The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot (8 page)

Fourrier had known Dr. Petiot for seven years. Since the rue des Mathurins, where his barbershop was located, is near the rue Caumartin, the doctor went to Fourrier for shaves and haircuts, and in turn the barber consulted him for medical problems. In May 1941, Petiot was in the shop waiting his turn when Fourrier told a story about a team of bicycle racers who were caught when they tried to cross the demarcation line into the free zone while pretending to race.
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While the other patrons laughed, Petiot quietly told Fourrier he always kept a packed suitcase near the door in case he needed to flee. He had an organization that could get people safely to South America. Fourrier asked the price. “Twenty-five thousand francs per person, false papers supplied, all costs included. If you know people who need to escape …”

France was divided into an occupied zone in the north and a free, or unoccupied, zone in the south until November 1942, when the Germans overran France all the way to the Mediterranean coast. The demarcation line, however, remained in effect until February 1943, and special permission to cross the line was generally given only for such emergencies as the sickness or death of a close relative. It was dangerous but comparatively easy to cross the line by using forged papers on public routes or by sneaking across poorly guarded border areas, as Nézondet had done.

Leaving France altogether was more difficult and became virtually impossible after the autumn of 1942 without the aid of a large network with numerous refuges across the country and carefully planned relays. The refugees' prime goal was Spain, from which ships would take them to England, North Africa, or South America, but the guidance of skilled mountaineers was required to cross the Pyrenees through Andorra, and alert coastal patrols made travel from France to Spain by small boat extremely dangerous. It has been estimated that only 30 percent of those who set out for Spain ever got there, though not all of the others fell victim to German patrols. There are terrible stories of
passeurs
who charged up to a million francs for the crossing, then demanded more when they reached the most dangerous part of the mountains or even killed their charges outright for their money. An honest network's price in 1942 could go as high as fifty thousand francs, and the price rose quickly in time; thus, Marcel Petiot was offering a fairly good deal.

Fourrier mentioned the escape network to his old friend Pintard. They apparently saw an opportunity to make some easy money, since Pintard set about actively recruiting customers. At a favorite café on the rue de l'Echiquier, around the corner from Pintard's rue d'Hauteville apartment and near the major prostitution area on the rue Saint-Denis, he ran into an underworld figure named Joseph Réocreux. Réocreux, alias Iron Arm Jo, alias Jo le Boxeur, had built up an impressive résumé in his thirty-two years: prison sentences totaling five-and-a-half years for three separate thefts, a one-year sentence for pimping, which was his current means of livelihood, and revocation of his citizenship and right to travel for twenty years. He was presently sought on a 1940 assault charge, and there were four other warrants outstanding that could not be served since he was known to be under German protection in exchange for services rendered—either supplying prostitutes or information or both. He was notoriously strong and fearless, and had been known to fight and vanquish three assailants simultaneously.

Recently, Jo le Boxeur and his copain Adrien “le Basque” Estébétéguy, disguised as Gestapo officers, had pulled off several robberies in the provinces, and his popularity with the occupying forces was on the decline. Faced with a sheaf of French warrants as well as possible prosecution by the Germans for impersonating an officer, Jo le Boxeur decided it would be a good time to leave the country together with his employee and current mistress Claudia “Lulu” Chamoux, whose identity papers gave her residence as the rue l'Echiquier café. With them would go another copain, François “le Corse” Albertini, a well-known pimp with a miraculously pristine police record, and François's mistress Annette “la Poute” Basset, alias Petit. Jo le Boxeur, after hearing about the escape route, told Pintard that he was very interested in knowing more. Could he give him details? Pintard saw the chance for a tidy profit and quoted the price as F50,000 per person—exactly double the rate Petiot had quoted to the barber Fourrier. Jo agreed: it was not excessive, and he had anticipated more difficulty due to his suspicious background.

At that time, Pintard had no direct contact with Petiot, whom he knew only from Fourrier's references to “Dr. Eugène.” He arranged a meeting through Fourrier, and it was at the Brasserie Molard near the Gare Saint-Lazare that Petiot met Jo le Boxeur. When Petiot learned that Fourrier and Pintard were trying to charge double his price, he furiously threatened never to deal with them again. He insisted that they were all working for a noble cause that held no place for thoughts of personal gain. Fourrier swore it would never happen again, and Pintard, in terror, apologized to a menacing Jo.

Jo le Boxeur, with good reason, did not trust Pintard, yet his friends were astonished to hear this hardened professional say that “Dr. Eugène's” eyes had made him extremely uneasy and that despite his initial enthusiasm he was now reluctant to leave Paris. He vacillated, and persuaded François le Corse to leave first. They swapped mistresses, perhaps to insure honor among thieves, and early one Sunday morning in September 1942, François and Lulu Chamoux arrived at the rue des Mathurins barbershop with their luggage. Around 9:00
A.M.
Dr. Eugène came to meet them, and Fourrier and Pintard watched from an upstairs window as they walked away with their suitcases. Several times Petiot glanced furtively about to make sure they were not being followed.

Jo le Boxeur still hesitated, and Petiot complained to Fourrier that Jo knew too much and should be pushed into leaving. Several weeks after the departure of François le Corse and Lulu, Petiot gave Fourrier a letter; he wanted it returned to him as soon as possible. Pintard showed the letter to Jo. It was from François le Corse and said that they had arrived safely in Argentina. Jo's confidence was now restored. He concealed plaques of gold in the heels of his shoes, sewed F1.4 million into the shoulder pads of his suit, loaded Annette La Poute and another, unidentified prostitute—Mademoiselle X—with jewels, and early one Sunday morning, they, too, departed. Several days later a puzzled Fourrier noticed Jo's gold watch on Petiot's wrist. Oh, the doctor said, Jo had given it to him out of gratitude—a sentiment most of Jo's friends had rarely discerned in him.

Several weeks later, Pintard passed a telegram from Jo le Boxeur around the rue de l'Echiquier café saying that all had gone well, and the great Francinet soon had another group eager to make use of his agency. Adrien “le Basque” Estébétéguy was a close friend of Jo's and boasted a similar police dossier (one police report on him, with typical understatement, called him “an individual of more than doubtful morality”): eight prison sentences and seven warrants outstanding on charges including theft, fraud, possession of firearms, and eight counts of assault—four of them against French policemen. Most of the warrants had never been served because Estébétéguy, too, was under Nazi protection.

Early during the Occupation, the Germans had seen the value of employing Frenchmen not only as informants but as sleuths and agents in their purchasing offices, which bought or requisitioned gold, jewels, and other valuable or useful materials to fund the war and nourish the Reich. A former criminal named Henri Chamberlin, better known under his alias Henri Lafont, was the most powerful and feared of these agents, and he had rapidly earned the position of head of the French Gestapo office at the rue Lauriston, near the Etoile. A clever man, Lafont was nonetheless initially hampered by his small-time criminal experience and lack of education, but his skill as a leader emerged when the Germans persuaded him to hire the superb organizer Pierre Bonny, who had become famous as “the greatest policeman in France” during the Stavisky affair of the thirties and was later drummed out of the force after numerous scandals.

The Lafont-Bonny gang was among the most effective weapons of the occupying forces: it was efficient, and the French were frightened and humiliated by the collaboration of their countrymen. The Germans were not particular about the methods the French sleuths used, and through dubious requisitions, outright theft, and shakedowns, Lafont's service systematically accumulated valuables, often retaining more than the 20 percent commission authorized by the Germans. To carry out his agency's specialized task, Lafont had originally formed a nucleus of twenty-seven hardened criminals the Germans released at his request from the notorious Fresnes prison. Adrien Estébétéguy was among the first.

Adrien le Basque's team was assigned to General von Behr's Service for Recuperation of Jewish Property, which requisitioned furniture, money, apartments, and land, directly turning over 80 percent of the take to the German government and 20 percent to Lafont at the rue Lauriston. This was the theory, at least; Lafont quickly discovered that Estébétéguy not only frequently denounced Frenchmen to suit his personal convenience but also had an unpleasant tendency to substitute gilded copper for confiscated gold ingots. Lafont did not mind swindling the Germans himself, but he found it rather “indelicate” (to use his own word) for one of his own men—and one who owed him his freedom at that—to perpetrate the same frauds on his benefactor. Estébétéguy was dismissed, and though he quickly transferred his allegiance to Wehrmacht Intelligence, he realized that the Gestapo was by far the more powerful service and that the loss of its protection seriously undermined his immunity from French justice.

On December 14, 1942, Estébétéguy and three cohorts disguised themselves as Gestapo officers and stole a large sum at the Hautefort farm of Emile Joulot in the Dordogne region. They announced they had come for Gilbert Saada, a young Jew from Nice staying with Joulot. Saada, they claimed, was suspected of owning a secret radio transmitter. While one of the gang guarded the two men, the others went off to find the radio; instead they took $2,300 in gold dollars, 530 louis d'or, $7,000 and F500,000 in paper money, and some of Saada's silk shirts, along with a suitcase to put them in. Taking Saada as their prisoner, they drove off in a black Citroën registered in the name of a licensed Paris prostitute named Gisèle Rossmy. Saada was released in Toulouse for a promise of F200,000, which the captors said they would return to collect in one month's time.

In addition to Estébétéguy, two of the other false policemen, Charles Lombard and Auguste Jeunet, also happened to be members in good standing of the rue Lauriston French Gestapo. Curiously, Saada, Joulot, and several others who had been in the farmhouse during the robbery formally identified the fourth robber as Joseph Réocreux, alias Jo le Boxeur, even though he had disappeared two months earlier.
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Henri Lafont, angered that his men were still using the Gestapo for their own ends, flew into a rage and personally reported the crime to the French police. One can assume that he obtained full details through his contacts, and though, for his own reasons, he disguised the name of one of the agents in his report, he agreed that the other three robbers were Lombard, Joseph Réocreux, and Estébétéguy, and he told police he no longer considered them to be under his protection.

Thus in early 1943 Adrien le Basque found himself falling into disfavor on all sides and resolved to leave the country with his friend Joseph Didioni Sidissé Piereschi, alias Dionisi, alias Zé. Piereschi had spent three years of his youth in a penal colony after committing a murder at age eighteen. He deserted from the army twice during the First World War, breaking jail while serving his second term. Later convicted of stealing military supplies, of arms trafficking and of pimping, during the Occupation of France he operated brothels reserved for the Germans. He had recently escaped from a Marseille prison, where he had been serving five years for a daylight holdup of a train station that netted F983,000. At forty-four, he was well known as a pimp and had fifteen girls working for him, though his true specialty was luring new girls into brothels and holding them in his power. Seeking to emigrate with Estébétéguy and Piereschi were their respective mistresses, Gisèle Rossmy and Joséphine-Aimée Grippay. Joséphine, alias Paulette, was twenty-four and beautiful; her dark complexion and the slant to her eyes had earned her the nickname of Paulette la Chinoise. She had been a professional and very high-class prostitute since she left home—“to follow her destiny,” as she had told her mother—at age sixteen. Recently, she and Piereschi had told friends they planned to take F800,000 in savings and open a brothel in South America. When she packed her clothes now for the departure, she included a black satin evening gown with golden swallows embroidered on the bosom—the dress later found under the basement stairs at 21 rue Le Sueur.

Gisèle Rossmy had led a mixed life. At age twenty she had given birth to an illegitimate child, now fifteen and being raised in an orphanage. She subsequently found a job as a typist and stenographer, which paid well, but dreamed of the fame to be found on the stage. She quit her job and, under the stage name Gine Volna, obtained a few rôles in small theaters and cabarets, and it was in such a setting that she met Adrien le Basque, some twenty years her senior. They lived together for several years, moving from one apartment to another as the neighbors complained of the noise made by their unsavory guests. Materially she could not ask for more, since Adrien drenched her with jewels and they lived in great luxury, but he forbade her to visit her family and former friends, and when he was drunk, which was often, he mistreated her shamelessly and she would hide in the concierge's loge. She had often thought of leaving, but she could think of nowhere else to go, and when he decided to leave the country she agreed to go along. On the last Saturday of March 1943, Gisèle Rossmy had dinner with a friend who later reported that she seemed sad at the prospect of leaving Paris the next day. As Réocreux and Albertini had done before them, Estébétéguy and Piereschi each escorted the other's mistress; Paulette la Chinoise and Adrien le Basque had already gone the day before.
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