Marcel Petiot

Marcel Petiot

Marcel André Henri Félix Petiot (born January 17, 1897 in Auxerre , † May 25, 1946 in Paris ) was a French doctor and serial killer .

During the German occupation of France in World War II , he gained the trust of refugees in hiding and offered to take them out of the country. In his house he murdered and robbed the refugees. He was able to prove the killing of at least 27 people. There was a whole family among them.

Earlier life

Marcel Petiot was born on January 17th, 1897 in Auxerre, France. It was later alleged that he had been suspicious of criminal offenses in his childhood and adolescence. However, it is unclear whether these claims were made up for the public to post. In fact, on March 26, 1914, a psychiatrist diagnosed him with mental illness. Marcel Petiot was also expelled from school several times. In July 1915 he finished his training in a special school in Paris.

During the First World War , Marcel Petiot was drafted into the army , into the French infantry , in January 1916 . He was wounded in the Battle of the Aisne , was gas poisoned and had other symptoms of a nervous breakdown . He was sent to various recreation centers where he was arrested for stealing army blankets. He was locked up in Orléans . In a psychiatric hospital in Fleury-les-Aubrais , Marcel Petiot was again diagnosed with various mental illnesses. In June 1918 he was sent back to the front . After shooting himself in the foot three weeks later, he was transferred to another regiment in September . A new clinical diagnosis led to his discharge. As a result, he received a disability pension.

Professional development

After the war, Marcel Petiot took part in a program for shortened training for war veterans , completed his medical studies in eight months and became an intern in a psychiatric hospital in Évreux . He received his medical degree in December 1921.

He then moved to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne and received money for his activities from both patients and state medical support funds. Already at that time he was using addictive narcotics.

Marcel Petiot's first victim could have been Louise Delaveau, the daughter of an elderly patient. He had an affair with her in 1926. Louise Delaveau disappeared in May. Neighbors later reported seeing Marcel Petiot loading a torso into his vehicle. The police first investigated, but dismissed Louise Delaveau's disappearance as likely an ordinary runaway.

In the same year Marcel Petiot ran for mayor of his city. He employed a helper to avoid political debates with his opponents and won the election. When he was in office, Marcel Petiot embezzled city money.

In 1927 he married Georgette Lablais. The next year their son Gerhardt was born.

The local prefect received numerous complaints about Marcel Petiot's thefts and shady deals. In August 1931 he was suspended from his position as mayor and then resigned. The town council also resigned out of sympathy . Five weeks later, on October 18, Marcel Petiot was elected councilor for the Yonne district.

In 1932 Marcel Petiot was charged with stealing electrical energy from Villeneuve-sur-Yonne and lost his seat on the local council. In the meantime, Petiot moved to Paris.

In Paris, Marcel Petiot recruited patients with fictitious credentials and created impressive reputations for his practice at 66 Rue Caumartin . In connection with this, rumors of illegal abortions and excessive prescriptions of addictive substances arose . In 1936 Marcel Petiot was appointed médecin d'état-civil with the right to issue death certificates . In the same year he was briefly admitted for kleptomania , but released the following year.

After the outbreak of the Second World War and the fall of France , Marcel Petiot began to issue false health insurance certificates for French citizens who were called up for forced labor in Germany . He also treated sick workers who had returned.

In 1941 Marcel Petiot bought a house at 21 rue le Sueur .

In July 1942, he was convicted of overprescribing narcotics , despite the disappearance of two addicts who were supposed to testify against him. Marcel Petiot received a fine of 2,400 francs .

According to his own accounts, Marcel Petiot is said to have developed secret weapons that allegedly killed Germans without leaving any forensic traces . He also had high-level meetings with the Allies, was active in resistance movements (e.g. by setting booby traps all over Paris) and worked with a (non-existent) group of Spanish anti-fascists.

The wrong escape network

Marcel Petiot's most lucrative activity was the Fly-Tox false escape route . He gave himself the code name “Dr. Eugène ”and accepted any refugee who could afford his price of 25,000 francs per person. He did not care whether they were Jews , resistance fighters or common criminals. His assistants Raoul Fourrier, Edmond Pintard and René-Gustave Nézondet brought his victims to him. Petiot claimed that he could arrange safe passage to Argentina or any other country in South America via Portugal . He injected his victims with a lethal dose of cyanide under the pretext that the Argentine authorities were demanding vaccinations . Then he robbed them and made the corpses disappear: at first he threw them into the Seine , later he dissolved them in unslaked lime or burned them.

It was Marcel Petiot's mistake not to remain inconspicuous. The Gestapo probably already knew about him. In April 1943, the Gestapo learned everything about the alleged escape route from Marcel Petiot. The Gestapo agent Robert Jodkum forced the prisoner Yvan Dreyfus to use the suspected network. But Yvan Dreyfus simply disappeared. A later informant successfully infiltrated the company and the Gestapo took u. a. Marcel Petiot's assistants Raoul Fourrier, Edmond Pintard and René-Gustave Nézondet. Under torture , they confessed that “Dr. Eugène “Marcel Petiot was. René-Gustave Nézondet was later released. Three other prisoners spent eight months in prison on suspicion of assisting Jewish refugees. Even under torture, they could not identify any other members of the resistance movement as they did not, in fact, know any. The Gestapo released the three men in January 1944.

discovery

On March 6, 1944, neighbors noticed that the smoke from the chimney of the house at 21 Rue le Sueur in Paris was unhealthy. When the neighbors wanted to complain on March 11, they found a note on the door that the resident would be out of the house for a month.

The neighbors informed the police and stated that Marcel Petiot owned the house. When the police called Marcel Petiot, he told them to wait for him. 30 minutes later the police had the fire service call in to clear about which reinforcing fire. The fire brigade entered through a window on the second floor and found bodies and body parts.

When Marcel Petiot arrived, he claimed to be a member of the French resistance and further claimed that the bodies of Germans, traitors and collaborators . With people basically approving of the resistance movement's activities, the police refused to arrest Marcel Petiot and let him go. When the police searched the garage, they found a pit with unslaked lime and human remains in it. The police also found a burlap sack with human remains on the stairs. In total, body parts of at least ten people were found.

Investigations

The famous Paris Police Commissioner Georges-Victor Massu took over the supervision of the investigation. His first problem was finding out whether Marcel Petiot killed for the resistance movement or for the Gestapo. The latter possibility was eliminated when he received a telegram in which the Germans ordered the arrest of Marcel Petiot as a "dangerous maniac".

The police found Marcel Petiot's apartment on Rue Caumartin abandoned. However, there she was able to find large amounts of chloroform , digitalis, and various other poisons, as well as a large amount of common medical remedies.

The Gestapo agent Robert Jodkum told the police that the Gestapo had arrested Marcel Petiot on suspicion of helping Jews escape. The police were also able to track down a man who intended to escape but had changed his mind. He said that Marcel Petiot had offered him a passage to South America for 25,000 francs.

The police succeeded in identifying two victims who were supposed to testify as witnesses in the criminal proceedings against Marcel Petiot for drug abuse in 1942. This was the first time the police had evidence of their suspicion that the witnesses had been murdered.

Marcel Petiot's brother Maurice confessed that he had delivered unslaked lime to his brother's house on behalf of Marcel Petiot. Maurice was charged with conspiracy to murder and jailed. His wife Georgette Petiot was also arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting. The same fate befell Marcel Petiot's assistants René-Gustave Nézondet, Porchon and Albert and Simone Neuhausen, who confessed to having helped remove the suitcases.

On June 6, 1944, the police had to interrupt the investigation when the Allied invasion of Normandy began.

Escape and capture

Petiot hid with friends for seven months. He claimed that the Gestapo was looking for him because he had killed Germans and informants. He was probably hiding with one of his patients, Georges Redouté. Petiot grew a beard and took various aliases.

When the French resistance and the Paris police rose against the German troops in Paris, Marcel Petiot took the name "Henri Valeri" and joined the Forces françaises de l'intérieur , FFI. He became a captain and took charge of counter-espionage and interrogation of the prisoners.

When the Resistance newspaper published an article on Petiot, his defense attorney received a letter from a drug abuse criminal case in 1942 in which a refugee allegedly being looked after by Petiot alleged that the allegations published were lies. This convinced the police that Petiot was still in Paris. The search began again. Among the people wanted was a "Henri Valeri". Petiot was finally recognized and arrested on October 31st at a Paris metro station. A pistol, 31,700 francs and 50 different identification documents were found on him.

Trial and conviction

Marcel Petiot was in the death row prison La Santé laid. He still claimed to be innocent and only killed enemies of France. He found the bodies in his house at 21 Rue le Sueur in February 1944 and assumed that they were collaborators who had been killed by members of his "network".

The police found out that Marcel Petiot had no connection to the known resistance groups. Some of the groups identified by Marcel Petiot never existed.

The prosecutor charged Marcel Petiot with at least 27 murders out of greed. The amount of his booty was estimated at 200 million francs.

Marcel Petiot came to court on March 19, 1946 and was charged with 135 criminal offenses. His defense attorney, René Floriot , competed against a working group made up of prosecutors and twelve civil lawyers. The lawyers were hired by the relatives of Marcel Petiot's victims. Marcel Petiot mocked the prosecutors, claiming that the victims were collaborators, Germans or double agents and that disappeared people in South America were alive under new names. He said he killed only nineteen of the 27 victims found in his home. They were part of the 63 "enemies" killed. His defender René Floriot tried to portray Marcel Petiot as a hero of the resistance movement. But the judges and jury were unimpressed. Marcel Petiot was sentenced to death on April 4, 1946 for 27 murders .

On May 25, 1946 at 5:06 a.m., Marcel Petiot was executed in Paris by executioner Jules-Henri Desfourneaux . For the first time since April 30, 1944, the guillotine was used again in Paris . The preparation for the execution dragged on for a few days because there were problems with the guillotine release mechanism.

Movie

The case of serial killer Marcel Petiot from World War II has been the subject of several film adaptations. The Spaniard José Luis Madrid filmed the true story in 1973 under the title Los Crímenes de Petiot . The French production Docteur Petiot by Christian de Chalonge was more successful in 1990 , and the lead actor Michel Serrault earned a César nomination.

Fiction

Ulrich Tukur dealt with Petiot's crimes in his first novel The Origin of the World (2019).

literature

• John Grombach: The Great Liquidator. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1980.
• David King: The Paris Serial Killer - The True Story of Dr. Petiot, who terrified occupied France . Hannibal Crime, Höfen 2013, ISBN 978-3-85445-435-9 (Original edition: Death In The City Of Light: The Serial Killer Of Nazi-Occupied Paris )
• Thomas Maeder: The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1980.
• Thomas Maeder: The incredible crimes of Dr. Petiot. Berlin: Semele Verlag, 2006.
• Ronald Seth: Petiot: Victim of Chance. London: Hutchinson, 1963.
• James Siegel: Epitaph (German title Lost ), New York: Warner Books, 2001

German-language literature

• Hans Pfeiffer : The compulsion to series - serial killers without a mask , Militzke Verlag, OA (1996), ISBN 3-86189-729-6
• RA Stemmle: Journey of no return. Non-stop library: Berlin-Grunewald (Copyright 1951 Herbig Verlagbuchhandlung: Berlin-Grunewald)

Web links

Commons : Marcel Petiot  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• The hunt for "Dr. Satan “ Spiegel-Online
• All about Dr. Marcel Petiot, by Michael Newton (English)
• A conversation with Thomas Maeder about his book “The incredible crimes of Dr. Petiot "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ulrich Tukur: The origin of the world. Frankfurt a. M. 2019. p. 297.