Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris (12 page)

By the end of the visit, the police had uncovered nothing whatsoever to implicate Georgette Petiot in the murders. All they found was a five-carat diamond ring that she could not explain other than say it was a gift from her husband. On this basis, the French police would later
charge her with receipt of stolen property. In the meantime, Massu made no charge. He asked her to pack a bag to return to the station. After escorting her through the crowds and into the car, the commissaire was struck by the many curious people who peered in through the window. Georgette shielded her face behind a handkerchief. The driver blew the horn several times to clear a path through the crowds blocking the way.

Georgette Petiot was driven to the Hôtel-Dieu, the oldest hospital in Paris. Located in the shadow of Notre Dame Cathedral on the Île de la Cité, the hospital held the sick and wounded in wings that segregated French and German patients. It also held important witnesses in criminal trials. Here, it was reasoned, Madame Petiot would be able to answer questions, safe from the reporters, photographers, camera crews, crowds, or anyone, for that matter, who might try to avenge a missing person blamed, rightly or wrongly, on her husband. Massu also hoped that, with close surveillance, he might be able to protect this important source of information from a possible suicide attempt.

M
ARCEL and Georgette Petiot had been married in her hometown of Seignelay on June 4, 1927.
Georgette’s father, Nestor Lablais, a former porter of a wagon-lits company, owned a local tavern-inn there, and her mother, Anna Villard Lablais, had been his chambermaid before their marriage. By the time Georgette was fourteen, the family had moved to Paris, and her father purchased the restaurant Côte d’Or in the 7th arrondissement, next to the parliament, the Chambre des Députés. Nicknamed “Long Arm” for his influence with his restaurant patrons, many of whom were prominent politicians, businessmen, and other leading figures of society, Lablais had recognized the talents and potential of his son-in-law.

Other people had also envisioned a bright future for Villeneuve-sur-Yonne’s young mayor. Petiot’s supporters compared him to another French physician-turned-statesman, Georges Clemenceau. One politician at the Petiot wedding, Henri Chéron, told the groom that if he ever had the chance to lead the government, he would appoint him as one of
his ministers. Chéron would later serve in several positions, including two stints by 1934 as both minister of justice and minister of finance. By then, however, Petiot’s promising career of the “New Clemenceau” had ended in scandal.

During Petiot’s term as mayor, small items had often disappeared from City Hall. Sometimes it was funds, other times simple trinkets, like a spoon, an ashtray, or a small keepsake that would fit into his pocket. Townspeople soon whispered about the mayor’s peculiar habit. A Villeneuve-sur-Yonne blacksmith, Depond-Clément, remembered Petiot coming to his forge looking for parts to repair his sports car—the mayor drove fast and recklessly, and thus became a frequent visitor there. Petiot would show up, “
humming, whistling, and joking,” while also gossiping and showing interest in the workers. Almost every time, afterward, something small, like a tool or a key, would be missing. When a forge employee went to confront him, the mayor simply returned the item, laughing and making no excuses.

Petiot was accused of some other bizarre crimes during his term. One time, the mayor was suspected of stealing a drum. The band for his rival right-wing party had set up the night before a concert at the Salle des Fêtes in the town hall. The next morning, band members arrived to find their bass drum missing. Within days, another band in town, which often played at political functions in support of Petiot’s socialist party, received a new, recently painted drum, the same size instrument as the one that had disappeared. It was a gift from the mayor.

Petiot polarized the town, leading some to praise his achievements, such as his reform of the elementary school system, his modernization of the sewer system, his improvement of garbage collection, and his building of other urban amenities, like a tennis court and a playground. Petiot also gained more railway stops for his town. At one point, he was said to have convinced railway executives of the stops’ necessity by throwing himself from a moving train.

Other people criticized the mayor for his unscrupulous actions, mostly involving corruption and his almost dictatorial control of the city council. Controversy would surround the rest of his term. Funds
and property continued to disappear. At least one member of City Hall, Léon Pinau, quit, claiming that he did not want to be engulfed in any of the many scandals likely to ensue in the mayor’s office.

Sure enough, after surviving several lengthy investigations into his accused thefts of oil and gasoline, a small scandal in the summer of 1931 resulted in Petiot’s resignation. A routine audit of his office had found 2,890 francs in fees, from 138 alien-registration applications, that had not been forwarded to the necessary officials. Petiot blamed his secretary for this simple mistake, and the man accepted full blame, pointing to his age, his poor eyesight, and exhaustion as a result of being too long overworked. But in late August, Petiot was suspended. On the twenty-sixth, the day before the suspension took effect, he resigned from office.

Petiot, however, came back in full force, waging another intense, passionate, and controversial campaign for reelection. He told how his experience in war had made him “
love the people” and aspire to a career as a physician to improve their well-being. He targeted First World War veterans and workers with appeals to the common man against Parisian decadence and corruption. His opponents returned the criticism: “
Drain Petiot out of his graft-built sewers,” as one poster put it.

Petiot’s brazen confidence and unorthodox tactics provided some advantages. At a late-season candidate debate at town hall, he offered to allow his opponent, Henri Guttin, to speak last. Petiot then delivered an enthusiastic address, outlining his many achievements and work on behalf of the poor. When Guttin stepped up to the podium and took out his notes to read his prepared statement, the room suddenly lost power. The candidate fumbled through his speech in the dark, an awkward contrast to the dynamic Petiot. The source of the outage was later traced to the physician’s residence.

In the end, Petiot was defeated. Prepared for the possibility, he had already entered a second campaign for office, this time as general councillor, the rough equivalent of a US congressman. Petiot won this contest, becoming the youngest of thirty-four representatives from Yonne. This position would not last long.

Petiot was again accused of theft, this time in the form of using a combination of cables, plugs, and pins to rewire electricity meters on his house and steal electricity. “
It’s a vile political hazing,” Petiot said, blaming the charges on his enemies. The evidence against him, however, was overwhelming. On July 19, 1933, the tribunal at Joigny pronounced him guilty, sentencing him to fifteen days in prison and fining him 300 francs with another 200 in damages. Petiot appealed, and the court waived his prison sentence and reduced the fine to 100 francs, but upheld the verdict.

This conviction—the first to stick against the young politician—led to a temporary loss of his voting rights, which, in French law, required a mandatory removal from office. And so once again, before the inevitable occurred, Petiot resigned. The political career of the “New Clemenceau” was over. Another phase was about to begin.

B
ACK at headquarters, after a beer in a brasserie on place Dauphine and a quick telephone call to his wife, Commissaire Massu sent a couple of inspectors to check out Georgette Petiot’s claims. No one had seen her at 52 rue de Reuilly, but this did not necessarily discredit her statement, as she had been trying to hide and none of the
twenty-one residents in the building knew her. Even the concierge barely recognized her.

Another detective, Inspector Hernis, checked out the Hôtel Alicot at 207 rue de Bercy, where she claimed to have eaten before leaving for Auxerre. The owner, Henri Alicot, confirmed that Madame Petiot had arrived at his restaurant, as she had claimed, on the morning of the thirteenth, looking bewildered and exhausted. He could also confirm that she had spent the day there, distraught about the news.

It was not possible, she had said, that her husband, “who is so good to me,” could have done those things reported in the newspapers. In the seventeen years of marriage, Georgette Petiot added, she had not once seen him angry. Her immediate plans were to travel to Auxerre to be with her son. Madame Petiot had napped in one of the rooms, but
declined food until Alicot had convinced her to eat a bowl of soup before leaving for the 5:20 train to Auxerre. Clearly she had feared being arrested.

Perhaps the restaurateur’s most interesting revelation concerned not the suspect’s wife, but his brother.
According to Alicot, Maurice Petiot came to Paris almost every week for business, usually arriving on a Wednesday and staying at his hotel until Saturday. Alicot claimed not to have seen him since the previous month, but he could date the event because it had been so peculiar.

During his stay February 19–22, 1944, Alicot recalled, a truck driver and a workman had appeared in his hotel lobby to deliver a message to Maurice. Their truck, which contained a delivery for the younger Petiot, had broken down at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Michel and Boulevard Saint-Germain, and the two men had been forced to leave it there. What particularly struck Alicot, however, was not the message, though he did wonder why they would abandon a truck loaded with goods. It was how frightened the men looked when they relayed the news and then how quickly they departed afterward.

E
XAMINING the black satin dress found in the basement of rue Le Sueur, Massu’s men had identified a possible victim. Detectives had contacted the Marseille designer listed on the fashion tag, Silvy-Rosa, whose real name was Sylvie Givaudan, and she remembered the dress. Givaudan had made it about three and a half years before and sold it to a woman named Paulette from a nearby brothel, whom she described as
young and beautiful.

The Marseille police department was able to provide more information about this woman. Her real name was
Joséphine Aimée Grippay. She had been given the name Paulette by a pimp who thought “Joséphine” sounded old-fashioned. “
It was good one hundred years ago,” he had reportedly told her, “[but] men like easy names to remember.” Grippay had gained a number of other sobriquets, including “
La Chinoise” for her long black hair, high cheekbones, and other facial features deemed Asian, though she was actually from Corsica.

Born January 7, 1917, in the port of Bonifacio (Bunifaziu), to a Corsican mother and a Breton father, Grippay had begun working in a brothel in Ajaccio before reaching Marseille, where she settled into an upscale brothel on rue Venture. Grippay soon made connections with many figures in the underworld, including, most prominently, Joseph Piereschi, known variously as “Joseph le Marseillais,” Dionisi, or Zé.
By the time World War II broke out, Piereschi had been sentenced to prison a number of times, mostly for petty theft, though there was one murder charge
and his participation in a train robbery that netted 983,000 francs. During the German Occupation, he started running a brothel for Nazi officers at Aire-sur-la-Lys. Eventually accused of defrauding German authorities, Piereschi fled, bringing Paulette Grippay with him. They worked their way north. Grippay had been in Paris just over one year when the police found her dress in Dr. Petiot’s basement.

How had Petiot come to know her? Was he one of her clients, or was she one of his? Rue Caumartin, after all, was located in the middle of a lively district full of nightclubs, bars, and brothels.

Not far away, on rue Provence, tucked into a discreet building with closed white shutters, was the One Two Two. The seven-story brothel, once the home of Napoleon’s marshal Joachim Murat, catered to an exclusive clientele that included royalty, statesmen, film stars, and eventually, many tourists. Each room upstairs projected a different theme. There was an Orient Express suite, a luxurious ocean liner cabin, and a Cloth of Gold Room inspired by the famous celebration by King Francis I and King Henry VIII in the summer of 1520. The Arctic igloo came with reindeer antlers and a polar bear rug, and the “
sunny farmhouse” was surrounded by a white picket fence with a mock hayloft above the bed. Two rooms were covered completely with mirrors. The top floors contained the more risqué rooms, including the popular torture chamber, with its whips, chains, handcuffs, and leather thongs.

Since his arrival in Paris eleven years before,
Petiot had drawn many clients from this environment. He had also attracted women from far less luxurious brothels, and many of them, like Jeannette Gaul, were outside the system of regulation altogether. Antonie Marguerite Bella, a thirty-six-year-old former chambermaid who became addicted to heroin and then worked as an unlicensed street walker, often visited his practice. She had no difficulty whatsoever in obtaining drugs from Dr. Petiot, she told Inspector Jean Prigent when he questioned her in prison. She had been referred to his practice by a friend in the same line of business, who consulted the doctor for “
the same reasons” and, she added, found the “same satisfaction.”

There was no shortage of witnesses ready to testify about Petiot’s
clientele, which seemed overwhelmingly female, with many of them addicted to morphine, heroin, or cocaine. As one patient later put it, Dr. Petiot was known to “
nearly all the drug addicts of Montmartre.” And if these women could not pay his rates, Petiot was not averse to cutting a deal or trading services. The physician credited these women with teaching him invaluable lessons, not least in how to impose his will on other people. “
It is through them that you learn to dominate,” Petiot said, calling prostitutes “the harems which make the great conquerors.”