As soon as the journalists did not name Marcel Petiot: a Parisian butcher, a demonic cannibal, a monster from the rue Lesere, Bluebeard of the XX century, but in the history of forensic science he remained as Doctor Satan.
On March 11, 1944, residents of the 16th arrondissement of Paris turned to the police with a complaint that for several days smoke with a disgusting smell had been coming from the chimney of house no. 21 on rue Leser. It was the center of Paris, and not the poorest people lived here. Therefore, they did not dismiss the complaint, but sent a detachment led by a corporal to figure out what was the matter.
The occupation regime in Western Europe was very different from that established by the Nazis in Belarus or Ukraine. In Paris, almost all state institutions, including the police, have been preserved intact. This will then arise the myth that every second Frenchman participated in the Resistance, and before the liberation of Paris, all officials, as before, went to work, receiving salaries not only in francs, but also (partially) in occupation marks.
The police officers who arrived agreed that the smell from the house was just awful. The mansion was closed, but the Azhans quickly found out the name of the owner (Dr. Marcel Petiot), contacted him by phone and asked to come. After waiting an hour, the corporal gave the order to break the door.
The police found a huge basement under the house with a stove installed in it, in which a fire was burning. A burnt human hand was sticking out of the furnace. Nearby was a pile of coal mixed with bones. Seeing such a hellish picture, the corporal called the criminal police brigade. The owner of the house, however, arrived soon after.
What was found in the basement was enough to immediately take him into custody, but the case was in occupied France, and the police officers who arrived at the crime scene were French.
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Marcel Petiot proudly declared that he was a member of the Resistance, and the remains in his basement belong to the Germans and collaborators. It was the duty of a patriot to kill these people and burn the corpses, but to arrest such a killer was a real betrayal, and the French police left. Of course, the doctor immediately took to the run.
And yet, the case was not closed. Slowly, with a creak, the started mechanism continued to work - all new documents were placed in the folder "Mansion on Leser, 21". Investigators found the remains of at least 26 people, but since many of the bones were crushed, it was impossible to accurately determine the number of victims.
Some of the victims were identified, after which it became clear that the victims were not the occupiers. An old case of 1942 came to light, when the dismembered remains of 13 people were caught in the Seine for several months. The expert then drew attention to a characteristic detail: the "butcher" during "smoke breaks" had the habit of driving a scalpel into the thigh of a corpse. The same "mark" was present on the victims found in house No. 21.
Removal of the remains of the victims from the house number 21 on Leser Street
Paris was liberated on 24 August 1944. Civil servants who worked under the Germans were declared traitors and fired, including members of the criminal police. On this, the Petiot case could have been closed, but the Gestapo archives surfaced.
In April 1943, a certain Ivan Dreyfus was arrested by the Parisian Gestapo. After several days of interrogation with partiality, Dreyfus agreed to cooperate. According to the Gestapo, there were underground workers in the city who transported Jews to South America. Dreyfus had to, posing as a refugee, infiltrate the network and hand it over to the Nazis.
A few weeks later, Dreyfus reported that he had made friends with the right people. According to him, the network was headed by a certain doctor Eugene, who had a "window" on the Spanish border. Dreyfus named three members of the organization: Pintar, Fourier and Nizonde. This was the last information from him since the agent had disappeared. The Gestapo arrested the trio, and under torture they called the real name of Dr. Eugene - Marcel Petiot. They didn't know anyone else.
The Gestapo decided to establish surveillance over Petiot in order to open the entire network, but the matter calmed down - Resistance groups became more active, sabotage became more frequent and there was no time for the "savior of the Jews". In January 1944, the case was dropped.
Documents from the archives of the Prague Gestapo gave the case of the corpses on Leser Street a new impetus and Petiot was put on the wanted list. An article appeared in one of the newspapers about the horrors of the house of "Dr. Eugene", which provoked the wrath of Marcel Petiot. The maniac wrote a refutation in the newspaper in which he declared himself a hero of the Resistance and a fighter against fascism. Thus, it turned out that Marcel Petiot was still in Paris, and the police intensified the search for him.
On October 31, 1944, at the Saint-Mandé suburban train station, a man was stopped for a check, presenting a certificate in the name of a member of the Resistance, a counterintelligence officer of the French internal forces (FFI), Captain Henri Valerie Watterwald.
The gendarme thought that he looked like the wanted Petiot, whose photographs were sent to all police stations. The man had five different identification cards. The police arranged a confrontation with his wife and brother, as a result of which Petiot's real identity was established.
During searches at the apartments of Petio's friends, the police found about fifty huge suitcases filled with belongings and valuables of refugees who had not left anywhere. Investigators began digging into the doctor's past. Prior to his arrival in Paris, Dr. Petiot practiced in Vilneuve-sur-Yon, where he became famous as a supporter of non-traditional methods of treatment. In 1926, residents even elected him as mayor. However, the city police did not share their enthusiasm.
The doctor actively used drugs in his practice. He was suspected of clandestine abortions. In 1926, a young woman disappeared without a trace - Petiot's mistress, who became pregnant with him. Later in the river they fished out a suitcase with the dismembered body of a young woman, which they could not identify. And although the case was closed, Petiot remained the number one suspect in it.
In 1931, Petiot was convicted of embezzling funds from the city treasury. He was forced to leave the post of mayor and move to Paris. In Paris, Petiot continued his drug fraud. During the occupation, he sold health certificates that allowed him to avoid being sent to work in Germany. And in 1942 he found his gold mine.
Suitcases of those killed at the trial
At that time, the occupation regime became tougher and a lot of people wanted to leave the country. This could only be done illegally. Petiot selected several henchmen, and they were looking for people ready to leave France for any money.
They were lured into a mansion on Leser Street, where they came with suitcases full of things and valuables. Having received 25,000 francs for organizing the escape (a huge sum at that time), Dr. Eugene, under the guise of inoculation, injected them with cyanide.
First, Petiot dumped corpses into the Seine, and from 1943 he began to transfer them to the stable, where he lowered them into a pit under the floor slabs and covered them with quicklime. In 1944, Petiot decided to get rid of the evidence. At night he took out corpses, carried them to the basement, and during the day he butchered and burned them.
During interrogations and in court, Petiot categorically denied that he had committed murders for profit. He claimed that he had killed exclusively “enemies of France” and that his conscience was clear, and that the corpses in the basement of his mansion were the remains of Gestapo agents destroyed by the Resistance.
On March 28, 1946, a jury found Marcel Petiot guilty of 26 murders and sentenced him to death. The police believed that Petio was responsible for at least 60 corpses, but the true number of victims of Doctor Satan has not been established. The verdict was carried out by guillotining on May 25, 1946.
Used materials from the site: oursociety.ru