Nowhere to Run: The Story of Doctor Marcel Petiot

Introduction

The year is 1941 and you make your way quickly through the bustling streets of Nazi occupied Paris. You look around nervously,these streets are not safe are not safe for a young Jewish person ever since the Nazi invasion in 1940. You take a breath.

“Everything will be okay… I am getting out of here.” 

You get suddenly calm because you know you are about to connect with a man who goes by the name Doctor Eugine. He is very well connected with the French resistance and knows how to safely get you out of Nazi occupied territory. Hopefully somewhere far away, like Argentina. The friend who referred you to him had heard of Doctor Eugine sending his refugees as far as South America, so to you this is a very real possibility.

When you arrive at the home of Doctor Eugine, he has a thin frame and a friendly face with a dark heap of hair. He informs you that in order to go to Argentina, you must receive special government vaccinations. 

You hesitate. With everything going on during these times, you have little trust in anyone. But this man has a good reputation and anything would be better than to suffer the fate of your fellow deported friends.

You agree, and he sticks you with the vaccine. 

Little did you know that this was not a vaccine, but something evil. Cyanide. You are one of over 60 jews and others who fell into the trap of one of the most unrecognized serial killers of the age. Doctor Marcel Petoit.

Early Life

Marcel Petiot was born on the seventeenth of January 1897 in Auxerre, France. As early as his teenage years, young Marcel showed signs of criminal behavior. After being charged with property damage,Petiot was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. While records are not public, the results of those tests were enough to have the case dropped for reasons of mental illness.

When he was older, Petiot volunteered for the French Army in World War I in January 1916.He was wounded and gassed in the Second Battle of the Aisne. After showing symptoms of a mental breakdown, Petiot was sent to various rest homes. There he resumed his criminal activity stealing army blankets, morphine, and other army supplies. This led to his arrest and placement in a psychiatric hospital in Fleury-les-Aubrais, though returned to the front in  1918. 

After the war, a traumatized Peitot entered an education program intended for war veterans, completing medical school in eight months. However, this did not change Petoit's criminal deposition, for there were rumors of narcotics dealings and dubious practices.

His First Murder 

Petiot's first murder victim is believed to be Louise Delaveau, an elderly patient's daughter with whom Petiot had a brief relationship with in 1926. 

Delaveau that year, and neighbors of the young doctor said they had seen him load a trunk into his car. It was investigated by the Paris authorities but eventually dismissed her case as a runaway. 

 Petiot attracted patients to his new practice on Rue de Caumartin by using fake credentials and built an impressive reputation. In Paris, this was the beginning of the horrible and murderous age of Doctor Marcel Petiot.

World War Two Murders and Capture 

Your experience at the beginning of this post was the sad fate of an estimated 60 Jews in Nazi occupied France. Using his reputation as a doctor he promised his victims safe passage away from the Nazi’s only to do the exact murder and cremation they were doing.

  For his early victims Petiot dumped the bodies in the Seine , but he later destroyed the bodies by incinerating them… just like his Nazi counterparts. In 1941, Petiot bought a house at 21 Rue le Sueur, where he continued his murders.

The Nazi  secret police learned about his fake "route" the French Resistance that was active in Paris. Three men were rounded up where one of them confessed that Dr. Petiot was Dr. Eugine.

On 11 March 1944, some of  Petiot's neighbours complained to police about a foul smell and large volumes of smoke billowing from a chimney of Petiot’s house. The police summoned firefighters, who entered the house and found a stove in the basement…In this fire were human remains.

Petiot was imprisoned in La Santé Prison and claimed that he had killed only enemies of the French.

Petiot was tried on 19 March 1946, facing 135 criminal charges. While he tried to use his claim of a hero of France it was very quickly disproven by the fact he had no friends with in the French Resistance 

On 25 May 1946, Petiot was beheaded, by means of guillotine, and buried at Ivry Cemetery. The dark age of Marcel Petiot was over.

What Took So Long To Catch Him?

  When considering why Doctor Marcel Petiot was allowed to get away with crimes he committed, we must remember the era the murders occurred and who the victims were.

 Hitler’s armies invaded France on May 10th, 1940, with the complete surrender given in June of that same year. The country was split into two parts. One part being run by the French government and the others (where Petiot carried out his murders) controlled by the Nazi’s. 

It was no secret the Nazis had racial policies that were directed towards Europe's Jewish populations. The largest deportations of French Jews called  The Vélodrome d'Hiver (the round up) took place on July 16th 1942. 

This is what made what Doctor Petiot did so devious and easy to hide. Serial killers tend to pick on weaker populations who disappearances would go unnoticed, so the fact that jews were already being deported worked to his favor. Even if his victims realized who he was before, the only people who they could report him to were the Nazis… the very people they were running from.

If the Nazis had won the war, who knows how many more murders Doctor Petiot could have committed under the regime.  

more information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YOv8lVFe5M