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

CHAPTER 24. BEATING CHANCE?

1 “Cigarette Butt” Petiot signed a poem with this nickname. APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° VII.

2 “It would be marvelous” Ibid.

3 “If Petiot is condemned” René Nézondet, Petiot “le Possédé” (Paris: Express, 1950), 123–124.

4 “very cultivated, very intelligent” France-Soir, March 16, 1946.

5 “I never saw” Nézondet, Petiot “le Possédé,” 128.

6 “meatballs” … “virgin forest” Marcel Petiot, Le Hasard vaincu (Paris: Roger Amiard, 1946), 14, 341, 1, 5–6.

7 “Petiot Exposition” Jacques Delarue and Anne Manson, “L’affaire Landru de la Libération: Docteur Petiot 21, Rue Lesueur,” in Gilbert Guilleminault et al., eds., Les lendemains qui ne chantaient pas (Paris: Denoël, 1962), 54.

8 “very esteemed” Jean Duchesne, Audition, November 27, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.

9 “he had belonged to a group” Ibid.

10 “participated in the murder” Jean Duchesne, Audition, November 28, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.

11 the owner of the five-room apartment Yvonne Salvage, Audition, December 10, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.

12 About nine o’clock one evening … “make the cadavers disappear” Georges Redouté, Audition, November 4, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.

13 a “Corsican” Ibid. Marguerite Durez, Audition, November 5, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.

14 “During the time” … “always alone” Georges Redouté, Audition, November 4, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.

15 “a drum with German colors” Perquisition, November 4, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.

16 Petiot had called this Georges Redouté, Audition, November 4, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.

17 a “game of poker” Ibid.

18 “I was convinced at that moment” … “the war, the Germans” Emilie Bézayrie, Audition, November 6, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.

19 “true patriot” … “I did not go to the police” Jacques Perry and Jane Chabert, L’affaire Petiot (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 113.

20 Petiot, laughing, offered Delarue and Manson, “L’affaire Landru,” 51.

21 Lieutenant Jacques Yonnet Many biographers confuse the surname and the alias. The correct surname is Yonnet.

22 wounded by a German grenade Jacques Yonnet was still feeling the effects June 16, 1944, describing how fragments “roam about in my side, my hip, my neck. They tickle, prick, scratch, throb, and sometimes leave me prostrate with attacks of absolutely unbearable convulsive pain.” Jacques Yonnet, Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City, translated by Christine Donougher (London: Dedalus, 2006), 165.

23 the twenty-five-year-old Charbonneaux Hubert Charbonneaux, “Hommage à Jean Charbonneaux (1918–1943),” last updated December 22, 2007, which can be read at the recommended Turma Vengeance website, at chantran.vengeance. free.fr/Doc/Charbonneaux05.pdf

24 inventor of the bath torture Jacques Delarue, Trafics et crimes sous l’occupation (Paris: Fayard, 1968), 45–52.

25 identifying one hundred V-1 George Martelli, The Man Who Saved London: The Story of Michel Hollard (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1961), 8, 154–155, 167.

26 No one in Agir Many other Resistants who would have moved in his circles denied any knowledge as well, including Claire Davinroy, Audition, October 31, 1944; Dr. Vic Dupont, Audition, November 13, 1944; and widows of fallen leaders, such as Gilberte Brossolette, Report, March 21, 1945, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.

27 “A guy who did nothing” DGER Report, Conclusions, May 3, 1945, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V and IV.