by David King
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NEWSPAPERS
Associated Press
L’Aube
L’Aurore
Chicago Daily Tribune Combat
Le Cri du Peuple
Le Figaro
France-Soir
Franc-Tireur
Front National
L’Humanité
Libération-Soir
Le Matin
Le Monde
Life
Newsweek
New York Herald Tribune (International Edition)
New York Times
L’Oeuvre
Le Parisien Libéré
Paris-Matin
Paris-Soir
Le Petit Parisien
Résistance
Time
United Press
Washington Post
Notes
PREFACE
1 A thick black smoke Brigade Criminelle Report, March 14, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° II; Le Matin, March 13, 1944.
2 unusually warm weather Robert Delannoy to Alain Decaux, C’était le xxe siècle: la guerre absolue 1940–1945 (Paris: Perrin, 1998), 257.
3 burnt caramel, burnt rubber Le Pays, March 5, 1946, and Albert Massui, Le Cas du Dr Petiot (Brussels: E.D.C., 1944), 10.
4 “Do something” Andrée Marçais, Audition, undated, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° II.
5 two-and-a-half-story Many books refer to the building as four or four and a half stories. This was not the case in 1944. The town house had an extensive renovation in 1952.
6 “Away for a month” Charles Deforeit, Report, March 11, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III.
7 The concierge … informed them Marie Pageot, Nouvelle Audition, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III.
8 “Have you entered” Joseph Teyssier, Audition, undated, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V; Report, March 15, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.
9 second-floor balcony Rapport des pompiers, March 11, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° I. All references to floors, unless otherwise noted, are by the American convention.
10 human hand Avilla Boudringhin, Audition, March 16, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III, and Charles Deforeit, Report, March 11, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III.
11 one of the younger men leaned 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), 15.
12 “Gentlemen, come and take a look” Avrilla Boudringhin, Audition, March 16, 1944, and Joseph Teyssier, Audition, same day, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III.
13 walked up to the fire chief Robert Boquin, Audition, March 17, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III.
14 “Are you good” Joseph Teyssier, Audition, undated from 1945, and Joseph Teyssier, Audition, undated, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.
15 “What kind of question” … “I must destroy” Ibid.
16 Sympathetic to the work Teyssier, or “Olive,” was a member of the police resistance group Honneur de la police.
17 Later, when Teyssier Paris-Soir, April 13, 1944.
18 “I still remember” Georges Massu, L’enquête Petiot: La plus grande affaire criminelle du siècle (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1959), 7.
19 “stabbing in the vicinity of Montmartre” Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 9.
20 “somber and deserted” … “uneasy curiosity” Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 12.
21 The French actress Cécile Sorel interview, Le Matin, March 14, 1944. She did not discuss this fact in her book, Cécile Sorel: An Autobiography (New York: Staples Press, 1953).
22 “The name Marcel” … Dante’s Inferno Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 13, 15, 18–19.
23 a decomposed body Charles Deforeit, March 11, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III.
24 a polished desk Report, March 13, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III.
25 His assistants, however Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 23.
26 Commissaire Massu had made Jean-Marc Berlière, with Laurent Chabrun, Policiers français sous l’occupation: d’après les archives de l’épuration (Paris: Perrin, 2009), 140.
27 but he had never seen Massu, L’enquête Petiot, 15.
28 “nightmare house” Massu L’enquête Petiot, 22.
29 “the crim
e of the century” The epithet would become the subtitle of Massu’s memoir. See L’enquête Petiot, 229 and 244.
CHAPTER 1. GERMAN NIGHT
1 The duke of Windsor David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich: A History of the German Occupation, 1940–1944 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981), 8.
2 “the laboratory of the” Frederic Spotts, The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 11, 7–8.
3 no farther than Portbou Lisa Fittko, Escape through the Pyrenees, trans. David Koblick (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1991), 113–115.
4 On the afternoon of Edmond Dubois, Paris sans lumière (Lausanne: Payot, 1946), 57. The air raid is used with effect by Irène Némirovsky in the opening of her novel Suite Française, trans. Sandra Smith (New York: Vintage, 2006), 3–5.
5 “like a badly-cut” Alexander Werth, The Last Days of Paris: A Journalist’s Diary (London: H. Hamilton, 1940), 124.
6 from the north, the east, and Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, trans. Jonathan Griffin and Richard Howard (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 1998), 59.
7 More often, residents Roger Langeron, préfect de police, watched from his window, June 11–13, 1940, Paris juin 40 (Paris: Flammarion, 1946), 16, 28–29.
8 Rumors thrived See, for example, the telephone conversations intercepted by commission de contrôle de Dijon, Antoine Lefébure, Les Conversations Secrètes des francais sous l’Occupation (Paris: Plon, 1993), 58–62.
9 estimated six to ten million Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 120.
10 Paris saw its population Jean-Pierre Azéma, De Munich à la Libération 1938–1944 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1979), 62.
11 “a boot had scattered” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras (New York: 1942; edition 1968), 68.
12 “There never has been” Robert Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964), 42.
13 At least sixteen This figure only includes known cases in Paris, and not those outside, including Albert Einstein’s nephew Carl in the Pyrénées. Ian Ousby, Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940–1944 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 170–171.
14 stuck his arm Nossiter, Algeria Hotel: France, Memory, and the Second World War (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 3. There is some question on his method and the reasons for his suicide. See, for instance, Thomas Kernan, France on Berlin Time (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1941) and Herbert R. Lottman, The Fall of Paris: June 1940 (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 354–355.
15 “the rights of the occupying power” Article III of the Armistice Convention. For more on the exploitation, Jacques Delarue, Trafics et crimes sous l’occupation (Paris: Fayard, 1968).
16 “working together” Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 19.
17 There were lavish Otto Abetz, of course, downplays this part of his work in his postwar memoir, Histoire d’une politique franco-allemand 1930–1950: mémoires d’un ambassadeur (Paris: Librairie Stock, 1953).
18 “dancing with false” Time, March 27, 1944.
19 As of October 3, 1940 Serge Klarsfeld, Le calendrier de la persécution des juifs de France 1940–1944 (Paris: Fayard, 2001), I, 29–33.
20 “Aryanized” For more on Aryanization, see Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Pillages sur ordonnances. Aryanisation et restitution des banques en France, 1940–1953 (Fayard: Paris, 2003).
21 “eliminate all” Law of July 22, 1941, translation by Paxton, Vichy France, 179.
22 “special train 767” Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz: le rôle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France—1942 (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 42–43.
23 75,721 Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers 1981), note to p. 343. This figure includes 815 Jews arrested in Nord and Pas-de-Calais, noted by Serge Klarsfeld in Le mémorial de la déportation des juifs de France (Paris: Klarsfeld, 1978).
24 four darkest years Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 353.
25 A French law Jean-François Dominique, L’affaire Petiot: médecin, marron, gestapiste, guillotiné pour au moins vingt-sept assassinats (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1980), 99.
26 Massu could have He had, of course, worked around the legal hour before. See, for instance, Georges Massu, Aveux Quai des Orfèvres. Souvenirs du Commissaire Massu (Paris: La tour pointue, undated/1951), 230.
27 a total of forty thousand agents This figure is taken from the size of the Gestapo in 1944, recorded in, for instance, Edward Crankshaw, Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny (New York: Da Capo, 1994), 95.
28 The garage at No. 22 Organization Todt requisitioned the garage on September 8, 1940.
29 “calm and order” … “attacks of the communists” C. Angeli and P. Gillet, La police dans la politique (1944–1954) (Paris: Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1967), 17.
30 The subordination was to be This was the view of Philip John Stead in The Police of Paris (London: Staples Press Limited, 1957), 162, and others at the time, such as Maurice Toesca, who emphasized the risks of militia taking over in Cinq ans de patience 1939–1944 (Paris: É. Paul, 1975), 168.
31 Commissaire Massu arrived Georges Massu, L’enquête Petiot: La plus grande affaire criminelle du siècle (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1959), 30.
32 At ten o’clock 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), 22.
33 “Petiot has” Alomée Planel, Docteur Satan ou L’affaire Petiot (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 1978), 38.
34 “Radio Paris lies” Fernande Wagman, The Demarcation Line: A Memoir (Xlibris, 2004), 112.
35 Patrolmen Fillion and Teyssier still Teyssier Audition, March 16, 1944, and Fillion Audition of same date, APP, Série J, Affaire Petiot, carton n° III.
36 “it smells like death” … “If I told you” Albert Massui, Le cas du Dr Petiot (Brussels: E.D.C., 1944), 10–12.
CHAPTER 2. THE PEOPLE’S DOCTOR
1 “At the death of my sister” Henriette Bourdon, Audition, March 21, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III.
2 the layers of rumor See, for instance, Le Matin, March 18–19, 1944; APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° I.
3 Even his favorite René Nézondet, Petiot “le Possédé” (Paris: Express, 1950), 12–14.
4 One former classmate Jean Delanove to Alain Decaux, December 2, 1975, Alain Decaux, C’était le xxe siècle: la guerre absolue 1940–1945 (Paris: Perrin, 1998), 263.
5 “intelligent, but not enjoying” Dossier de réforme, July 7, 1920, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.
6 “incapable of [making]” Ibid.
7 Young Petiot seemed Jean-François Dominique, L’affaire Petiot: médecin, marron, gestapiste, guillotiné pour au moins vingt-sept assassinats (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1980), 17–27.
8 On January 11, 1916 Ministry of Pensions Report, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° I.
9 A hand grenade Etat Général des Services et Campagnes, 91 ème régiment d’infanterie, Report on Petiot (1097), APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.
10 “mental disequilibrium, neurasthenia” Extrait du registre du contrôle de psychiatrie de la Vo Région (February 26, 1918–March 29, 1918), Report, October 15, 1936, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.
11 “Here, what is” … “it is the law” Communication of “Lucien B,” January 13, 1976, Decaux C’était le xxi siècle, 263–265.
12 “mental imbalance, along with sleepwalking” 8 ème Corps d’Armée, 15 ème Division, 30 ° Brigade, Place de Dijon, Committee Report on Petiot, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.
> 13 Petiot was discharged Dossier No 363831 in police report, March 15, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° I.
14 “continuous surveillance” Ministry of Pensions Report, April 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° I.
15 “delicate and nervous” … “very intelligent and understands” Dossier de réforme (July 7, 1920), APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.
16 The first two years … He completed his third Faculty of Medicine, January 9, 1945, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.
17 His thesis This was entitled Contribution à l’étude de la paralysie ascendante aiguë.
18 a legitimate degree-holder Faculty of Medicine, January 9, 1945, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° V.
19 “very banal” Dominique, L’affaire Petiot, 34.
20 “Dr. Petiot is young” Prospectus for Petiot’s medical practice, APP, Série EA, carton n° 181.
21 One recurring rumor Marcel Jullian, Le mystère Petiot (Paris: Edition No. 1, 1980), 61.
22 Madame Husson Dominique L’affaire Petiot, 42.
23 “Horse cures!” Nézondet, Petiot “le Possédé,” 27.
24 “that could kill an adult” AN 334 AP65, 3310.
25 “It was a veritable” … “I think I will” Nézondet, Petiot “le Possédé,” 32, 7, 18, 34–35; Tomlins, Die in Paris, 156.
26 the approximate equivalent Thomas Maeder, The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), 134.
27 “That’s nothing” Dominique L’affaire Petiot, 57.
CHAPTER 3. PRELIMINARY FINDINGS
1 “the charred remains” Paris-Midi, March 12, 1944.
2 a sickening sweet … “it smelled just like” Jean-François Dominique, L’affaire Petiot: médecin, marron, gestapiste, guillotiné pour au moins vingt-sept assassinats (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1980), 10.
3 “a pile of skulls” René Piédelièvre, Souvenirs d’un médecin légiste (Paris: Flammarion, 1966), 73.
4 “respectable people” Massui, Le cas du Dr Petiot (Brussels: E.D.C.1944), 11.
5 “it was impossible to tell” Marie Lombre, Report, June 3, 1944, APP, Série J, affaire Petiot, carton n° III.