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

33.

WALKOUT

THE FOREIGN PRESS DOES NOT APPEAR TO UNDERSTAND FRENCH JUSTICE.

—Alex Ancel, Parisien Libéré, March 31, 1946

IN Floriot’s hands, the interrogation of witnesses on days eleven and twelve sometimes became so fierce that it seemed that the question of a witness’s or victim’s honor overshadowed the issue of Petiot’s guilt. The prosecution, outmaneuvered, labored to prove the obvious, namely, in Yvan Dreyfus’s case, that he was a patriot who had been forced to sign two documents promising to aid the Third Reich. The defense used the evidence of his signature to argue that Dreyfus was a collaborator and a traitor who intended to infiltrate Petiot’s Resistance organization.

After the radio engineer Jean-Claude Stern testified about Dreyfus’s patriotism, an electrician imprisoned with him at Compiègne named Marcel Berthet also confirmed Dreyfus’s Resistance credentials. “We respected Yvan Dreyfus as the most reliable Resistant, and I was keen to come here to declare it.” One highlight of his testimony was telling the court how Dreyfus and several other prisoners nearly succeeded in digging a tunnel to escape the camp.

Maître Véron then read a telegram from Pierre Mendès-France, a future prime minister who at that time served as Charles de Gaulle’s minister of national economy. After making a dramatic escape from a Vichy prison, Mendès-France joined the Free French forces in Britain. Mendès-France, then on a mission in New York, defended his fellow Resistant with passion. “I learn with amazement that PETIOT DARED DEFAME THE MEMORY OF YVAN DREYFUS.” The allegations were “unthinkable to everyone who valued Dreyfus’s character, courage, and patriotism.” Petiot looked on, several eyewitnesses noted, with an expression that vacillated between boredom and disdain.

Paulette Dreyfus then took the stand, wearing a black dress suit with a black veil and a pearl necklace. Unlike most of the previous witnesses, Dreyfus did not look at Petiot when she testified, and the physician, for once, did not interrupt.

Dreyfus discussed, her voice trembling, how her husband wanted to leave Occupied France to join de Gaulle in London. She told of his capture, imprisonment at Compiègne, and fear of deportation to Drancy, followed by the sordid history of the negotiations over his release that ended with Yvan being forced to sign the Gestapo papers. “I was horrified,” Dreyfus said. “His release was supposed to be unconditional.”

Dreyfus told how then, after they had paid the ransom, the lawyer Jean Guélin came with yet another “last requirement” for her husband at Gestapo headquarters. Her husband left with him and she never saw him again.

“When your husband left, did he carry any suitcases?”

“No, Guélin took care of the luggage and loaned him some,” Dreyfus said, thereby supporting the defense contention that the Gestapo attempted to infiltrate Petiot’s organization. Floriot had already established that the first of the two letters her husband had been forced to sign bound him not to act in any way against the Third Reich. He now asked her about the second letter. Dreyfus’s answer was exactly what the defense counsel wanted to hear: “To give information on the organization that managed the departures.”

LIKE Madame Dreyfus, Fernand Lavie had been outraged by Dr. Petiot’s assertion that he killed only “Germans, notorious collaborators, Gestapo, and agents provocateurs.” His mother had been killed, he had earlier told the police, because she refused, “by her silence, or her declarations [to become] an accomplice of Dr. Petiot’s trafficking in drugs.” Lavie was the next witness called to the stand.

He retraced the background of the case from his half sister Raymonde Baudet’s arrest for forged prescriptions to the strange postcards allegedly from his mother informing the family of her sudden departure for the unoccupied zone. “My mother never intended to leave,” Lavie said, noting that she did not pack any personal belongings or take any money with her.

Floriot reminded the court that Khaït’s husband David told the police that he believed Marthe had both written and delivered the letters, admitting also that she had previously expressed an interest in fleeing Occupied Paris. David Khaït was not available to testify because he had been arrested and deported by the Germans in June 1944. He had not returned.

“Do you know,” Floriot then asked, “that three people, including a railroad employee, believed that they recognized your mother in June 1943?” This was fifteen months after her disappearance.

Lavie said he had not heard that.

“Didn’t your mother come to drop off a letter with your attorney as your stepfather claimed?” The maid at the attorney’s office had also recognized her, Floriot said. The attorney, of course, happened to be Véron, who was now serving as Lavie’s representation in the civil suit. If this statement was correct, Floriot had found four witnesses who claimed to see Khaït after the time his client was accused of killing her.

“Let’s call the maid to the stand,” Véron said. The irony of the lawyer questioning the statement of his own maid was not lost.

Floriot asked about Lavie’s half-sister, Raymonde Baudet, whose forged prescription began the original narcotics investigation. Lavie admitted that he had not heard from her and did not know her whereabouts. He only knew that she was living in the country.

“Yet she must know that we are discussing her at the Cour d’assises and that her presence here would be welcome,” Dupin interjected, trying to cover the fact that the prosecution had neglected to call her to testify.

“How many witnesses does that make whom you haven’t been able to produce?” Petiot asked. “Are we to conclude that they are dead? Did you murder them?”

Dupin then asked the witness if he had been shown a letter from Jean-Marc Van Bever, another alleged Petiot victim who disappeared within days of his mother in March 1942. Lavie said that he had. The police inspector had concealed the signature, but he thought the handwriting was the same as in the letters that arrived at their apartment supposedly from his mother.

The graphologist Edmond de Rougemont did not agree, Floriot noted.

“Maître, if you manage to explain this away,” Véron said, “you will perhaps remove two reasons for condemning your client to death. There will still be twenty-five left.”

MARGUERITE Braunberger took the stand on Saturday, March 30, the twelfth day of the trial and the last one for the prosecution witnesses. As the third widow to testify, Braunberger discussed her husband’s disappearance on the morning of June 20, 1942, noting the mysterious phone call summoning him to a meeting at the L’Étoile métro station on the pretense of taking him to care for a patient at an unknown location on rue Duret.

An usher of the court opened one of the glass cages in the room and showed the witness a blue shirt with white pinstripes and a man’s hat, size 50. Braunberger, embracing them, confirmed that they had been worn by her husband the day he disappeared.

“How do you explain this find?” asked Maître Perlès, the attorney for the Braunberger family.

“The moment has not come for me to answer,” Petiot said.

“I would advise you to do so,” Leser said.

Petiot refused, adding that he would respond after the other witnesses had testified.

“That gives you time to think of a reply,” Perlès said.

“Petiot, I order you to answer.”

The defendant held his ground, promising a rebuttal in half an hour.

“Mon Dieu, I’m not going to go anywhere.” As the court would soon learn, Petiot actually had an unexpected answer to the accusations.

After Madame Braunberger left the stand, the prosecution called Raymond Vallée to testify about the relationship between Braunberger and Petiot. He was well placed to provide information. A friend of the Braunbergers and a cousin of Georgette Petiot, Vallée had hosted the luncheon where the victim and his alleged murderer met.

Vallée told the court about receiving a letter, purportedly from Braunberger, on June 24, 1942, asking him to bring his furniture to one of Petiot’s properties near the Bois de Boulogne. Vallée admitted that he had been skeptical. He did not understand how Braunberger could have possibly known about the town house.

Petiot’s expressions had been full of disdain, but at one point during the testimony, he lost his temper and jumped out of his chair, shouting at the witness. Leser ordered him to sit down and control himself. A guard, standing behind Petiot, indicated that he should comply, using the familiar tu form, not the formal vous.

“I forbid you to use tu with me!” Petiot yelled at the guard, who simply repeated the order.

“Fuck you!” Petiot screamed.

As the crowd jeered, Leser pounded the gavel and shouted for everyone to calm down. But then, as Petiot started to ask Vallée a question, Leser allowed the witness to leave the stand. Floriot smiled. The clerk of the court, alert to the possibility of a mistrial, whispered to Leser. An usher was sent to fetch Vallée. Moments later, he returned to answer Petiot’s question. It was insignificant.

Other members of the Braunberger household took the stand, including the maid, the cook, and a nurse from Dr. Braunberger’s medical practice. Each one identified the shirt and hat as belonging to the doctor.

Petiot now asked for the two pieces of evidence. “There was no reason for me to kill this old Jew.” Not only did he barely know him, but Braunberger obviously didn’t take any money or valuables with him the morning he left his apartment. There was nothing to gain, the defendant said. As for the shirt, Petiot disputed the prosecution’s claims that it bore Braunberger’s initials. “Do not speak to me anymore about this hat or shirt,” he concluded, literally tossing the items at the clerk. Floriot would soon have more to say about these items.

During the break, Petiot was besieged by audience members wielding copies of his book Le Hasard vaincu and requesting autographs. Some asked for photographs with him. Petiot smiled, joked, and signed away, pausing at one point to sign a copy of his book that he would present as a gift to someone else. He inscribed on the title page: “Very sympathetically, to M. Leser.”

WITNESSES were called next for the Kneller case, including their neighbor Christiane Roart, family friend Klara Noé, and young René’s godfather, Michel Czobor, who told the court how they had also received postcards, allegedly from the Knellers, describing their arrival in South America and encouraging them to follow them abroad. Petiot did not refute anything of substance in the testimony, as it did not contradict his basic stance that he had helped the Knellers escape Occupied Paris.

During the testimony, the attorney for the family of Joseph Piereschi, Maître Dominique Stéfanaggi, again confronted the defendant about his relationship with the Germans: “Why were you released from prison by the Gestapo?”

Petiot clearly did not want to return to this subject. “To insinuate what you want to insinuate, you really have to be a bastard.” He demanded that the attorney retract the question, before adding that he would hear from his cellmates at Fresnes.

Many attorneys jumped in, all speaking at once. Was Petiot threatening the attorney? It sounded that way to many people in the gallery, but actually Petiot was probably referring to a couple of witnesses who would soon testify for the defense. In the meantime, as Leser tried in vain to restore order, the sharp Marseille accent of Maître Charles Henry, the representative of the Paulette Grippay family, drowned out the shouting. Henry suggested that the crux of the matter was not whether Petiot worked for the Resistance, but rather if he had served the Gestapo.

“Me? An agent of the Gestapo?” Petiot asked. “I was tortured and kept for eight months by the Germans.” He boasted of not revealing anything about his fellow Resistance fighters, while “you lawyers of the alleged victims,” on the other hand, launched desperate, last-minute attempts to slander him. “In other words, you are all bastards.”

Maître Henry repeated that the case should be tried before the High Court of Justice, the new tribunal established by the Liberation government to hear cases of treason, which took precedence over a criminal trial. Leser interrupted, advising him not to suggest such a thing. Maître Stéfanaggi agreed with his civil attorney colleague. Petiot began to shout, and so did several other attorneys.

Enraged at the breakdown of protocol, Leser walked out of the courtroom. The magistrates, the clerk of the court, and other officials followed. Someone near Leser said he had actually adjourned the court, but few had heard it if he did. As this chaotic session wound down, Floriot looked pleased, no doubt contemplating cause for a mistrial on the grounds that the président of the tribunal left the room in the middle of the proceedings.