by David King
AS Leser continued his preliminary examination, he turned to the charges of shoplifting against Petiot at the Joseph Gibert Bookshop in April 1936. The defendant denied stealing anything. It was raining, he said. “I was engrossed in my invention. I consulted the book, and then I put it under my arm by distraction.” When Leser asked which invention, Petiot launched into a monologue about his device to cure chronic intestinal problems and claimed that “everyone with a fancy for invention is suspected of being crazy.”
“But it was you who pretended to be insane every time you had trouble with the law.”
“No one ever knows if he is crazy or not,” Petiot said. “You can only be crazy by comparison.”
Turning to the subject of rue Le Sueur, Leser recounted the defendant’s history with the building and began to describe its features. When he made it to the triangular room with its false door, fake alarms, iron hooks, and one-way viewing lens, Petiot interrupted. “Nothing is simpler,” he said. This was going to be the room of his clinic that would house his radiotherapy equipment. The bell did not work because he had not yet installed the electrical wires. The “false door” was mere decoration, with the wood chosen for its ability to protect against humidity. As for the viewer, what good was it when it was “obstructed by wallpaper”? The small room had been exaggerated beyond recognition by the lies of the Nazi press. “You understand me, don’t you?”
Petiot also repeated his assertion that the bodies found in his house had been planted there by Germans while he was imprisoned as a Resistance fighter at Fresnes. Before drawing this conclusion, the defendant admitted that he had first blamed his Fly-Tox colleagues for dumping the dead bodies of Germans and traitors on his property.
“But what comrades?” Dupin asked. “What are their names?”
“I will not deliver the names of the comrades of my group because they are not guilty, no more than I am anyway. Some of them offered to testify here for me, but I didn’t want them to do so because these men deserve the Croix de la Libération for eliminating thirty Boches and you would put them in handcuffs.”
“Let them come, and I will give them the Cross. I promise you.”
“No, no. I will not give you their names so long as the purge [of collaborators] is incomplete, and people are still free who swore an oath to Pétain.”
As several eyewitnesses described it, Leser then threw his arms into the air and claimed that he had never seen anything like this.
“Don’t lift your arms to the sky, Monsieur le Président,” Petiot said.
“I’ll lift my arms to the sky if I want!”
“Then you’ll have reason to lift them even higher in a little while.”
Clearly Petiot was scoring points with a public that looked back on the discredited Vichy regime with extreme distaste. Leser moved the conversation on to Petiot’s assertion of having joined the Resistance from the very beginning and noted that “there was no Resistance at that time.” At this unpopular position, the audience booed.
“No organized Resistance, I mean.” Leser retreated, asking Petiot to elaborate on his purported invention of a secret weapon.
The defendant refused, claiming that it was not appropriate to discuss it as the Boches might use it against Allied troops stationed in Germany. He then repeated his claims of having killed German soldiers with his weapon, mentioning hitting a man on a horse in the Bois de Boulogne. After a heckler suggested that they call the horse to the stand, Petiot spoke of his Resistance group, its work with the Arc-de-Ciel network, and its relationship with the same unnamed English special operations officer who supposedly trained Resistance fighters in the Franche-Comté. He told how he and his comrades in the Fly-Tox organization blew up German trains in the Chevreuse Valley.
When Leser ordered a short recess, many members of the audience refused to budge from their seats. Some ate sandwiches in the courtroom; others ventured out only after ensuring their seat was saved and returned with a copy of Petiot’s book, Le Hasard vaincu, which was being sold in the street outside the Palais de Justice. Often in intermissions throughout the trial, Petiot would leave his box and sign copies.
After the break, the attorney representing the Khaït and Dreyfus families, Maître Pierre Véron, began to question Petiot on his alleged Resistance activities. Tall, broad-shouldered, with close-cropped hair and a Legion d’honneur pinned on his gown, the thirty-six-year-old Véron was well qualified for this task. A Resistance fighter himself, Véron had detonated many bridges, as he helped protect the right flank of Patton’s army while it approached Paris in the summer of 1944. One film producer working for the U.S. Army and in attendance at the trial said that Véron was one of three people in the room who could play himself in a Hollywood production. The other two were Leser and Petiot.
Véron opened with a simple question about a subject Petiot claimed expertise in: “What are plastic explosives?”
Petiot stammered, appeared ruffled, and, some thought, reddened with embarrassment. Véron charged ahead as if his suspicions of Petiot’s ignorance were confirmed: “How do you carry plastic explosives? How do you prime them? How do you detonate them?”
“Is this an entrance exam for the École Polytechnique?” Floriot asked, coming to Petiot’s defense.
“An exam for the École Polytechnique? Certainly not. This is an examination on the Resistance, and it didn’t take long to show that your client is an imposter,” Véron said. “I am now certain that this man, this so-called great Resistant, has never seen plastic explosives and does not know what they are.”
“You did not let me finish,” Petiot said, trying to overcome the poor impression he had made by his answers. Véron kept the focus on technical matters of the explosions that a Resistance fighter should know. In the midst of continuing his account of a German potato-masher grenade with wooden handle, Petiot suddenly exploded at the attorney: “You defender of Jews and traitors!”
With boos and hisses from the gallery and many shouts from hecklers, Leser pounded the gavel. The ruckus continued. At six thirty that evening, the court adjourned.
“Why?” Petiot asked. “I’m not the least bit tired.”
27.
“NOT IN DANGER OF DEATH”
I ACTED WITH A SPORTING SPIRIT.
—Marcel Petiot
MAKING front-page headlines in most Parisian newspapers, the Petiot trial evoked passionate debate, and opinions of the defendant were by no means all negative. Letters of support poured in for the accused murderer. The prosecutor, for one, was appalled, particularly with the Petiot fan mail and what he called the “hundreds of marriage proposals” from “neurotic, deranged women.”
As the second day of the trial opened on another spring morning, an even larger crowd angled for a seat or, more realistically, a place to stand in the packed courtroom. An unknown number of spectators had slipped inside sporting dubious press badges. Street vendors were selling not only Petiot’s book, but also the small yellow tickets signed by Président Leser that granted admission to the trial. Lessons from the wartime black market were in full display around the Palais de Justice.
When Petiot arrived in the prisoner’s box, he found that it was already occupied. A young woman in a red dress sat there, apparently pleased with her luck of finding the last empty seat. Petiot, with no small charm, kissed her hand and insisted that she keep her place, noting that his honor as a gentleman would be offended if she refused. The audience appreciated the wit.
Leser opened the proceedings by returning to the central question of Petiot’s work with the Resistance, asking how he recruited members for his alleged Fly-Tox network and how exactly it worked. Petiot explained that he used the auction house on rue Drouot as a recruiting center—a good answer since there would be no lack of witnesses who could vouch for his regular attendance on its premises. Ignoring the part of the question about the selection of members, Petiot elaborated on the method of liquidation, or execution, as he insisted on calling the acts.
“It
is very simple,” he said. “I have detected them by the following way: by approaching them and challenging them by saying: ‘German Police.’ By the way they reacted, we were informed.” Many of the suspects protested that they, too, worked for the police. In that case, Petiot continued, “we shoved them in a truck and left, under the protection of men armed with submachine guns. We took them either to rue Le Sueur or the woods, and there, after an interrogation, our conviction being confirmed, we slaughtered them.”
“How did you get rid of the bodies?” Dupin asked.
“We buried them. It was the safest [thing to do].” The audience, weaned on press accounts of rue Le Sueur, was surprised. There was no mention of a basement stove or lime pit.
“You told the police your executions were at 21 rue Le Sueur,” Dupin said. “Now you speak about a truck.”
“Yes,” Petiot said. His Fly-Tox men killed “traitors” in the forest, but if they were for any reason under pressure, they went to rue Le Sueur. “All this may seem unbelievable, Mr. President. We lacked neither a certain courage nor a certain nerve.”
“Did you take part personally in these executions?”
“No.”
Gasps of surprise were again heard in the gallery.
“Yet you have acknowledged that before.”
“The day of my arrest, I was questioned by someone no one has ever been able to find, a captain of the DGER. I had handcuffs on my wrists, and signed what was desired.”
Floriot filled in some details for the jurors, taking advantage of news that had only emerged a few days before, thanks to an investigative piece by Jacques Yonnet in Résistance. “My client was arrested by that famous Captain Simonin of the DGER. Where is he? He was served with papers along with Colonel Dewavrin.” Now, addressing Leser, Floriot asked, “Why don’t you have him appear—as Simonin, or under his real name, Soutif, police inspector of Quimper and Gestapo collaborator, responsible for the execution of a score of French Resistants!”
Véron interrupted, asking again about specific people Petiot had killed.
After his initial refusal, Petiot agreed to give one name, with Floriot’s approval: Adrien Estébétéguy, or “Adrien the Basque.” Véron pressed the defendant for details, only to receive another outburst from him: “Shut up, you defender of Jews.” Petiot then accused the lawyer of “searching for dramatic effect.”
“No,” Véron answered, “but I won’t allow you to soil the Resistance with your lies!” This response drew loud applause.
“You’re a double agent!” Petiot shouted, leaning forward, his knuckles white from gripping the edge of the box.
“If you don’t take that back immediately, I’ll break your face!” Clenching his fist, Véron started toward Petiot. The audience loved it. Had a lawyer and a defendant ever come to blows in the Palais de Justice? The trial had just opened for the day, but some journalists already had their lead-ins for the morning paper. Leser pounded the gavel, demanding silence and threatening to call a recess. Someone looked at Petiot’s lawyer, Floriot, who, remarkably, appeared to be asleep. The Petiot trial was threatening to become a farce.
Président Leser returned to the question of victims of the so-called escape network he’d raised before the interruption.
The first victim, Petiot said, was Jo the Boxer, though by the prosecution tally, it was actually Joachim Guschinow. The defendant described Jo as having “a head like a pimp, or if you like, a police inspector.” Such physiognomy would “make sure he was stopped at the border” and that was why Petiot’s group insisted on solid documentation for voyagers.
Petiot was again asked for specific names of people who helped furnish the false papers.
“I would like very much to be able to tell you,” the defendant said. “Unfortunately, I no longer remember.” He put his head in his hands and remarked that he had a bad memory for names. Moments later, as if the truth suddenly occurred to him, Petiot said that, although he did not want to promote inexactitudes, he seemed to recall that his group obtained its false documents with the help of “an employee in the embassy of Argentina at Vichy.” Petiot was still claiming to be a small part of the larger organization who did not know all the details of its operations.
He was asked about Lucien Romier, a Vichy administrator who had an assistant who Petiot claimed helped with false documentation to enable transit into the unoccupied zone. This time, Petiot only said that this “minister of Pétain” was no Resistant, and he had never worked with him.
“What are the names of the people who actually helped escapees across the border?”
“Oh, you know, they changed names fairly often.”
“We also know that you did too,” one of the civil parties, Pierre-Léon Rein, said to Petiot, loud enough for some members of the audience to hear.
“Some names, some names,” Véron demanded.
“At [Chalon-sur-Saône], there was a man named Robert. At Nevers, there was a German who later committed suicide. At Orléans you met a man with a black beard at the train station café.” He mentioned something vague about a countess on horseback with a property near the line of demarcation. When this line of questioning did not progress, veering instead into the realm of a “cloak and dagger novel,” as trial observer Claude Bertin put it, Maître Véron turned to Petiot’s arrest in May 1943 and his nearly eight-month imprisonment by the Gestapo.
“It was the famous Jodkum who took charge of me,” the defendant explained. “ ‘Ah, you’re Dr. Eugène!’ he said, and then he had my head crushed, suspended me by my jaw, filed my teeth, put me in the bath of frozen water, and other things. I will not go into the details. In short, the usual ‘fantasies.’ ” Petiot followed with a monologue about how he did not ask for any thanks and people were naturally ungrateful, especially forgetful of “the sufferings of heroes.” He started to cry. The courtroom was silent, as if dumbstruck by the defendant’s sudden change of emotion.
Leser asked Petiot about his mysterious release from the Gestapo in January 1944.
Petiot said only that his brother bought his freedom for 100,000 francs. Unfortunately, Petiot was not pressed to explain why the Germans would have agreed to free him at such a low price. The prosecution lost another opportunity to cast doubt on Petiot’s defense that he worked for the Resistance.
“What about the bodies at the rue Le Sueur?” Leser asked.
“I found a large pointed heap of them when I went there. I was very annoyed. I didn’t want that sort of thing about my house.”
“Is that why you asked your brother for quicklime?”
“Oh no! The lime was for exterminating roaches.” One journalist noticed that family members of victims winced. Petiot continued, noting that as his colleagues could not haul away the bodies, he had decided to use the lime, and then, as that did not work well, they tried the stove, which he had already lit to destroy a mite-infested rug.
Instead of pressing Petiot about the contradictions in his statement about why he obtained the lime, Dupin asked Petiot yet again to identify his colleagues.
“You know well that I am not going to give them to you,” Petiot replied and shrugged, “because you would just indict them for complicity.”
“I have given you my guarantee that I will not arrest them.”
“I know that tune. You do not arrest them, but your buddy does.”
Dupin told Petiot that he could help himself by citing names.
“All right, I’ll give them to you—as soon as I’m acquitted.”
“Do you think that you will be acquitted?”
“I should hope so. I’ve never had the least doubt. Besides, it is not you who will judge me. It is the gentlemen of the jury, and I have more confidence in them.” The audience was relishing the give-and-take thrusts of the exchange. L’Aurore used this quote as a headline the following morning: I AM NOT IN DANGER OF DEATH.
WHEN the court reconvened after the recess, the crowd was even larger, prompting Petiot to complain that he did n
ot have anywhere to lay his overcoat. The questioning turned to the first of the twenty-seven alleged victims, Marthe Khaït, the mother of a young patient, Raymonde Baudet, who disappeared in March 1942 before her planned testimony in the narcotics trial against the physician.
Véron not only represented this family as civil attorney, but he had previously served as Baudet’s lawyer in the drug case. Ironically, it was Petiot who had recommended Véron to the Khaït family—and it was Marthe Khaït’s disappearance that had first awakened his suspicions about the physician.
Petiot naturally dismissed Baudet’s allegations that he had murdered her mother. “You know how it is. Drug addicts lie and cheat.”
“Madame Khaït embarrassed you,” Véron said, cutting to the heart of the issue. “Since the narcotics affair was discovered, you feared to be viewed as guilty. Summoned to justice, you risked being removed from the medical establishment.” The letters of Khaït, he added, resembled those of another patient who disappeared, Van Bever.
“You have a great deal of talent,” Petiot said. “I congratulate you. I shall have to send you more clients.”
“It is less dangerous for you to send me clients than for me to send them to you.” The audience laughed at the riposte.
Leser asked the defendant why he decided to help Khaït’s daughter Raymonde Baudet.
“It’s rather simple. She was a very lovely girl.”
“Not at all. Raymonde Baudet was rather commonplace,” Véron said.
“You knew her too late.”
As the discussion rambled on, threatening to move even further away from the main topic, Véron tried to show that Petiot’s actions were steeped in fear that he would lose his medical license for drug trafficking.
“Mlle. Baudet,” Floriot interjected, “attempted to obtain heroin with the aid of a prescription of Dr. Petiot, which was rubbed out with a corrector and then rewritten. Where is Petiot’s responsibility for her actions?”
“I have said that Madame Khaït was a threat to you,” Véron said, turning to the defendant. “You have done away with her.”
