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

by David King

  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.

  34.

  NAUFRAGEUR

  WHATEVER THE OUTCOME OF THIS TRIAL MIGHT BE, I WILL ALWAYS BE GLAD TO HAVE SHARED A CELL WITH DR. PETIOT.

  —Lieutenant Richard Héritier

  AFTER a break Sunday, the trial would enter its third and final week on Monday, April 1. By this time, all the prosecution witnesses had testified and the defense would begin calling its witnesses. Tuesday and Wednesday would be devoted to the presentations of the civil suit attorneys, followed by the prosecution’s closing statement. On Thursday, Floriot would sum up the defense, and then the jury would convene for its deliberations. This, at least, was the schedule that Leser outlined for the court.

  Rumors circulated that morning that the justices of the War Crimes Trial at Nuremberg would take a break from their historic proceedings and attend the Petiot Trial. Many in the audience actually expected Robert H. Jackson, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and his fellow American, Soviet, British, and French justices of the Nuremberg Commission to enter at any moment and assume the row of empty chairs placed behind Leser. Others believed that this was just another unsubstantiated rumor that spread in the hothouse climate of this unorthodox trial, perhaps even an April Fool’s prank.

  With April 1 also being day thirteen of the trial, several astrologers and Tarot card readers were predicting a big day for Marcel Petiot. For the first time since the opening, however, it was not difficult to find a seat. Attendance was down considerably. Many Parisians had formed their opinions and, no doubt, knew that the defense witnesses would not offer as dramatic, or chilling, testimony. So for this brilliant spring day, even many regular trial attendees chose the boulevards, parks, and sidewalk cafés over the courtroom drama at the Palais de Justice.

  Before the first witness took the stand, Maître Henry wanted to clarify what he had meant at the end of the previous day. He had not intended to propose that Petiot be charged for treason and the trial move to the High Court, no matter what the journalists and audience remembered. Instead, he claimed that he merely wanted to ensure that the defendant and his accomplices would be held responsible for their crimes. It was not a credible retraction. Leser stopped him to call the first witness.

  François Comte, a decorated World War I veteran and shop owner in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, spoke fondly of his experience as a patient at Petiot’s clinic. He praised Petiot for his service to the poor, including his frequent treatment without charging a sou. Comte went on to explain how Petiot, an innocent man, ended up in such a predicament: the malicious slander of his enemies.

  After this novel theory, which was championed with unusual vigor, Comte proceeded to elaborate on how many of Petiot’s rivals, particularly conservative, right-wing townsmen, had opposed his expensive reforms. Other people, he said, resented that Petiot chose to marry Georgette Lablais, the daughter of a Seignelay pork butcher, rather than one of their own daughters.

  Emile Pathier, a retired porter in his seventies who had previously served with Petiot on the municipal council, agreed, calling Villeneuve-sur-Yonne “a veritable fire-box of political intrigue.” Still, Petiot had managed to improve the city in many ways. He had built a sewer system over the opposition of many critics and transformed the educational system from a “true nest of tuberculosis” into a quality institution. He was, simply, “incapable of doing the things that he had been accused of doing.”

  From the first witness, every Petiot defender spoke with conviction. Fellow townsmen and former patients alike praised the contributions of the popular, influential doctor. One witness told how Petiot cured a man who had suffered a serious injury from falling out of a poplar tree, visiting him every day for three years and nine months. Another witness testified that he had been overwhelmed by stress in his work and Petiot had even paid for his vacation. When the war came, he was said to hide British pilots and help patients avoid deportation to Germany by giving injections that made them temporarily ill. “Petiot was a Frenchman one hundred percent,” Monsieur Mure said, before correcting himself. “Make that two hundred percent.”

  Not everyone in the courtroom was swayed by the testimony. Robert Danger of France-Soir concluded that Petiot had not been able to “kill everyone.”

  THE most effective witness for the defense was the decorated Resistance fighter Lieutenant Richard Héritier, a member of the SOE’s RF unit that was dropped into Ruffey-sur-Seille in the Jura in February 1943. After his capture by the Germans, Héritier was imprisoned on June 10, 1943, at Fresnes, where for the next five months he had shared cell 440 with Marcel Petiot.

  Héritier made several important claims about his cell mate. Given their many lengthy, detailed discussions in prison, often about the Fly-Tox organization and the clandestine escape network, Héritier had never doubted Petiot’s Resistance credentials. Petiot had not only shown his inside knowledge of the movement, but he had also furnished Héritier with contact information of other Resistants in Paris, should he ever escape.

  Among other things, Petiot had coached him on surviving the horrific interrogations of the Gestapo. He had surprised and even impr
essed hardened Resistance fighters with his audacity. Héritier testified that he had repeatedly been amazed by Petiot’s almost complete lack of fear, to the point of taunting the Gestapo jailors. He was an inspiration to his prison mates, Héritier added, to a stunned courtroom, the audience and jury alike hanging on every word.

  “You spent five months with him,” Floriot said. “Do you think that a man can conceal his true feelings for five months?”

  Héritier doubted that was possible. A prison cell was simply too intimate.

  Floriot asked his opinion about the defendant.

  “I think that first, Petiot did not act alone. Second, he was a member of a political party that was very active in the Resistance, but not the official Resistance that worked directly with the Allies. I believe that this party gave him orders which he carried out in his own way.” The unidentified party was of course the Communists, which had furnished France and other countries in Occupied Europe with many Resistance fighters.

  “After the beating he took in the press,” Héritier continued, “the party that dared to claim Petiot would find itself sinking in the elections.” Petiot had in other words “sacrificed himself for the cause,” only to be unceremoniously discarded.

  Petiot then asked the witness if a rational person could possibly think that he served the Gestapo.

  “I don’t believe so,” Héritier said. “Whatever the outcome of this trial might be, I will always be glad to have shared a cell with Dr. Petiot.”

  After another Resistant and former cellmate, Roger Courtot, testified that Petiot was “without any question a real Resistant and a courageous one,” the defense called to the stand Germaine Barré, a stylish blond dressmaker who had served in the British Secret Intelligence Service. She had been present in Jodkum’s office when the Gestapo commissioner questioned Petiot.

  Based on what she saw and heard, Barré was convinced that Petiot could not have worked for the Gestapo. She also told the court of Petiot’s response when Jodkum asked if he would like to purchase his release for 100,000 francs: “I do not care whether you free me or not. I have stomach cancer and I do not have long to live anyway.” Barré then testified that Jodkum called Petiot’s brother to obtain the ransom.

  Petiot asked the witness if she recalled his response when Jodkum wanted him to swear an oath never to engage in any activity against the German authorities. Yes, Barré answered. The defendant would not sign anything at all.

  The court was hearing another side to Dr. Marcel Petiot. At the same time, one fundamental question remained. Although many witnesses had testified to Petiot’s devotion as a doctor and his courage during his imprisonment by the Gestapo, had the defense been able to establish the crucial point—namely, that Petiot had served the French Resistance and killed only Germans and collaborators?

  BY the standards of the previous two weeks, attendance at the Petiot trial was once again low on the fourteenth and fifteenth days. “We’re making a flop today” was how Petiot put it. The beautiful spring weather again offered many rival attractions, and the civil-suit attorneys, scheduled to present their cases, promised a great deal of repetition. On several occasions, Marcel Petiot would be seen and photographed sleeping in his box. One French newspaper summed it up as EVERYBODY SLEEPS AT THE PETIOT TRIAL.

  Maître Archevêque outlined the Guschinow case, Véron the Dreyfus case; Maître Claude Perlès represented Madame Braunberger, Dominique Stéfanaggi the Joseph Piereschi estate, and Charles Henry the Grippay family. Very little new material emerged. Henry accused Petiot of working for a secret “anti-French terrorist organization” in close cooperation with the Germans—or, as he put it, a “Nazi faun that haunts the outskirts of the Gestapo.”

  Henry was often singled out for illustrating the problems of lengthy repetitive speeches that day. In the middle of his talk, in which he had promised to “cast light on the entire case,” Petiot stood and said to much amusement: “I would like to remind the court that I am not paying for this lawyer’s services.” Henry spoke of everything in his closing statement, it seemed, except his client. At the end, Président Leser asked him “What about your client?”

  “I am finished,” Henry said. “I do not insist on anything further.” Indeed, he had little to connect the disappearance of his client to the defendant, other than circumstantial evidence.

  Andrée Dunant, the only female attorney in the trial, performed more effectively with her summary on behalf of the Rossmy family. Building on Petiot’s admission on the third day of the trial that he had killed Gisèle Rossmy, Adrien the Basque’s girlfriend, and reminding the jury of his reasoning, namely that “he did not know what else to do with her,” Dunant argued that the court had no other course of action than to declare the defendant guilty. She stuck to the essentials, avoiding the extended, tedious, and frequent digressions that dogged her colleagues.

  Spectators in the gallery might have complained about the lack of drama in the last session of the trial, but they did not know what had happened earlier outside the courtroom. At ten thirty that morning, a red-haired woman wearing a houndstooth jacket had entered the bicycle repair shop of one of the jurors, André Molvault. The customer wanted to know if her bike was repaired; Molvault apologized for the delay, telling her that he was serving at the Petiot trial. “Ah!” she said. “There are going to be reprisals, you know, believe me.”

  When Molvault asked if he should consider that a threat, the answer was yes, the woman said, storming out of the shop. In doing so, she had forgotten to take her bicycle and so Molvault was able to give a name to the police, who then traced it to a Dutch woman who lived in Lyon. Président Leser himself wrote an account of this incident and asked the police to pursue this case of juror intimidation.

  On the fifteenth day, Wednesday, April 3, Maître Jacques Bernays summed up the civil case for the Wolff family. Maître Gachkel spoke for the Basches and Maître Léon-Lévy for the Knellers, both attorneys concentrating on showing that the victims simply could not have been collaborators or secret agents of the Gestapo. The defendant, Léon-Lévy said, united families—that is, by “uniting them in death.” The most effective speech of the day, however, came from Maître Pierre Véron, who spoke this time for the Dreyfus family.

  “I have the good fortune to defend an excellent case against a man who is only an imposter,” Véron began, attacking Petiot’s claims to have been a Resistant. Based on the latter’s ignorance of basic facts and the many contradictions in his testimony, it was simply not possible that Petiot could have worked for the Resistance. A jury of eight-year-old children, Véron argued, could poke holes in his claims about his so-called secret weapon.

  Véron provided one of the trial’s memorable moments when he compared Petiot to a popular legend of naufrageurs, or ship wreckers:

  Cruel men set lanterns on the cliffs to attract sailors in distress and make them believe that it was a port or harbor. The confident sailors, unable to conceive of such black deeds, crashed onto the reefs, losing their lives and property. Those who deceived them, by pretending to save them, then enriched themselves with the spoils. Petiot is just that: the false rescuer, the false refuge.

  The members of the French Resistance had not died in combat, torture chambers, or the execution grounds so that Dr. Petiot could “wrap himself in the folds of their flag.”

  Then, after reminding the jury of the fact that the Gestapo had released Petiot from prison, Véron pointed out that the Germans had certainly not been “very curious” about his activities. “I do not know if Petiot worked for the Gestapo or not,” he said, “but one thing is certain: the smoke rising from the chimney of rue Le Sueur went to join … the smoke from the crematoria of Auschwitz or Belsen.” Petiot was actually more hateful than the executioners at the Nazi death camps, Veron then argued, because he “dared to claim that he did this in the name of the Resistance.”

  For his unspeakable crimes, the jury must, Véron concluded, “condemn him to death.” The court erupted
in thunderous applause.

  Amid the commotion, Petiot stood in his box shaking his fist and shouting insults at the attorney. Véron countered, as the applause died down, that he would attend his execution.

  At this point, already well after five o’clock in the afternoon, Leser asked Dupin to begin the prosecution’s closing arguments. Clearly he would not have time to finish the summary that day, and the obvious question was how much would splitting his concluding statement rob it of its power. Dupin began in an old-fashioned flowery rhetorical style, claiming “the records of the Cour d’assises de la Seine, preserved for more than a century, are unable to provide an example of another trial as monstrous.” Petiot, looking down at his sketchpad, doodled and yawned.

  “Yes, to find as many cadavers, to see as much blood, to witness as many killings one must go to the other side of the Rhine to the terrible charnel houses of Buchenwald or Auschwitz, where so many of our people have been systematically murdered by Nazi barbarians.” On trial that day, however, was not a German war criminal but a Frenchman. Petiot, still sketching, acted as if he was barely able to stay awake.

  Dupin described Petiot as “remarkably intelligent and a wonderful actor, devoid of all scruples, deeply perverted and sadistic.” He covered his crimes by crafting his own personal “fictional romance of the Resistance.” But in a few minutes, Dupin said, “I will show you without difficulty that all of this is only a tissue of lies.” Petiot made a show of looking at the clock.