Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris

by David King

  Sartre, Camus, Beauvoir, and the literary world of the Left Bank were gearing up for a novel event: a new play scheduled to debut on March 19, 1944. The author was Pablo Picasso. The Nazis had refused to allow him to exhibit his paintings in Paris, but they had said nothing about plays.

  AFTER leaving Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, Massu and his colleagues reached Auxerre on Monday, March 13, about one o’clock in the afternoon. Along the way, they had stopped by a roadside restaurant, where they encountered a scarcity of food options and jokingly complained about the difficulty, as policemen, of cashing their ration tickets on the black market.

  After finishing their coffee, or “roasted barley,” the officers visited the police station, informing the local authorities of the objectives of their mission and obtaining reinforcements to watch railway stations and quays for possible escape. Both Dr. Petiot and Madame Petiot were officially “in flight.”

  The rue des Lombards address listed on the note attached to the door at rue Le Sueur belonged to Marcel Petiot’s younger brother, Maurice, who owned a number of properties. He lived, however, in an apartment above his electronics shop on 56 rue du Pont with his wife and two kids, thirteen-year-old Ghylaine and eight-year-old Daniel. A third minor was staying in there: Marcel and Georgette’s son, Gérard, who was studying at the nearby sixteenth-century school, Lycée Jacques Amyot.

  The home address was the one that police discovered had first been scribbled on the note and then erased. The detectives were eager to visit, but they first checked out the owner, Maurice Petiot, a thirty-seven-year-old electrician by trade who, in his photograph, looked like a taller, darker, and more handsome version of his older brother. Maurice had struggled financially for a number of years and had declared bankruptcy. More recently, his business had improved dramatically and he had begun investing in properties in the region.

  When police arrived at his shop, its shelves stocked with a range of radio and electronic goods in high demand due to the popularity of the BBC and Radio Berlin, Maurice Petiot was not there. His wife, the thirty-one-year-old Marie Angèle Le Guyader Petiot, or Monique, received the officers cordially. She allowed them to look around the premises without a permit. She also agreed, when asked, to escort the detectives three blocks away, to the property at 18 rue des Lombards.

  What Massu and his team found was a small château. Built atop a hill, with a gate and metal grilles over the windows, the estate had a labyrinthine cellar with two long corridors that connected into a series of Roman catacombs. How could Maurice Petiot afford this property? Clearly the profits from selling radio and electronics equipment would not have sufficed. Monique explained that the building had been purchased by her father-in-law, Felix Petiot, in the name of her son Daniel.

  No one lived at the estate, Monique Petiot said. Indeed, despite its grand exterior, the inside was dusty and untidy, with broken panels and furniture sometimes piled in heaps in the corners, strangely reminiscent of rue Le Sueur. Upstairs, the state of disuse also resembled the Paris town house. There was, as Pierre Malo of Le Matin would later describe it, “the most extraordinary collection of works of art and garbage that it is possible to imagine.” The property, however, did not seem as uninhabited as Monique Petiot claimed.

  In a small room on the ground floor near the staircase was a bed with the covers pulled back and the sheets ruffled. Massu asked who had slept there. Was it Marcel or Georgette Petiot? Monique shook her head, saying only that the guest was a family friend, a forty-seven-year-old businessman named Albert Neuhausen, who lived in Courson-les-Carrières, a small town about ten miles south. She had forgotten to mention that.

  The inspectors made the short drive to verify the claim. Neuhausen, also in the electronics business, admitted that he knew Maurice and Monique Petiot well. Yes, he had recently stayed with them, he said, as he often did when he took the train to Paris.

  Neuhausen had something else to tell the detectives. Although he did not know Dr. Petiot well and certainly had no information on his whereabouts, Neuhausen admitted seeing the murder suspect on the morning of Saturday, March 11. Neuhausen had been in Paris on business, and as a favor for Monique, he had stopped by Petiot’s apartment on rue Caumartin about eleven o’clock to fetch a pair of shoes for Gérard.

  “We spoke of things without importance,” Neuhausen said. “The doctor gave me the shoes for his son and a quarter of an hour later, I left.” He took the 5:20 train at Gare de Lyon, arriving at Auxerre at 9:40, and while he had intended to bike home, it was raining and he decided to stay the night at rue des Lombards, just as Monique said. He told detectives that this was all he knew about the matter.

  ON Tuesday, March 14, an investigator spotted an attractive woman in a black skirt and a black astrakhan coat, carrying an expensive yellow leather suitcase. She was standing on the platform waiting for a train at the Auxerre station. Slim and petite, she had deep brown eyes and black shoulder-length hair with a few locks falling onto her forehead. She was just four months shy of her fortieth birthday, though she looked much younger. When the policeman approached, the woman did not deny her identity. “I have done nothing wrong,” Georgette Petiot protested, before collapsing on the platform. Two gendarmes carried her out of the station. One young man assisted the police, crying all the while. This was her son, Gérard.

  Massu, informed of the arrest, returned at once to the Auxerre police station. Georgette was taken to his car. Already in the vehicle was her brother-in-law Maurice, who had been apprehended the previous night when he returned home from the nearby villages of Cheney and Joigny. Georgette rested her head on his shoulder. Her “short sobs” broke up the otherwise silent ride back to Paris.

  7.

  “BESIDE A MONSTER”

  HELP us FIND YOUR HUSBAND. WE’LL HELP YOU ESTABLISH THE TRUTH.

  —Commissaire Massu to Georgette Petiot

  NEWS of the arrests spread quickly, and when Massu’s car approached his office on the Quai des Orfèvres, a crowd of reporters and photographers was already waiting. Commissaire Massu helped Georgette and Maurice Petiot out of the car, trying to shield them from the cameras popping and flashing in a disorienting barrage of blue magnesium light.

  Massu was particular about how he wanted to question suspects. For one thing, he preferred to interrogate them alone, or in the company of a deputy who remained silent. A room full of police officers and observers posed far too many problems. Countless interrogations, Massu knew, had been derailed by an untimely interruption from an aggressive yet inexperienced officer.

  Above all, Massu believed in dealing mainly in hard evidence and rational deductions grounded in fact. He would first attempt to gain an early admission, however insignificant, that would penetrate the defenses a suspect had almost invariably constructed. Then he would proceed as soon as possible to the moment that he called “the intrusion of an elephant into a porcelain shop”—that is, the awkward question, based on evidence and the suspect’s previous admissions, that simply could not be parried without making a major contradiction or otherwise losing credibility.

  The commissaire showed Georgette Petiot to her seat in his office and asked her if she would like a drink, which she refused. Then, as customary, Massu stalled a few minutes before launching into his questions. He tidied the papers on his desk, walked to the window, and gazed out onto the Pont Neuf. He saw cyclists crossing the bridge, some of the two million bicycles in Paris, the new ones then selling for almost as much as an automobile had only five years before. Massu wondered if Marcel Petiot had also biked across the bridge, towing who knows what in his cart.

  Massu turned back to face the suspect’s wife. “Well, Madame Petiot, what do you know? No need to rush, we have a lot of time. Begin where you would like.”

  “I must say that I was unaware of his business,” Georgette Petiot said, referring to her husband. She sat with her elbows on his desk, staring aimlessly ahead. In her right hand was a small handkerchief. Speaking in a low, barely audible voice, P
etiot explained that she knew that her husband had purchased a property at 21 rue Le Sueur two or three years before (it was three years). Massu, settling into a chair near her, noted the beads of sweat on her forehead. He asked if she was warm and wanted to take off her coat. She did, revealing a tight red-and-white checkered sweater.

  She had only been to rue Le Sueur one time, about two years before, Georgette Petiot said, but she had not gone inside. She had never liked the house. It was too large and expensive, costing nearly half a million francs. Moreover, it would mean that her husband would be home even less. Still, despite her misgivings, she had not protested at the purchase of the property because, as she put it, her husband attracted a large clientele at his medical practice and made a lot of money.

  As for the renovations to the property, Georgette knew that Dr. Petiot was skilled enough to perform much of the interior work himself, such as the painting, the installations, and the decorations. She then bragged about his talent at sculpture, particularly working in wood, but did not provide any specific information about possible renovations to rue Le Sueur.

  Massu asked about her husband’s bicycle and trailer. Georgette Petiot claimed not to remember exactly when he bought them, though she believed that they had been acquired together. She knew that he used them when he went to the auction houses, where he often indulged his hobby of purchasing “old books and antiquities.” Above all, in response to Massu’s probing, Georgette defended her husband as a “very gentle man” who took care of his family. His patients adored him. And if they were poor, or unable to pay his medical fees, she added, Petiot would not take a sou.

  There was a problem about eight years ago, Georgette acknowledged. Her husband had ended up in a mental institution because, she told Massu, of “some troubles he experienced following the accidental death of one of his clients.” Georgette was referring to the thirty-year-old woman Raymonde Hanss, who had lost consciousness after Dr. Petiot treated an abscess in one of her teeth. Hanss’s mother blamed the physician for her death, but an investigation was never made with any thoroughness.

  WHEN Massu asked about the events of March 11, 1944, Georgette said that her husband had spent the morning making house calls. They had eaten lunch together at the apartment and then, about three or three thirty, he left again “without telling me where he was going.” Marcel refused to keep her updated on his activities, she said, and this was her one reproach with their marriage.

  About six that evening, Petiot returned home and received a client who had been waiting for a consultation. One hour and a half later, about seven thirty p.m., as she and her husband dined together, they were interrupted by the telephone call from the police, informing them of the chimney fire. As Massu called for specifics about her and her husband’s response immediately afterward, he observed that his questions disturbed Georgette. She sank into the chair and, raising her hand to her eyes, began to cry. Massu later said that he thought she would crack at any moment.

  “Pull yourself together. We do not want anything from you. We only want to know the truth. What did your husband say?”

  “I heard the word ‘police.’ Marcel immediately grabbed his hat and left.”

  “Did he not say where he was going?”

  “No, he didn’t give me an explanation.”

  “Did he often leave without saying where he was going?”

  “Sometimes. I never questioned him.”

  Georgette would only admit to following him down the stairs to see which direction he went, later adding that she had accompanied him around the corner onto rue Saint-Lazare. She never said anything about their conversation along the way.

  When Massu asked her what she did after her husband’s departure, Georgette Petiot said that she had “waited all night in an armchair.” Did she always do that whenever Dr. Petiot left without giving any information on his destination? No, that night was different. “It was the word ‘police’ that disturbed me.”

  “But this word should not have disturbed you since you know your husband is incapable, as you say, of doing an evil deed. Was there something else that bothered you?”

  “You never know, these days, what is going to happen to a man who has business with the police.”

  Georgette Petiot was right. The Nazi Occupation had vastly complicated criminal investigations, tarnishing respect for law and the police who enforced it. Massu later said that he admired her for her candid remark, which was uttered at no small risk to herself. He pressed on, however, with questions about her actions immediately following the discovered remains at the town house.

  “That morning, did you think of going to rue Le Sueur to find your husband?”

  “No, I decided to return to Auxerre,” she said, eager to be with her son, who then studied in that town and lived with her husband’s brother Maurice. She went to Gare de Lyon, looking for the seven or eight o’clock train, but learned that there were none leaving until Monday evening. “I returned to the neighborhood of rue Caumartin, but without returning to my apartment.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know.… A feeling told me that there was danger there for us.”

  “Was it not rather the sight of two policemen at the door that made you turn back?”

  “I do not know. Yes perhaps.” She also said that she had hoped, despite everything, to find her husband somewhere on the street.

  Georgette Petiot explained that she went to church, attending several masses, and then spent the rest of the afternoon at the busy train station Gare Saint-Lazare. She was not waiting for anyone, she told the commissaire, and she had not gone there to avoid being recognized. “I was afraid, and I felt more security in the middle of the crowd.”

  Asked what exactly she feared, Petiot said that the evening newspapers had appeared at the train station kiosk about six o’clock, and she had panicked when she saw her name on the front page of Paris-Soir. That night, she went to one of her husband’s properties, at 52 rue de Reuilly, thinking that he might come there and give her an explanation. He did not. And as she did not know anyone there, she hid on a staircase near the attic, fleeing into the shadows when a door opened, or occasionally into the courtyard of the neighboring building, which her husband also owned. Fearing detection, she had not slept well.

  Early Monday morning, she had gone back to the Gare de Lyon and found the train schedules. As the next departure was not until 5:20 p.m., she spent most of the day at a small hotel restaurant, the Hôtel Alicot at 207 rue de Bercy. She bought her ticket at the last minute and boarded the train for Auxerre. Arriving at 9:00 p.m., she went over to the apartment of her brother-in-law Maurice on rue du Pont. She hoped to find her husband, she repeated, but no one was home. She waited, terrified and uncertain of her next move.

  “Perhaps rue des Lombards?” Massu asked.

  The mention of this property shook her. She also seemed disturbed by the fact that the address had been posted on a sheet attached to the carriage door. As Massu described the scene, Petiot’s hand opened, her handkerchief fell to the floor, and she fainted. This would not be the last time she would collapse—or pretend to collapse—in the middle of an interrogation.

  WIVES of criminals, Massu later reflected, were indeed an interesting lot.

  There are those who, real panthers in madness, defend their men with claws out; there are the cold and insensitive ones, who wrestling step by step, discuss each argument and answer your questions with other questions; there are the stubborn ones who can pass the entire night in total silence against the light of the interrogation; there are still others, who, shaken and in distress, discover as you do that they have lived for years beside a monster.

  In which category did Georgette Petiot belong? And what about Maurice? Massu was eager to find out.

  The commissaire began the first interrogation of Maurice by exploring his background, establishing that he had, like his older brother, been raised by his aunt Henriette Gaston and educated by his uncle, Vidal Gaston, now d
eceased. The Petiot brothers had been close, but, in the early 1930s, Maurice told the commissaire, they had drifted apart. His relationship and then marriage to Monique had resulted in what he called “a little chill.” After the wedding on September 22, 1934, the brothers did not speak for five years.

  After the exodus in the summer of 1940, Maurice claimed that he had returned home to find that his warehouse had been sacked. He had begun to make regular trips to Paris to replenish his stock and, in the process, mend his relationship with his brother. “I have eaten lunch with him on each trip,” Maurice said, adding that this was often followed by dinner with Marcel, his wife, and son. This occurred about every two weeks.

  Massu asked what he knew about 21 rue Le Sueur. Maurice replied that he remembered his brother, or perhaps Georgette, speaking at some point, probably in 1942, about the purchase of a new property in Paris. Maurice emphatically denied having any further information on the topic. “I have never known which street this private mansion was on, and I have never been there.”

  When pressed, however, Maurice soon qualified this statement. Yes, he knew the address and he had in fact been there three or four times. In July or August 1943, Maurice had applied anti-mite treatment on the bug-infested furniture and rugs. A few months later, probably December 1943, he had gone to shut off the water in case of an accident with the sudden arrival of cold weather. The last time, January 1944, he had brought an architect to look for possible leaks that might be causing humidity problems in a neighboring building on rue Duret.

  Asked if that was all he knew about the town house, Maurice Petiot said that it was. Massu, however, would soon have good reason to be skeptical.

  8.

  A DELIVERY

  MY HUSBAND GAVE ME A ROSETTE NECKLACE, A RING WITH A SOLITAIRE OF FIVE CARATS, I BELIEVE …

  AND A CROSS MADE OF GOLD.