘in 15 minutes with the keys’. After half-an-hour, Petiot had not arrived and, with the smoke thickening and smell worsening, the fire brigade turned up. Their chief, Avilla Boudringin, climbed in through a second-floor window with some men and headed for the source of the fire and stench in the basement. Within a few minutes, he and his colleagues staggered out of the house, one of the firefighters retching in shock at what he had seen. ‘Gentlemen, I think you have some work ahead of you’, was Boudringin’s understatement, as he ushered the two police officers inside.
Within 21 rue Le Sueur, a vision of ghastly horror greeted the visitors. Gingerly, they headed towards the dark basement and found two stoves, one unlit, the other blazing furiously, with a woman’s hand protruding from the open door. Only the eerie light from the stove guided the police as they explored, finding a staircase at the bottom of which was a pile of coal on which were scattered arms, a head, two skeletons, broken rib-cages, feet, hands, jawbones, skulls and a heap of small bones and rotting human flesh. The startled officers left the house almost immediately, bumping into a man in the street just arrived on a bicycle. In his mid-forties, the man had dark, almost black, piercing eyes. It was Petiot.
Petiot was surprised to see his house open and asked to go inside with the police. Calmly viewing the gory scene in the basement, he announced, ‘This is serious. My head may be at stake’. Back on the street, Petiot asked the police if they were patriotic Frenchmen and told them the corpses were those of German soldiers and collaborators he had slain as leader of an underground Maquis cell. He needed time to burn 300 compromising files and asked if, ‘in the name of France’, he could be allowed time to do so. Believing such a grisly site could only be that of an organised resistance group, the police agreed and Petiot rode off on his bike.
A whole series of officials now descended on 21 rue Le Sueur. The fire was eventually extinguished and the authorities, French and German, attempted to get to the bottom of what had happened there. Entering 21 rue Le Sueur; one came first to a short vaulted passageway. After ten metres a paved courtyard was reached, surrounded on three sides by a building and a nine-metre wall on the other. The yard was thus concealed from outside. The house was large and spacious, with six bedrooms, public and dining rooms and a library. Filthy and covered in dust, the rooms were heaped to the ceiling with a fantastic assortment of furniture, art, chandeliers and all sorts of bric-a-brac. Across from the main building were former stables and servants’ quarters. A second library was sited there as well as the only neat and tidy room in the entire complex – a doctor’s consultation room. Tiny and wedged in a small L-shaped corridor, it seemed an odd place to have such a room when the size of the house was considered. Next to the consultation room was a garage, containing a mound of quicklime, 12 cubic metres of it, full of human remains including a scalp and jawbone. Adjacent to this were the stables, in which a former manure pit with a ladder to enable access was propped and a block and tackle for lifting heavy objects rigged above. In the pit itself, was yet more quicklime pitted with human debris. On the landing of a staircase leading from the courtyard to the basement was a canvas sack. Half-a-leftsided torso was within, complete except for the foot and viscera. Beside the coal in the basement, an axe with what looked like dried blood on it and a shovel were discovered. A sink in the basement kitchen large enough to hold a corpse and with drainage sufficient to let blood flow without coagulating, was also found.
An amazing assortment of booty was piled around the rue Le Sueur. Included were 83 suitcases, five fur coats, 28 suits, 66 pairs of shoes, 79 dresses, 87 towels, 115 men’s shirts and a host of coats, hats, sweaters among 1,760 items discovered. When considering that Van Bever and Madame Khait left with no luggage, one can only imagine the extent of Petiot’s nefarious activities. Once Maurice Petiot’s two homes in Auxerre and Dr Petiot’s at 66 rue Caumartin were searched, a total of three tonnes of clothing and assorted articles were found. The police soon concluded that the number of victims could easily run into hundreds.
Within hours of discovering the bodies, the case was given to Commissaire Georges Massu, a 33-year-old policemen with 3,257 arrests to his name and the model for Georges Simenon’s Maigret. Checking out the house, he found the odd triangular room and imagined how it featured in the death of those who met their end in that terrible place. Were they chained to the iron rings, beaten, tortured, drugged, gassed? There was no sign that the spyholes had been used or that victims had struggled. No gas, needles or poisons were found. There were many puzzles relating to the murders that no one, least of all Petiot, would ever properly explain.
The Germans assessed the situation quickly and, describing their former captive as a ‘dangerous lunatic’, ordered his immediate arrest. On hearing this, Massu concluded that Petiot, whom he intended to arrest early that morning of 12 March, probably was with the Maquis and so he procrastinated. When members of his team went to 66 rue Caumartin, they discovered the Petiot’s had left only 30 minutes before. Half-heartedly, the police looked for him, earning a stern rebuke from the Gestapo, who soon realised Fillion and Teyssier had deliberately let Petiot escape. Both then fled France, returning only after the liberation.
The press revelled in the case, publishing ever more lurid tales of speculation as to what had happened to Petiot’s victims and the ever-increasing number of those estimated to have been killed. How many were there? Careful sifting of the quicklime to extricate the remains was carried out by four gravediggers before a team of eminent pathologists and anthropologists, led by France’s foremost scientist of the day, Dr Albert Paul, who spent a month measuring, labelling and reassembling the bones. Even so, they could only guess that at least five women and five men had been found, out of possibly as many as thirty. In addition were ten complete scalps, 15 kilos of charred bones, 11 of uncharred, five of hair and ‘three garbage cans full’, as Dr Paul told the newspapers, of fragments too small to identify. As to the ages of the victims, these varied from 25 to 50. Few had any distinguishing features, even the teeth being unrecognisable. Breakages in the bones were so rough and ready that it appeared as if wedging them in a door and pulling had caused the fractures. As for how the bodies had been dismembered, the ribcages had been torn open as one would a chicken. The technique was reminiscent of that used on the nine bodies found in the Seine a year to 18 months previously. Such dissection was professionally done but was thought to be more the work of a coroner than a surgeon.
Analysis of the corpses revealed nothing as to how they had died. All had been dead for several months, apparently murdered prior to Petiot’s sojourn with the Gestapo. Identification of the dead would be difficult. Examining the loot helped more in this regard than the bodies themselves.
Among the clothing found were identification tags marked with the names of the victims briefly outlined above. Initials too abounded in the effects left by Petiot. Some had been torn off but so randomly and haphazardly that identification was quite easy. Where possible, relatives and neighbours of the previous owners of the loot were interviewed and eventually the police were slowly able to piece together a list of people they were certain had finished their ‘escape’ at 21 rue Le Sueur. It was not definitive by any means, but a good starting point.
On 13 March 1944, the search for Dr Petiot finally began. The hunter became the hunted, but despite sightings the length and breadth of France and in North Africa, he was nowhere to be found. Ten people associated with him were arrested, interrogated and, after several months, released. These included Georgette Petiot, Fourrier, Pintard and Maurice Petiot, who it was revealed, had sent 683 kilos of luggage in five suitcases to Auxerre on 26 May 1943, five days after the Gestapo arrested his brother. Maurice claimed he did this at the request of Marcel and that he had seen nothing unusual when collecting the booty from 21 rue Le Sueur. No bodies, no smell filled the house, perhaps because the bodies were submerged in the quicklime he himself had delivered to the house.
As D-Day came and went, Paris was soon to enjoy its liberation from a German army that surrendered the city to General Jaques Leclerc’s Free French forces on 25 August. Petiot was temporarily forgotten, as an orgy of revenge was unleashed against collaborators, thousands of whom were lynched, and tens of thousands sacked from their jobs or arrested and either tried or released some months later. The city reeled from the purge, yet Massu never took his eye far from the Petiot case. As the demand for vengeance against those who had betrayed France slowly subsided, Massu decided to take advantage of public opinion to lay a trap for the murderous doctor.
On 19 September 1944, the newspaper Resistance published an article headed, ‘Petiot, soldier of the Reich’, in which the fugitive was denounced as a member of the Parti Populaire Francais, an actively collaborationist organisation that openly supported Germany, accusing him of leaving France in German uniform the previous March to fight against the Maquis. Petiot took the bait. His vanity would not allow such ‘outrageous’ accusations to go unanswered. On 18 October, the same newspaper published a reply sent by Petiot via his lawyer, in which he utterly refuted allegations of collaboration, claimed to be a Maquis hero and that he had ‘lost everything but his life’ by ‘selflessly risking even that’ in an attempt to establish his patriotism, if not his innocence.
The authorities now guessed that Petiot was still living in Paris, not only under an alias but probably serving in the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). To catch him, military security was asked to compare the handwriting of Petiot’s with that of their men and to look out for anyone matching his description. Among those given this job was Captain Henri Valeri, the officer in charge of counterespionage and interrogation, based in Reuilly, Paris. Valeri had been a member of the FFI for only a matter of weeks. His real name, according to his identity papers, was Dr Francois Wetterwald. He was in fact Dr Marcel Petiot.
After fleeing 66 rue Caumartin, Petiot stayed with a number of persons unknown for a few days here and there. Eventually, he found refuge with Monsieur Georges Redoute, a former patient whom he knew only slightly. Redoute was concerned at harbouring someone accused of such heinous crimes, but his fears were assuaged by his highly persuasive guest, who convinced him that he was a patriot, on the run after having killed the enemies of France. Cooped up for months and sharing his patient’s rations, Petiot let his imagination run wild, telling Redoute of his frequent operations on behalf of the Maquis in which he fetched weapons dropped by the Royal Air Force, assassinated German troops and collaborators and destroyed them physically either by throwing their bodies into the canals adjoining the Seine or at 21 rue Le Sueur. Apparently, Redoute never thought to ask why it was necessary to dismember, burn or otherwise dispose of enemy bodies in such a way.
After months in hiding at Redoute’s, on 20 August Petiot disappeared for the day and returned carrying a drum and some grenades which he claimed to have taken from Germans he and his Resistance comrades had fought and killed that day. A few days later he left without a word, taking all his possessions and went off to join the FFI.
Petiot was an incredibly resourceful individual. He did not just join up under a false name. Wanting to remain a doctor, he sought out members of his profession who were still held by the Germans. Eventually, he came across the name of Dr Francois Wetterwald, incarcerated in Mauthausen, a Nazi concentration camp. Visiting Wetterwald’s mother posing as a resistant, he persuaded her that her son’s identity papers were required to secure his release. After obtaining them, Petiot adopted the nom de guerre of Dr Wetterwald and left the real owner of that name to rot in captivity, where he stayed until the end of the war. For security reasons, Petiot/Wetterwald then took the new alias of Dr Valeri when joining up.
As a soldier, Petiot initially impressed all who came into contact with him for his patriotism, hard work and ceaseless commitment to rooting out and liquidating those who had betrayed France. As was common in those anarchic times, promotion could be swift and Petiot quickly became a captain. His madness still troubled him and he slept three nights a week for a month in Ivry cemetery, believing German troops and their French stooges were hiding there. It was not long before his innate criminality surfaced and he began abusing his new authority to line his own pockets.
On September 12, a Lieutenant Dubois, an underling of Petiot, searched the home of café owner Madame Juliette Couchaux on an unconvincing pretext and ransacked her home, stealing three million francs worth of jewellery. She complained to Dubois’ commanding officer, Captain Valeri, now sporting a beard and in uniform, a couple of days later. Told to withdraw her complaint, Madame Couchaux was advised to ‘sell her café and disappear’. She had no intention of doing so and was thrown into prison. Released a couple of months later, Madame Couchaux claimed that another woman, who shared her cell for describing a similar event, had told her that the officer she went to see, Petiot/Valeri, was even wearing the rings she called to report stolen!
Petiot had by then linked up with a vicious gang who joined the FFI to rob vulnerable citizens. On 16 September, two FFI members of the gang, Lieutenant Jean Duschesne and Corporal Jean Salvage, together with a civilian, Victor Cabalguenne, broke into the home of Monsieur Lareugance, Mayor of Tessancourt, supposedly to investigate his alleged collaboration. Instead, they beat him ferociously and shot him in the head before blowing his safe and escaping with 12.5 million francs in cash and valuable stamps. Three youths who saw the killing were themselves arrested after informing Petiot.
On 31 October 1944, at 10.15am Captain Valeri was standing on the platform of the metro station Saint-Mande-Tourelles on the eastern edge of Paris when approached by FFI Captain Simonin and three other army officers, who had awaited him for over three hours. One of them asked Petiot the time. Still wearing the watch of Joseph Reocreux, as he was distracted the doctor was handcuffed, kicked to the ground and then dragged to a waiting car. Petiot was subsequently handed to the military police and then taken to civilian police headquarters. How did Simonin know that Petiot and Valeri were one and the same? No one would ever know. There was no Captain Simonin. He vanished, never to be found. The police did discover his real name was Soutif, a collaborator responsible for the killing or deportation of hundreds of patriotic French citizens.
Cabalguenne and Duchesne were soon picked up. They told the police that Petiot had told them his real identity, claiming to have killed 63 collaborators, including Reocreux. Salvage, who had provided Petiot with an apartment, never re-appeared. He had worked for Simonin/Soutif and when the police sought him they were told he had been sent on a ‘top secret’ military assignment. No one knew to where or would disclose when he would return. The authorities would never find out. Those who later offered to provide information on Salvage or Soutif met with death. Whoever this mysterious duo were, they had important connections that enabled them to cover their tracks. Petiot must have been an embarrassment to them. Handing him to the authorities must have seemed a good way of getting rid of someone who no longer served a useful purpose. At last, Massu had his man. Now he must build a solid case if the mass-murderer was to pay a visit to Madame Guillotine. It would not be easy.
In custody in Sante prison, Petiot vigorously denied being anything other than a patriotic servant of France who had risked all in serving the nation. He wrote to his former commanding officer, Colonel Ruaux, to enlist his aid, stating that ‘Captain Valeri is incapable of having committed acts that would make an honest man blush with shame’. His letters being censored, this one was never sent. Nevertheless, the Petiot defence of calling him a resistant could only cause headaches in French society, splintered as it was by the occupation and its immediate aftermath.
Preposterous as it might seem, the Petiot defence would be difficult to break down. The doctor had sewn the seeds of doubt in many in the months leading to his arrest and a few people were taken in to the extent that they genuinely believed the man a hero. He had told the same tale consistently even from the time he was in the hands of the Gestapo. Was Petiot telling the truth? Those looking at the case in any depth were not so easily fooled.
The juge d’instruction in charge of the case was Ferdinand Goletty. Petiot’s story was that from 1940 he provided false medical certificates to Frenchmen who were to be rounded up for forced labour in Germany. He also worked with Spanish Republican guerrillas and was trained by the Maquis in plastic explosives, unarmed combat, weapons etc. Petiot then claimed he was appointed to head his own group of resistants by Pierre Brossolette, a famous resistant conveniently (for Petiot) killed in March 1944. Petiot’s group was named ‘Fly-Tox’, after the slang name for an informer, mouchard (mouche is French for fly) and the name of a fly spray.
While building his resistance group, Petiot still found time to design a secret weapon, so secret it was never discovered. The mad doctor boasted of how he used this incredibly powerful weapon to kill two German motorcyclists, claiming that five tonnes of it could have cleared France of the Boche (Germans). The weapon was so amazing that no cause of death was left on the victims, who were thought to have died of natural causes. The design of the weapon was, Petiot pompously asserted, ‘classified’ and he refused to describe it even in rough outline.
British agents parachuted into the unoccupied zone provided training for members of Fly-Tox and Petiot asserted that he and his comrades soon became experts in handling weaponry, explosives and hand-to-hand combat. Petiot explained that his victims were selected by observing those who entered Gestapo headquarters. These people were then followed when they left and Petiot’s men arrested them, pretending to be Germans. If a person protested that he was a German agent, he was immediately beaten to death with rubber hoses filled with sand, lead and bicycle spokes and buried a few kilometres outside Paris in the woods at Marly-le-Roi. These bodies were never found and probably never existed. Those killed in this way supposedly numbered 63. Thirty-three French collaborators and 30 German soldiers. Petiot would always remain adamant that this was the total number of his victims, yet between 1941 and 1943, 86 dismembered bodies were found in the Seine alone, most of which appeared to be the handiwork of the evil doctor. The thighs invariably had similar pincushion marks, from a dismembering scalpel being stuck in, while the body was being ripped apart. Although most of the bodies taken from the river were beyond identification circumstantial evidence from such as the Knellers, led to Petiot as the culprit.
The escape route was genuine said Petiot, who maintained that many suspected of meeting their demise at 21 rue Le Sueur, such as Guschinow, had actually escaped to South America. Others, Reocreux for example, were killed for trying to expose the route. As for his accomplices, Petiot recruited Fourrier and Pintard as he thought a barber and make-up artist would be useful in creating disguises. The comrades who helped expose traitors, kill them or assist with providing documents, safe houses, transport etc for escapees he steadfastly refused to name, saying either that he was unaware of their true identities or that to do so would put their lives at risk should Germany once again invade. Their codenames and aliases were never proved to relate to anyone who ever existed. One or two real names were offered up, again, of Resistance activists who had met heroic deaths and who could neither support, nor refute the doctor’s story. As for the Jews killed, ‘all were traitors in the pay of the Nazis’, declared Petiot outrageously.
The ‘house of horror’, as the French press called it, had been in a shambolic state when Petiot was released from Gestapo custody. Fly-Tox had apparently ceased to exist with the lack of a British/American invasion. Feeling ill, Petiot went to Auxerre to recuperate. It was not, the doctor declared, until 8 February 1944 that he ventured back to his house in the 16th arrondissement, where a month later his ghastly crimes would be discovered. On entering, he claims to have found the place in disarray following a Gestapo search. Bodies were piled in the old manure pit in an advanced stage of decomposition and stinking to high heaven. Valuable medical equipment and furniture had been stolen. Petiot resolved to clean up the mess and asked his brother to bring 200 kilos of quicklime from Auxerre, ostensibly to kill cockroaches but in reality to disinfect and assist the decomposition of the corpses. Petiot argued that, had he known the bodies had been there, he would have brought the quicklime himself, thus avoiding the involvement of his ‘innocent’ brother.
How had the cadavers ended up in Petiot’s house asked Goletty? Who were they? The doctor believed it to be the work of his over-enthusiastic comrades. He claimed to have reproached them and they in turn accused the Germans, although it was preposterous that the occupying power would kill people and leave them lying rotting around in a house in the middle of Paris. What to do? Petiot claimed that two of his associates decided, unknown to him, to burn the bodies commencing on 10 March. It was the following day that the fire brigade and police ‘with typical impertinence’, in the words of Petiot, broke into his property.
Smoke was pouring from Petiot’s house from 6, not 10 March, as the doctor stated. No names of comrades were forthcoming, as Petiot did not want to ‘get them into trouble’. In all probability there was no one else directly involved in the destruction and disposal of so many people. Investigators concluded that those who participated in Petiot’s scam probably believed their victims did escape. Only Petiot knew the grim truth. Only he was involved in burning the corpses at 21 rue Le Sueur.
As the authorities planned their next move, Petiot busied himself in prison, taking up smoking, writing poetry and even a 300-page manuscript he entitled Le Hasard Vaincu (Chance Defeated), detailing how to maximise one’s chances at poker, lotteries, the roulette wheel etc. The book, published by Roger Amiard in 1946, was a fascinating, flowery work of numerous digressions exploring such bizarre subjects as God’s relationship to Satan. Strangely, the dedication of the book was to Dr Eugene, Captain Valeri and Dr Petiot, ie himself and two of his aliases.
Resistance members were interviewed to ascertain their knowledge of Petiot’s wartime activities. Despite exhaustive investigations, not a soul was found who could verify his tall tales of heroic resistance, Spanish Republicans, Fly-Tox, secret weapons, contact with the British or his ‘assassination’ of the two German motorcyclists. On 3 May 1945 lieutenants from the Direction Generale des Études et Recherché (military security or DGER) produced a report stating quite categorically that the doctor was a fraud. He had no connection whatever to the Resistance and named as associates only those whose names were commonly known as having died in the service of France. The report detailed 25 points where the deposition of Petiot conflicted with reality and they concluded with the statement, ‘We formally reject the hypothesis that the accused played even the remotest part in the Resistance’.
Petiot rebuked his accusers and settled down to further months of questioning as the dossier against him grew and grew. Eventually he tired of it all and, on 30 October 1945, declared he would answer questions only in open court. Goletty informed his superiors of the strong accusations Petiot had to answer. A trial was now inevitable.
No one wanted to try the case. It would be huge and inevitably recount issues many felt uncomfortable with in the immediate aftermath of war. Vichy, the Resistance, collaboration and the role of those directly involved in the case could surface. Honour and career considerations meant few wanted the dubious privilege of taking on Petiot. The Procureur Général, who would normally handle such a complex and high-profile trial, passed the case to an assistant, who also passed it on to someone who did likewise until eventually Avocat Général Pierre Dupin was instructed to prosecute the case. He had only six weeks to study and master the thousands of pages that comprised the Petiot dossier. The doctor stood accused of murdering 27 people for financial gain, having stolen an incredible 200 million francs in cash, gold and jewellery that was never found, even by treasure hunters who searched through the rubble of 21 rue Le Sueur after it was demolished a few years later.
The trial of Dr Marcel Petiot was one of the most enthralling and extraordinary events to take place in France in the immediate postwar era. The public were fascinated and the Palais de Justice was packed throughout, with hundreds of curious citizens, scores of journalists, 80 witnesses, numerous relatives of the victims and their legal representatives. French law allows the victims of a crime to have their own lawyers present their case and, if the accused is convicted, seek financial recompense. The court was thick with members of the legal profession and their clients glowering at the accused.
On Monday 18 March 1946, the trial opened with Michel Leser, President of the Tribunal, taking charge of proceedings. He was flanked by a magistrate on either side, with a total of seven jurors next to them, with three alternates. Together, this group would decide the defendant’s guilt or innocence. For the prosecution, the state had selected Advocats Généraux Dupin and Elissalde. Petiot had Maître René Floriot, his long-standing legal representative and the greatest criminal attorney in France, to defend him.
The clerk to the court read out 27 indictments, followed by a biography of Dr Petiot outlined by the president. He was often corrected by Petiot, bored, arrogant and sarcastic, who complained that: ‘80% of the dossier is false’. Shouting, interrupting and showing contempt for proceedings that would never be permitted in an American, English or Scottish court, Petiot continued to find the recounting of his life tiresome and erroneous, as he was accused in the dossier of all sorts of petty crime, ranging from the theft of the antique stove and electricity to practising as a quack and graduating to mass murder. ‘Keep your opinions to yourself … please let me continue, this is my trial …’ and ‘I don’t care to be treated like a criminal’, were some of Petiot’s rude and frequent interjections. He went on to proudly admit tax evasion, a ‘medical tradition’, in his view, but denied any other illegalities.
The president had great difficulty keeping the accused in check and the trial degenerated into farce at times, as Leser traded insults with the defendant. Eventually, Leser got to the crux of the matter and raised the issue of the sinister happenings at rue Le Sueur. To Petiot, the temerity of the judge in raising this was tantamount to believing ‘German lies’. Petiot declared that he was a Resistance hero, who was merely burning the bodies of unknown Germans the Resistance had killed and were disposing of in the house. After all, said Petiot indignantly, ‘Would I have returned to the house when contacted by the police had I been guilty?’
Of course, no one was surprised when Petiot refused to name his supposed comrades. According to him, they had volunteered to attend but he had refused, believing he said that they would be arrested too. Dupin responded that he would ensure they were each awarded the Liberation Cross if an appearance was made. This, said Petiot, was impossible whilst ‘men who pledged their allegiance to Pétain are still free’. Petiot then made the fantastic assertion that he had developed a ‘secret weapon’ in the rue Le Sueur. Of course, as with Goletty, in the interests of ‘national security’ he could not go into details in court.
As Leser lost his command of the court, Petiot was repeatedly questioned by the lawyers acting for the victims on how much he knew about explosives, firearms etc. Not much it seemed. Still, the accused remained confident and unfazed by anything thrown at him and bragged of blowing up enemy trains and killing German motorcyclists with his mysterious secret weapon. It all proved hugely entertaining for the people in the public gallery. When Petiot claimed to have killed a mounted German in the Bois de Boulogne, a wag shouted, ‘Call the horse to the stand!’
Maître Pierre Veron, lawyer for the Khait and Dreyfus families, asked how long it took a grenade to detonate. Petiot replied, ‘Thirty minutes’. Gleefully, Veron pointed out it was seven seconds and denounced Petiot as an imposter, who had never been in the Resistance. Angered, Petiot yelled at Veron, accusing him of defending ‘traitors and Jews’. When, on the second day of the trial Petiot repeated the smear, Veron lost his temper, shouting, ‘Take that back or I’ll knock your teeth in!’ The crowd roared with laughter and the journalists had great headlines for next morning’s newspapers.
Pressed to reveal the names of anyone who could corroborate anything he said, Petiot refused, saying he would do so ‘only when acquitted’. Showing a complete lack of impartiality but understandable exasperation, Leser replied, ‘I doubt you will be’.
Petiot then owned up to killing French civilians he had tricked. Of course, Petiot claimed they were not frightened people desperate to save their lives, but ‘traitors and collaborators’ who got their just deserts. Petiot then told the court of his arrest by the Germans, the torture he endured whilst in their custody and finding his house full of bodies when released upon his brother handing over a modest 100,000-franc bribe. Apparently unfazed, if irritated by the cadavers in his home, the doctor proceeded to explain how, when and why the corpses were burned.
The day after Petiot’s latest fantastical recollections, the newspapers appeared almost to admire his bombast and egoism. The prosecution certainly seemed incapable of tying down the numerous contradictions in Petiot’s ludicrous tales that appeared to be made up virtually on the hoof. There was a mountain of evidence and Dupin was struggling to cope with, let alone turn the defendant’s lies against him. Petiot was enjoying being centre stage and frequently contradicted the evidence he had supplied to the Goletty dossier that Dupin had before him. Floriot taunted Dupin, telling him to learn the difference between ‘always’ and ‘sometimes’ and ‘yes’ and ‘no’. His client was unimpressed, complaining, ‘Don’t I have the right to say anything? I’m involved in this too you know’. To which Veron sarcastically yelled, ‘Poor fellow. Are you bored?’
Monsieur le President sank into sarcasm frequently too, wearying of the farcical goings on in a court he singularly failed to control. After denying he had ever heard the name of a particular victim, Denise Hotin, whom he may not actually have killed, Petiot ‘allowed’ Leser to continue, for which Leser replied, ‘How gracious of you to permit me’. Later that day, Leser denounced the accused to David Perlman, reporter for the New York Herald Tribune. ‘Petiot is a demon, an unbelievable demon, a terrifying monster and an appalling murderer’. A juror chipped in, ‘He (Petiot) is mad, with a terrible intelligence. He is a monster. The guillotine is too good for him!’ Another juror added, ‘We are only hearing of the bodies found. How many more were killed and how many bodies are still hidden? We shall never know’.
Floriot demanded a mistrial. Leser simply replaced the jurors with alternates. He then proceeded with more caution, striving to ensure the trial progressed as smoothly as possible thereafter. On the third day of the trial, some of the victims’ stories were detailed. When Dupin mentioned the sanctity of human life, the ‘audience’ roared with laughter, causing him to shout that, ‘Those who wish to amuse yourselves should go to the theatre’. Petiot remained impervious to Dupin’s questioning. Asked where Guschinow was now, he simply responded, ‘In South America. Have you searched it? It’s a big place’. Floriot interjected and showed that only two people had been contacted regarding the whereabouts of the missing furrier. Of course, neither had seen the missing man. Petiot’s lawyer then pointed out that if the same question asked of two people in Paris regarding any missing person it would probably provide the same answer. It was ‘ridiculous’ yelled Floriot. Dupin, not Petiot, was now on the defensive. Asking why identifying labels were removed from clothes, Dupin was caught out by Petiot replying: ‘If you knew anything of the Resistance … ’. Haughtily, Dupin said he did, to which Petiot cattily remarked, ‘Yes, but not from the same side’.
Dupin began to outline other individuals who had vanished at the doctor’s hands: Dr Braunberger, Reocreux and other victims. Petiot began to invent and elaborate stories of how the ‘collaborators’ met their end, some bravely, some begging for their lives. It was all fantasy.
The sarcasm continued. Dupin suggested that Petiot had stolen millions of francs from Estebeteguy alone, money allegedly stitched into the victim’s shoulder pads. When questioned about it Petiot denied having found any money but asked for a 10% ‘finders fee’ if any money was discovered.
Petiot did not help his case by insisting that his Jewish victims, the Basches, Stevens and Wolffs were traitors who deserved to die. This strained the court’s credibility, but Floriot pointed out that the Wolffs had entered France with legitimate German passports. The Nazis had requisitioned the hotel they had hidden in. Dupin’s lack of detailed knowledge prevented him from interjecting that the Wolffs had entered France in 1933 not 1942 as Floriot misleadingly implied. Petiot scoffed that the Wolffs had hidden as he had on his honeymoon. ‘I hid under the sheets and asked my wife to try and find me’.
On day four of the trial, Petiot attempted to besmirch the memory of Yvan Dreyfus, claiming he was responsible for Petiot’s incarceration by the Gestapo. In this he showed his anti-Semitism by asking the court, ‘Who cares if a Jew has disappeared?’ They certainly cared about seven-year-old René. How could this little boy possibly be accused of treason? ‘The boy was a lovely child’, recounted Petiot. Was? Why did Petiot use the past tense? Dupin thought he had him but Petiot sidestepped. Dupin then made another error, accusing Petiot of refusing to sign an inventory of clothing found in his house. Floriot leapt to his feet and threatened ‘to give up practising law right now’ if the prosecution could prove his client had ever seen the list. He hadn’t and Floriot scolded Dupin once more for his ignorance as to the contents of Petiot’s dossier.
The following day, the court visited Petiot’s sinister house in the rue Le Sueur. Thousands lined the streets to get a glimpse of the ‘monster’ and 300 policemen held back the crowds. A mêlée developed as journalists and citizens jostled for a peek. Soon the public burst into the house and Petiot’s library was ransacked as others gawped luridly at the stove and pit. Lawyers even posed for photographs holding thighbones aloft. The situation was farcical.
Eight members of the court including Dupin, Petiot, Leser and Floriot found their way inside the triangular room. It was eerie and pitch black. Candles were lit but repeatedly went out. Utter darkness lasted for seemingly endless minutes until a gendarme lit up the room by torch. Everyone sensed the cold, dank horror of the place and began to chatter nervously. Dupin tried to speak, was ignored and petulantly threatened to leave if not heard. He stormed out as the rest of the court was gradually ushered in one at a time. Professor Charles Sannie pointed out where half-a-corpse was found in a cement bag. Petiot insisted it was a mailbag. Floriot was outraged to discover no one knew even where the sack was. Apparently it had not been retained as evidence.
Back at the Palais de Justice, Sannie was forced to admit that the fingerprints of the accused had not been found anywhere in the rue Le Sueur. Following him, Commissaire Massu was asked about the sack containing the body. ‘A potato sack’, thought Massu. On being asked specific questions he tried to deflect responsibility saying that, ‘Inspector Poirer was in charge of this’, or ‘Inspector Batut was in charge of that … ’. Despite having overall responsibility of the investigation, like Dupin and unlike Floriot, he showed only a haphazard knowledge of the case. The court realised the slapdash way in which the entire prosecution case had been cobbled together.
On the sixth day, a Saturday, Prince Rainier of Monaco attended. That day the defence was less able to counter the witnesses before it. As always, Petiot attempted to interject. He was caught out when Veron exposed him as being ignorant of the appearance of, and how to detonate, plastic explosives. Petiot claimed he knew about detonators when Veron was ‘breast feeding’ and accused Veron of never having seen any. Veron was able to retort he had travelled with up to 150 kilos in his car while working for the Resistance. The doctor was then caught out as having falsely claimed to have killed two Gestapo agents and burying them in Marly woods. In fact, they had been killed months later and the police knew their killers, all 11 of them. A Captain Henri Boris, a former aerial operations director for de Gaulle during the war who had shared a cell with Dreyfus, testified that Dreyfus supplied the Maquis with radios and would never have betrayed France. He added that no plastic explosives were in France when Petiot claimed to have used them. Petiot hurriedly asserted that a man parachuted in from London delivered them. When asked his name, Petiot said he did not know but the man had ‘fled to Corsica and there committed suicide’. Laughter erupted at this unlikely scenario.
The next day was Sunday and so court was not in session. The following Monday, 25 March, a tentative, pale and sad Madame Guschinow appeared and explained her husband’s disappearance. Petiot had told her he had received letters from her husband in Argentina, saying that Mr Guschinow had arrived safely but then destroyed them for ‘security reasons’. To everything she said, Petiot shouted out, ‘She’s lying!’. His bullying riled Leser and lawyer, Maître Jaques Archeveque, who stepped in to question her attacker about the details of Guschinow’s disappearance. Petiot took on the mantle of victim and accused Madame Guschinow of having a young lover, knowing her husband was still alive and, astonishingly, criticised her for not availing herself of Petiot’s services during the war. Floriot then remonstrated with Dupin for failing to organise a search of Argentina for Monsieur Guschinow, stating his belief that he was still alive. No one in the court believed it, but it was an important point that once more undermined the prosecution’s lack of attention to detail.
Monsieur Michel Cadoret de l’Epingham gave evidence. He had intended to escape using the Petiot ‘network’ but changed his mind when Petiot told him he would require injections, saying, ‘These will make you invisible in the eyes of the world’. Petiot shouted out, ‘I see it all now, the mad doctor with his syringe. It was a dark and rainy night, the wind howled under the eaves and rattled the windowpanes of the oak-panelled library … ’. Cadoret was also upset that Petiot asked for money, which resistants did not do and by the grime beneath his fingernails, unusual for a physician. He had paid some money to Petiot but before he could ask for it back, Petiot returned it to him, explaining curtly that he could not help. It seemed that both parties were equally suspicious.
On day eight, the ‘experts’ had an opportunity to specify their often grisly findings in court. Dr Albert Paul detailed the remains discovered at 21 rue Le Sueur. The skulls, shoulder blades, collar bones, arms, legs vertebrae, five kilogram’s of hair, scalps and face skin expertly removed in one piece. The gendarme next to Petiot was visibly horrified at the gruesome minutiae, while Petiot simply whistled and looked bored.
In response to Dupin’s questioning, Dr Paul could not specify when the victims died, how, their exact ages and in some instances their sex. Fire and lime had caused too much damage. No bullet wounds or skull fractures were found, but their deaths could have been caused in numerous other ways. The similarity of the pincushion thigh wounds to those on bodies fished from the Seine was emphasised, as was the expertise of the dissection. Floriot quickly interrupted to say that Petiot had never taken a dissection course. ‘That’s a shame, because he dissects very well’, retorted Dr Paul.
Professor Henri Griffon, a Director of Toxicology for the Paris police, had examined the remains for poison, finding nothing. He hypothesised that the triangular room was used as a gas chamber or the victims killed by morphine. Floriot pointed out that neither gas nor morphine was discovered at the rue Le Sueur, although 504 ampoules of morphine were found in Petiot’s rue Caumartin apartment.
Next up was Dr Genil-Perrin, a psychiatrist who had examined Petiot both in 1937 and before the trial. To the amusement of the court, he found Petiot to be highly intelligent with ‘an extraordinary gift for repartee’. Yet Petiot was also ‘morally stunted and responsible for his actions’. His colleague Dr Gouriou described Petiot as ‘perverse, amoral and devious’. Floriot asked Dr Gouriou if he had examined Petiot’s sister. He had and found her ‘quite normal’. Floriot then revealed that Petiot had no sister, as Gouriou shambled off the stand, his credibility in pieces, the courtroom laughing at him.
Edouard de Rougemont, a graphologist, then testified. He had examined the many letters purportedly from victims and announced all were written under duress and that, ‘Monsieur de Rougement is a great scholar who never makes mistakes’. He could even tell ‘with certainty’ if a man writing on a piece of paper was lying or telling the truth. Floriot sarcastically pointed out that, had Petiot simply written his story down, de Rougemount could have decided if he was being truthful and saved France the expense of a trial. An embarrassed de Rougemont then shuffled off.
Monsieur Jacques Ibarne, journalist for with the newspaper Resistance and Military Security officer, informed the court that his investigations revealed no one in the Maquis who had heard of Dr Eugene or Fly-Tox. Petiot never knew any Maquis heroes, played no part in the Resistance and gained any information he had from a former Fresnes cellmate, Robert Lateulade, now deceased. He added that he believed Petiot to have collaborated. Otherwise, the Germans would never have released him. Petiot gave Ibarne a deathly stare throughout his testimony.
Veron used the Ibarne evidence to pin down the accused on the 28 German soldiers he claimed to have killed, apart from the two allegedly slain by ‘secret weapon’. Petiot declined. He would only do so ‘when acquitted, which is already a certainty’.
Wednesday, 27 March found Petiot’s gang in the witness box as one by one, Fourrier, Pintard, Porchon, Nezondet and Petiot’s brother Maurice testified. They said little, afraid of incriminating themselves. Only Nezondet said anything of significance, recounting that while Dr Petiot was in German captivity, Maurice had told him fearfully that, ‘The journeys begin and end at the rue Le Sueur’. Under oath, Maurice Petiot, dying of throat cancer and trying to save his brother, denied ever having said such a thing.
Day ten saw Eryane Kahan enter the witness box. With strawberry-blonde hair, dark glasses and beige suit she was wrapped in fur hat and gloves, oblivious of the heat of the courtroom. She was 50 but looked much younger and spoke, quivering with sentiment, in a strong Romanian accent. Her testimony flatly contradicted Petiot’s rants about those devoured by the rue Le Sueur. The Jews who hoped to escape through ‘Dr Eugene’ were terrified of the Gestapo, trusted their ‘saviour’ and were patriots, not collaborators. She was perhaps in a good position to judge. Just before his execution, former collaborator and Floriot client Henri Lafont, attempting to clear his conscience, detailed Kahan’s life accurately and denounced her as a Gestapo informant happy to betray fellow Jews to the Gestapo in return for her own survival. She had vanished the day Petiot’s photograph appeared in the newspapers for the first time. Claiming to have been a resistant which she was after March 1944, she could prove nothing before then, having apparently switched sides when the writing was on the wall for her former employers.
Floriot revealed that Kahan had taken money when procuring escapees for Petiot. She denied it or that she had a German lover. ‘He was Austrian’, said the witness. ‘Just like Hitler!’ exclaimed Floriot. She even had a dossier revealing her collaboration and Dupin said he had never heard of it. ‘Number 16582’ replied Floriot. Kahan was discredited.
Three witnesses who knew Dreyfus swore to his exemplary patriotism. One of de Gaulle’s ministers, Pierre Mendes-France, sent a telegram to declare his ‘stupefaction’ that Petiot was attempting to dishonour the ‘noble memory’, of Dreyfus. Madame Dreyfus gave evidence sadly and quietly, still distressed at her husband’s fate. Petiot was silent throughout, as she detailed her efforts to buy him out of prison and then France. Monsieur Fernand Lavie, son of Madame Khait, who described his mother’s disappearance and the strange circumstances surrounding it, followed her. Madame Braunberger then testified, explaining how she identified clothing from Petiot’s house that had been worn by her husband the day he vanished. Petiot was asked to answer questions on this, refused and swore at his guards. After more witnesses, regarding the Knellers this time, the court became bored, with even President Leser gazing at his watch, fidgeting. The trial seemingly dragged on and on, even though few doubted the eventual verdict. Maître Dominique, representing the Piereschi family, asked Petiot how he came to be released by the Germans. ‘Good grief’, remarked Leser. At this point Petiot shouted to the lawyers, ‘You are all bastards’. Spontaneously and in unison they replied, ‘Thank you!’ After several lawyers began droning on, Leser, fed up, got up and walked out.
The thirteenth day, 1 April, it was rumoured Judge Robert H Jackson would take time off from the Nuremburg war crimes trial to attend the more entertaining case of Petiot. It was an April fool. As the prosecution rested, it was time for the defence to bring forward its own witnesses, mostly to attest the ‘noble character of the accused.
Defence witnesses from Villenueve-sur-Yonne painted a glowing picture of Petiot’s near saintliness. Former patients, admittedly afraid of his ‘intense eyes’, nevertheless denounced the trial as a politically motivated slur against their former mayor, revealing the ‘astonishing things’ he had done to improve the lot of his constituents and his devotion to the sick. He had vastly improved the local school from being a ‘virtual leper colony’, built the sewer system and improved transport links. The doctor was a ‘200% Frenchman’ who had saved many lives, was sadly missed and would ‘never be forgotten’. A deaf witness could not take the oath due to his hearing impairment. He said he had ‘heard nothing’ of Petiot since he left. ‘I am not surprised’, said a caustic Leser.
Patients of Petiot from his Paris practice rallied round him too. He had cured one of constipation using a ‘strange machine’, provided identity papers for two British pilots shot down in France and paid from his own pocket for an exhausted patient to take a vacation. The undoubted star turn was Lieutenant Richard Lhertier, who marched into court wearing the uniform of the French paratroopers. He had been dropped behind enemy lines, was caught and placed in a cell with Petiot. The doctor was a ‘man of integrity’’ who told him in detail about Fly-Tox, how to resist torture and reveal nothing under interrogation. Petiot had shown only contempt for the Germans and proven an inspiration to his fellow prisoners. The court was impressed. Lheritier said he was ‘proud to have shared a cell with Dr Marcel Petiot’.
Another former cellmate, Roger Courtot, backed up Lheritier’s testimony and denied it was ‘possible’ for Petiot to have been motivated by money. The doctor had never worried about his personal safety. As Cortot spoke, Petiot wept in silence.
Mademoiselle Germaine Barre had volunteered to appear. She had been caught working for the Allies and was in the office of Robert Jodkum when he offered Petiot his freedom for 100,000 francs. Petiot had contemptuously rebuffed him, was insolent and condescending, refusing to sign a document stating he would do nothing against Germany if released. It was ‘impossible’ that Petiot was a traitor she announced. It was a positive note on which to end the defence.
On day 14, lawyers acting for the families of the deceased questioned Petiot and much evidence was repeated. As they droned on, both Petiot and Floriot fell asleep. The following day was much the same and again Petiot, Floriot and many in attendance slumbered. Veron woke them up. Denouncing the accused as a psychopath, he alluded to Petiot being a false saviour who exploited people’s trust in the same way as wreckers lured ships onto rocks by lantern. Petiot had turned the survival instincts of the terrified, desperate and hunted people who sought his help against them for loot. In doing so, in hiding behind the skirts of the Resistance, the murderer brought only shame on France.
Dupin summed up for the prosecution with a flourish. He could do little else, having such a poor command of the facts. Petiot had outdone Landru, France’s ‘Bluebeard’, who had ‘only’ killed 11 people, with 27 victims, although Petiot himself boasted of 63 killings. Again, Dupin repeated that the memory of the Resistance could not be stained by a creature as foul as Petiot, a pathological liar and cold-blooded killer who had concocted a ‘fictional drama’ to save his own skin.
Thursday 4 April, day 16, was the last day of the trial. Dupin, who had spoken for two hours previously, did so for another 90 minutes in similar vein, recounting the hideous crimes of the accused. He insisted that only the death penalty would suffice. Justice demanded that Petiot join his victims. As he sat down, Petiot remarked, ‘Thank God that’s over’.
Floriot opened his remarks at 3pm having drunk a glass of champagne. He would drink another halfway through a speech that went on without interruption for more than six hours. In doing so he avoided the emotion of the prosecution. He focussed only on hard facts, making no comment or plea that could not be ascertained directly from the Petiot dossier.
Everything against Petiot was false. His reputation was destroyed even before entering court, portrayed as he was by the media as a heartless fiend, obsessed with plunder. He would never have been accused at all, but for the bodies in the rue Le Sueur. Originally, the police had accused his client of over 100 murders but dropped most of them when their real murderers were caught, it was discovered they had been deported or had vanished while Petiot was in prison. Any murders the police could not pin elsewhere were dumped at Petiot’s doorstep. In fact, reasoned Floriot, over 60,000 non-Jewish Parisians remained missing almost two years after the liberation. The police could easily find a connection between the accused and some of those people to frame Dr Petiot. The huge number of missing Parisians mentioned by Floriot did not help his client, having the effect of convincing the jury that the number of Petiot victims must surely have been much greater, such as the bodies in the Seine perhaps?
The police had interviewed 2,000 of Petiot’s patients and not one had said anything against him. On the contrary, all stressed his dedication to them. It was political jealousy and spite that had brought Petiot to the dock.
Floriot continued to paint an exemplary view of his client as a patriot who, when war engulfed his homeland, risked his life for others, for France. He had killed only traitors. He denied killing only eight of the 27 people he was accused of murdering: Braunberger, Guschinow, Denise Hotin (possibly murdered by her own husband), Khait, the Knellers and Van Bever. If the prosecution could prove Petiot had slain even one of these people, he deserved to die.
Petiot’s link with Hotin was weak. Her husband said she had gone to see him by train from their village of Neuville-Garnier outside Paris on 5 June 1942 and vanished. There is no evidence she did. She was not a patient of his. Monsieur Jean Hotin made no reference to Petiot regarding his ‘missing’ wife before the doctor’s arrest. Indeed, her identification papers were found at his home 18 months after her disappearance. During the occupation it was extremely unlikely that anyone would leave home without papers.
Floriot had difficulty in disposing of the charges against other victims by trying to persuade the jury that clothing labels relating to victims were mis-identified and so should be discounted. He was not persuasive. So what did happen to Dr Braunberger et al? The Germans were blamed of course. Dr Braunberger and Madame Khait were Jews, probably swept up in the Holocaust. The other victims may have been liquidated by the Gestapo too or might still be alive somewhere.
Maître Floriot now turned to the 19 dead that Petiot accepted responsibility for. All, Floriot argued, were connected to the Germans. They were pimps, prostitutes, thieves and informers. The Jews proved difficult to malign but an heroic effort was made. After all, had not the Basches shared a hotel with the Italians and crossed demarcation lines seemingly at ease? He now concluded by demanding the acquittal of his patriotic client. When he finished, the court was so impressed that he was given a standing ovation.
Petiot had little to add, saying only that he was a Frenchman who had killed collaborators and that the jury would ‘know what to do’. He was then taken away where he cheerily discussed oriental carpets with Floriot’s assistants.
As the seven jurors, Leser and the other two magistrates deliberated, one can reflect that Floriot’s brilliance and prosecution incompetence would have led to acquittal in many jurisdictions. The farcical nature of the trial itself and the comments of jurors and President Leser should have led to a mistrial. As it was, five questions had to be asked concerning each of the 27 deaths. These were:
Was each specified victim killed by Petiot?
Was there malice aforethought?
Was the killing premeditated?
Were the victim’s possessions and valuables stolen?
Was the victim killed for the purpose of financial gain?
At least six votes were required to condemn on each of the 135 questions asked in total. Few doubted Petiot’s guilt, but proving that Guschinow was not at that moment sipping coffee in a Buenos Aires café for example opened the door to ‘reasonable doubt’. Dupin had been poor, circumstantial evidence haphazardly presented and Floriot’s defence detailed and systematic. What made the difference was the sheer scale of what was presented and the figure of Petiot himself, who came across as arrogant, cocky, bullying, mocking, sarcastic and totally without remorse for the dead or pity for their families. He enjoyed being the centre of attention while relatives of the deceased wept. Petiot certainly did not come across as either a caring doctor or dyed-in-the-wool patriot. Rather he was seen as a cruel, ruthless, efficient and devious murderer who probably laughed, joked and reassured his victims up until the moment they rolled up their sleeve to receive a lethal injection.
It was 35 minutes past midnight when they jury came back. The 135 questions had been asked and answered in barely three hours, having spent an average of only 80 seconds on each question. The defendant was found not guilty of all charges in connection with Denise Hotin and not guilty of stealing or intending to steal the possessions of Madame Khait and Monsieur Van Bever. He was convicted on the remaining 126 charges, including 26 murders.
President Leser now asserted the dignity and authority of his office that had been so lacking until that point. As the courtroom remained silent and transfixed on his words, he sentenced the 49-year-old defendant to die by the guillotine. Petiot seemed unperturbed. He had enjoyed himself, amused others and seemingly cared little beyond that. As he was taken away he shouted, ‘I must be avenged!’ By whom and for what was not clear. The civil-suit lawyers claimed compensation on behalf of their client’s families. The three magistrates gave awards, based on the victims estimated worth, ranging from 880,000 francs for Dreyfus to 10,000 for Piereschi. Surprisingly, the relatives of the Knellers and Wolffs were awarded nothing. In total, 1,970,000 francs were paid out. This was estimated to be less than 1% of the 200 million francs Petiot stole from his victims. Georgette Petiot paid half the court costs of just over 300,000 francs.
Floriot appealed his client’s sentence on 13 May. It was rejected ten days later. Petiot spent his last days smoking and writing. Only Floriot and the prison’s doctor and chaplain were allowed to visit. Under French law, the condemned were only allowed to know when their day of execution had arrived at 18.00 the previous evening. In Petiot’s case, there were delays because 69-year-old Henri Desfourneaux, his executioner who held the post went on strike for higher pay. Known as ‘Monsieur de Paris’, the executioner owned his own guillotine and claimed Allied bombing had damaged it. After the authorities agreed to pay him 65,000 francs per year to carry out executions and 10,000 to maintain his guillotine, he agreed to carry out his appointed task.
In the early hours of 25 May, just after dawn, Petiot was woken from his peaceful slumbers. He anticipated the moment, as Dr Paul Cousins, assistant to Floriot had nervously informed him the previous evening. Dupin uttered the traditional words. ‘Have courage, the time has come’. Petiot swore back at him as he blearily watched the removal of his manacles and exchanged his prison uniform for the suit he had worn at the trial. He quietly wrote letters to his wife and son and spoke to Floriot. ‘My friend, if anything about me is published after my death, please ask the author to include photographs of those I have been accused of killing. Then perhaps they will appear and my innocence proved’. To a rather queasy Goletty and Dupin, Petiot merrily said, ‘Gentlemen, I am at your disposal’.
Petiot was offered the usual glass of rum and a cigarette, declining the former. He heard mass, though insisted his conscience was clear and signed the executioner’s register. After having the nape of his neck shaved and his hands bound behind his back, Petiot was led outside and saw Madame Guillotine for the first and last time. Erected swiftly and quietly earlier that morning by Desfourneax, she stood five metres tall. The oblique blade weighed seven kilograms alone. With a 30-kilogramme weight attached, it would soon descend its well-oiled tracks and do its clinical business in a fraction of a second.
Witnesses later remarked how incredibly calm and nonchalant Petiot was. He showed not the slightest trace of fear as he lay down to expect the blade. ‘Gentlemen’, he shouted to the watching group of officials and lawyers, ‘I ask you not to look. This will not be very pretty’.
The courtyard of La Santé prison was almost silent. The police had placed a cordon around the place. Seven years previously, the execution of German serial killer Eugene Weidmann had appalled the French authorities when citizens rushed to dip their handkerchiefs in the murderer’s blood. There would be no repeat. Executions were now carried out in private.
At 5.05am the blade cleaved the head from Petiot’s shoulders. At the moment of impact, a photograph secretly taken captured the expression on Petiot’s face; he was smiling serenely.