Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris (41 page)

“
Yes, you know these things better than me, as I am not a forensic scientist,” Petiot mumbled. “Diptera and coleoptera … hmmm. This is fascinating. Could you tell me more about it?” When Piédelièvre responded that the subject did not pertain to the case, Petiot agreed and invited himself over after the trial to discuss the matter further.

Professor Griffon then testified that he had not found any evidence of poison. But “
that does not mean that there wasn’t any,” he added, noting that the small triangular room was well suited to serving as a gas chamber.

“But there was a gap of over two centimeters under the door,” Floriot objected.

“It would have been easy to close it,” Griffon said, suggesting a simple rug.

“
That’s only a hypothesis. Can you produce this rug?”

“If it were gas, then what kind of gas?” Dupin asked.

“Almost any one you would like, except perhaps lighting gas because we found no trace of equipment.” Griffon then reminded the court that Petiot’s apartment on rue Caumartin contained “a pharmaceutical arsenal of uncommon size” with an “abnormally high proportion of narcotics.”

“They were used for painless deliveries,” Petiot said.

“Did you find a single poison at rue Caumartin?” Floriot asked.

“Morphine.”

“Morphine is not a poison.”

“That depends upon the dose.”

“Did you find any morphine at rue Le Sueur?”

“No.”

“I see,” Floriot said. “No poison at rue Le Sueur. No way to block the opening in this famous gas chamber of yours. Nothing at all? Thank you very much.”

The psychiatrists who had examined Petiot came next, including Dr. Georges Paul Génil Perrin, who had noted Petiot’s attempts to pretend he was insane to escape punishment.

“
I have examined Petiot from a mental point of view,” Génil Perrin said, “and found him endowed with a lively intelligence and a remarkable gift for repartee …,” a statement that drew laughter from members of the audience and prompted Dupin to note that he had observed this quality himself even without psychiatric training. Génil Perrin then testified about Petiot’s troubled or “arrested moral development,” before concluding, as in his previous report, that the defendant was “
fully responsible for his acts.”

Another psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Gouriou, testified that Petiot was not “a monster or a madman,” but rather “perverse, amoral, a scamp and a simulator. In times of trouble, he has attempted to avoid prosecution by faking insanity.” Petiot’s “lack of moral education,” he added, “has allowed him to develop a taste for evil.”

Floriot objected that the doctor’s patients found him quite the opposite.

“I know of doctors whose mental disequilibrium is expressed by an increased devotion to their patients.”

“Did he pretend to be insane with you?” Floriot asked.

“No, he lied about many points, but not that.”

“You concluded that Petiot completed his studies in a ‘mysterious’ fashion. Do you know his examination results?”

“I saw his grades. He had
‘mediocre’ in dissection,” Gouriou said
to laughter in the courtroom. “His thesis received the grade
‘très bien,’
but that is done easily. A thesis can be bought if desired. At any rate, it is based on books and does not give an indication of the personal worth of a physician.”

Floriot pointed out that the witness was making insinuations without proof. He then asked the expert if, in his examination of Petiot’s relatives, he found anything unusual about his sister. After a slight hesitation, Gouriou said, “
She is in good health.”

“
Sorry, but Petiot does not have a sister.”

The courtroom erupted in laughter, prompting Leser to call for a recess.

T
HE trial recommenced with the prominent graphologist Professor Edouard de Rougemont, who was asked to testify about the handwriting of the letters supposedly sent by Van Bever, Khaït, Braunberger, and Hotin. In each case, Rougemont believed the letters were genuine, though the text was in disagreement with the actual sentiments of the writer.
Rougemont detected a high degree of stress, probably even dictation under duress or the influence of drugs.

Floriot asked if the scholar could really draw these conclusions based only on looking at the handwriting. When Rougemont answered yes, Floriot scribbled something on his pad, ripped off the sheet, and handed it to the expert. Would he mind informing the court if Floriot believed what he had written? Rougemont read the paper and then refused to say anything. Floriot had written: “
Monsieur de Rougemont is a great scholar who never makes a mistake.”

“
If we had asked Petiot to write out his story and Monsieur de Rougemont to read it, we could have dispensed with this whole trial,” Floriot said, to another round of laughter in the courtroom.

Colonel André Dewavrin, director of the DGER intelligence service under General de Gaulle, was scheduled to testify. When the bailiff called his name, however, another man stood and announced that he represented Dewavrin. Président Leser was often criticized during the
trial for his relaxed courtroom, but he was not going to accept a spokesman for a witness. Floriot also objected, claiming that the defense was counting on Colonel Dewavrin’s testimony, because as de Gaulle’s chief of intelligence, he could officially confirm Petiot’s work as a Resistance fighter.

Instead, a witness with much greater potential for damaging Petiot took the stand, Jacques Yonnet, who had published the article “Petiot, Soldier of the Third Reich,” which had played an important role in the capture of the physician. Yonnet had also investigated Petiot’s claims to have fought Germans and their collaborators, and drafted his summary for the court, which had concluded that Petiot had no Resistance credentials whatsoever.

Asked by Floriot about the newspaper article, Yonnet admitted that the piece was based on a copy of a report that he claimed later to find out had contained many falsehoods. He had published the article with the caveat that he could not vouch for all the allegations. As for the investigation, which Floriot criticized for its lack of objectivity, Yonnet stood by its results.

Petiot could not have known any of the people he mentioned, such as Brossolette, Cumuleau, or the other members of Arc-en-Ciel. Yonnet and his colleague Brouard could not find a single person who had heard of his so-called Fly-Tox organization, which moreover was not included on the files of Fighting France that were housed at 76 Avenue Henri-Martin. Fly-Tox, Yonnet concluded, had not existed other than in Petiot’s imagination.

Despite Yonnet’s sweeping claim, the files of the Brigade Criminelle show that several people had in fact heard of Fly-Tox, including the widows of Brossolette and Cumuleau. Still, no evidence of the group’s existence has ever been made public, and, if Fly-Tox existed, did Petiot really belong to it, or did he just exploit it for his own purposes?

It is unfortunate that Dewavrin did not appear at the Petiot trial. He could have helped clear up the matter of
Petiot’s Resistance credentials, or lack thereof. Instead, his absence only raised questions. Dewavrin did not refer to the episode in his memoirs and never spoke of it, at least
publicly, except for one time. On that occasion, he gave a terse rejection of Petiot: “
Organized Resistance has never, for any reason whatsoever, had dealings with Dr. Petiot.”

Véron asked the defendant to elaborate on his claim of killing sixty-three people, thirty-three collaborators and thirty German soldiers. Beginning with the latter, Véron wanted to know how specifically Petiot had killed them. Petiot said vaguely that many of them had been his patients. Véron countered that Petiot was not authorized to treat German citizens.

“
I refuse to tell you,” Petiot said. “I did not work to earn a stripe or a decoration. When there are invaders, there are always avengers.”

Véron persisted in his demands.

“I do not have to explain murders that I am not accused of committing. When I have been acquitted, you can indict me for the thirty
Boches
that I have taken down,” Petiot said, his usual bluster likely strengthened by his belief that the trial was swinging in his favor. Actually, several reporters in the room agreed with him. Headlines the next day noted that Petiot’s conviction looked
doubtful.

Véron asked Petiot about his relationship to the Gestapo. Why did they not react to his so-called killings of German soldiers, and more important, once they had arrested him, why did they release him from prison? This was an important question that deserved more attention. Civilians arrested for helping evaders could expect no mercy from the Gestapo.

“Obviously,” Yonnet said, “this man should have been shot.”

“
Monsieur Ibarne,” Petiot said, using Yonnet’s Resistance alias, “I saw you somewhere that you would not like me to mention.”

“
On the contrary, I demand that you say it, because I am sure that I have never seen you.”

Petiot, who did not say a word, sat there beaming with a smirk that suggested that he held some valuable inside knowledge. Yonnet demanded that he answer.

“Do you not play tennis at the Racing Club?” Petiot asked, suggesting that Yonnet was affiliated with an institution requisitioned by the
Germans and favored by many elite French collaborators. No, Yonnet said, he did not play tennis and had never been to that club. Petiot made no rebuttal.

Yonnet’s DGER colleague, Lieutenant Brouard, next testified that Petiot could not pick out Cumuleau in a group of photographs. Moreover, he reiterated the results of their investigation, which included no fewer than twenty-five instances where Petiot’s testimony contradicted basic facts about the Resistance. By the time Leser adjourned the court at seven that evening, these last two prosecution witnesses had dealt harsh blows to Petiot’s credibility.

T
HE ninth day of the trial, March 27, the prosecution called Petiot’s alleged accomplices to the stand, including the hairdresser Raoul Fourrier, the makeup artist Edmond Pintard, Marcel’s brother Maurice, and his old friend René Nézondet. The witnesses certainly had a wealth of relevant information, but the challenge for both prosecution and defense was ferreting it out and making sense of testimony that often obscured more than it revealed.

When a guarded and taciturn Fourrier took the stand, Président Leser returned to the question of his motives for bringing clients to Petiot. Fourrier would not admit to anything other than that he had helped what he believed was a patriotic organization. His confidence in the integrity of the group was confirmed, he said, when the Gestapo arrested Petiot and held him in prison for almost eight months.

Asked about the disappearance of the gangsters and their mistresses,
Fourrier said that he did not know that the men would bring the women with them. No, he had not asked many questions, because Petiot told him that the matter was confidential. He emphasized how little he in fact knew of the organization and that it was actually his colleague, Edmond Pintard, who went looking for travelers.

Pintard admitted scouring the bars and cafés of Montmartre for potential clients, generally soliciting by speaking “
neither of business nor politics, but of everything and nothing.” He confessed to recruiting all nine of the gangsters and their girlfriends. Like Fourrier, he seemed to believe that he was only helping people escape Nazi oppression.

At one point, Pintard testified that Fourrier showed him a letter or note from Jo the Boxer confirming his arrival in Buenos Aires. Petiot smirked and then, almost off the cuff, admitted that he had imitated Jo’s handwriting and forged the note. This was a surprising confession, coming out, as it did, after the handwriting expert had concluded that other similar surviving letters were genuine. Petiot was apparently enjoying the sensation of showing up an authority, even one whose testimony might be said to work in his favor.

Marcel Petiot’s oldest friend, René Nézondet, took the stand. His testimony—if not much more enlightening—was more damaging to the defendant. Just as he had told the Gestapo following his arrest with Petiot in May 1943, Nézondet said that he did not know anything at that time about Petiot’s activities. It was in prison, he said, that he learned that the physician conducted “clandestine passages” and expected the Germans to shoot him. It was after his own release from prison, Nézondet said, that he learned what Petiot was really doing to his clients.

The realization had come in a conversation with Maurice Petiot. “
The journeys begin and end at rue Le Sueur,” Petiot had allegedly told him, before describing the “many suitcases, postdated letters, syringes, a formula for poison, and some bodies” that he found on the property. When Nézondet expressed his shock, calling the doctor a “monster,” the younger Petiot had defended his brother as “a sick man” who needed treatment and insisted that Nézondet keep quiet about the information. Otherwise, he said, everyone would be shot.

Nézondet’s date for this conversation with Maurice, July 1943, differed from the time of December 1943 that he had indicated to the police. Still, this was the most harmful testimony to Petiot that day, coming from a source close to the defendant. At the same time, Nézondet related how Maurice told him about finding several German uniforms at rue Le Sueur, though the question remained open whether this would ultimately help or hurt Petiot. Would this testimony, for instance, support his claim that he posed as a German policeman to arrest traitors, or did it perhaps indicate that the defendant had much closer ties to the Nazis than hitherto revealed?

When Maurice Petiot took the stand, he flat-out denied Nézondet’s statements. He spoke softly and with considerable difficulty; he was then suffering from the late stages of throat cancer. Petiot admitted seeing German uniforms at his brother’s property, but, he emphasized, he had never seen any bodies, poisons, syringes, or, in fact, anything disturbing. Certainly, he never said those things Nézondet claimed. Nézondet was simply carried away by his imagination.