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

The townhouse at 21 rue Le Sueur. After Dr. Petiot purchased it from Princess Marie Colloredo-Mansfeld, neighbors began to note peculiar sights, sounds, and smells coming from the building.

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Courtyard of the townhouse. The door of the brick building led to Dr. Petiot’s office, and beyond that, his death chamber.

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The basement stove where human bodies were found burning on March 11, 1944.

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The kitchen workstation where the bodies were dismembered.

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Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, told his son, Bernard, that they were confronting “the most dreadful criminal plot that I have ever seen.”

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Entrance to the lime pit at rue Le Sueur.

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Rope and pulley found over the pit.

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Gravediggers from Passy Cemetery were hired to sift through the debris for human remains.

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Remains of the victims were carried away for examination at the Institut médico-légal.

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The photographs of Georgette and Marcel Petiot used in the warrant for their arrest on March 13, 1944. The third photograph is of young Dr. Petiot.

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“the mysterious charnel-house of rue le sueur.” The occupied press was quick to speculate on Petiot’s relationship with drug addicts, prostitutes, and “terrorists” in the Resistance.

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Crowd outside Petiot’s residence at 66 rue Caumartin. Paris would soon be engulfed in “Petiot Mania.”

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Georgette Petiot is carried away after her apprehension by the police.

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The arrest of Dr. Petiot’s younger brother, Maurice.

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Black satin dress found at 21 rue Le Sueur. The garment was still scented with perfume.

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Forty-nine suitcases belonging to victims arrive at 36 Quai des Orfèvres.

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He did not steal identities, Petiot said; he only borrowed them.

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Police believed that this viewer, found in the wall, was used to watch victims suffer in the death chamber.

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In court, Petiot put on a show, and the trial soon became a circus.

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Petiot liked to sketch and doodle in his prison cell as well as at the trial. This drawing was made in prison.

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This is a page from the manuscript Petiot wrote in prison. “Man,” Petiot wrote, “has been created to play, to challenge chance, to make love, and to struggle. But he has lost the rules, and, at the same time, something of the taste for the game.”

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