Marcel Chevalier

Marcel Charles Chevalier (born February 28, 1921 in Montrouge ; † October 8, 2008 in Vendôme ) served as the last executioner in France from October 1, 1976 to October 9, 1981 .

Chevalier married the niece of André Obrecht in 1948 , who was assistant executioner at the time and in 1951 came to the office of "exécuteur en chef des arrêts criminels". The holder of this office, introduced in 1871, had to carry out all beheadings in France together with five assistants, three of whom each participated in an execution . Obrecht appointed Marcel Chevalier to be his assistant in 1958. The first execution he participated in was on November 4, 1958 in Paris against René Delville, the murderer of an old couple. As an assistant he took part in 40 executions, the most recent being the beheading of Christian Ranucci on July 28, 1976.

In France, it has long been a tradition that the executioner's office was passed on from one generation to the next within a family. Obrecht, who had no children himself, submitted his resignation in September 1976 for reasons of age and proposed Chevalier as his successor. As exécuteur en chef, Marcel Chevalier beheaded only two other convicts with the guillotine : Jerôme Carrein on June 23, 1977 in Douai for attempted rape and murder of a little girl and Hamida Djandoubi on September 10, 1977 in the prison Les Baumettes ( Marseille ) for kidnapping, Torture and murder of his ex-girlfriend. In both executions Chevalier's son Éric Chevalier (* 1953) worked as an assistant with a view to a possible future successor. However, in the last four years of the existence of the death penalty in French law , no death sentence has been carried out. Other assistant executioners of the two executions in 1977 were René Chény and Roger Deshaes, who had worked with Obrecht since 1960.

As an executioner, Chevalier had no official status, but was a freelancer in a kind of service contract with the Ministry of Justice. Regardless of the number of executions, he received a basic monthly allowance of 3,650 francs , in addition to which he was paid an additional fee of 6,000 francs for each execution. Chevalier's main job was as a printer . Like all executioners in the city of Paris and since 1871 the officiating executioners in France, he also had the euphemistic nickname "Monsieur de Paris".

When the law initiated by President François Mitterrand to abolish the death penalty came into force on October 10, 1981 , the office of exécuteur en chef des arrêts criminels became obsolete and Chevalier's term of office ended without a successor.

Web links

• Illustrated biography of Marcel Chevalier on site.voila.fr (French)

predecessor	Office	successor
André Obrecht	Executioner of France 1976–1981	(Abolition of the death penalty on October 10, 1981)