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

13.

POSTCARDS FROM THE OTHER SIDE

SOMETIMES I AM UNABLE TO PREVENT MYSELF FROM QUIVERING WHEN I IMAGINE THE SCENES THAT HAVE BEEN WITNESSED AT THE HOUSE ON RUE LE SUEUR.

—Commissaire Massu

JEAN Gouedo, the man who appeared in Massu’s offices, owned a leather and fur shop across the street from Marcel Petiot’s rue Caumartin apartment. He had purchased the store in 1941 from his friend and former partner, Joachim Guschinow, then a forty-two-year-old Polish-born Jew who had been frightened by a number of developments in Occupied Paris. Gouedo had no need to explain why Guschinow had lived in fear.

On September 27, 1940, a new law had forced Guschinow, like all Jewish store owners, to display the bilingual black-and-yellow sign identifying his business as Jewish: JÜDISCHES GESCHÄFT and ENTERPRISE JUIVE. The following month, Guschinow became one of 7,737 Jewish shop owners and 3,456 co-owners in the Department of the Seine who were forced to sell their businesses to a non-Jew. The German Occupation was making a tragic mockery of France’s tradition of tolerance, which had long attracted immigrants like Guschinow to the country.

In early May 1941, the Préfecture de Police used the recent German-ordered census, identifying the almost 150,000 Jews in Paris, and required the 6,494 foreign Jewish males of Polish, Austrian, and Czech nationality between the ages of eighteen and sixty to report to one of five locations on the fourteenth of the month. The 3,747 who obeyed were promptly deported to the concentration camps of Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande. Most of them would later die at Auschwitz.

Three months later, at the next roundup, the French police sealed off an area of the 11th arrondissement, north and east of the Place Bastille, with a large population of foreign-born Jews, and began seizing men between the ages of eighteen and fifty. They forcibly removed them from home, work, the métro station, and the streets. The 2,894 arrested in the initial sweep, however, were not sufficient, according to German authorities. Follow-up operations raised the number to 4,232, all of whom were sent to the new concentration camp Drancy, three miles away, in an old unfinished housing project. On the night of October 2–3, Gestapo-organized riots burned six Parisian synagogues and destroyed a seventh with explosives. Everywhere, it seemed, Nazi persecution was increasing in frequency and intensity. Each day, Guschinow feared arrest.

As Gouedo explained to the commissaire, Guschinow had told him that his medical doctor, Marcel Petiot, claimed to know a way out of the country. It was not easy, the physician had warned, but it was certainly possible. For a fee of 25,000 francs, an underground escape network would smuggle him over the mountains into Spain or alternatively across the line of demarcation into the unoccupied zone, where he would board a ship at Marseille for Argentina. All travel documents, including forged identity papers, false passports, and phony entry and exit visas, would be provided.

Guschinow was supposed to maintain complete silence about the secret organization, but, in his excitement, he confided to his colleague—a fortunate circumstance that would help the investigation. Despite his misgivings about the risks of such an enterprise, Gouedo had agreed to help his friend prepare for departure, and he now told Massu what he knew. The instructions had been minutely detailed. No pictures or identifying papers of any sort were to be carried; any initials or marks on articles of clothing or any item on his person had to be removed. After all, it was worthless, the physician had reportedly said, to purchase a false identity, only to carry evidence that contradicted or cast doubt on it. The fee was to defray the costs for the passeurs, the stay in a string of remote hideouts, the voyage across the Atlantic, and the bribes of corrupt officials along the way.

Instructed to bring one or at most two suitcases of personal belongings, Guschinow had sewn two five-hundred-dollar bills in US currency into the shoulders of his tweed coat and concealed another sum in a secret compartment of one of his suitcases. In total, he carried about 500,000 francs, along with a fortune in gold, silver, diamonds, and other family heirlooms, which included an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 francs in jewels alone. He also brought along several fur coats to start a new furrier shop in Buenos Aires.

Hearing the extraordinary story, Massu called in Guschinow’s wife, Renée, for an interview, which took place on March 21, 1944. A small blond woman in her early forties, Madame Guschinow confirmed Gouedo’s account in many respects and elaborated on other details as well. On January 2, 1942, the night of departure, she accompanied her husband to the L’Étoile, perhaps farther. It was dark and they were trying not to be seen. Guschinow had been told to come alone.

It was striking that Renée’s husband had been told the location of the rendezvous—rue Pergolèse, which intersects rue Le Sueur. In every other case that the police would discover, all of which came later chronologically, the physician would never again reveal the address in advance. Had he perhaps learned to be more reserved with this information? At this point, too, there was no mention of the name Dr. Eugène, though of course Petiot had no need to use a pseudonym with Guschinow, who, as his patient, already knew his identity.

As Madame Guschinow continued relating what she knew about the enterprise, Massu learned that her husband had been referred to one of Petiot’s colleagues, a specialist in tropical diseases who would make some “necessary injections,” presumably vaccinations. Guschinow was asked to pack a special suntan lotion, two blankets, and selected valuables in no more than two suitcases. That evening, Joachim and Renée Guschinow dined together, walked around the Arc de Triomphe area, and then kissed good-bye, never to see each other again.

In March 1942, two months after her husband’s departure, Renée was worried that she had not heard from him. She visited the doctor, who was said to be the only acceptable way to contact a client abroad. Petiot assured her that her husband was doing well. After traveling through Marseille and Casablanca, he had reached Buenos Aires. Petiot showed her a postcard that he said he had received from Guschinow: “I have arrived. I got sick during the crossing but I am completely healed. You can come.” That was all it said, or at least that was what Petiot claimed it said. The letter had been written in code. There was no obvious date, stamp, addressee, or signature. It seemed to be written in Renée’s husband’s handwriting.

Two other postcards and letters purportedly from Guschinow appeared that spring, written on stationery bearing the name of the “Alvear Palace Hotel, Buenos Aires,” where Petiot claimed that Renée’s husband was living. In these communications, Guschinow never elaborated other than to say that, after nearly losing his mind at the initial departure and breaking down in tears, his voyage had been comfortable and he had arrived safely. His business was thriving, and above all, he wanted his wife to join him.

Once, on her insistence, Petiot allowed Renée Guschinow to retain the card from her husband, on the condition that she later tear it up. She had complied, she told Massu. In the last message, Guschinow demanded that his wife immediately depart, threatening to cut off ties unless she consented. Petiot seconded the urgency of the request, advising her to “sell all [her] belongings and carry as much money as possible.”

MARCEL Petiot had purchased the property on rue Le Sueur from the Princess Marie Colloredo-Mansfeld in May of 1941 for 495,000 francs. He paid 373,000 down, covering the remainder with annual payments of 17,500. The building was put in the name of his son, who became the ninth owner since its construction in 1834. On August 11, 1941, Petiot took possession of the town house, and within six weeks, he began making renovations.

The construction company, Laborderie et Minaud, had made a number of improvements to the property. In addition to pouring a concrete foundation in the garage, the masons had built a high outer wall in gypsum around the courtyard and constructed an inner wall in one of the buildings, which created the triangular room. They then surrounded this new space with a wall consisting of twenty-two centimeters (8.6 inches) of solid brick. A viewer was installed, a double door was inserted, and eight iron hooks were added. In the kitchen, they had also installed a concrete sink and, he claimed, plugged some holes in the basement that gave access to the sewer. The renovation work was completed in October 1941—two months before the disappearance of the first known victim, Joachim Guschinow.

Jean Minaud, one of the owners of the firm, said that he had never visited the site or inspected the work. It was a small project compared to his company’s usual ventures. He had delegated everything to two brothers, Louis and Gaston Dethève. When Massu asked to speak with them, Minaud told him that Louis had died two years before in an air raid. Gaston, however, was available, and on March 23, 1944, he accompanied the commissaire to rue Le Sueur, where he would point out the work in detail. He also removed the Lumvisor lens from the wall for examination.

As Dethève explained, Petiot had told them that he planned to open a clinic and mental institution after the war. The newly constructed triangular room would house an “electric transformer.” Petiot wanted the walls reinforced to drown out the sounds, so as not to disturb the neighbors and also to protect against the dangers of radiation. “With electrotherapy,” he had allegedly told the Dethève brothers, “you cannot be too careful.” Petiot had also explained the insertion of the viewing lens into the wall as a device to monitor the progress of his machine. The courtyard addition, which was built on top of a wall already several stories high, would protect his patients from the prying eyes of his neighbors, not to mention shield them from the peach pits that he claimed children liked to throw into his yard. As for the hooks in the triangular room, Dr. Petiot had not explained their purpose.

WITH news of the “murder factory” on rue Le Sueur splashed on the front pages of all the major Parisian papers, a number of people approached police headquarters with stories about the suspect. One of the more useful tips came from Roland Albert Porchon, a thirty-two-year-old former deliverer of wine who had made a small fortune during the years of the Occupation. He owned, among other things, a trucking company near la porte de Sainte-Cloud and a restaurant on rue du Faubourg Poissonière, which had been “Aryanized.” A large man with short dark hair and a thick neck that the French then described as Germanic, Porchon had many friends on the police force and in the criminal underworld.

Like Gouedo, Porchon claimed knowledge of the clandestine escape agency. In March 1943, Porchon had suggested it to a friend, René Marie, and his wife, Marcelle. After the usual round of background checks and interviews, the couple had been accepted by the organization. The cost was to be 45,000 francs, the fee clearly varying depending on many factors, not least being the desperation of the potential client to leave and his or her ability to pay. Porchon, who operated a secondhand furniture business on the side, had offered to buy the couple’s furniture for a lump sum of 220,000 francs. The couple, in the end, had not left with the agency.

But there was more to Porchon’s testimony. After the news on rue Le Sueur first broke, Porchon had panicked. Realizing that he had sent over a couple to the doctor and fearing that police might find their names, as well as his own, at rue Le Sueur, Porchon had tried to cover up the incident. He confessed to Massu that he had gone to the Maries, and told them, in no uncertain terms, to avoid speaking with the police. And if the police came to them, they should deny everything. Porchon, busy with his own concerns, did not need any additional hassles from the authorities.

In the course of the conversation, Porchon also mentioned a name that Massu and his inspectors kept encountering: René Nézondet. He was, they already knew, a friend of Marcel Petiot, and he had also been arrested when the Gestapo arrived at the physician’s home. They were in prison together until Nézondet’s release in June 1943. After twenty years of friendship dating back to their bachelor days in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, Nézondet had served, in Porchon’s words, as Petiot’s “right arm.”

Nézondet had approached Porchon once with a proposal from Dr. Petiot to sell a large stock of alcohol. Porchon, tempted, picked up the phone and called a friend in a purchasing agency that sold goods in bulk to the German Occupation authorities. He was not interested. Nézondet came with many other proposals, which Porchon said he had not taken seriously.

On one such occasion in 1943, Nézondet had come to him with an idea of launching a new, German-sanctioned radio station that would operate in Paris. While they discussed the proposition, Nézondet related some gossip about Dr. Marcel Petiot, calling him “the King of the Gangsters.” Then, Nézondet added mysteriously, “I would never have believed he could ever commit murder!”

According to Porchon, when he challenged this statement, Nézondet told him that he had entered a basement somewhere in town—he did not say where—and seen “sixteen corpses stretched out.” Porchon was still skeptical, he said, but Nézondet replied that he had seen the corpses himself. “They were completely black,” he added. “They must have died by injection or some poison.”

Nézondet then allegedly told Porchon why he thought Petiot had killed his victims: “I suppose he asked them for money to pass them into the Free Zone and instead of helping them escape, he killed them.” Nézondet swore Porchon to silence, assuring him that he would report the murders to the police himself as soon as the war ended.

As if that were not disturbing enough, Massu now learned that this was apparently not the first time Porchon had reported Petiot’s suspected murders to the police. On August 2, 1943, Porchon had contacted a friend, Commissaire Lucien Doulet, then a forty-two-year-old director of the police économique at the quai de Gesvres, which investigated financial crime, and told him about a rumor circulating in the underworld about “a Parisian doctor who, under the pretext of passing young people out of the country, asked them for sums of money between 50,000 and 75,000 francs, and then did away with them after payment.” This doctor, Porchon added, disposed of the remains “by burying them in the courtyard of his building.”

Doulet had told him to report the news to the Police Judiciaire, which Porchon did. “He didn’t seem to take the matter seriously,” Porchon said. The police officer in question, Massu learned, was an inspector on his own Brigade Criminelle: René Bouygues. When the commissaire interviewed him on August 19, Assistant Inspector Principal Bouygues admitted knowing Porchon for five years and praised him as a valued police informer. But he denied ever hearing anything about Petiot or any murders. He later changed his mind, saying that he had “forgotten about it.”

That Inspector Bouygues would attempt to make this excuse for not pursuing the allegation illustrates the sheer disregard for human life during the German Occupation—a time when many people simply disappeared without explanation. Porchon’s testimony also underlined the extent to which the police department, even when tipped off about possible murder, neglected to investigate. Was this an example of incompetence, an overwhelmed police force, or yet another sign that perhaps someone was protecting Marcel Petiot?

It was at this time that Massu learned that the rumors of a stranger arriving at and departing from the crime scene at rue Le Sueur on the night of March 11 were true. Patrolmen Teyssier and Fillion, the policemen who spoke with the man, had always denied it, persisting in their stance even after fireman Corporal Boudringhin gave his testimony on March 16, describing the visitor in detail.

Teyssier admitted that there had been many curious people outside the town house, but he said none had been allowed to enter. He flat-out denied the claims of the fire chief. “At no point,” Teyssier said, “have I seen Dr. Petiot on the premises.” Fillion supported Teyssier, but the evidence was mounting. Robert Bouquin, one of the first arrivals to rue Le Sueur, also saw the stranger, as did Maurice Choquat, who had arrived that night about 7:45.

On March 18, 1944, Patrolmen Teyssier and Fillion reversed themselves. A man claiming to be “the brother of the owner,” Fillion confessed, had approached him and entered the building with his permission. He explained this lapse of judgment by the fact that he had been shocked and overwhelmed by the “staggering spectacle and the unbreathable air from the smell of rotting cadavers burning in the stove.” Teyssier also now acknowledged seeing the stranger. After his return from calling headquarters for reinforcement, Teyssier noticed this unknown man standing under the vault of the carriage entrance with Fire Chief Boudringhin and Fillion, the latter looking uncomfortable. The man had remained three or four minutes, Fillion said, and then left, profiting from the general chaos. “At that moment,” Fillion added, “I was far from thinking that this man was the killer.”

For this negligence of duty, as well as their repeated lies, Patrolmen Teyssier and Fillion were removed from their positions and ordered to appear before the Germans at the Pépinière Armory. Both men fled, fearing severe reprisals. Teyssier, a thirty-nine-year-old member of a Resistance group inside the police—l’Honneur de la police—escaped by jumping out of a window at the armory.