The Disturbing Case of Dr. Petiot Who Murdered 26 People in Paris 1944 – ht
On the evening of March 11th, 1944 in Nazi-occupied Paris, a woman named Madame Masset told her husband she could not take it anymore. The smell had become unbearable. For days, the chimney of the townhouse across the street, number 21 Rue LeSueur in the fashionable 16th arrondissement, not far from the Arc de Triomphe, had been belching irregular discharges of thick, oily, black smoke.
Neighbors described the stench as burning rubber mixed with charred caramel and scorched hair. It penetrated furniture, drapes, and rugs. It clung to the air and would not leave. Madame Masset called the police. Two officers arrived on bicycles. They knocked on the door of number 21. No answer. The building was locked.
A neighbor provided a telephone number for the owner. A voice answered and promised to arrive within 15 minutes [music] with a key. And after 30 minutes of waiting, the police gave up and called the fire department, fearing a chimney fire that could spread to adjacent buildings. Firemen broke in through a second-story window.
Several minutes later, they reemerged, ashen-faced. The fire chief turned to the two policemen and said, “Gentlemen, come and have a look. I believe you have your work cut out for you.” The officers descended into the basement. There, in the glow of two roaring coal stoves, they found what no routine patrol could have prepared them for.
The iron door of one stove was ajar. Inside were human hands, feet, arms, and legs, bodies that had been chopped into pieces and shoveled into a makeshift crematorium. As their eyes adjusted to the dim light, they saw stacks of human remains all around the room. Heads, halves of torsos, and scalps with hair still attached. There was very little blood.
The body parts appeared dried out. A massive heap of gray ash lay on the floor. In the courtyard behind the house, they found a pit partially filled with quicklime. More body parts were buried in the powder at varying stages of decomposition. In a canvas bag, still more remains. Throughout the property, scattered like the debris of a hundred interrupted lives, were 72 suitcases and 655 kg [music] of personal belongings.
1,760 pieces of clothing, including 21 woolen coats, 90 dresses, 120 skirts, 26 handbags, 28 men’s suits, 33 ties, 57 pairs of socks, 43 pairs of shoes, and one pair of children’s pajamas belonging to a boy named René Neller, who had disappeared along with his parents. Enough body parts were found that night to account for at least 10 victims, and there would be more.
And when veteran police inspector Commissaire Georges Victor Massu arrived to survey the scene, he discovered something else. A small outbuilding in the courtyard that housed a private doctor’s office, exceedingly clean and well-kept. The front room was unremarkable. A desk, armchairs, magazines, bookshelves.
But in the back was a triangular room about the size of a walk-in wardrobe. It contained a bare lightbulb, a metal cot, and large iron hooks on the walls. On one wall was a handsome door that appeared to be an exit, but it was false, plastered to a thick concrete wall. A door to nowhere. In the opposite wall, a magnifying peephole had been embedded, oriented to observe the inside of the room.
And the door that led into this chamber was missing its inside handle. It could only be opened from the outside. And this was a killing room. A room where a person could be locked in, observed through a peephole, and left to die. The owner of this house, the man whose telephone number the neighbors had called, the man who had promised to arrive in 15 minutes and never came, was a physician, a general practitioner, a former mayor, a man with piercing black eyes and an odd habit of rubbing his hands together.
His name was Dr. Marcel Petiot. The press would call him Docteur Satan. He had murdered at least 26 people, perhaps 60, perhaps more. Almost all of them were Jews fleeing the Holocaust who had paid him to [music] save their lives. Welcome to the Crimson Files. If you are new here, and this is a place where we do not look away from the darkest chapters of the past, because understanding them is the only way to ensure they are never repeated.
Subscribe, turn on notifications, and before we begin, tell me in the comments, where in the world are you listening from tonight? Marcel André Henri Félix Petiot was born on January 17th, 1897 in Auxerre in the Yonne department of north-central France. Even as a teenager, something was wrong. He robbed a postbox and was charged with theft and damage to public property.
A psychiatric evaluation resulted in the charges being dismissed. The court determined he was mentally ill. A second psychiatrist reaffirmed the diagnosis in March 1914. After being expelled from school repeatedly, he finished his education at a special academy in Paris in July 1915. And he volunteered for the French army in January 1916 and was sent to the front in World War I.
He was wounded and gassed at the Second Battle of the Aisne. He was arrested for stealing army blankets, morphine, wallets, and personal belongings from other soldiers. He was diagnosed with mental illness again. Returned to the front, allegedly injured his own foot with a grenade to get removed from duty. Transferred, diagnosed again, discharged with a disability pension.
After the war, Petiot entered an accelerated education program for veterans, completed medical school in 8 months, and received his medical degree in December 1921. He set up a practice in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, a small town south of Paris, and within months had built a reputation as a dedicated physician, a doctor who would see anyone, treat anyone.
He never turned away a patient who could not pay. He was beloved. [music] He was also stealing from his patients’ homes during house calls. He was performing illegal abortions. He was supplying narcotics to addicts and using them himself. And in 1926, a woman named Louise Delaveau, the daughter of an elderly patient with [music] whom Petiot was having an affair, disappeared.
Neighbors later told police they had seen Petiot loading [music] a trunk into his car. The case was dismissed. She was listed as a runaway. That same year, Petiot ran for mayor of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. He hired someone to disrupt a debate with his political opponent. He won. As mayor, he embezzled town funds.
He was eventually suspended, then resigned, then was elected to the Yonne departmental council, >> [music] >> then lost that seat when he was caught stealing electricity from the village by rewiring his own meter. He married Georgette Le Blay in 1927, the daughter of a wealthy landowner. And their son, Gerhard, was born in April 1928.
By 1933, Petiot had relocated to Paris, where he established a practice at 66 Rue de Courmartine in the Opera district. He advertised miraculous cures. He treated venereal diseases, addicts, anyone the respectable physicians would not see. His patient list grew. His income grew. He acquired real estate across Paris and Auxerre.
In 1936, he was caught shoplifting a book on electricity from a bookshop and got into a fistfight with the store clerk. He was arrested and ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation. The psychiatrist diagnosed mild manic-depressive psychosis and recommended institutionalization. Yet, after 18 days in a private clinic, Petiot was declared lucid and released.
A review panel noted he had unbalanced tendencies, but that these did not rise to the legal definition of insanity. He returned to his practice. He continued to thrive. And then the Germans came. In June 1940, the German Wehrmacht marched into Paris. Millions of Parisians had already fled. The city went dark.
Blackout curtains, unlit street lamps, a Nazi-imposed curfew that kept the population indoors at night. Gasoline was rationed to the point of near extinction for civilians. Cars vanished from the streets. The only vehicles that moved belonged to the Germans and their collaborators. For the Jewish population of Paris, the occupation was not merely oppressive.
It was lethal. Beginning in 1941, Jews were required to register with authorities. And they were forced to wear yellow stars. Their businesses were confiscated. Their bank accounts were frozen. And beginning in July 1942, mass roundups began. French police, under orders from the Vichy government, arrested more than 13,000 Jewish men, women, and children in a single operation.
The Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup. And held them in a cycling stadium before deporting them to Auschwitz. Most never returned. In this atmosphere of terror, rumors began to circulate about an underground escape network operated by a mysterious figure known only as Dr. Eugène. This man, it was said, was a member of the French Resistance.
He could smuggle Jews and other persecuted people out of occupied France. Through Portugal to Argentina or elsewhere in South America. The fee was steep. 25,000 francs per person. Sometimes as much as 200,000 francs. Depending on what the escapee could afford. But for a Jewish family facing deportation to the death camps, any price was worth paying.
Dr. Eugène was Marcel Petiot. The operation was meticulous in its cruelty. Three accomplices. Raoul Fourier. A hairdresser who ran a beauty parlor at 25 Rue de Maturin. Edmond Pintard. And René Gustave Nizonde. Served as recruiters. They combed Paris for Jews. Resistance fighters, criminals, anyone desperate to leave France and willing to pay.
When a candidate was identified, they were directed to the beauty parlor for a meeting with Dr. Eugène. At the meeting. >> [music] >> Dr. Eugène, tall, slender, dark-haired with those striking black [music] eyes. Laid out the terms. The escapee must settle all affairs in France. Say goodbye to loved ones.
Produce 10 passport-sized photographs for forged travel documents. And leave behind all identifying papers. Nothing with a name. No monogrammed clothing or luggage. Gather all cash and valuables. Hide them in clothing and suitcases. And arrive at the beauty parlor on the designated date. Ready to leave forever. When the day came, Petiot would escort the escapee from the beauty parlor to the townhouse at 21 Rue Le Sueur.
There in the clean, well-kept doctor’s office in the courtyard. He would explain that Argentine immigration officials required travelers to be inoculated against disease [music] before entry. He would prepare a syringe. The injection was not a vaccine. It was cyanide. The victim would collapse. Some may have been led first into the triangular room with the false door and the peephole. Locked inside.
Watched as they struggled. He left to die from the poison or from whatever other means Petiot had employed. The forensic evidence was never entirely clear on this point. What is clear is that after death. Petiot. A man with medical training. And what the forensic examiner described as. >> [music] >> Great and intimate knowledge of human anatomy.
Dismembered the bodies. He removed the entrails. He detached the faces and scalps. He scraped away the fingerprints. He submerged the parts in quicklime to desiccate them. Then burned them in the coal stoves. Earlier victims had simply been dumped in the Seine. He then emptied the victim’s suitcases. Took the cash. Took the jewelry.
Took the railway shares, the gold, the furs. Kept the clothing. 90 dresses, 28 men’s suits, 43 pairs of shoes. Kept the suitcases. Kept everything. You and all future communication between the escapees and their loved ones still in France was to be conducted through Dr. Eugène. For the safety of all involved. When families wrote to ask how their husband, mother, son, or daughter was doing in South America, Petiot could respond with reassurances.
Or simply not respond at all. In wartime, silence was normal. >> [music] >> Disappearances were normal. People vanished every day. The chaos of the occupation was the perfect camouflage. The escape network eventually attracted the attention of the French Gestapo. The Carlingue. A collaborationist agency staffed by French criminals and corrupt officials.
Operating under Nazi direction. The Gestapo learned that a pipeline was smuggling wanted persons out of France and assumed it was a resistance operation. They decided to infiltrate it. In May 1943. An Gestapo agent Robert Yoedke, chief of the Jewish Affairs Department, forced a Jewish prisoner named Yvonne Dreyfus to approach the network as a mole.
Dreyfus was to make contact with Dr. Eugène. Gain his trust. And lead the Gestapo back to the organization’s leadership. Dreyfus met Dr. Eugène at the beauty parlor. Petiot escorted him to the hideout. Along the way, Dreyfus signaled to the doctor that they were being followed. His own plan was to shake the Gestapo tail and actually use the escape network.
Petiot took the hint and evaded the surveillance. Yvonne Dreyfus was never seen again. He had escaped the Gestapo only to walk into the hands of something worse. The Gestapo tried again. A second informant successfully infiltrated the operation and led agents to the beauty parlor. On May 21st, 1943. Two Gestapo officers raided the premises and arrested Fourier, [music] Pintard, and Nizonde.
Under torture on the fourth floor of Gestapo headquarters, Fourier gave up a name. Dr. Marcel Petiot of 66 Rue de Comartin. Petiot was arrested. He was tortured for weeks. Submerged in ice water. Holes drilled in his teeth. His head placed in a vise. He insisted he was merely a low-level scout for the network. Not its leader.
The Gestapo could not break him. They threw him in prison. Months later, his brother Maurice paid a fee and Petiot was released. His three accomplices spent eight months in prison suspected of helping Jews escape. Even under torture, they could not identify other resistance members than none because there were none.
The escape network was not a resistance operation. It was a murder factory operated by one man. Yet for nearly a year after his release by the Gestapo. Petiot continued operating. More victims arrived at the beauty parlor. More suitcases piled up at 21 Rue Le Sueur. More bodies went into the quicklime and the coal stoves.
Then came the night of March 11th, 1944 and the complaint about the smoke. When Commissaire Massu arrived at the townhouse, the full scale of the operation became apparent. [music] The basement crematorium. The quicklime pit. The triangular killing room. The 72 suitcases. The 1,760 pieces of clothing.
The pair of children’s pajamas. Petiot had received the telephone call from the neighbor about the chimney fire. He had promised to come with a key. He never arrived. By the time police entered the house, Petiot had vanished. Over the following days, the investigation expanded. You know, at the home of an associate named Albert Neuhausen, a shopkeeper in Auxerre.
Police found approximately 60 more suitcases. The same mismatched luggage a neighbor had seen being loaded into a rare petroleum-powered freight truck at the townhouse shortly before the discovery. Petiot’s wife, Georgette, was arrested at a train station in Auxerre clutching a suitcase. His brother Maurice surrendered himself.
The story became a national and international sensation. Nazi-controlled media seized on it as a distraction from the deteriorating war effort. >> [music] >> Christening Petiot the greatest murderer of history. Dr. Satan. The Butcher of Paris. And modern Bluebeard. Wanted posters bearing his photograph were plastered across the city.
Petiot was nowhere to be found. For 7 months. The Marcel Petiot disappeared from the face of the earth. He grew a thick beard. He adopted aliases. He moved between the homes of friends and patients. And then in September 1944, with Paris now liberated from German occupation. He did something astonishing. He enlisted in the French Forces of the Interior, the FFI, under the name Henri Valérie.
He was given the rank of captain. He was placed in charge of counterespionage and prisoner interrogations. The most wanted man in France had joined the very organization that was hunting for him. He was interviewing suspects. He was writing reports. He was quite possibly among the men drafted to search for himself.
It was a newspaper article that undid him. In September 1944, and the paper Resistance published a piece titled “Petiot, Soldier of the Reich”, accusing the doctor of collaborating with the Nazis. The article was a fabrication, deliberately planted by investigators who guessed correctly that Petiot’s ego would not allow such slanders to go unanswered.
Weeks later, a letter to the editor arrived at the newspaper, handwritten, defending Dr. Petiot as a patriot and resistance hero. The letter gave [music] police two crucial pieces of information. Petiot was still in Paris, and they now had a fresh handwriting sample. The FFI was ordered to collect handwriting specimens from all doctors and medics in their ranks.
One sample matched Petiot’s handwriting. It belonged to Captain Henri Valéry, a medical officer stationed at the Rue Le Sueur On the morning of October 31st, 1944, in the police captain and two FFI officers waited on the platform of the Saint-Mandé-Tourelle Metro station. Captain Valéry entered bearded and in uniform, oblivious to their presence.
The police captain approached and stared into those piercing black eyes. “You are caught, Petiot. Unless you deny who you are, I arrest you in the name of the law.” Petiot neither denied nor resisted. Among his possessions were a pistol, 31,700 francs, and 50 sets of forged identity documents. The trial of Marcel Petiot opened on March 19th, 1946 at the Palais de Justice in Paris.
He faced 135 criminal charges, including 27 counts of murder. The prosecution was led by a team of state prosecutors and 12 civil lawyers hired by the families of identified victims. [music] The defense was conducted by René Floriot, one of the most celebrated criminal attorneys in France. The courtroom was packed.
The trial was a spectacle, and Petiot made sure of it. His defense was brazen and unwavering. He was a resistance hero. Every person he had killed was an enemy of France, Germans, collaborators, informers, traitors. He claimed to have killed 63 enemies in total during the occupation, all in service to his country. He taunted the prosecutors.
He mocked the judges. He challenged individual charges with theatrical contempt, claiming that various identified victims had been double agents, or were alive and well in South America under new names. When confronted with the suitcases, the clothing, the children’s pajamas, he offered explanations that ranged from implausible to absurd.
Floriot attempted to portray his client as a patriot wrongly accused, a man whose wartime heroism was being twisted into criminality by an ungrateful state. But the judges and jurors were not impressed. Police had established that Petiot had no verified connections to any major resistance organization. The groups he named either did not exist or could not confirm his membership.
The secret weapon he claimed to have invented for the resistance was never produced. His supposed resistance contacts were conveniently dead. The prosecution painted a different picture, a lifelong criminal and pathological liar who had exploited the most terrified and vulnerable people in occupied France, Jews who had already lost their businesses, their homes, their civil rights, and who faced deportation to the death camps, and people who came to him with their last savings sewn into their clothing, their children in their arms,
their photographs in their pockets, begging for a way out. And he had injected them with cyanide, dismembered them, burned them, and kept their shoes. The prosecutors estimated his total gains at as much as 200 million francs. The jury convicted Petiot of 26 counts of murder. He was sentenced to death. Marcel Petiot was held in La Santé prison in Paris to await execution.
He remained defiant to the end, insisting on his innocence, insisting he was a patriot, insisting that history would vindicate him. On the morning of May 25th, 1946, after a brief delay caused by a mechanical problem with the guillotine’s release mechanism, Marcel Petiot was led to the scaffold. He was 49 years old.
He is reported to have remained calm, even composed. He did not confess. He did not recant. He did not ask for mercy. The blade fell. He was buried [music] at Ivry Cemetery in Paris. His son, Gerhard, lived until September 22nd, 2011, dying at the age of 83. A man who spent his entire adult life carrying his father’s name.
There is an image from the investigation that I cannot stop thinking about. When police cataloged the belongings found at 21 Rue Le Sueur, they recorded everything. 72 suitcases, 21 woolen coats, 90 dresses, 120 skirts, 43 pairs of shoes, and one pair of children’s pajamas, and small, folded, belonging to a boy named René Neller, who had arrived at the townhouse with his parents, carrying whatever he had been told to pack, I trusting that the doctor who greeted [music] them was going to take them somewhere safe.
René Keneller did not make it to Argentina. His parents did not make it to Argentina. No one made it to Argentina. There was no escape network. There was no passage through Portugal. There were no forged documents waiting at the other end. There was a triangular room with a false door, a peephole, and no handle on the inside.
Marcel Petiot understood something fundamental about the occupation, that the Holocaust did not merely kill people. It first made them desperate. It stripped them of every protection, every recourse, every option, until they would hand their savings to a stranger and follow him into a basement because the alternative was a cattle car to Auschwitz.
Petiot did not create that desperation. The Nazis did. But he fed on it, and he built a machine to harvest it. He turned the terror of genocide into a business model, and he ran that business with the calm efficiency of a man who had been stealing from people his entire life. The neighbors on Rue Le Sueur heard screams coming from the townhouse.
They assumed it was the Gestapo torturing prisoners. They did nothing. In occupied Paris, you did not ask questions about screams. You closed your curtains and minded your own business. The darkness of the occupation made Petiot possible, not just because it provided him with victims, [music] but because it taught everyone around him not to look.
26 convictions, perhaps 60 dead, perhaps more. We will never know the true number because Petiot destroyed the evidence with the same thoroughness he applied to the bodies, burning them down to ash, and scraping away their fingerprints, dissolving their flesh in quicklime until they were anonymous, until they were no one. But they were not no one.
They had names. Joachim Guschinov, Jean-Marie Van Bever, Martha Kite, Rachel Marks, Ludvika Hollander, Ludwig Krusberg, the Neller family, when father, mother, and little René with his pajamas. They came to a doctor because they wanted to live, and he killed them [music] because they had something he wanted. The house at 21 Rue Le Sueur still stands. Thank you for being here.
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