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Dr. Marcel Petiot: Serial killer of Nazi-occupied Paris. Mass grave of dozens of Jewish families found in his basement
Dr. Marcel Petiot: Serial killer of Nazi-occupied Paris. Mass grave of dozens of Jewish families found in his basement.
Marcel André Henri Félix Petiot (17 January 1897 – 25 May 1946) was a French medical doctor and serial killer. He was convicted of multiple murders after the discovery of the remains of 23 people in the basement of his home in Paris during World War II. He is suspected of the murder of about 60 victims during his lifetime, although the true number remains unknown.
Some infamous Nazis, like Dr. Mengele would fall under the category of a serial killer. At the end of the day, he wasn't just a doctor at a concentration camp, he was a sadistic psychopath who systematically tortured people, especially women and children.
After the 1940 German defeat of France, French citizens were drafted for forced labor in Germany. Petiot provided false medical disability certificates to people who were drafted. He also treated the illnesses of workers who had returned. In July 1942, he was convicted of overprescribing narcotics, even though two addicts who would have testified against him had disappeared. He was fined 2,400 francs.
Petiot later claimed that during the period of German occupation, he was engaged in Resistance activities. He supposedly developed secret weapons that killed Germans without leaving forensic evidence, planted booby traps all over Paris, had high-level meetings with Allied commanders, and worked with a (nonexistent) group of Spanish anti-fascists.
There is no evidence for any of these statements. However, in 1980, he was cited by former U.S. spymaster Col. John F. Grombach as a World War II source. Grombach had been founder and commander of a small independent espionage agency, known later as "The Pond", which operated from 1942 to 1955. Grombach asserted that Petiot had reported the Katyn Forest massacre, German missile development at Peenemünde, and the names of Abwehr agents sent to the U.S. While these claims were not corroborated by any records of other intelligence services, in 2001, some "Pond" records were discovered, including a cable that mentioned Petiot.
On 11 March 1944, Petiot's neighbors in Rue Le Sueur complained to police about a foul stench in the area and large amounts of smoke billowing from a chimney of the house. Fearing a chimney fire, the police summoned firemen, who entered the house and found a great fire in a coal stove in the basement. In the fire, and scattered in the basement, were human remains.
In addition to those found in his basement, human remains were also found in a pit filled partly with quicklime in the back yard and in a canvas bag. In his home, enough body parts were found to account for at least ten victims. Also scattered throughout his property were suitcases, clothing, and assorted property of his victims.
The media reaction was an intense media circus, with news reaching Switzerland, Belgium, and Scandinavia.
I grew up surrounded by Holocaust survivors and I remember we had a member in our congregation who had been tortured by Mengele because when she arrived at Auschwitz she was pregnant with twins, thereby becoming one of his Guinea pigs (sorry if it seems like an insensitive comparison but I can't think of a better way of discribing the way he saw his own victims).
Both of these monsters seem to have forgotten that they took the Hippocratic oath, which, granted, wasn't updated until 1948, but the fact is that it's hard to fathom that someone who spent years, if not at least a decade studying to help the ill can be so sadistic.
Sentence
Petiot was imprisoned in La Santé Prison. He claimed that he was innocent and that he had killed only enemies of France. He said that he had discovered the pile of bodies in 21 Rue le Sueur in February 1944, but had assumed that they were collaborators killed by members of his Resistance "network".
However, the police found that Petiot had no friends in any of the major Resistance groups. Some of the Resistance groups he spoke of had never existed, and there was no proof of any of his claimed exploits. Prosecutors eventually charged him with at least 27 murders for profit. Their estimate of his gains was as much as 200 million francs.
Petiot was tried on 19 March 1946, accused of 135 criminal charges. Celebrity attorney René Floriot acted for the defense, against a team comprising state prosecutors and twelve civil lawyers hired by relatives of Petiot's victims. Petiot taunted the prosecuting lawyers, and claimed that various victims had been collaborators or double agents, or that vanished people were alive and well in South America using new names. He admitted to killing 19 of the 27 victims found in his house, and claimed that they were Germans and collaborators – part of a total of 63 "enemies" killed. Floriot attempted to portray Petiot as a Resistance hero, but the judges and jurors were unimpressed. Petiot was convicted of 26 counts of murder, and sentenced to death.
On 25 May 1946, Petiot was beheaded, after a stay of a few days due to a problem with the release mechanism of the guillotine, and buried at Ivry Cemetery.
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