By the time smoke began curling from the basement of number 21 Rue Lesueur on the afternoon of 11 March 1944, the house had already attracted attention more than once. Neighbours had noticed strange visitors arriving late at night, and this was not the first time smoke had risen from the property. When no one answered the door, the fire brigade was called, and police soon learned that the owner was a doctor named Marcel Petiot, who lived a short distance away at 66 Rue Caumartin. Petiot arrived hastily.
Firemen had already entered the building, and the smell coming from the basement was unusual. When they reached the furnace, they found human bones and dismembered body parts mixed among the coal. What followed was remarkable. After confirming that the policemen were French and not working for the Germans, Petiot insisted he needed to enter the building to retrieve important documents.
He claimed to be a leader of a French resistance group and that the bodies in the furnace were enemies of France. The officers believed him. Commissioner Georges-Victor Massu, however, ordered a full search of the house. More remains were discovered, including a quicklime pit in the backyard and human remains in canvas bags.
Investigators estimated at least ten victims, though they suspected there were many more. By then, Marcel Petiot had disappeared. Before the war, Petiot had built a life that seemed to contradict his troubled past. Born on 17 January 1897 in Auxerre, about 170 kilometres southeast of Paris, he was intelligent but displayed disturbing behaviour from childhood.
At eleven, he took his father’s gun to school and fired it in class. After his mother died in 1912, his father sent him to live with an aunt, where his behaviour deteriorated further. He vandalised a postbox and was charged with theft, but a psychiatric evaluation found he had a mental health condition, and no charges were brought. He was suspended from school repeatedly before being sent to a special academy in Paris, finishing his education in July 1915.
Called up for infantry service in January 1916, he fought in the Second Battle of the Aisne, where he was wounded and exposed to gas. His behaviour concerned his officers, and he was assessed as having suffered a mental breakdown. He was arrested for stealing blankets, morphine, army supplies, wallets, photographs, and letters. At trial, the judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity and ordered him sent to a psychiatric hospital.
He stayed only briefly before being returned to the front line in June 1918. Three weeks later, he was back in a military hospital after shooting himself in the foot. He was eventually discharged for abnormal behaviour, even though some doctors believed he should have been institutionalised. After the war, Petiot used the government’s accelerated education programme for veterans to study medicine.
He completed his classroom studies in eight months, served a two-year internship at a psychiatric hospital, and obtained his medical degree in December 1921. He opened a practice in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, near Auxerre, and became popular among locals despite rumours of dubious practices. Without his patients’ knowledge, he enrolled them in a state-funded medical assistance programme, allowing him to charge both the government and the patient. In May 1926, his girlfriend, Louise Delaveau, the daughter of one of his patients, went missing.
Her mother contacted the police, who dismissed the case, suggesting the young woman had run away. A week later, a trunk was found in the river containing unidentifiable female remains. Neighbours told police they had seen Petiot loading a trunk into his car around the time Louise disappeared, but no investigation followed. That same year, Petiot ran for mayor.
To guarantee victory, he hired an accomplice to disrupt a debate with his opponents. He won. In June 1927, he married Georgette Labre, the 23-year-old daughter of a wealthy landowner, and in April 1928 she gave birth to a son. The man once considered insane by medical professionals had become a doctor, mayor, husband, and father.
The rumours continued. He was known for supplying narcotics, performing illegal abortions, stealing, and engaging in questionable financial arrangements. In March 1930, a fire broke out at the home of a man named Amon Dubois. His wife, Henriette, was found dead inside, beaten with a blunt object.
Police suspected a robbery, but some believed she had been involved with Petiot, who had been seen near her home. A man named Massuer Fisco told police in confidence that he had seen the doctor outside her house on the night of the crime. Fisco later died after a routine visit to Petiot’s practice. Petiot was suspended from his position as mayor and resigned.
In October 1931, he was elected as a councillor, but the following year he was accused of stealing electricity, lost his council seat, and was fined and sentenced to fifteen days in prison. He appealed, and in 1933 relocated to Paris. In Paris, he established a practice at 66 Rue Caumartin, and again rumours circulated about his illegal activities, including prescribing addictive medication. When one patient died, an autopsy found excessive morphine, but the coroner returned a verdict of death by natural causes.
Instead of drawing scrutiny, Petiot was granted the authority to write death certificates. He built a popular practice. In April 1936, he was caught stealing from a shop and assaulted a policeman who tried to apprehend him. He escaped, later gave himself up, but was not prosecuted after presenting his military discharge papers.
He was instructed to spend time in a psychiatric hospital, where doctors released him despite their concerns. On 3 September 1939, France declared war on Germany. By mid-June 1940, the German army controlled Paris. Some French citizens were drafted for forced labour in Germany, and Petiot saw an opportunity.
For a payment, he would provide false medical disability certificates to those drafted. He also told people he was part of the resistance, claiming he had developed weapons that could kill German soldiers without leaving forensic evidence, planted bombs, and met with high-ranking Allied commanders. This forged reputation helped him with his most profitable venture. He claimed he could arrange safe passage out of France for those wanted by the Germans or the Vichy government.
The route, he said, would take them through Spain to Portugal, then by ship to Argentina, for 25,000 francs per person. He was aided by three men: Raoul Fourrier, Edmond Pintard, and René Nézondet. They spread word around Paris that an evacuation route existed, using the code name Doctor Eugène. Those who came to Petiot’s practice paid him and included Jewish community members, resistance fighters, and criminals.
None ever left Paris. Before giving them instructions for their journey, Petiot told them they would need vaccinations against certain diseases. He then injected them with cyanide, took their valuables, and disposed of their bodies. At first, he threw the bodies into the Seine, but the risk of being caught at night grew too great.
He began using a furnace in the basement of 21 Rue Lesueur, a house he purchased in 1941 in an affluent area near the Arc de Triomphe. As dismembered bodies surfaced in the river, police struggled to identify them. The German authorities and the French Gestapo were more focused on finding the group that supposedly arranged escapes to Argentina. In 1942, Petiot was charged with over-prescribing narcotics.
The two patients who agreed to testify strangely disappeared. He was fined 2,400 francs. Eventually, the Gestapo became aware of Petiot’s claims to help people escape. Believing he was part of the resistance, they arrested him and his three accomplices and tortured them for information.
The men had none, because there was no escape route to Argentina. Petiot had simply taken the money and murdered his clients. The four men were sent to prison but released by January 1944. After the discovery at Rue Lesueur, authorities searched Petiot’s apartment and found chloroform and other poisons.
They learned of his earlier arrest for arranging passage out of the country. One witness described how Petiot had offered to arrange his escape to Argentina for 25,000 francs. Georgette Petiot was arrested, as were the three suspected accomplices. Despite the resources of both the police and the Gestapo, the search for Petiot was unsuccessful.
He had taken the name Henri Valeri and joined the French Forces of the Interior, rising to the rank of captain in charge of counter-espionage and prisoner interrogations. The police suspected he had left Paris, but realised he was still there when the newspaper Résistance published an article about him. A week later, Petiot wrote to his lawyer insisting the article was untrue. The search intensified.
On 31 October 1944, he was recognised at a Paris metro station and arrested. He was found with 31,700 francs, a pistol, and over fifty sets of identity documents. His trial began on 18 May 1946 at the Palais de Justice before a seven-man jury and three judges. The prosecution argued that Petiot was responsible for at least 27 murders for profit, though they believed the true number was higher.
Petiot claimed he was innocent of all charges, insisting he had only killed enemies of France. He said he had discovered the bodies at 21 Rue Lesueur in February 1944 and assumed they were people targeted by the resistance. But police found no links between him and any resistance group. Some groups he claimed to have worked with were unknown to all intelligence services, and prominent wartime resistance figures said they had never heard of him or his actions.
Marcel Petiot was found guilty and sent to La Santé prison, where on 25 May 1946 he was executed by guillotine. His story, however, did not end there. Thirty-four years later, former U. S.
spymaster Colonel John F. Grombach cited Petiot as a World War II source. Grombach had been the founder and head of a small independent espionage agency later known as the Pond. At the time, the claims were not supported by any evidence.
In 2001, some Pond records were discovered, including a cable that mentioned Dr. Marcel Petiot.