A serial killer on the loose in wartime Paris
Cowbridge U3A recently welcomed Tony Curtis, Emeritus Professor of Poetry at the University of South Wales, who read extracts from his new novel, Darkness in the City of Light, interspersed with stories of France, in general, and Paris, in particular, during WWII.
Most are familiar with tales of the heroic French Resistance and the retributions meted out to collaborators after the liberation (for example, women being humiliated and having their heads shaved for consorting with Germans), but there are many lesser-known accounts of France under Nazi rule.
There were levels of collaboration, from those just making a living working in a café or shop, to those actively supporting the German occupiers. It was the French police, not the German military, who rounded up Jews for transportation to concentration camps. Many of the Parisian criminal underworld, such as the gangsters Pierre Bonny and Henri Lafont with their confederates, actively assisted the Gestapo by infiltrating, and then exposing, Resistance groups in return for freedom from prosecution for other crimes. Lafont became known as the ‘King of Nazi Paris’.
It was a real character, Dr Marcel Petiot, associated with this murky, lawless Paris scene, who prompted the writing of the novel. Petiot appeared to be a respectable citizen, a doctor and a former town mayor, but he had been an abortionist pre-war. In occupied Paris, he gained the reputation of having organised an efficient escape route to South America, which Jewish families, and also criminals fleeing justice, paid well to use. His clients would arrive at his practice with packed bags and, as they were never seen again, it was clearly a very successful exit pathway.
It was only in March 1944, when police investigated the smell of burning flesh emanating from a house in the Rue Le Sueur that the full horror unfolded. The foul stench came from a roaring fire in a coal stove in the basement, while elsewhere, bodies, body parts, a quicklime pit, suitcases, clothing and other personal possessions were discovered. By then, Petiot had fled the scene and evaded arrest by changing his appearance and using new identification cards. He was finally detained by the police and faced trial in 1946, charged with 26 counts of murder.
Professor Curtis has woven the real-life history of Petiot (known as ‘Doctor Satan’ in France) into his novel, adding fictional flesh to the bare facts.
In court, it emerged that Petiot had told his clients that they needed an injection before travelling abroad. It was a fatal ‘cure for everything’. There was a room in the doctor’s house fitted with a window through which, it would seem, the doctor would watch his victims in their death throes.
After a long trial, the physician was found guilty and sentenced to be guillotined. It was reported that Petiot then shouted out “It was 140, not 26!”
On 25th May 1946, the notorious serial killer was beheaded. His last words were recorded as, “I am a traveller who is taking all of his baggage with him”.
SPM
🌟 This article first appeared in the printed edition of the Glamorgan Star on 16.06.22
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