Marcel Petiot, Dr. | Biography

Dr. Marcel Petiot was a Parisian physician during World War II who would come to be known as the "Vampire of the rue Le Sueur." In the 1930s Petiot was found not guilty by reason of insanity in a shoplifting charge. As part of his sentence, Petiot's wife admitted him to a state mental hospital. Petiot explained to the psychiatrist that he had invented a cure for constipation and took credit for astrophysical theories. The presiding psychiatrist diagnosed Petiot with what we would refer to today as manic depression

Petiot returned to his professional career as a physician in the general practice of medicine, but he also treated several patients for drug addiction. In 1942, Petiot had a narcotics charge pending against him. Mysteriously the two individuals scheduled to testify against him disappeared. The two witnesses were later found dead and thought to be Petiot's earliest victims.

Two years after this incident a group of neighbors complained of the stench and thick smoke escaping from 21 rue Le Sueur. Police attempted to call the owner of the building, Dr. Petiot, at his home, but only talked to his wife. The police and firefighters entered the building and walked down to the basement where they found a woman's hand hanging out of a burning coal stove and body parts strewn across the floor. Petiot arrived on the scene, giving police a false name, and told them that these bodies were the result of a covert operation against the Germans.

The police went to Petiot's home and his examination room. By this time Petiot had fled the city and could not be found. The police found an unusual set-up in his examination room. This room had a back door leading into another triangular shaped room. The room had iron rings hanging from the ceiling and one door which led to nothing more than a solid wall. The wall in the examination room had a spyglass to see inside the triangular shaped room. Detectives never discovered the purpose of the room or the way the victims were killed but speculated that the Dr. used the back room as a torture chamber for his victims.

Petiot was arrested while using the alias Captain Henri Valeri. He confessed to killing sixty-three people using a defense of justifiable homicide. He claimed he had killed as a soldier of the Resistance to eliminate the enemies of France. The prosecution charged Petiot with the murder of twenty-seven people and the theft of 100 million francs worth of cash, gold, and jewelry. (These items were never found in Petiot's possession.) The greatest evidence against Dr. Petiot was that the victims had similar circumstances surrounding their disappearances and were last seen with him.

Petiot's trial began at the Palais de Justice in 1946. On the witness stand, Petiot testified that he killed Germans as part of the Resistance. However, when the judges and prosecutor pressed Petiot with questions regarding military equipment and procedures Petiot could not explain what he had done or how he had fought for the Resistance. Several stories Petiot told on the witness stand could not be verified. In the end Petiot was found guilty of 126 of the 135 criminal counts against him and sentenced to death by guillotine.