The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot

by Thomas Maeder

  When the Stevenses and Anspachs learned from their relatives of the chance to leave France altogether, the Belgian consul in Nice put the four people in touch with Robert Malfet, a middle-aged former chauffeur who now specialized in clandestine passages. He took them to Paris in early January 1943. But when Inspector Batut began searching for traces of the four fugitives a year and a half later, he found four receipts from the Cook Travel Agency showing that the Stevenses and Anspachs had, under the names they had been using all along, gone to Paris by wagon-lit on September 26, 1942, and again on January 6, 1943; this last time they went with Malfet’s help, and their destination was the rue Pasquier. What, police wondered, were they doing in Paris during their first visit? If they were so frightened, why and how did they cross the demarcation line several times? Above all, why did they buy their tickets at a travel agency and travel openly on a regular train? It made no sense at all. Nor was Robert Malfet’s role very clear. When the police arrested him in 1944, they found in his Nice apartment F315,000, expensive jewelry, clothing that was not his, and fifty-five newspapers concerning the Petiot affair, which he claimed his wife was using to line the kitchen shelves. Meanwhile, six people left the rue Pasquier: the Arnsberg-Anspachs in early January 1942, the Schonker-Stevenses around January 8–10, and the Basch-Bastons a week later. None of them was seen again.

  When Malfet dropped the group off he had met Eryane Kahan. She arranged to meet him again the next day at the Café Weber near the Madeleine, and as they sat over drinks she inquired about his work and connections. She, like Fourrier and Pintard, was out to recruit. She spoke of “the doctor” and the trips to South America, gave him her telephone number, and encouraged him to send people her way. He did. Robert Malfet presented three more candidates in April 1943. Michel and Marie Cadoret de l’Epinguen and their young son wished to leave the country, and they were placed in contact with Malfet through a circuitous grapevine. He presented them to Eryane Kahan, who was posing as Petiot’s secretary; she told them the price would be F50,000 per person. They paid F50,000 in advance to Malfet and were given an appointment with Dr. Eugène. “I went to this appointment at the rue Pasquier and we were introduced to the doctor,” Cadoret said.

  The doctor gave us details about the method of passage, pointing out that we would leave when space was available and that he was helping us only as a special favor. Next, he told us that the organization required all potential travelers to remain hidden for forty-eight hours—the time necessary to prepare official documents and to fulfill the health regulations of the country where we would land. He specified that we would have to receive injections. He also specified that the place where we would be hidden was a beauty salon near the Etoile. Finally, he advised us to take the maximum amount of money but not more than fifty kilograms of luggage.

  In the course of their conversation, Madame Cadoret de l’Epinguen, herself a doctor, mentioned the difficulty of procuring pharmaceutical products in those hard times, and Petiot began a rambling discourse on certain obscure South American drugs. His manner of speaking was strange, and she noticed that his hands were covered with a thick layer of dirt—unusual for a medical man. These factors, combined with a vague mistrust of Eryane Kahan, caused the Cadorets to change their minds. They called Eryane, but before they could inform her of their resolve, she told them that Dr. Eugène had changed his mind and no longer wished to occupy himself with their case. Their money was returned by Malfet, and they eventually found another means of leaving the country. They did not return to Paris until 1945, and consequently knew little about the Petiot affair, which was not covered appreciably by the foreign press. One evening they chanced to dine with the friend of a friend, Maître Pierre Véron, and they recounted their abortive escape attempt via “Dr. Eugène.”

  “Good God,” said Véron. “That was Dr. Petiot!”

  6

  DEPARTURES WITHOUT END

  From June 1944 to August 1945 the police identified five more missing persons who had in some way been in contact with Petiot. The last three were brought to their attention only weeks before the definitive act of accusation was drawn up—seventeen months after the rue Le Sueur discovery and only seven months before the beginning of the trial. By that time, the police were no longer really looking for new victims; the bodies and clothing yielded virtually no useful information. Had they continued to search, even more victims may have been found. Petiot would eventually be accused of twenty-seven murders; he boasted sixty-three, and the attorney general surmised there may have been as many as a hundred. Reports were never filed on nine of the twenty-seven identified victims, and there were other people Petiot had told Fourrier and Pintard he had “passed” whose descriptions fit none of the known travelers.

  Nelly-Denise Bartholomeus was a young Parisian girl who sold handbags and belts at Lancel, near the place de l’Opéra. During the 1940 Christmas season she met Jean Hotin, a fanner from Neuville-Garnier in the Seine-et-Oise, and they married on June 5, 1941, when she was twenty-six and he twenty-seven. A month after the wedding, she apparently discovered that she was several months pregnant. War deaths and a declining birth rate were ravaging the population of France, and to counteract this trend the Vichy régime had made abortion a capital offense. But Jean’s father, the mayor of Neuville-Garnier and a wealthy landowner, held the family honor above the law and gave the couple money for an abortion, justifying the expense by saying the loss was the same as for a dead cow. Denise went to Paris and spent several days at the home of Madame Mallard, a midwife.

  Neuville-Garnier is a small town, and suspicions arose about Denise’s treatment for “pneumonia.” A year later, the Hotins decided that Denise should return to Paris and procure a doctor’s certificate proving that she had not had an abortion—though it is unclear just how her family intended to exhibit this document. On June 5, 1942, the first anniversary of her marriage, she climbed on the train to Paris alone, without luggage and without even a hat.

  Two days later an ominously strange letter, heavily underlined, arrived postmarked from Paris.

  Dear Parents,

  I cannot come home this evening as planned. Having seen Madame Mallard, I learned that inquiries had been made: she will say that I was treated for pneumonia—which is true. If I told Mme Grédely something else it was because I was mad at you but, of course, I never had a miscarriage because I was never pregnant. I cannot come home for the time being (though I have done NOTHING wrong). If anyone asks you where I am, say that I am with my family in Bordeaux, and that I will return sometime soon. Don’t worry, I hope everything will work out.…

  Three weeks later she still had not returned, but another letter, also mailed in Paris, arrived for her husband.

  Mon petit Jean chéri,

  I am very sad about being away from you. I can’t come home. I don’t know when I will be able to. I am so sad. I embrace you tenderly, and I love you.

  Both letters were signed “Lily,” the name she was known by in her family, and appeared to be in her hand. There were no more, and she never came home.

  Jean did not worry. In fact, after a surprisingly brief delay he became engaged to someone else and filed for divorce from Denise on grounds of desertion—a project his father wholeheartedly supported. Denise’s parents grew concerned about her, but in response to their persistent queries the Hotins would only say, “No, she is not here,” or, “Your daughter is just fine but we don’t know where she is.” Denise was very close to her own parents, and it was impossible that she should not write. In September, the Bartholomeuses went to the police. Nothing much was done.

  In January 1943, six months after his wife’s disappearance, Jean Hotin stopped at Madame Mallard’s in the course of a business trip to Paris. He casually inquired whether by any chance she had seen his wife? Yes, Madame Mallard replied, she had sent her to a Dr. Petiot for treatment on June 5, 1942. Hotin went to 66 rue Caumartin. He read the sign on the door that listed office hours, which did not begin for ano
ther half hour, and since he had a train to catch, he left. Apparently he scarcely gave Denise another thought until he spoke to the police in May 1944.

  The people of Neuville-Garnier were unanimous in saying that Jean’s parents had always disliked Denise and that Jean had gradually come to share their point of view. Denise loved Paris, was bored in a small town, and had no desire to spend her days working in the fields. Many people believed Jean himself had murdered her and that when he finally went to the police almost two years later it was simply because a dead wife was more readily divorced than one who was only missing. Certainly his search had been unconvincing, and he had never actually reported her missing until the Petiot affair broke. Madame Mallard had died by 1944; her daughter vaguely recalled having heard Petiot’s name at some time, but apart from that there was nothing to support Jean’s contention that his wife had gone to see Petiot at all. It turned out, too, that the sign Hotin would have seen on Petiot’s door in 1943 did not show the office hours he claimed.

  At 8:30 A.M. on June 20, 1942, an unknown man telephoned Paul-Léon Braunberger, a physician, age sixty-two, at his home at 207 rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. The caller asked Dr. Braunberger to be at the métro station Etoile at 11:00 A.M. A patient whose name could not be revealed, living on the rue Duret, urgently required medical attention. The rue Duret meets the avenue de la Grande Armée at a small open intersection formed by the joining of three streets: the rue Duret, the rue Pergolèse, and the rue Le Sueur. The caller appeared to know Braunberger, since he neither gave nor requested a description when he offered to pick him up at the meeting place and conduct him to the patient’s nearby home.

  Braunberger was not altogether surprised by this unusual request. He and his wife had long since sent their money and valuables to a friend in Cannes in preparation for possible flight, and a few days earlier the German authorities had notified him that, being a Jew, he would shortly be barred from his practice. In these dangerous times everyone had troubles and reasons for secrecy, and he did not question the telephone call. The doctor left shortly before the appointed hour. He went on foot, carried only his medical bag and a minimal amount of cash, and he was never seen again.

  At 11:30 A.M. of the same day, an express letter was delivered to the home of Raymond Vallée, a family friend and patient of Dr. Braunberger’s. Vallée immediately took it to Braunberger’s wife Marguerite. It was written on the doctor’s letterhead and appeared to be in his handwriting, though the terminology was uncharacteristic and the letters shaky; police graphologists would eventually surmise it had been written under constraint. “I was almost arrested and barely managed to escape,” the letter read.

  Tell my wife that I am not coming home, and that she should put all her most valuable possessions in two suitcases and prepare to leave for the free zone and overseas. I will let her know where she can join me. She should say nothing to anyone, and tell my patients I was taken ill in the suburbs and could not travel.

  On June 22 and 23, Madame Braunberger herself received two similar letters; they gave the same explanation and added that she should destroy the letters and be ready to leave on the following Saturday. On the twenty-fourth, Raymond Vallée received a registered letter in Braunberger’s hand that said:

  My dear friend,

  I know that your cousin, the doctor, recently purchased a house near the Bois de Boulogne in which he does not intend to live until after the war. Would you do me the great service of speaking with him and making arrangements to have all my furniture and property moved to his house. I am counting on you. Please have this done within 48 hours. Thank you.

  Vallée and Madame Braunberger ignored this preposterous request. Vallée was quite puzzled. In the course of a single letter, Braunberger switched from the formal vous to the informal tu, which indicated a degree of familiarity the two men had never attained. For that matter, there was no reason why Braunberger should have confided in Vallée at all, since it turned out that in fact Braunberger detested the man. He only visited him out of consideration for his wife, and when Vallée came to his office for treatment or consultations, Braunberger had often taken a perverse pleasure in making him wait as long as possible. But strangest of all was the mention of the house near the Bois de Boulogne. Vallée was quite certain he had never spoken to Dr. Braunberger about any such thing. Yet the house did exist; among Vallée’s relatives there was only one doctor, the husband of his wife’s cousin—Dr. Marcel Petiot, who had indeed purchased a building at 21 rue Le Sueur, not far from the Bois de Boulogne.

  On June 30, the Braunbergers’ maid picked up the telephone and an unidentified man’s voice told her: “I am calling to give you news of the doctor. I passed him into the free zone; he was a bit crazy. He started doing stupid things in the métro and almost got us caught. Madame can get out of trouble on her own—I’m not going to pass her, I was too badly paid.” The maid asked how the doctor was and where he had gone. “I left him en route to Spain and Portugal.” She begged the caller to come and they would pay him better for his services. “Not likely. I have a letter I was supposed to bring you, but I would just as soon mail it.”

  The letter arrived on July 1:

  Ma Chérie,

  Follow the person who brings you this letter; he will tell you how to come and join me. I shall see you soon. All my love.

  The handwriting was more tortured than ever, and in this letter, as in the previous ones, Marguerite noticed that her husband did not call her, as he invariably did, “Ma chère Maggie.” It also seemed odd that he had repeatedly asked her to bring her valuables, when he knew as well as she that they had all been long since sent ahead to Cannes. She became even more confused on July 3, when a German soldier came to her building and asked the concierge whether a doctor fitting Braunberger’s description lived there. The visit had no apparent purpose and was not repeated.

  On September 12, after several months had passed and her husband had neither communicated further nor contacted their friends in Cannes, an alarmed Madame Braunberger reported her husband missing. The police did not investigate. In 1942 it was hardly worthwhile or wise to hunt for missing Jews, and to close the case the police fictitiously noted that the doctor returned home several days after the original report was filed. Petiot’s name did not come up at the time, since the oblique mention of his house was merely another detail in a series of uncanny events. What connection could there be? As Madame Braunberger told police later, her husband and Petiot had met only once, at a party at Raymond Vallée’s house almost ten years earlier. The two physicians had discussed cancer cures, and after they left, Braunberger told his wife he had just met either a genius or a lunatic. They had not made any effort to see one another again. At the time it did not seem suspicious, but retrospectively, after March 1944, Raymond Vallée found it peculiar that Petiot should quickly have learned of Braunberger’s disappearance and inquired several times whether they had received news from him. And if Petiot had been involved in the affair, it no longer seemed so odd that Vallée should have received the first letter, since he was the only friend of Braunberger’s whom Petiot knew.

  The story grew even more complex the following year. In April 1943, the wife of Roger Allard, one of Braunberger’s patients who had been involved in clandestine passages himself and who had even offered to help the Braunbergers if they needed it, told the doctor’s cook, “I know who passed the doctor; a friend of one of my cousins told her, ‘It was my father who passed Dr. Braunberger.’” Madame Braunberger telephoned Roger Allard, who said the father of the friend who had spoken to his cousin was named José or Josian; he was not personally acquainted with him and did not know his address. Some time later, Braunberger’s brother met Roger’s mother, Andrée Allard, and told her, “We know that it was your son who passed my brother, and you don’t want to tell us where he left him.”

  She replied: “It was not my son, it was Josian who passed him. The doctor cried out when crossing the demarcation line and was almost caug
ht.” This was almost the exact phrase the mysterious telephone caller had used when he spoke to the maid, and Madame Braunberger and her brother-in-law were now convinced that the Allards were involved. When asked where Josian lived, Madame Allard said she believed he was a railroad employee and lived on the rue Ordener, near the freightyards at the Porte de la Chapelle. She promised to ask Roger for details.

  Finally, Roger Allard told the Braunbergers that his cousin’s friend’s father had passed not Dr. Braunberger, but a Dr. Ascher. The subsequent police investigation the following year only served to add another layer of confusion to this twisted tale: the Allards’ stories became increasingly bizarre; police eventually found, in Dr. Braunberger’s own address book, a patient named Chauzan who lived at 67 rue Louis-Blanc near the Gare de l’Est. “Chauzan” sounded similar to “Josian,” but investigators found that no one of either name had ever lived at that address. Nor was Chauzan or Josian found among the railroad employees, listed in the city-hall files, or inscribed on coal-ration lists. One more strange fact surfaced during the investigation. Braunberger’s nurse informed the police that a man named Francinet had regularly called at the doctor’s house to deliver wine, but a few months later she changed her mind and strenuously denied ever having said such a thing or heard such a name.