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

by David King

  —Georgette Petiot

  CURFEW, blackouts, air raid sirens, long lines outside shops, and the daily risk of unwarranted denunciations, which poured in to German authorities at a staggering rate, all compounded the hardships suffered from a lack of food and fuel. “Paris had been reduced to a sham,” Jean-Paul Sartre said. He compared the occupied city to “empty bottles of wine displayed in the windows of shops which could no longer manage to stock the real thing.”

  As a result, many Parisians resorted to Système D, a colloquial expression for a “do it yourself” approach that involved stretching meager resources as far as possible and finding the least unacceptable substitutes. Coffee was brewed with chicory, chickpeas, or roasted acorns. Tea was made from apple skins, and milk was skimmed and watered. Cigarettes were rolled with Jerusalem artichoke or nettles. Potatoes were peeled after boiling to make them last longer. Thin leek soup was often served as dinner, accompanied by new dishes like turnips, previously viewed only as “cow food.” Chestnuts spiced up bland desserts, which were otherwise expensive and difficult to obtain.

  Carrots, beans, and a variety of vegetables were grown in window boxes, on rooftops, and in large public spaces like the Tuileries, Luxembourg Gardens, and the Esplanade des Invalides. Rabbits and hens were raised on balconies and in broom closets. Pigeons became an increasingly rare sight in parks. The prefect of Paris warned against the health hazards of eating “stewed cat.” During the Nazi Occupation, French men and women were consuming an estimated half the total calories that they had in the Depression, circa 1935–1938. Wartime diets in France were probably the lowest in calories in Western Europe.

  By March 1944, the cold winter was at last giving way to the arrival of spring, the “ballet of buds,” as Massu put it, that danced on the quays, parks, and windowsills around Paris. Alas, the commissaire did not have time to enjoy it as much as he would have liked. There were seemingly endless meetings with the heads of brigades and principal inspectors—a council of ministers for the police, he joked. “I have never loved these chitchats where you lose precious time.” he said. He often arrived late, left early, and in the meantime, kept his eyes glued to the clock. Above all, he was consumed by the Petiot case.

  After Madame Petiot recovered from her faint, or feint, at Massu’s office, the commissaire asked her to accompany him to her family’s apartment on the second floor at 66 rue Caumartin. Massu exited his office first, landing in a crowd of reporters and photographers who fired questions rapidly. “Did she confess?” one journalist yelled. “Did she help dispose of the bodies?” another asked. “Did she help her husband flee?”

  “Gentlemen,” Massu said. “My secretary is going to speak to you.” As the reporters rushed off to hear the announcement, thinking no doubt of impending deadlines, the commissaire escaped down the corridor with Madame Petiot and slipped into a car waiting outside on the quay.

  A few miles away, at rue Caumartin, a crowd of about one hundred people jammed the sidewalks and spilled over onto the road, and onto the nearby rue Saint-Lazare. Photographers and reporters were there looking for a scoop. “Those lads are everywhere like mushrooms,” the chauffeur said to Massu in the car. A motion picture camera was set up to shoot their arrival.

  “Assassins!” Georgette Petiot screamed as she tried to make her way to her apartment. “You are the assassins! You are jeering at my distress.” She had only gone to Yonne to see her son, she yelled.

  After a locksmith hired by the police opened the door, which had been locked since the last visit, Commissaire Massu, Georgette Petiot, and a team of investigators entered the apartment. While detectives searched, Petiot sat in an armchair in her living room, adorned with Chinese vases, fine porcelain, and tapestries on the wall. The commissaire resumed his questioning: “How did you live here?”

  “As the good middle-class citizens that we were,” she said in an angry tone that Massu suspected had been inspired in part by her encounter with the hostile mob. “We often went to the theater and the cinema. It is not forbidden, as far as I know.” Massu asked if her husband had a lot of free time. “Obviously,” she answered, although he often had to leave in the middle of a performance.

  “Did he say where he went?” Massu asked.

  “To the sick, of course.”

  “Were you ever astonished by the jewels and the linen that your husband often brought in his cart?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Did he ever give any explanations?”

  “Yes, completely valid ones.” She told how he often made purchases at the House Drouot, France’s oldest and most prominent auction house, established in 1852 by Napoleon III and located a few minutes’ walk from the Petiot apartment. Both the auctioneers and the famous black-clad porters with the red collar could well vouch for him. Petiot spent a great deal of time there huddled in a corner like many other dealers, presumably discussing lots and bids.

  “What about the many erotic prints that we found?” Massu asked.

  “Simple mania of a collector.”

  By the end of the visit, the police had uncovered nothing whatsoever to implicate Georgette Petiot in the murders. All they found was a five-carat diamond ring that she could not explain other than say it was a gift from her husband. On this basis, the French police would later charge her with receipt of stolen property. In the meantime, Massu made no charge. He asked her to pack a bag to return to the station. After escorting her through the crowds and into the car, the commissaire was struck by the many curious people who peered in through the window. Georgette shielded her face behind a handkerchief. The driver blew the horn several times to clear a path through the crowds blocking the way.

  Georgette Petiot was driven to the Hôtel-Dieu, the oldest hospital in Paris. Located in the shadow of Notre Dame Cathedral on the Île de la Cité, the hospital held the sick and wounded in wings that segregated French and German patients. It also held important witnesses in criminal trials. Here, it was reasoned, Madame Petiot would be able to answer questions, safe from the reporters, photographers, camera crews, crowds, or anyone, for that matter, who might try to avenge a missing person blamed, rightly or wrongly, on her husband. Massu also hoped that, with close surveillance, he might be able to protect this important source of information from a possible suicide attempt.

  MARCEL and Georgette Petiot had been married in her hometown of Seignelay on June 4, 1927. Georgette’s father, Nestor Lablais, a former porter of a wagon-lits company, owned a local tavern-inn there, and her mother, Anna Villard Lablais, had been his chambermaid before their marriage. By the time Georgette was fourteen, the family had moved to Paris, and her father purchased the restaurant Côte d’Or in the 7th arrondissement, next to the parliament, the Chambre des Députés. Nicknamed “Long Arm” for his influence with his restaurant patrons, many of whom were prominent politicians, businessmen, and other leading figures of society, Lablais had recognized the talents and potential of his son-in-law.

  Other people had also envisioned a bright future for Villeneuve-sur-Yonne’s young mayor. Petiot’s supporters compared him to another French physician-turned-statesman, Georges Clemenceau. One politician at the Petiot wedding, Henri Chéron, told the groom that if he ever had the chance to lead the government, he would appoint him as one of his ministers. Chéron would later serve in several positions, including two stints by 1934 as both minister of justice and minister of finance. By then, however, Petiot’s promising career of the “New Clemenceau” had ended in scandal.

  During Petiot’s term as mayor, small items had often disappeared from City Hall. Sometimes it was funds, other times simple trinkets, like a spoon, an ashtray, or a small keepsake that would fit into his pocket. Townspeople soon whispered about the mayor’s peculiar habit. A Villeneuve-sur-Yonne blacksmith, Depond-Clément, remembered Petiot coming to his forge looking for parts to repair his sports car—the mayor drove fast and recklessly, and thus became a frequent visitor there. Petiot would show up, “humming, whistling, and j
oking,” while also gossiping and showing interest in the workers. Almost every time, afterward, something small, like a tool or a key, would be missing. When a forge employee went to confront him, the mayor simply returned the item, laughing and making no excuses.

  Petiot was accused of some other bizarre crimes during his term. One time, the mayor was suspected of stealing a drum. The band for his rival right-wing party had set up the night before a concert at the Salle des Fêtes in the town hall. The next morning, band members arrived to find their bass drum missing. Within days, another band in town, which often played at political functions in support of Petiot’s socialist party, received a new, recently painted drum, the same size instrument as the one that had disappeared. It was a gift from the mayor.

  Petiot polarized the town, leading some to praise his achievements, such as his reform of the elementary school system, his modernization of the sewer system, his improvement of garbage collection, and his building of other urban amenities, like a tennis court and a playground. Petiot also gained more railway stops for his town. At one point, he was said to have convinced railway executives of the stops’ necessity by throwing himself from a moving train.

  Other people criticized the mayor for his unscrupulous actions, mostly involving corruption and his almost dictatorial control of the city council. Controversy would surround the rest of his term. Funds and property continued to disappear. At least one member of City Hall, Léon Pinau, quit, claiming that he did not want to be engulfed in any of the many scandals likely to ensue in the mayor’s office.

  Sure enough, after surviving several lengthy investigations into his accused thefts of oil and gasoline, a small scandal in the summer of 1931 resulted in Petiot’s resignation. A routine audit of his office had found 2,890 francs in fees, from 138 alien-registration applications, that had not been forwarded to the necessary officials. Petiot blamed his secretary for this simple mistake, and the man accepted full blame, pointing to his age, his poor eyesight, and exhaustion as a result of being too long overworked. But in late August, Petiot was suspended. On the twenty-sixth, the day before the suspension took effect, he resigned from office.

  Petiot, however, came back in full force, waging another intense, passionate, and controversial campaign for reelection. He told how his experience in war had made him “love the people” and aspire to a career as a physician to improve their well-being. He targeted First World War veterans and workers with appeals to the common man against Parisian decadence and corruption. His opponents returned the criticism: “Drain Petiot out of his graft-built sewers,” as one poster put it.

  Petiot’s brazen confidence and unorthodox tactics provided some advantages. At a late-season candidate debate at town hall, he offered to allow his opponent, Henri Guttin, to speak last. Petiot then delivered an enthusiastic address, outlining his many achievements and work on behalf of the poor. When Guttin stepped up to the podium and took out his notes to read his prepared statement, the room suddenly lost power. The candidate fumbled through his speech in the dark, an awkward contrast to the dynamic Petiot. The source of the outage was later traced to the physician’s residence.

  In the end, Petiot was defeated. Prepared for the possibility, he had already entered a second campaign for office, this time as general councillor, the rough equivalent of a US congressman. Petiot won this contest, becoming the youngest of thirty-four representatives from Yonne. This position would not last long.

  Petiot was again accused of theft, this time in the form of using a combination of cables, plugs, and pins to rewire electricity meters on his house and steal electricity. “It’s a vile political hazing,” Petiot said, blaming the charges on his enemies. The evidence against him, however, was overwhelming. On July 19, 1933, the tribunal at Joigny pronounced him guilty, sentencing him to fifteen days in prison and fining him 300 francs with another 200 in damages. Petiot appealed, and the court waived his prison sentence and reduced the fine to 100 francs, but upheld the verdict.

  This conviction—the first to stick against the young politician—led to a temporary loss of his voting rights, which, in French law, required a mandatory removal from office. And so once again, before the inevitable occurred, Petiot resigned. The political career of the “New Clemenceau” was over. Another phase was about to begin.

  BACK at headquarters, after a beer in a brasserie on place Dauphine and a quick telephone call to his wife, Commissaire Massu sent a couple of inspectors to check out Georgette Petiot’s claims. No one had seen her at 52 rue de Reuilly, but this did not necessarily discredit her statement, as she had been trying to hide and none of the twenty-one residents in the building knew her. Even the concierge barely recognized her.

  Another detective, Inspector Hernis, checked out the Hôtel Alicot at 207 rue de Bercy, where she claimed to have eaten before leaving for Auxerre. The owner, Henri Alicot, confirmed that Madame Petiot had arrived at his restaurant, as she had claimed, on the morning of the thirteenth, looking bewildered and exhausted. He could also confirm that she had spent the day there, distraught about the news.

  It was not possible, she had said, that her husband, “who is so good to me,” could have done those things reported in the newspapers. In the seventeen years of marriage, Georgette Petiot added, she had not once seen him angry. Her immediate plans were to travel to Auxerre to be with her son. Madame Petiot had napped in one of the rooms, but declined food until Alicot had convinced her to eat a bowl of soup before leaving for the 5:20 train to Auxerre. Clearly she had feared being arrested.

  Perhaps the restaurateur’s most interesting revelation concerned not the suspect’s wife, but his brother. According to Alicot, Maurice Petiot came to Paris almost every week for business, usually arriving on a Wednesday and staying at his hotel until Saturday. Alicot claimed not to have seen him since the previous month, but he could date the event because it had been so peculiar.

  During his stay February 19–22, 1944, Alicot recalled, a truck driver and a workman had appeared in his hotel lobby to deliver a message to Maurice. Their truck, which contained a delivery for the younger Petiot, had broken down at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Michel and Boulevard Saint-Germain, and the two men had been forced to leave it there. What particularly struck Alicot, however, was not the message, though he did wonder why they would abandon a truck loaded with goods. It was how frightened the men looked when they relayed the news and then how quickly they departed afterward.

  9.

  EVASION

  DR. PETIOT WAS A CLEVER MAN.

  —René Piédelièvre

  EXAMINING the black satin dress found in the basement of rue Le Sueur, Massu’s men had identified a possible victim. Detectives had contacted the Marseille designer listed on the fashion tag, Silvy-Rosa, whose real name was Sylvie Givaudan, and she remembered the dress. Givaudan had made it about three and a half years before and sold it to a woman named Paulette from a nearby brothel, whom she described as young and beautiful.

  The Marseille police department was able to provide more information about this woman. Her real name was Joséphine Aimée Grippay. She had been given the name Paulette by a pimp who thought “Joséphine” sounded old-fashioned. “It was good one hundred years ago,” he had reportedly told her, “[but] men like easy names to remember.” Grippay had gained a number of other sobriquets, including “La Chinoise” for her long black hair, high cheekbones, and other facial features deemed Asian, though she was actually from Corsica.

  Born January 7, 1917, in the port of Bonifacio (Bunifaziu), to a Corsican mother and a Breton father, Grippay had begun working in a brothel in Ajaccio before reaching Marseille, where she settled into an upscale brothel on rue Venture. Grippay soon made connections with many figures in the underworld, including, most prominently, Joseph Piereschi, known variously as “Joseph le Marseillais,” Dionisi, or Zé. By the time World War II broke out, Piereschi had been sentenced to prison a number of times, mostly for petty theft, though there was one murder charge and hi
s participation in a train robbery that netted 983,000 francs. During the German Occupation, he started running a brothel for Nazi officers at Aire-sur-la-Lys. Eventually accused of defrauding German authorities, Piereschi fled, bringing Paulette Grippay with him. They worked their way north. Grippay had been in Paris just over one year when the police found her dress in Dr. Petiot’s basement.

  How had Petiot come to know her? Was he one of her clients, or was she one of his? Rue Caumartin, after all, was located in the middle of a lively district full of nightclubs, bars, and brothels.

  Not far away, on rue Provence, tucked into a discreet building with closed white shutters, was the One Two Two. The seven-story brothel, once the home of Napoleon’s marshal Joachim Murat, catered to an exclusive clientele that included royalty, statesmen, film stars, and eventually, many tourists. Each room upstairs projected a different theme. There was an Orient Express suite, a luxurious ocean liner cabin, and a Cloth of Gold Room inspired by the famous celebration by King Francis I and King Henry VIII in the summer of 1520. The Arctic igloo came with reindeer antlers and a polar bear rug, and the “sunny farmhouse” was surrounded by a white picket fence with a mock hayloft above the bed. Two rooms were covered completely with mirrors. The top floors contained the more risqué rooms, including the popular torture chamber, with its whips, chains, handcuffs, and leather thongs.

  Since his arrival in Paris eleven years before, Petiot had drawn many clients from this environment. He had also attracted women from far less luxurious brothels, and many of them, like Jeannette Gaul, were outside the system of regulation altogether. Antonie Marguerite Bella, a thirty-six-year-old former chambermaid who became addicted to heroin and then worked as an unlicensed street walker, often visited his practice. She had no difficulty whatsoever in obtaining drugs from Dr. Petiot, she told Inspector Jean Prigent when he questioned her in prison. She had been referred to his practice by a friend in the same line of business, who consulted the doctor for “the same reasons” and, she added, found the “same satisfaction.”