The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot

by Thomas Maeder

  I like to believe that Jehovah, with Saint George at his side, fought as best he could, but could not conquer, could not master an adversary who balked at no method and would willingly have sunk all into Nothingness. The only hope was a compromised Peace with divided zones of power. We see today, alas, its unfortunate results.

  A friend even assured me that God took one Hell of a thrashing in this battle, and that only a few atoms of infinite Goodness and divine Providence remain. He held these excessively pessimistic beliefs—which explains it—at Fresnes, after 5 months of Nazi torture.

  My faith is more optimistic.

  In their peace treaty, God and Satan (Lucifer had changed his nom de guerre) agreed to split fifty-fifty. But how could they choose the blessed and the damned?

  There was, of course, the old method using the scales of divine justice, but you can be sure that well before the first Dreyfus Affair and others like it, Satan had invented the technique of the “thumb on the scale,” and God knew it … So Satan suggested “Heads or Tails,” played with a celestial orb.

  The game went on and on, and would be going on still if, at the end of 4,000 years, as the Bible tells us, God had not happened to notice while balancing his accounts that Satan had populated his entire realm and had no lack of manpower, while eternal paradise remained rather empty, and the celestial choir was short on singers.

  The Almighty had always watched the coin closely when Satan said “Heads I win, Tails you lose!” and noticed nothing amiss … but still the Creator, who knew his Laws as though he had made them, had the Revelation that Satan had cheated, because in the Laws of Probability, the Rule of large numbers would predict near perfect equality and, in a game of “Heads or Tails,” perfect equality at the end of the World.

  All this is to plant firmly in your mind the fact that this Law is absolute. You know the end of the story. God broke the treaty and parachuted a camouflaged envoy down to reconnoiter the terrain, and decided to brand members of his own flock at birth. But Satan had his own methods and, all things considered, still seems to do pretty well for himself. But that’s another story.

  Strangest of all was Petiot’s dedication:

  To you

  who have given me this leisure …

  The research has been done

  by “Doctor EUGENE,” ex-Chief of the Resistance Group

  FLY-TOX

  The columns of numbers were set up

  under the direction of “Captain VALERI”

  of the 1st Army, 1st Paris Regiment

  The errors in the operations were committed

  by Doctor Marcel PETIOT …

  The book, aside from helping the reader win at games of chance, was presented as amusement for the author and a guide on methods of “escaping boredom.”

  If Petiot was bored and required recreation, his accusers had more than enough puzzles to occupy their time. The evidence linking Petiot with the identified victims continued to build up slowly. But now there was another problem. No one had quite expected him to take the position he had; denial, yes—but not a plea of justifiable homicide. Two lieutenants from the Direction Générale des Etudes et Recherches (DGER, or Military Security) were appointed to investigate Petiot’s Resistance stories—Albert Brouard and Jacques Ibarne; the latter had worked for Résistance under the pseudonym Jacques Yonnet and was the author of “Petiot, Soldier of the Reich,” which had recounted the questionable testimony of Charles Rolland.

  Brouard and Ibarne dissected Petiot’s story, interviewed Resistance members, and attempted to verify even the vaguest among the few tangible details. It was unavoidably difficult to prove that something did not happen, and since Petiot’s assertions were so general, and his justifications for silence legally, if not reasonably, worthy of consideration, their task was difficult and frustrating. Nonetheless, in their report dated May 3, 1945, Lieutenants Brouard and Ibarne felt confident they could reject Petiot’s story as pure fantasy:

  … Petiot’s statements, his hesitations, his contradictions, his glaring ignorance of the structure of the Resistance and even of the nature and operation of those sectors for which he pretends to have worked, the numerous improbabilities in his declarations, his systematic habit of mentioning only Resistance comrades who are either dead (Cumulo, Brossolette) or who cannot be found (the members of Fly-Tox) lead one to believe that Petiot was not at any time in serious contact with any Resistance organization whatsoever. He has simply exploited information he possesses.… We formally reject the hypothesis that the accused played even the remotest part in the Resistance.

  Among other objections, they found that no one in Lucien Romier’s entourage had heard of Petiot or Dr. Eugène, there was no Desaix or De C at the Argentinian embassy, nor had a Lyon police commissioner ever been involved in clandestine passages. There was an Englishman who was sent to Besançon—Captain H. Ree—but when he arrived in late 1942 he had gone directly to Montbéliard for sabotage, and at no time had he instructed anyone in the use of Resistance weapons.

  No German motorcyclists had been killed in mysterious ways, though one had died on the rue La Fayette—one of Petiot’s specified locales—when he was hit by a truck. As for the secret-weapon plans, the American consular secretary Tyler Thompson had never heard of Petiot, Eugène, Valéri, or any secret weapon, and the other American with whom Petiot claimed to have spoken, Muller, simply did not exist. As for Thompson, his signature had been affixed to certain documents posted on American-owned properties in Paris, and Petiot might have learned his name from them.

  Petiot had also mentioned early Resistance work with a group of anti-Franco Spaniards at Levallois-Perret. These people actually did exist and knew Petiot, but not quite in the capacity he claimed. Two illegal aliens, Miguel and his pregnant mistress Liberta, were in hiding at the Levallois home of Grégoire Gonzalez, and the three of them comprised the Resistance group les Guerrilleros in its entirety. When Liberta’s baby was born, Petiot certified the birth, and he returned two or three times to treat the infant; during one of the visits his bicycle was stolen. Given Petiot’s statement about the bicycle and the fact that there was no other anti-Franco group in Levallois, there was no doubt that he was referring to les Guerrilleros. He had never at any time participated in any of their activities, though he once told González to contact him if he ever got into trouble. González was arrested and did appeal to Petiot, who sent along a false medical certificate with his apology that he could do nothing else for the moment. Petiot said that after González’s release, however, he would be able to get him out of the country.

  Ibarne and Brouard’s report listed twenty-five points in Petiot’s testimony that seemed to disprove his story. Petiot answered these charges with indignation and ridicule. When he annotated a copy of the Military Security report, Petiot discounted each point with one of three accusations: Ibarne and Brouard were lying, they were themselves ignorant of the Resistance, or they had altered his original statement and refuted one of their own making.

  Petiot’s knowledge of Resistance organization, procedure, and terminology, stated the report, was vague or incorrect, as when he called Rainbow a “group” rather than a “network.” Petiot replied: “Term employed 36 times in 8 D.G.E.R. reports, and particularly in one: 19 times in 7 pages.” Petiot’s assigned code names and numbers were unlike any the Resistance had ever used. Furthermore, no one had ever heard of Fly-Tox, nor would Brossolette’s organization have set up such an independent execution squad. (“The proof that they needed an autonomous group comprised of people unknown to the other members is that right after my disappearance, they were all raided at the same time.”) Above all, his descriptions of Cumulo were totally incorrect (only their erroneous transcription of it, Petiot said), and it was impossible that he could have known him under that name, since Jean-Marie Charbonneaux had adopted that pseudonym only after Petiot was in prison, and he had been killed before Petiot’s release. Among all the Resistance members questioned, only two thought th
ey remembered hearing the names Petiot or Augène (sic); both were uncertain, one was a mythomaniac, and their stories implied that Petiot had been a Gestapo informer. Not even his accusers took this suggestion seriously.

  The investigators pointed out that there were complete records of all official Resistance members, including names, addresses, and photographs, from which they had been able to reconstruct, for example, the entire membership of Rainbow. Petiot and his “group” were not to be found among them. They questioned Petiot’s reluctance to name members of his group—an attitude they had never encountered in hundreds of previous interrogations. “Those who compile these dossiers [of Resistance groups],” Petiot replied, “are either lunatics or criminals. Surely they know that some D.G.E.R. officers are former Gestapo members. On the first day of the next war, the first people the spies will execute are the people on those lists, thanks to those lists.” They promised Petiot that their investigation was being pursued with the utmost discretion and he need not worry about such things. Petiot merely laughed at the notion that Yonnet-Ibarne and Goletty could ever keep a promise or even knew the meaning of discretion.

  Petiot almost created doubt with one point before it toppled back upon him. In the event that he lost contact with Brossolette’s group, he said, he had been instructed to go see Brossolette’s mistress, “Mademoiselle Claire,” in an apartment whose address he could no longer recall but which was located near the Seine. No one in Brossolette’s group had ever heard of this woman, and in their report Brouard and Ibarne dismissed this as another transparent fiction. It subsequently turned out that Mademoiselle Claire did exist. She was Madame Clémence Davinroy, formerly the code secretary for the Resistance group Parsifal and presently a member of the French provisional government. Madame Davinroy, however, testified that she had never been Brossolette’s mistress (although she knew him well), had never owned an apartment near the Seine, and had never heard of Petiot under any name. She suggested that he might have heard of her through her friend Robert Lateulade, who had been at Fresnes when Petiot was there. Coincidentally, Petiot and Lateulade had actually shared the same cell for a time, and when Petiot was released Lateulade, who was deported and died in a German camp before the Liberation, sent him to see another Resistance member named Lazerges. It seemed likely that Petiot had learned some of his more plausible scraps of information from these two men and not through his own Resistance activity.

  On May 3, 1945, when the report was completed, only four of the original ten suspected accomplices were still in prison: Maurice Petiot, Raoul Fourrier (who had been rearrested after six months of liberty), René Nézondet, and Albert Neuhausen—Nézondet would be released three days later, having completed his fourteen-month sentence for nondenunciation of a crime, and Neuhausen on May 18, after serving thirteen and a half months for hiding a bunch of suitcases. Juge d’instruction Ferdinand Goletty continued the task of building up background information on the victims, identifying clothing, verifying Petiot’s statements, and trying desperately to master a dossier that had assumed gargantuan proportions. Petiot was brought to Goletty’s chambers every few days and questioned, confronted with witnesses and accomplices, questioned again and again. The same stories were repeated and elaborated. Finally, on October 30, Petiot told Goletty: “I refuse to answer any more questions because I wish to explain myself in public, in court, as quickly as possible.” He had been in prison for exactly one year now, he complained, and if the present questions had any significance they should have been asked long before.

  Petiot’s decision was firm, though occasionally his delight in sarcasm and argument got the better of him. On November 3, Goletty once more questioned him.

  GOLETTY When did you buy the house on the rue Le Sueur?

  PETIOT I have decided not to answer any questions except in public.

  GOLETTY For what purpose [did you buy the house]?

  PETIOT If you just put “ditto,” things will move along more quickly.

  GOLETTY Did you ever live in this building or use it for some purpose, and if so, when?

  PETIOT Ditto.

  GOLETTY How did you furnish the building? Where did the furnishings come from?

  PETIOT Idem.

  [Et cetera.]

  On November 16 Goletty confronted Petiot with Guélin, who denied any collaboration and gave a perfectly innocent explanation of the Dreyfus affair. Petiot sat in silent fury while Guélin spoke, but was finally unable to control himself and broke his vow of silence. “I have decided not to answer any questions, but I do want to congratulate the witness on his wonderful imagination. I love the fairy tale he just told you.” On December 10, perhaps out of sheer boredom, he answered several questions concerning Dr. Braunberger.

  GOLETTY Didn’t you meet him on June 20, 1942?

  PETIOT This must be some sort of joke. Really, how can you expect me to remember the year in which I met someone?

  GOLETTY Why were some of his clothes found in suitcases which came from the rue Le Sueur?

  PETIOT I met Dr. Braunberger once in my life, and I am asking you one more time to at least show me these so-called clothes of his. You are certainly not unaware of the fact that all of these things which were stolen—because there was never any search warrant—spent over a year in the hands of the Franco-German police, and the Nazis could have removed or inserted anything they pleased. The least I can ask is to see them now.

  GOLETTY The letters from Dr. Braunberger coincide strangely with those from the aforementioned Khaït, Van Bever, and Hotin.

  PETIOT Could you give me the definition of this word “coincide”?

  GOLETTY These letters are all from missing persons. Their handwriting is all distorted, and the phraseology is similar.

  PETIOT I was not aware of this definition of “coincide,” but since these deductions were made by people working for you, I consider them utterly devoid of significance.

  Petiot’s final pretrial interrogation took place on December 28. Goletty had prepared forty-eight pages of questions covering every aspect of the case. Petiot refused to answer a single one.

  Hastened by Petiot’s attitude, the State moved into the final preparatory stages for the trial. Goletty submitted his dossier—weighing thirty kilograms—to the Chamber of Accusations, a panel of three Appeals Court magistrates (roughly equivalent in function to a grand jury in the United States) that determines whether a case should go to trial. They decided that it should, and turned the dossier over to the procureur général’s office for drafting of the formal act of accusation.

  The procureur général is nominally involved in a French criminal case from the beginning. In theory, the Police Judiciaire’s investigation and the juge d’instruction’s interrogations are conducted under the procureur’s supervision and authority, though unless there is misconduct, he rarely really intervenes in routine cases; the procureur’s function is not usually apparent until he or members of his staff of avocats généraux and substitutes draw up the act of accusation and prosecute the case in court. But when a crime has political overtones or attracts significant public interest, the procureur’s office frequently plays a more active role throughout the investigation, and for an extremely important matter, the procureur général may personally take charge.

  In the immediate postwar years, however, the authorities shied away from cases that even remotely concerned the Resistance. It was a delicate topic to begin with, and since many officials had retained their posts under the Vichy régime, they feared that their own honor might become involved in the debate. The procureur général had decided not to touch the Petiot case, and had passed it on to one of his assistants, who gave it to another assistant, who gave it to another—until finally it had reached the newest, youngest, and most inexperienced member of the office, Avocat Général Elissalde.

  Elissalde, age thirty, had already devoted months to the case, attending interrogations and poring over the huge dossier, which he knew almost as well as Goletty. When the tim
e came to construct the case summary, he carpeted the entire floor of his apartment with the dossier. He would leap from place to place and room to room, reading out scraps from here and there and shouting them out to his new bride, who spent her honeymoon taking dictation on Dr. Petiot.

  Petiot was accused of murdering twenty-seven people for plunder. His loot was estimated at F200 million worth of cash, gold, and jewelry—which was never found, though treasure hunters searched his properties and picked through the rubble of 21 rue Le Sueur when it was demolished in the 1950s. Elissalde recognized that evidence to back up the accusations was flimsy and that, taken individually, few if any of them were strong enough to earn a conviction. Since French law permits a charge based on “presumption of guilt” when circumstantial evidence is so overwhelming as to leave no normal doubt in the minds of a jury, Elissalde took the position that, taken as an ensemble, the remarkably similar disappearances of so many people, virtually all of whom were last seen with Petiot or known to be in contact with him, were sufficient cause for presumption of guilt. He restricted his official summary to a concise thirty-eight pages; by law, the case summary, as well as the rest of the dossier, had to be shown to Petiot’s lawyer, and Elissalde did not wish him to know what the prosecution’s strategy was going to be. For the prosecution’s own use, he wrote out two hundred cramped pages of additional notes expanding on details.

  In late January 1946, the procureur général ordered Petiot sent before the Assize Court of the Seine on March 18. It was only then, after setting the trial date, that he appointed Avocat Général Pierre Dupin to prosecute the case; Dupin, who was not noted for courtroom brilliance, had only six weeks to read the dossier and no hope of mastering it. For the defense was René Floriot, then recognized as the greatest living criminal attorney in France—a great innovator, who had helped replace the emotional oratorical technique popular in the early part of the century with a logical courtroom style. A recent French minister, Françoise Giroud, described him as “a lawyer the way another might be a surgeon. When a surgeon operates on a stomach, he does not ask whether the stomach’s owner is an honest man and whether he likes him or not. He fights against death, trying to save the man who has confided his life to him.”