Jeanne Weber

Jeanne Weber in 1908, flanked by two policemen in the courthouse of Saint-Mihiel .

Jeanne Weber (born Moulinet ; born October 7, 1874 or 1875 in Kérity , France , as Jeanne Moulinet ; † 1910 in Mareville , New Caledonia ), known as the ogre from the Goutte d'Or ( L'Ogresse de la Goutte d ' Or ), was a French serial killer . Weber killed ten children, including her own. After Weber stood trial once, was investigated against her for months and there was no conviction on both occasions, after the tenth murder she was declared terminally insane and admitted to a psychiatric institution in New Caledonia. The motives for the acts remained unclear, Weber did not comment. The Weber case went through the international press and caused forensic medicine , which was celebrated as almost infallible at the time, a great loss of reputation.

Life

The murders in the Goutte d'Or

Jeanne Moulinet came from the fishing village of Kérity in Brittany and came to Paris at the age of 14 . In 1893 she married Jean Weber and has lived in the Passage de la Goutte d'Or in the 18th arrondissement ever since . The Weber couple had three children in total. Two girls died early, the son Marcel was seven years old in 1905. Jean Weber, like his wife Jeanne, was heavily dependent on alcohol . Her husband's brothers (Pierre, Léon, Charles and Marcel) lived in the neighborhood with their families.

On the morning of March 2, 1905, 18-month-old Georgette Weber, the younger daughter of her brother-in-law Pierre, died while Jeanne Weber took care of Georgette and her older sister Suzanne. The children's mother had gone to a public wash house. There she went to a neighbor and reported that Georgette must have suddenly become ill, and that she had heard the child gasp and scream. Georgette's mother ran home immediately and found Georgette on Jeanne Weber's lap, who appeared to be massaging the child's chest. The girl was blue and foaming at the mouth. The mother picked up the girl and patted her back. A short time later the child recovered and was breathing normally. The mother then returned to the wash house. An hour later, Georgette was dead.

Nine days later, on March 11, 1905, Madame Pierre Weber asked her brother-in-law's wife again to take care of her older daughter Suzanne. The parents returned home from work late in the evening and found Suzanne, who was almost three years old, dead. She too was blue and foaming at the mouth. The district poor doctor could not find any signs of unnatural death and noted "convulsions" as the cause of death in both children.

Two weeks after Suzanne's death, on March 25th, Weber looked after seven-month-old Germaine, the youngest child of Léon Weber and his wife. In the morning, Germaine suffered an attack of suffocation. The child's grandmother, who lived in the same house, heard the baby cry and found the girl on Jeanne Weber's lap with a swollen face, bulging eyes and red spots on her neck. During the following night, Germaine made a full recovery. The next day the child was entrusted to Jeanne Weber again and died in the course of the afternoon. Alerted by the loud screaming baby, neighbors found Germaine in her stroller, Weber's hands pressed tightly under the baby's shirt. All rescue attempts were unsuccessful, the informed doctor could only determine death. Germaine was buried the very next day. A short time later (Thorwald writes, the night after Germaine's funeral, according to other sources four days later) Weber's own son, seven-year-old Marcel, died in the same way as the other children. In Germaine and Marcel, the doctor diagnosed diphtheria as the cause of death .

On April 5, Charles Weber's wife only went shopping for a short while, leaving her son Maurice, a few months old, with Jeanne Weber. On her return she found the baby, blue and foam at the mouth, lying on the bed, Jeanne Weber's hands pressed tightly under the child's shirt. Madame Charles Weber ran with the child to the Brétonneau Hospital, where Dr. Saillant was examined, who immediately suspected the child had been strangled. Saillant talked to his mother and found out that four children in the Weber family had died within the last month, all with the same symptoms of suffocation and all in the presence of Jeanne Weber. Dr. Saillant examined Maurice again on April 6th, the purple color of the face had disappeared, but the strangling marks on the neck were all the more prominent. After the head physician of the department, Dr. Sevestre, who had re-examined Maurice and reached the same conclusions, informed the police to Saillant.

The investigation and the trial

An inspector took on the case and quickly found out that two children, Lucie Alexandre and Marcel Poyatos, who were being looked after by Jeanne Weber, had died in the babysitter's arms as early as 1902. For both children, the cause of death was extremely vague on the death certificates issued.

On April 9, the examining magistrate Leydet commissioned Léon Henri Thoinot to investigate Maurice Weber, and two days later he ordered the exhumation and autopsy of the deceased Weber children. Thoinot was a close associate of the celebrated forensic doctor and university professor Paul Brouardel and should succeed Brouardel. Thoinot, then 47 years old, was supposed to examine Maurice Weber on April 10, but could no longer find any strangling marks. These had disappeared the day before, reported Madame Charles Weber. Thoinot then scanned Saillant and Sevestre's reports while his assistant examined the child. In his report, Thoinot wrote that he could not find any use of force, the child could also have had a glottic cramp .

On April 14th, Georgette, Suzanne, Germaine and Marcel were exhumed. Georgette's body was well preserved, Thoinot could not find any traces of pathological changes on the neck. There was no bruise, the carotid arteries were intact, as was the hyoid bone . There were also no signs of strangulation on Suzanne Weber's body. Likewise, Germaine's body showed no suspicious signs, Thoinot only found "insignificant congestion of blood in the lungs".

In July, the examining magistrate asked Leydet Thoinot again for an opinion, this time regarding the testimony of witnesses. In this report, Thoinot described the observations of strangulation marks, discolored faces and bulging eyes as "unscientific". Leydet then handed the files over to the public prosecutor's office. On January 29, 1906, the trial of Jeanne Weber began in front of the Seine assists . She was charged with murdering her three children, as well as Georgette, Suzanne and Germaine Weber, as well as Lucie Alexandre and Marcel Poyatos (the sources used say nothing about the year of birth and death, the circumstances of death and the names of Jeanne Weber's two daughters. Apparently there was enough evidence that Weber had also murdered her two daughters. They are officially included in the number of their victims. Nothing is known about the circumstances of death, the age and the origin of Lucie Alexandre and Marcel Poyatos).

A crowd had gathered in front of the courthouse demanding revenge on the Ogresse de la Goutte d'Or . The lawyer Henri Robert , who became famous beyond France through the Gouffé affair , had offered himself as Weber's defense lawyer . The eloquent Robert intimidated the largely intellectually inferior witnesses of the prosecution and involved them in contradictions, so that after the testimony of Thoinot, the prosecutor Seeligman was forced to apply for acquittal. Weber was acquitted on January 30th and hailed as innocent persecuted by the crowd that had demanded vengeance the day before.

The murder in Villedieu-sur-Indre

Jeanne Weber left her husband Jean and the Goutte d'Or in June 1906 because, despite the acquittal, no one trusted her anymore. She made her way as a vagabond to Chambon near Villedieu-sur-Indre , a municipality in the Indre department , where she - under the name of Jeanne Moulinet - was accepted into the household of the widowed Sylvain Bavouzet. Bavouzet had three children, Germaine, Louise and Auguste, aged nine. On the evening of April 16, 1907, Louise Bavouzet looked for the village doctor, Dr. Papazoglou, on. She asked the doctor to look after her brother Auguste, who was very ill. Papazoglou asked about the symptoms and learned that the boy had eaten a lot at a wedding invitation early that evening and had been sick for a few days. The doctor gave Louise Bavouzet a stomach medicine and sent the child home.

In the early morning of the next day, Sylvain Bavouzet personally asked the doctor for a home visit because the child was doing very badly. Papazoglou accompanied the father back to the small farm and could only find out that the boy was dead. At the boy's bed he found Weber, who had already washed the child and freshly dressed. Auguste wore a shirt with a collar that closed very tightly around his neck. However, Papazoglou insisted on examining the child thoroughly and took off the shirt. Under the collar he noticed a reddish discoloration of the skin that ran around his entire neck. The doctor found this so strange that he refused to issue a death certificate and informed the police.

Re-investigation and second arrest

Title page of Le Petit Journal of May 12, 1907, after Jeanne Weber's arrest.

The examining magistrate in charge, Belleau, instructed Charles Audiat to conduct an autopsy. Audiat also noticed the strangulation line, but was unsure about the tightly closed shirt collar and whether this change could not have been caused post mortem by the collar. Audiat learned that Auguste had complained of a headache in the days before his death and attested a natural death, caused by an irritation of the meninges . Auguste was buried on April 19. A few days later his older sister Germaine, who Weber deeply distrusted, found a bundle of newspaper clippings about the serial killer Jeanne Weber in the housekeeper's luggage. One of the articles was illustrated with Weber's picture.

Germaine realized that Moulinet and Weber were the same person and immediately went to the gendarmerie . There she presented the newspaper articles to an inspector and declared that Moulinet was identical to Weber and had strangled Auguste. On April 23, examining magistrate Belleau revisited the case and instructed Dr. Audiat with re-checking his findings from the autopsy. He also asked the pathologist Frédéric Bruneau to examine the body again. The pathologist delivered his report the next day, to which the auditor now agreed on every point. Auguste was clearly strangled. Not only the clearly visible strangulation furrow speak for it, there is also bleeding in the larynx and in the neck muscles, as well as small injuries in the skin that could result from fingernails. Bruneau found no evidence of natural death. Auguste Bavouzet had a slight tuberculous meningeal irritation, but this could in no way lead to the boy's death. The child was probably strangled with a handkerchief.

Jeanne Weber was arrested on May 4, 1907. The newspapers worldwide reported her arrest again. Henri Robert offered few days later to defend Weber again and asked the coroner, the body of the luminary of the coroner's office , to let Thoinot investigate. Belleau resisted, but soon had to give in to pressure from the press and the public and consented to the third autopsy. Thoinot, on the other hand, faced the choice of admitting a mistake of his own and thereby perhaps losing his reputation or of making Audiat and Bruneau ridiculous because of the weight of his statement.

Thoinot initially only dealt with the written reports and on July 1 sent a letter to the Bourges Prosecution in which he described the reports as "amateurish". He is not in a position to give a judgment on the case. Then on July 27, 1907, three months after Augustes death, the body was exhumed again and examined by Thoinot. On August 5, Thoinot submitted his report to the court. Thoinot wrote that the body was already so rotten that it was no longer possible to detect strangulation. However, the incisions that Audiat and Bruneau had made were completely amateurish and showed that both doctors had no idea about forensic medicine . The child's bowel had not been opened, which is why both doctors overlooked Peyer's spots , which indicate typhus . The boy ultimately died of this. There could be no question of a violent death, he concluded.

After several months of scientific dispute between Thoinot, Audiat, Bruneau and three other pathologists who had been called in in the meantime (who, however, waived a fourth autopsy and relied only on the written reports), Belleau dropped the indictment in December 1907.

The murder in Commercy

Representation of Weber on the title page of the Petit Journal of May 24, 1908

After her release from prison, Jeanne Weber left Chambon and met George Bonjeau, President of the Society for the Protection of Children . He believed in Weber's innocence and hired her as a nurse in his children's home in Orgeville. He released her after a few days after she had almost strangled a child. However, he did not contact the authorities for fear of being ridiculous. Weber moved on and was arrested in March 1908 for vagrancy. She claimed to be the child murderer Jeanne Weber, but revoked this admission at the station.

The prefect of police had the arrested woman examined by a neurologist in Nanterre for her mental state, who certified that she was in perfect health. In April 1908 she met the lime distiller Emile Bouchery in Bar-le-Duc , with whom she took a room on May 8, 1908 in Commercy at the Poirot hostel on rue de la Paroisse. Bouchery had found a job in the Euville quarries and introduced Weber as his wife.

The lime burner left the hostel again in the evening to have a look at his new workplace. Weber meanwhile played with the seven-year-old Marcel, the son of the couple. At nightfall Weber told the couple that she was very scared. She asked if Marcel could sleep in her room until Bouchery got back. The couple agreed. Around 10 p.m., another guest heard the screams of children and alerted the Poirots. The landlords broke into Bouchery's room and found their son lying on the bed covered in blood. The local doctor was informed immediately, but Marcel was already dead when he arrived. Bruises on the neck and neck were clearly visible on the corpse. The child bit his tongue, causing the bleeding.

The summoned police officers found a letter from Henri Roberts to Jeanne Weber in Bouchery's luggage. Bouchery immediately admitted to being Weber, but protested her innocence. Marcel Poirot's body was transported to the hospital under guard and photographed there immediately to prevent a similar disaster as the investigation into the death of Auguste Bavouzet. The examining magistrate Rollin is said to have stated that "no Thoinot would shatter the facts with wise arguments". Rollin telegraphed to the professors of forensic medicine and pathology at the University of Nancy , Professor Parisot and Professor Michel. Parisot began the autopsy the next morning . Every cut was captured photographically. Parisot and Michel determined the cause of death to be death by strangulation.

After Poirot's death

Thanks to the intervention of Thoinot, who finally had to fear for his reputation, Jeanne Weber was not brought to trial again. On October 25, 1908, the Paris psychiatrist Dr. Lataue was declared insane and taken to the mental hospital in Mareville , New Caledonia , where she put an end to her life herself in 1910.

Thoinot and Robert stubbornly maintained that Weber only killed the last child, Marcel Poirot. She would have fallen into a " self-hypnotic intoxication ", triggered by the great stir about the deaths in Paris and Chambon. In this intoxication she then did what had been wrongly accused her for so long.

The work of the coroners was heavily criticized in public, with French newspapers demanding in their articles that in future court proceedings less weight should be given to the opinions of experts and more attention should be paid to facts.

Importance of the case to forensic medicine

The Jeanne Weber case clearly showed the limits of forensic medicine at the beginning of the 20th century and almost led to the overthrow of France's leading forensic doctor. In 1906, after the first trial, a detailed article by Brouardel and Thoinot on the Jeanne Weber case appeared in the January edition of the journal Annales d'hygiene publique et de médicine légale directed by Paul Brouardel . This article contained the wording of all investigation protocols and reports and again underlined Thoinot's stance that none of the children could have been murdered. The coroners were not yet aware that strangling and strangling children with their still elastic neck organs leave little traces and that these traces also disappear again very quickly.

The autopsy of the child Auguste Bavouzet three and a half months after his death was pointless from the forensic medicine level at the time. Thoinot found nothing because he could not find anything with the research methods of the time. In 1906, forensic doctors were still unfamiliar with blood tests on victims of asphyxiation , and the resulting chemical changes in the blood had not been researched. Neither Thoinot nor Brouardel were aware of the damage that death leaves behind in the liver , brain and heart through a lack of oxygen . Only the advancement of histology brought new possibilities for forensic medicine to recognize strangulations even longer after death.

The Jeanne Weber case also showed that one could not rely solely on forensic medicine, which was then celebrated as infallible. The circumstances surrounding the acts also had to be carefully examined. The question of why all the children suddenly died in the presence of Jeanne Weber, without having been sick beforehand, hardly played a role in both the investigation and the trial. The main focus was on forensic medicine, which was overwhelmed by the current state of research with the case. The Weber case went down in the history of criminology as a warning to exercise extreme caution.

literature

• Jürgen Thorwald : The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971; ISBN 3-426-00160-8
• Michael Newton: The great encyclopedia of serial killers , Stocker, Graz, 2002, ISBN 3-85365-189-5

Web links

Commons : Jeanne Weber  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• French Ogress again arrested , New York Times article, May 5, 1907 (PDF file)
• Woman a child slayer , New York Times article, May 10, 1908 (PDF file)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Michael Newton: The great encyclopedia of serial killers , Stocker, Graz, 2002, ISBN 3-85365-189-5 , p. 418.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Woman thrice held as child slayer , New York Times article, May 17, 1908 (pdf), accessed December 28, 2009.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Jürgen Thorwald: The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971, p. 93.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Entry at crimezzz.net ( Memento of the original from May 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed August 1, 2009. 
5. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald : The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971, p. 70.
6. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971, p. 71.
7. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971, p. 78.
8. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971, p. 79.
9. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971, p. 81.
10. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971, p. 83.
11. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971, p. 87.
12. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971, p. 88.
13. ↑ ^{a b} Jürgen Thorwald: The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971, p. 92.
14. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971, p. 91.
15. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The Century of Detectives, Volume 2. Report of the Dead , Knaur Verlag, 1971, p. 94.

Remarks

1. ↑ The sources viewed do not mention the first names of the mothers of the murdered children; only Madame Pierre Weber, Madame Charles Weber etc. are mentioned.