Death in the City of Light
by David King
Crown/Broadway, 2011, 1st ed.
345pp, biblio, notes, index,
8pp b/w photo insert
This book is sub-titled The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris, referring to Dr. Marcel Petiot, who murdered, dissected, and burned an unknown but high number of people, probably into the hundreds. He did this with impunity a block or so from Gestapo headquarters, preying mostly on people desperate to flee Nazi persecution of Jews and other “undesirables”.
The book is as much about Police Commissioner Georges-Victor Massu and his dogged efforts to discover Petiot’s identity and, when he fled, to capture him.
All this deduction, action, and skullduggery took place as Hitler’s worst lay waste to Paris, clamping down on social freedoms, keeping all the high life for themselves, and stealing loot as casually as popping a champagne cork.
Petiot was a charming, popular doctor, known for his generosity, his willingness to come on house calls at any hour, and to let payments slide if poverty struck. He dispensed drugs sometimes off the books and he was garrulous, well-mannered, and always neat in appearance. He was married to a beautiful woman he used to lure victims. It was only when the bodies began to stink that complaints led to the discovery of a basement lime pit, a furnace, and the bones and other body parts of dozens of people.
At first a rumor blamed the SS. Surely this was one of their torture-and-death houses. Such vile places were rumored although it turned out the SS neither knew nor much cared about finding jumbled body parts even in houses near their own headquarters, a place so dangerous even elite SS men of rank would often sneak into the building via side entrances with a gun drawn. It was so risky inside that they would call each others’ desks to arrange escort to the pissoir, having trusted friends stand guard and check to make sure this small journey down a hall was successfully completed.
Obviously the SS and the whole Nazi apparatus cared nothing about carnage, too busy with betrayal, cutthroat moves to advance rank, and various cabals at war in the very shadows they themselves cast.
Ah, but for Commissioner Massu, police work continued regardless. He was a phlegmatic man of great dedication. He was able to maintain focus even in the blur of occupation chaos, whimsical Nazi edicts, and continual obstruction encountered at every level.
Petiot thrived in this miasma, seeking out human misery to exploit with the nose of a bloodhound. He would discover poor Jewish refugees, drop hints that he knew a foolproof route to freedom, then wait. They usually came to him. He would issue commands for them to liquidate all assets into cash, pack only a certain few things, and be ready at a moment’s notice. He would come one night soon, to lead them to the resistance group that would ferry them out.
Where they ended up is demonstrated by the barn full of luggage found after Petiot was identified as the owner of the row house in which hundreds of decaying bodies were found. He owned property all over, it turned out, and was quite rich, especially for a doctor who did not even exact fees from all his patients.
Massu’s people were tasked not only with corpse mining, which required shifts that withered even experienced mortuary hands, but with trying to identify the remains. This included seeking to match shreds of clothes to other items found in the bewildering array of suitcases and other luggage. They also had to run all over Paris and environs to investigate other properties connected to Petiot, not to mention searching for him. This required travel permits from the Nazi hierarchy, which cooperated with unpredictable whimsicality.
Massu worked himself to the bone and was instrumental in putting together a coherent case against Petiot from the mounds of mingled evidence, body parts, abandoned (stolen) luggage, and so forth. Petiot’s defense, once he was caught? Those people he was accused of killing? Well, the dead ones the SS murdered; he knew nothing of those. Most of the missing folks were safely elsewhere, he claimed. He showed letters and postcards from them; all in his handwriting of course. He also claimed to be a hero in the French resistance and said, “If I’ve killed anyone, it was Nazi collaborators, and this is war, and that is not murder.”
Petiot made a circus of the trial. He also inspired the climactic speech in Charles Chaplin’s excellent movie, MONSIEUR VERDOUX, which is based on a number of serial killers, bluebeards and murderous gigilos among them. From Petiot he copped the rather icy if rational argument that, in times of war, and because capitalist society lives off killing, why can’t a man do the same?
Massu was not to see the case to completion but Petiot was brought to justice, if such a word applies to such an appalling, fascinating, and bizarre case. That the backdrop was Nazi-occupied France makes it all the more compelling. King does a good job of putting things into cultural context, taking time to mention celebrities there at the time, historical moments, and the like. He also reminds us that history is human history, not a grand sweep but a staggering desperate lurch at times.
Petiot apparently had a kill room in one of his places, complete with remote controls and a spy lens. He ran his murder business with precision and efficiency, for maximum profits and with no sentiment. Hello, corporate mentality.
It would be uplifting to claim this book is an object lesson aimed at lessening the chances this kind of thing will happen again but we all know that’s a laugh. It’s a quality history written well, researched remarkably, and presented with the clarity required to untangle much of the mess Petiot caused and left behind. David King got access to police files sealed since the war, so his book is definitive and authoritative. This is the factual account unlikely to be beat, and it’s a hell of a good reading experience, as thrilling as a detective novel but every detail pegged to reality. If you like your true historical crime sinister, harrowing, and intense, this is definitely the book for you.
/// /// ///
