by David King
Leser asked about the child.
“Yes,” Petiot said, “he was a delightful boy.”
“ ‘Was’ is the operative word,” Dupin said, noting that his pajamas were found at rue Le Sueur.
Floriot instructed his client not to respond.
“Those must be the pajamas that the kid slept in the last night,” Petiot answered anyway. Calm as usual, he proceeded to explain that the family did not want to begin their journey with “dirty laundry,” especially when it bore their initials. He always instructed his clients not to carry any identification papers and to remove anything from their personal belongings that might cast doubt on the forged documents. As for the pajamas, Petiot asked, “Why would I have kept them?”
Dupin stood and, as if he were finally about to trap Petiot as many expected, said that Petiot’s defense was “collapsing.” But he offered no major revelation or rebuttal. He only noted that Petiot refused to answer any question about the Kneller family.
“That’s false,” the defendant replied, claiming that he had answered many questions on the subject and only stopped when “they wanted to make me sign a list of answers to 362 questions that had not been asked.” To dramatic effect, he added, “I do not know if it is the habit of the justice to use such manners.”
Floriot tried to silence his client by shouting over him. Petiot was correct, he said. The prosecution had never provided him with any list of “what was allegedly found in the suitcases.”
At this point, Dupin interrupted, disputing the claim: “The juge d’instruction showed him the inventory several times. Petiot refused to answer.”
“Why do you only say such inexactitudes? Petiot never saw that inventory. Show me the interrogation in the dossier.… If you can provide me with that, I’ll immediately stop practicing law.”
Elissalde whispered something to Dupin, who then said that the juge d’instruction, Ferdinand Gollety, had confirmed that morning that Petiot had seen the inventory several times.
“Well, then call him to the stand.”
No one, Petiot repeated, had shown him the list or the suitcases. “You could have put anything in those suitcases.”
Petiot had a point. Strictly speaking, he was correct when he stated that the police did not provide him with a list of contents—they had offered, but he had refused on the grounds that the police had never shown him the suitcases themselves, let alone opened them to reveal the contents. The seals on the suitcases, moreover, had been placed on them at a later date and removed several times without his or his attorney’s presence. The contents had been handled by many investigators and even been exhibited to the public. Under the circumstances, Petiot had refused to sign any statement. Leser must have realized this, as he immediately called for a recess to evaluate the situation. The inventory of the suitcases was not discussed again.
THE first witnesses of the trial took the stand later that afternoon. The most effective one was Lucien Pinault, Massu’s successor and the commissaire in charge at the time of Petiot’s arrest. A broad-shouldered, heavily perspiring man who had, in the words of Pierre Bénard of France-Soir, the “face of a kindly boxer,” Pinault testified that he had conducted extensive interviews with Resistance fighters, and not a single one had known or recognized Dr. Petiot or his alias Dr. Eugène. The police officers who gave evidence after him, however, added little new information.
Day five opened on a rainy Friday, March 22. Professor Charles Sannié, the director of the Identité Judiciaire, Legal and Police Identification, at the Natural History Museum in Paris, described the physical evidence uncovered at Petiot’s town house. Jury and journalists alike listened intently, at least for the first part of the presentation. Many were restless because later that afternoon, the entire court would pack up, file into a long procession of cars outside the Palais de Justice, and reconvene at 21 rue Le Sueur. The “Circus Petiot” was going on tour.
René Floriot had proposed the temporary change of locale to demonstrate to the jury how much the police had distorted and exaggerated the claims about Petiot’s building, which, the defense maintained, was to be converted after the war into a medical clinic. True, Petiot had also used the property temporarily for his antiques business and for the headquarters of his Resistance organization, but it was hardly an “execution chamber,” as the newspapers during the Occupation reported and then embellished to distract a war-ridden city from its woes.
Before Professor Sannié could finish his testimony, several journalists left the courtroom, hoping to beat competitors to the remarkable photo opportunity of capturing the man accused of being France’s most deadly serial killer arriving at the scene of the crime. Rue Le Sueur was already filling up with spectators. Parisian newspapers had reported the day’s trip, complete with maps of the “chamber of horrors” in the middle of the elegant 16th arrondissement.
Rue Le Sueur had been blocked off from traffic, and Petiot’s building roped off from pedestrians. Two hundred policemen, using wooden barricades, would try to hold back the curious spectators pushing their way forward to a better view. Other people looked out from balconies or upper-story windows, or took their conversations about the “murder house” with its death pit and triangular chamber to nearby cafés and bistros.
Just before two p.m., as the rain continued to fall, Président Leser, the magistrates, Floriot, Dupin, and all the attorneys, assistants, and members of the jury descended the monumental front steps outside the Palais de Justice and filed into the fifteen cars waiting outside. An escort of police motorcyclists led the procession from Place Dauphine over the Pont-Neuf to the Quai du Louvre, the Quai des Tuileries, and then the Place de la Concorde. Avoiding the busy Champs-Élysées, the chauffeurs maneuvered through a number of streets on the Right Bank unil they reached the Étoile, Avenue Foch, and finally rue Le Sueur.
At the town house, a handcuffed Marcel Petiot stepped out of the black limousine, the fifth one in the procession, wearing his tweed overcoat with collar turned upward in the slight drizzle and smiling to the photographers. Two plainclothes police officers, with the brims of their felt hats turned down, were at his side, escorting him to the building. Taunts and jeers were heard from the crowd.
Président Leser, raising his hand, called the reassembled court to Petiot’s office. Judge, jury, prosecution, defense, civil parties, and the many relatives and spectators followed Professor Sannié into the room. No one, however, had thought to reconnect the electricity, and so the court met in the house of horrors by candlelight. “Truly enlightened justice,” Petiot quipped.
With the defendant appearing perfectly at ease, Sannié walked the members of the court through rooms of the mansion filled with what a Time correspondent described as “a strange conglomeration of expensive Louis XVI furniture, human bones, and 600 volumes of murder mysteries.” Pierre Scize of Le Figaro described the dilapidated building with knocked-over furniture and ripped-open divans as having “the leprous walls, the décor of a shady office, and the mezzanine of an abortionist drug trafficker.” Debris threatened to soil clothes. One person slipped on rat excrement. Many people thought that they could still smell human rot.
The court essentially retraced an alleged victim’s path. The triangular room was too small for everyone to fit in at once, and so they broke up into groups. When Leser, Dupin, Floriot, Sannié, Petiot, and a couple of jurors entered, the candle went out, and no one had a match to relight it. After an uncomfortable moment in the dark, a policeman finally arrived with a flashlight. One thing, however, was missing: the Lumvisor viewer that Petiot allegedly used to spy on his victims.
“Where is the viewer?” Floriot asked.
“I don’t know,” Sannié said.
“This is unbelievable,” Floriot said, criticizing the prosecution for its handling of evidence under official seal.
“I would have preferred that the viewer had been here,” Petiot said, because he wanted to explain its function. Turning to a specific juror, who seemed frig
htened at being addressed, Petiot offered to describe the lens. It was not a periscope, he said, but “a sort of telescope” that allowed him to see a certain part of the room from the outside: “Precisely where Monsieur le Président is now standing.” The device would help him monitor his radiotherapy equipment, which he had planned to install in the room.
One of the jurors asked, if Petiot intended to use this viewer for medical purposes, why he covered the lens with wallpaper? Petiot explained that he had wanted to wallpaper the room but one of the workers had covered the lens by mistake. Another juror wondered if this small room could be used as a cell.
Petiot denied that with sarcasm, saying that it was impossible to detain anyone in here, let alone kill them in “this little hole.” He turned to Président Leser: “Would you tell me how you would go about killing someone here?”
A member of the jury pointed out that a murder can take place in smaller places, like the truck Petiot claimed that his Fly-Tox organization used.
“Oh, obviously you can kill anywhere,” Petiot said, losing his temper. He had admitted executing people, so what difference did it make where he killed them? “Stories like this are going to make us look like idiots to the rest of the world.”
Yet the walls were thick enough to drown out any cries for help, it had been noted. Petiot explained the thick, soundproof walls as a protection against the radiation of his X-ray machines—he could not use lead, of course, as it was a very difficult substance to obtain during the war. No one asked why he did not wait for better materials, as he claimed he was not going to use the clinic anyway until after the war.
At times, during the visit, Petiot looked pale. Once or twice, losing his balance, he was forced to grab on to a nearby rail or on to Floriot’s arm. After exiting into the courtyard and into the garage, Petiot again nearly stumbled. This time, he was standing at the edge of the lime pit. Several journalists witnessing the scene reported that Petiot had finally come to grips with the sheer magnitude of his crimes. Another one believed that he was mocking the tragedy.
It is more likely, however, that Petiot was suffering giddiness from a poor diet. As the Swiss journalist Edmond Dubois discovered, the defendant had barely eaten all day, or indeed the last five days, since the trial began. He had been picked up at prison before breakfast and returned to his cell after dinner. He had been subsisting on little more than a small bowl of soup and a slice of bread.
At this point, it was time to enter the basement. Professor Sannié continued explaining, like a tour guide, what they had found, pointing out its location and describing its state. “It is here at the bottom of these steps that I discovered pieces of cadavers,” he said. “Next to the two furnaces you see there was half a human body, split in the middle. In the larger furnace were human remains burning and sizzling with human juices and blood oozing out from the heat.”
Sannié also mentioned the bag, outside the landing, that contained “half a corpse.”
Petiot interrupted, asking the expert to confirm that it was a German army mail sack.
Sannié thought it was a cement bag.
“This sack is under seal, isn’t it?” Floriot asked.
Sannié did not answer.
“This is truly incredible.”
There were certainly risks in moving the courtroom to this location, and many irregularities emerged, any one of which could cause a mistrial. In addition to the growing list of missing or misplaced evidence, the door to Petiot’s town house had remained open; when someone tried to close it, Leser refused. It was a public trial, he said, not wanting to open a loophole for the defense. Yet, because he had insisted on the openness, the crowds eventually managed to swarm past the roped barriers and the police officers. Robert Cusin of L’Aurore compared the rush of spectators to a rugby scrum.
Several members of the public roamed the building virtually at will. “Do you want to see the boiler?” an elderly couple was overheard asking their granddaughter. A reporter was inspecting the stove closely enough with his flashlight to spot the hairs scorched into the grate. Another journalist witnessed members of the public urinating in a corner.
Souvenirs were snatched, like an ashtray from Petiot’s office, medical brochures, and review journals, some of them with the physician’s notes in the margins. Someone walked away with Petiot’s copy of Céline’s Bagatelles pour un massacre; another person with an early edition of Pascal. One man was seen rushing out of the building carrying a stack of Petiot’s criminal novels and treatises. More disturbingly, papers were flung out of office windows. Leser’s son was said to have uncovered a tibia. Prosecution lawyers were even photographed that day holding what one astonished reporter identified as “human shin bones in their hands.” Some of the many alleged bones were likely chunks of quicklime left over from the retrieval of the remains from the pit.
Just after four o’clock that afternoon, as the expedition wound its way back to the front of the building, certain members of the audience started shouting, “Death to the assassin!” As for the jurors, the trip to 21 rue Le Sueur had not delivered the wave of sympathy that Floriot and Petiot had hoped. The so-called future clinic of the doctor had not seemed innocent, but rather more grim and horrific than ever.
30.
BLACK FINGERNAILS
THESE INJECTIONS, PETIOT SAID, WOULD RENDER US INVISIBLE TO THE EYES OF THE WORLD.
—Michel Cadoret de l’Epinguen
PROFESSOR Sannié took the stand again in the short late-afternoon session at the Palais de Justice. Maître Jacques Bernays, the civil attorney representing the Wolff family, asked him about Petiot’s statement that he had planned to put medical machinery in the triangular room. “It is absurd and ridiculous,” Sannié answered. He could not squeeze an examination table into the small room, let alone bulky machinery.
Petiot protested that, while the room was small and he had used it to question traitors captured by his group, it had not served as a torture chamber. Nothing he said, however, addressed Sannié’s point that medical equipment for his so-called clinic simply would not fit into the room. Floriot came to his client’s assistance, reminding the court that there was no evidence whatsoever to support the hypothesis that the triangular room was a torture chamber or prison cell. There was not even a sign of a struggle or any attempt to escape its confines, as surely would be the case if the room had been used as the prosecution claimed.
“Did you find any of Petiot’s fingerprints on any of the objects taken from rue Le Sueur?” Floriot asked.
“No, we did not find any of his fingerprints.”
It was an astonishing revelation. Not only were Petiot’s fingerprints lacking, but Sannié further testified that the ones found on-site remained unidentified.
Georges Massu, then serving as commissaire of Grandes Carrières in the 18th arrondissement, followed Sannié to the stand, his left hand and wrist still healing from his suicide attempt. After the tour of rue Le Sueur, his testimony proved anticlimactic. Floriot hounded him about the missing bag that had been found at rue Le Sueur with half a body inside. Massu thought it had been a potato sack. Floriot and Petiot both said it was actually a German mailbag, with the implication that it was the Germans who brought the bodies to rue Le Sueur.
When Floriot asked where the bag was now, Massu said that he thought it was with the Identité Judiciaire. The commissaire added little new substance to the trial, prompting several journalists to criticize him for testimony that seemed vague, imprecise, and even contradictory. “Why do these civil servants, nine times out of ten, cut such pathetic figures?” asked Pierre Scize of Le Figaro. The least difficulty, he added, “sends them hiding behind each other.”
Massu would later defend himself against these charges. Although he had not succeeded in arresting Petiot, he had identified the murderer, uncovered the evidence to bring him to trial, apprehended several accomplices, and identified a number of Petiot’s alleged victims. It was his team that had established the basic paramete
rs of the case. Massu was proud of his work, he said, even if he never had the chance to interrogate Petiot, as he had long wanted.
On Saturday, March 23, the trial resumed at one o’clock in the afternoon, drawing probably the largest crowd yet. Newspaper accounts of the court’s relocation to rue Le Sueur had evoked more curiosity and attracted even more members of high society. Rainier, the heir to the Principality of Monaco, and Laure, the wife of the provisional president of France, Félix Gouin, were among those who came à la Petiot as if it were the theater. The duke of Windsor, it was said, had written Leser to ask permission to attend the trial.
Just before the président opened the proceedings, a man fainted and the ushers struggled in the packed room to remove him to safety. After the delay, Commissaire Massu’s assistant, Inspector Marius Battut, took the stand, carrying a stack of notes. He had handled many of the details of the investigation, including the discovery of the suitcases in Courson-les-Carrières and the identification of many victims. The inspector was able to hold his ground.
When asked if the Wolffs and the Basches had served as Gestapo informers, Battut was adamant: “I can assert the contrary under oath.”
After a heated exchange that ended with Floriot forcing Battut to admit that Dreyfus had been working for the Gestapo, Floriot asked the witness if the suitcases the police found were ever shown to the victims’ families.
“To my knowledge, no.”
“Why not?”
“Maître, you are forgetting that we were under the Occupation.” It was difficult to imagine Nazi authorities making an effort to help families of Jews, criminals, or other people who had tried to escape.
Floriot asked about Lafont’s visit to Massu and the identification of the silk shirts that had belonged to Petiot’s now acknowledged victim, Adrien Estébétéguy. “I am not well informed on that matter,” Battut said. He knew that Lafont was interested in the fate of some of his men who had posed as German police and committed a number of robberies. All of them went missing, he said, except for “a man named Lombard, who did not disappear.”