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

CHAPTER 5. “100,000 AUTOPSIES”

1 “The New Landru” Le Petit Parisien, March 13, 1944.

2 “burned alive” L’Oeuvre, March 13, 1944.

3 “demonic, erotic” Le Matin, March 14, 1944.

4 double life The question of a double life was also posed in French papers, for instance Le Petit Parisien, March 16, 1944.

5 “shady ladies” … “twisted corpse” Associated Press, May 28, 1944.

6 spotlights The United Press, in turn, broadcast the report in various newspapers, for instance, Milwaukee Journal, March 15, 1944. The claim had already been reported by Le Matin, March 14, 1944.

7 “You have often heard” Georges Massu, Aveux Quai des Orfèvres. Souvenirs du Commissaire Massu (Paris: La Tour Pointue, undated/1951), 242–243.

8 “catastrophic” Ibid.

9 many bodies, but no signs Jacques Perry and Jane Chabert, L’affaire Petiot (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 20.

10 “I should have been” Albert Massui, Le cas du Dr Petiot (Brussels: E.D.C., 1944), 35.

11 “A shiver ran down” … “His black eyes” Associated Press, May 4, 1944.

12 “horrible and icy” Georges Massu, L’enquête Petiot: La plus grande affaire criminelle du siècle (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1959), 184.

13 having trouble sleeping Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 83.

14 “Boss” … “It’s almost certain” Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 86. Rumors of Petiot’s drug habit were soon circulated further, Le Petit Parisien, March 15, 1944.

15 “did not want to provide” Report, March 14, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° I.

16 “very bad reputation” Ibid.

17 On March 11, 1930 Report, March 14, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° I.

18 “Furiously, he pressed” Seguin’s testimony appears in Jean-François Dominique, L’affaire Petiot: médecin, marron, gestapiste, guillotiné pour au moins vingt-sept assassinats (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1980), 51. Petiot’s fingerprints are found in folder 42 of APP, Série J, carton n° I.

19 Speculations rose Paris-Soir, March 20, 1943, and more fully in Paris-Soir, March 21, 1943.

20 “by accident” Jean-Marc Varaut, L’abominable Dr. Petiot (Paris: Balland 1974), 51.

21 “anthropometric” techniques Marcel Le Clère, Histoire de la police (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1947), 105–107; Colin Beavan, Fingerprints: The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case That Launched Forensic Science (New York: Hyperion 2001), 76–93.

22 five million measurements Claude Cancès with Dominique Cellura, Alissia Grifat, and Franck Hériot, Histoire du 36, quai des Orfèvres (Paris: 2010), 53.

23 “enthusiastic admiration” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,” in Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009), 153.

24 “A right foot” Dr. Paul’s testimony in F.A. Mackenzie, Landru (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1928), 201. This book was reissued in 1995 in The Notable Trials Library of Gryphon Editions with an introduction by Alan M. Dershowitz.

25 “the doctor of” … “thigh bones, craniums, shinbones” Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 78–79.

26 Massu and Paul Massu, Aveux Quai des Orfèvres, 212; Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 80.

27 In most cases Premier Rapport préliminaire et succinct, APP, carton n° VII.

28 “three garbage cans” Le Petit Parisien, March 15, 1944.

29 “It’s not an autopsy” Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 79.