In France, a criminal case is first turned over to a juge d’instruction, or examining magistrate, who conducts the instruction—interrogating and confronting witnesses, gathering evidence, directing police investigations, and compiling a dossier that, should he decide that a crime has been committed, he sends to the public-prosecutor’s office, where the indictment is drawn up. When this is complete, an avocat général, roughly equivalent to a prosecuting attorney, actually takes the case to court and argues on the State’s behalf. The Van Bever and Gaul case was turned over to juge d’instruction Achille Olmi, who was generally seen with his mouth open and an astonished look in his eyes, and whom lawyers found to be one of the less efficient and scintillating magistrates in Paris.
Petiot in 1942 was operating as a general practitioner out of an office in his apartment at 66 rue Caumartin in the busy commercial district near the Gare Saint-Lazare. Among his other patients were about ninety-five addicts whom he was curing of their habits by means of diminishing doses of drugs. Though such cures were legal, most respectable physicians shied away from them, and there were only about twenty-five Parisian doctors who cared to deal with them at all. Petiot had previously run afoul of the narcotics laws, and though never convicted, this made him suspect from the beginning. Jeannette Gaul and Van Bever, when arrested, initially stated that Petiot had given Van Bever the two prescriptions with full knowledge that they were actually for his mistress. Both admitted that the doctor had refused to furnish him a third prescription. The whole case rested on this one point, for Petiot could possibly have been deceived by Jeannette Gaul, who had no real intention of being cured; but had he given her additional prescriptions in Van Bever’s name, it would be obvious that he knew of her intentions.
When called before Olmi for questioning in February 1942, Petiot quite truthfully pointed out that his fee was only fifty francs, a quite reasonable rate and hardly the sort of sum one would charge for the illegal sale of drugs. He outlined the precautions he took to avoid abuse of his services and said he had warned Jeannette Gaul at the start that, despite any requests she might make, he would never give her more than a certain predetermined quantity of heroin. Van Bever had been presented to him as an addict, and, given certain physical signs and an awareness of the “habitual proselytism of addicts,” Petiot had believed him to be one. Examination had been difficult, he said, because Van Bever had pretended to be deaf and his mistress had whispered in his ear before he answered any question. Petiot had given him two prescriptions but had finally tired of the whispering routine and grown suspicious about Van Bever’s addiction, and when the latter returned a week after his second visit, Petiot refused to give him any more.
Following Petiot’s statement, Jeannette Gaul changed hers and said Petiot had told the truth. Van Bever agreed, saying he had accompanied his mistress to the doctor’s office in all innocence, and had been greatly surprised when he heard her telling Petiot that he was an addict. Several weeks later, Olmi heard the three again. Petiot and Gaul repeated the same story, but Van Bever now claimed he had told Petiot that he was not an addict. Jeannette Gaul then changed her statement again, saying that, after all, Petiot had really known the heroin was for her. Both maintained that Petiot had never bothered to examine Van Bever—an absolutely essential step before furnishing a prescription. Olmi didn’t know what to do, and while waiting for something to occur to him, he indicted all three. Jeannette Gaul remained in jail, while the judge granted Van Bever a provisional release on March 15. Petiot had not been jailed at all. The trial date was set for May 26, 1942.
At 9:30 on the morning of Sunday, March 22, Van Bever and his friend Papini went down to the café in their building for coffee. A robust, clean-shaven man of about forty-five was waiting for Van Bever. The two seemed to know one another, and after a brief conversation, Van Bever went up to his room, came down, and was about to go out the door with the stranger when he turned to Papini. The man, Van Bever told his friend, was the husband of one of Jeannette Gaul’s friends and had a letter from Jeannette that had been smuggled out of the prison. Papini asked why the stranger couldn’t have brought the letter with him. “Perhaps Jeannette had some debts that they want me to pay—but don’t worry, I won’t pay them.” Saying he would return that afternoon or evening, Van Bever bid his friend farewell and left.
Van Bever did not return that day, nor did he work or come home Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. Papini entered his friend’s room and noticed that everything was in its place and that Van Bever, a heavy smoker, had not even taken his tobacco pouch or a letter he had been in a hurry to post. On Wednesday, Papini contacted Van Bever’s lawyer, who advised him to write to the public prosecutor. In his letter, Papini did not even mention Petiot, since Van Bever had not worried much about the case and did not think he would have any further trouble with it. Papini instead wrote that in November 1941 Van Bever had gone to Troyes with France Mignot, a prostitute who had been his mistress before Jeannette Gaul, to meet her family. When the couple had arrived at the house, the entire Mignot family had thrown itself on Van Bever, beating him with clubs, stabbing him twice, and robbing him of F1,200. Van Bever had pressed charges, and the case had been due to come up in Troyes on March 24, 1942—two days after the disappearance. Papini feared that the Mignots had murdered his friend.
The issue grew more complex on March 26, when a stranger delivered two letters to the boulevard Saint-Germain office of Jeannette Gaul’s lawyer, Françoise Pavie. One asked Maître Pavie to tell Van Bever’s lawyer, Maître Michel Menard, that his services would no longer be required, while the other begged Jeannette Gaul to tell the truth—that Van Bever truly had been an addict. Maître Menard was convinced that neither the handwriting nor the style of the letters was his client’s, and since he was an old family friend he could not believe Van Bever would willingly have dismissed him with a brusque note sent to a third party.
Police searched hospitals and prisons, and made inquiries at Troyes and among Jeannette Gaul’s circle of friends—all without result. A drug dealer who was tentatively identified as the man who had taken the letters to Maître Pavie could never be found for questioning. Similarly, the husband of a young addict who was both a friend of Jeannette Gaul’s and an occasional client of Dr. Petiot fit the description of the man who had led Van Bever away, but police never found him either. The case remained a mystery; at the time, there was no compelling reason to suspect Petiot, who denied any knowledge of Van Bever’s fate and apparently stood to gain little at that stage by his disappearance. Retrospectively, however, one might find a motive in the fact that ten days after Van Bever vanished, Petiot suddenly “found” a complete report on his medical examination of Van Bever—a report so complete, he boasted to Judge Olmi, that he had even measured the length of the man’s penis. Here, then, was incontrovertible proof that Petiot had diligently fulfilled the obligations of his profession. A prosecutor later wondered whether the careful report was the result not of an examination, but of an autopsy.
The drug charge came to trial as scheduled in May. Jeannette Gaul was sentenced to six months in prison and fined F2,400. Released in August, she promptly returned to prostitution and drugs, and died of tetanus three months later. Van Bever was sentenced in absentia to one year in prison and drew the same fine as his mistress. Petiot was found guilty and given a suspended one-year sentence and a F10,000 fine, which his lawyer, René Floriot, subsequently succeeded in reducing. The search for Van Bever continued over the next year, headed by Police Inspector Roger Gignoux.
The old Petiot file Commissaire Massu consulted contained another, remarkably similar case. On March 5, 1942, another young woman, Raymonde Baudet, was arrested for infraction of the drug laws. She had taken a prescription for the mild tranquilizer Sonéryl and, with the help of her lover, had removed the word “Sonéryl” with ink eradicator and substituted “14 ampoules of heroin.” The pharmacist to whom she presented it immediately noticed the clumsy forgery and telephoned the police. Th
e original prescription had been written by Dr. Marcel Petiot, who had previously given Raymonde Baudet four prescriptions for heroin as part of a drug cure.
It is not clear what Petiot thought the danger to himself might be from the Baudet forgery. Perhaps he was worried about the earlier four prescriptions, particularly since the Gaul–Van Bever case had begun only two weeks earlier. Whatever the reason, his next actions were drastic and suspicious. Raymonde Baudet’s mother, née Marthe Fortin, married three times: to a man named Lavie, by whom she had a son; to Raymonde’s father, Monsieur Baudet; and presently to David Khaït. Raymonde had used the name Khaït with Petiot—possibly concealing the fact that she was getting drugs elsewhere under another name—and it was “Khaït” alone that appeared on the prescriptions. Petiot apparently reasoned that if the mother were an addict as well and he claimed that half the prescriptions had been intended for her, the case against him would be seriously weakened. But to make the police believe this, he would need the mother’s help.
Several days after Raymonde’s arrest, a little past noon, a man went to the Khaït home and introduced himself as Dr. Petiot. Marthe Khaït initially resisted the propositions he made, but with tortuous logic he explained, cajoled, and finally persuaded her that if she lied to the police she would weaken some of the accusations against her daughter. Brazenly speaking in her eldest son’s presence, Petiot told her that since the police might wish to verify Madame Khaït’s fictitious narcotics use by a physical examination, he would need to give her a dozen dry injections in the thigh to leave convincing puncture marks. The son, Fernand Lavie, an employee at the Préfecture de Police, objected to this deceit, but his mother brushed him off, saying that she had done many things for his sister in the past and could certainly do one more small thing to help her. Petiot and Madame Khaït went into the next room, and after a few minutes he emerged and left.
Several days later, Madame Khaït changed her mind. She told her son that she would no longer follow Petiot’s counsel and went to consult Dr. Pierre Trocmé, a trusted family friend as well as her physician. Trocmé at first could not believe a real medical man would have made such outrageous suggestions, but when he found Petiot’s name quite properly listed in his medical directory, he advised his patient to tell the police everything. Later in the investigation he hid behind professional secrecy, and though he admitted having examined Madame Khaït, he would not tell police whether he had found puncture marks.
At 7:00 P.M. on Wednesday, March 25, 1942—three days after Van Bever’s disappearance—Madame Khaït put on her hat and told her husband she was going to see Raymonde’s lawyer to pay part of his fee. The altruistic Dr. Petiot had offered to contribute F1,500 to the girl’s defense and had also recommended the lawyer, Maître Pierre Véron—an ironic detail since, four years later, Véron would be the prosecution’s most potent weapon at the Petiot murder trial. Madame Khaït took nothing with her and left a pot of water boiling on the stove for her laundry. Her husband expected her back very shortly. Perhaps she went to get money from Petiot. Perhaps, as Véron later suggested, she was planning to tell him about Petiot’s false injections but, before doing so, the honest and trusting woman wished to inform the doctor that she was no longer willing to follow his plan. Wherever she went, she was never seen again.
The next morning, David Khaït found two letters under the door. One was to him, one to his stepson Fernand; both notes seemed to be in Marthe Khaït’s handwriting and announced her intention to flee to the unoccupied zone of France until Raymonde’s trial was over. In the letter to her husband Madame Khaït also said that, without his knowledge, she really had been taking drugs for several years. The front gate of the Khaït house was difficult to open unless one knew the trick, and their dog, which barked ferociously at strangers, had not made a sound, so Monsieur Khaït was certain his wife had delivered the letters herself. He recalled that in the past few days she had told him she thought that her disappearance during the trial would help Raymonde’s case—a notion he had strongly opposed—so though he was puzzled, he was not altogether surprised.
At 10:00 the same morning, an envelope was handed to Pierre Véron’s maid containing F300 toward the lawyer’s fee and letters to Raymonde Baudet and Véron. At one later point Maître Véron would say his maid had formally recognized Madame Khaït; at another, that it had been a strange young man who delivered the envelope. Both letters again announced Madame Khaït’s intention to flee to the free zone, and Véron also remembered her mentioning this idea during their previous meeting. Police handwriting experts compared all the letters and determined that they were indeed by Marthe Khaït but that she had written them under great stress, perhaps following someone else’s dictation; the syntax was atypical, and she used none of the nicknames by which she always addressed her family.
David Khaït went to see Petiot, who claimed that Madame Khaït had spoken with him, too, about her escape plans, and who said he had given her the names of René Nézondet and some of his other friends in the free zone who could help her if and when she arrived there. Petiot hastily wrote a postcard, which he asked Monsieur Khaït to mail. It was addressed to “Gaston,” at Plagne, near Loupiac in southwestern France, and Khaït thought the cryptic message was an inquiry about his wife. A few weeks later Petiot told Khaït that his friends had written saying they had seen no one fitting Madame Khaït’s description.
David Khaït maintained to the end that his wife had left of her own volition, but on May 7, 1942, Fernand Lavie and Raymonde Baudet notified the police of their mother’s disappearance. The case was assigned to juge d’instruction Achille Olmi and the investigation to Police Inspector Roger Gignoux. If Madame Khaït had been abducted, it seemed strange that her captor would have let her go home to deliver mail. Olmi sat about for hours wondering about this point and thinking how strangely the case resembled the Van Bever disappearance.
Inspector Gignoux searched throughout France for Madame Khaït, as he had for Van Bever. Raymonde Baudet had told him her mother might be using her maiden name, Fortin, or the pseudonyms Hait, Lavic, Laric, Piot, Fiot, or Lepic. At Lyon, in what seems to have been nothing more than coincidence, Gignoux found a young drug addict named Piot who chanced to be not only a friend of Raymonde Baudet, but a former client of Petiot’s, but she knew nothing of the affair. Gignoux found one woman near Lyon and two railroad conductors from the Dordogne (one named Fortin) who thought the photograph of Madame Khaït resembled a woman they had seen around March or April 1942, but these, too, were written off as errors when no corroborating evidence could be found. At Plagne in the Cantal, Gignoux located the Gastons, who were distant relatives of Dr. Petiot. They had not seen him in years, though in April 1942 they had received an incoherent postcard from him—the same one David Khaït had posted—to which they had never replied.
Gignoux concluded that Madame Khaït had not fled of her own accord. In his report he pointed out the close similarities between the Van Bever and Khaït cases: narcotics, abrupt disappearance, the reception of letters from the missing persons contradicting their earlier statements, and, above all, the presence of Dr. Petiot in both cases. Though not a handwriting expert, Gignoux compared the Van Bever and Khaït letters and concluded they had been written by the same hand. If an expert could confirm this opinion, his March 1943 report boldly concluded, it would provide “irrefutable material proof that the two cases are closely linked and may be related to the narcotics cases for which Dr. Petiot was indicted. In this event, the most likely hypothesis would be that Monsieur Van Bever and Madame Khaït are being held captive or have been murdered.”
Olmi sat and wondered. The Baudet drug case had come to trial on July 15, 1942. Raymonde Baudet was found guilty and sentenced to the four months she had already spent in prison, and Petiot was given another one-year suspended sentence and a F10,000 fine. Petiot’s lawyer, René Floriot, subsequently managed to have the doctor’s fines from both the Van Bever—Gaul and Baudet convictions combined and reduced
to a grand total of F2,400. Meanwhile, attorney Pierre Véron pursued the Khaït mystery. Upon learning of the Van Bever disappearance and of Petiot’s connection with it, he insisted that Olmi indict Petiot for kidnapping or murder. An investigation was made, but only halfheartedly, since so many people were disappearing in those days. David Khaït, himself a Jew, would vanish two years later and die in deportation.
Véron kept pushing, and nearly a year later Olmi grudgingly consented to search Petiot’s rue Caumartin apartment. “What good is it now?” Véron asked. “Do you think he’s kept them sitting in his closet?” And even then Olmi’s search was so superficial and slovenly that his own secretary described it to Véron in shocked tones. Olmi went to the apartment only after warning Petiot several days in advance. He did not make routine inquiries as to whether Petiot rented a basement storage space in the building, nor did he check city-deed-office records to see if Petiot owned or rented other properties in Paris. He did not even ask questions when, during his search, he noticed a slip of paper lying in plain view—a fire insurance policy for 21 rue Le Sueur. Nor did Olmi search the entire rue Caumartin apartment, contenting himself with a cursory perusal of the doctor’s office and waiting room. Opening a desk drawer, Olmi found a small fortune in gold and jewels. Petiot said they had been given to him in lieu of fees by impoverished patients; he did not, however, explain how poor people could be so wealthy. When the doctor complained about the search, Olmi made light of it, claimed it was mere troublesome routine, and joked, “I am not accusing you of killing people and burning them in your stove!”
The months went by, Gignoux’s evidence built up, Véron continued to insist that an indictment should be drawn up against Petiot. A year later, on Monday, March 13, 1944, two days after the discovery at the rue Le Sueur, Pierre Véron strode angrily into Olmi’s office. Olmi, who had scarcely given the case a thought since his pointless search a year before, jumped up and wailed bitterly: “I was going to arrest Petiot tomorrow—I really was! But they took the dossier away from me. I don’t understand why.” Had he only understood sooner, several dozen dead people might still have been alive; and there are those who maintain it is his conscience that should bear the burden of their deaths.
The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot Page 3