In the early 1940s the Nazis controlled Paris-
but even they were terrified of a depraved maniac whose body count might have been as
much as 150. The cops wanted him, the Nazis really wanted
him, but this highly educated psychopath wasn’t so easy to catch. This is the story of the man who became known
as Dr. Satan, and it’s arguably one of the most messed up tales we’ve ever told. Let’s start at the beginning. 1940 was a bad time for most Parisians. Before those German tanks made their way into
the city, around two million residents of Paris had already moved out. For those left behind and who understood the
perils of Nazism, it was a despairing time. Their bones chilled as they watched the swastika
fly above the Arc de Triomphe. Some of these were the people who’d be spied
on by the Gestapo, and worse, interrogated and possibly killed. It was a time of great fear and paranoia. So, the last thing anyone needed was a serial
killer to add to their woes, a man that left decapitated heads and other body parts for
the cops to find. Nonetheless, Dr. Satan was a hero to many,
albeit folks who were continually fooled by him. As for the Nazis, it would be reasonable to
say that the evil doctor was always one step ahead of them. His real name was Mr. Marcel Petiot. How he ever became a doctor boggles the mind,
which is something we’ll think you’ll agree with after you hear about his strange
life from childhood to adulthood. He was born in the French city of Auxerre
on January 17, 1897, and he was a delinquent at a young age. At age 11 he brought a gun to school and used
it to threaten a girl. He got involved with theft, smashed up public
property, and he did terrible things to small animals. It’s said he also put on a kind of circus
act one time in school, standing against a locked door in class and throwing knives at
the other students. It’s not surprising then that he was deemed
mentally ill by child psychiatrists. According to the book “Death in the City
of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris”, he got expelled from school a few times as
a teenager and so was evaluated by professionals, who said this kid is just not right in his
head. His parents, of course, were very concerned,
telling doctors that he wet the bed, and had the occasional convulsive fit. They were also a bit worried about his constant
sleepwalking. If you were to ask an expert now, they might
assume this kid at some point had had a serious head injury and that’s what caused all the
problems. A psychiatrist in 1914 seemed to suggest his
frontal lobes weren’t working right, stating that he was “an abnormal youth” who didn’t
take “responsibility for his acts.” As you’ll see, nothing really changed when
he became an adult. Still, he ended up at a special Paris academy,
and later in 1916 when he was 19 years old, he went to fight for the French Army in the
trenches of World War I. What could possibly go wrong, a kid with mental health problems
and a proclivity for violence being hired to murder people? Physicians among the French forces said what
others had said before- Petiot had some serious mental health issues. The kid wasn’t fit to fight. He was already walking close to the edges
of his sanity when he was gassed and wounded in battle, after which it’s said he had
a complete breakdown. At first, he was sent to homes where he could
be looked after properly, but then he took up the bad habit of stealing morphine and
other supplies, including people’s personal stuff and their letters and photos from loved
ones. For that, he got some jail time, but after
being professionally diagnosed with more than one mental illness, he was sent to a psychiatric
hospital. It was those diagnoses that kept him out of
prison, with doctors saying he wasn’t a criminal, but mentally ill. One psychiatrist wrote in a report that he
suffered from “mental disequilibrium, neurasthenia, mental depression, melancholia, obsessions,
and phobias.” If you’re wondering what neurasthenia means,
it’s basically a term for being persistently mentally disturbed. After three weeks’ leave, he went back to
the army. During this stint, he complained of headaches
and blackouts, memory loss, and sleepwalking. At first, he was let go from the forces and
given a 40% disability pension, but then after a review, he got a 100% pension. He was still sent to the asylum, a place he’d
one day say he was a doctor, not a patient. In 1919, he was finally released from that
institution. The war was over. He was 22 years old. You could say it was time for a new beginning,
although the doctors that had seen this young man and studied his temperament said it was
important that he was kept under “continuous surveillance.” That didn’t happen. Being mentally ill or having a personality
disorder doesn’t necessarily mean a person can’t do well in life. Just look at the lives of many serial killers
you all know well, some of them excelled in certain areas, and while they were busy cutting
up victims, they held down decent jobs, and some had a wife and children at home who dearly
loved them. So it was that Monsieur Petiot joined an accelerated
medical education program for war veterans and he absolutely nailed the exams. He landed an internship at a hospital and
by the time December 1921 rolled around he could proudly say he was the owner of a medical
degree. He then set up a practice in his town of Villeneuve
sur Yonne, a lovely little place in the Burgundy region, and a place that would feel the wrath
of Petiot’s violence. Now he was a professional, but his mental
health issues were still there. He even got arrested for stealing at one point,
but he kept his job. Petiot very likely had a touch of the psychopath
in him, and we say that for various reasons, with one being that he was very cunning and
absolutely without a conscience. He needed more patients, so he went about
saying he was one of the best doctors in town. He printed fliers that said so. One of them said:
“Dr. Petiot is young, and only a young doctor can keep up to date on the latest methods
born of a progress which marches with giant strides. This is why intelligent patients have confidence
in him. Dr. Petiot treats but does not exploit his
patients.” That could not have been further from the
truth. He charmed his way into getting a long list
of patients, who he enrolled in a government program, thereby ensuring he got paid once
by them and once by the government. It’s said someone would come into his practice
with a regular kind of illness, and he’d say, “Here’s some morphine. That should fix it.” No doubt it helped, but opiates are generally
not the first line of treatment for a bad cold or a bout of tonsillitis. One time the recipient of his morphine was
just a kid, and the kid almost died from an overdose. When a pharmacist told Petiot that no way
should he be giving strong opiates to children for minor problems, he replied, “What difference
does it make to you, anyway? Isn’t it better to do away with this kid
who’s not doing anything in the world but pestering its mother?” We should just say here that when Bayer first
started marketing heroin in the late 19th century, one of its uses was to give it to
kids to help with their coughs. Heroin is basically strong morphine. It worked, because the drug tends to work
in many ways, but it was also highly addictive and dangerous as hell. So, while Petiot might have had a point about
morphine being an excellent product to shut up talkative kids, he shouldn’t have been
doing what he was doing. Those frontal lobes it seems were still not
doing their job and helping this man think about the consequences of his actions. He spent most of his time alone, only coming
out to drive his sports car and occasionally smashing it into other cars. It was at this time in his life that he stole
from his brother Marcel, and was kicked out of his rented accommodation for theft. In 1922, the Commission de Réforme told him
that he had to undergo a new examination regarding his disability pension. A doctor later said his tongue was badly injured
because he was always biting it during his convulsions. He added that Petiot had a “total indifference”
about his life and the way it was going. How he kept his job as a doctor beggars belief,
and more so because he was even allowed to claim 50 percent of his disability pension. We guess it was the 1920s. You could get away with such things back then. He began an affair with the daughter of one
of his patients, a young woman named Louise Delaveau. After a few months, she disappeared. Neighbors of Petiot told the cops that they’d
seen him putting what looked like a really heavy package into the back of his car. The police looked into this but concluded
that Delaveau had probably just skipped town. It was certainly a strange case, though, seeing
that at the time Delavea’s parents’ home was broken into and burned to the ground. Later, something that looked like the trunk
Petiot had stuffed into the back of his car that day was pulled out of the river in the
town. Inside it was the badly decomposed remains
of a young woman, but this being the 1920s, the cops didn’t have ways of properly identifying
the body. Undoubtedly, this was his first murder, although
it was never proven. If this story couldn’t get any crazier – and
we promise you it’s going to go off the rails – Petiot decided that he wanted to
be the town mayor. Being the trusted town doctor, he actually
won the mayorship, but only after he’d paid some guy to spoil his opponent’s speech
when the two were debating. At one point, just after he finished his own
speech, the town lights all went out and a bunch of fires were started. That was the work of Petiot’s man and when
the votes were counted it was revealed he’d won by a landslide. During his time as mayor, he got busy stealing
again, and among other things, he took a drum from the town band, and a stone cross he didn’t
much like. When he was accused of this, he said he was
the best mayor the town had ever had and those accusations were just his political enemies
reeling with envy and trying to taint his good name. In 1927, aged 30, he married a 23-year-old
woman named Georgette Lablais. You probably won’t be too surprised to hear
that she was the daughter of a wealthy landowner in the region. They had a kid together, Gerhardt, and things
were looking up. Even so, Petiot was accused of stealing oil
from the town’s railroad depot. He was fined 200 Francs and sentenced to three
months in prison, but he managed to get that decision reversed. In 1930, there was a huge fire at the house
of a dairy unionist named Armand Debauve. When the flames were finally out, his wife
was found inside having been beaten to death with what the cops said was a blunt instrument. 20,000 Francs was missing, too, and police
found footprints leading from the house back to the nearby town of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. On top of that, there were rumors going around
that the dead woman had been the mistress of none other than Monsieur Petiot. He’d even been seen near her home on the
night of the fire. The witness who’d seen Petiot was Monsieur
Fiscot. He’d told the police that he would testify
to that in court, but with not many doctors around, he had no choice but to visit Petiot’s
practice when his rheumatism was acting up. Fiscot was given an injection and three hours
later he was dead. Petiot said the man had had an aneurysm. You’re probably now seeing why he was nicknamed
Dr. Satan, but we’re just getting going in this story. A few years later, all those complaints about
him came to the fore and he was forced to resign as mayor. People were so fooled by this guy that the
council resigned with him, saying what had happened was just unfair. In 1932, he got a job on the council himself,
but a year later he lost the seat because it had been found out he was stealing electricity. The case went to court, with the judge saying
that Petiot’s defense was nothing but a “fantasy.” He was subsequently sentenced to 15 days in
jail and handed a 300 Franc fine. As usual, Petiot appealed the decision, and
later his jail time was suspended. In the end, he stayed out of jail and was
only fined 100 Francs. Still, that meant the end of his council seat
and a bad reputation that was becoming harder to shake off. With his character now tarnished, he made
the move to Paris, the city where his cruelty and criminality would soar to new heights. Petiot started what became a very popular
practice on the Rue de Caumartin, using fake documents at times so that people thought
he was the best doctor around for miles. handing out morphine for just about any condition
or illness, which, as tends to happen with highly-addictive drugs, had people queuing
up every day to see him. He even had the audacity to counterfeit a
document that claimed part of his work experience had been as an intern working at a certain
mental health institution, although the truth was that he’d been a patient there, not
part of the medical staff. He’d just changed the word “interned”
to “intern.” As crazy as it sounds, he kept his job after
being sent to a mental health facility for his stealing. Later, when he got out and was working again,
he was given the “médecin d'état-civil” so he could write death certificates. Now he could more easily knock people off. One of his victims was a 30-year-old woman
named Raymonde Hanss. She went to see Petiot about some painful
abscesses in her mouth, and it was decided that he’d surgically remove them. After the operation, she never again regained
consciousness. He drove her home in that state, and she was
pronounced dead a few hours later. Her mother, Madame Anna Coquille, said something
just wasn’t right here. Her daughter had been in good health despite
the abscesses. She ordered an autopsy, and it was found that
her daughter had been given a very high dose of morphine. This should have rung alarm bells, but after
an investigation, it was ruled that the woman had died of natural causes. Not long after in 1936, Petiot was caught
shoplifting, and then when a cop tried to arrest him, Petiot beat him up. It was after this event that the authorities
started looking at him more seriously. He ended up in court again, this time crying
his eyes out saying he’d had one of his funny attacks. He told the court to look at his army record
and the fact that at times he’d been mentally ill, and the court didn’t charge him in
the end, saying instead he’d been hit with temporary insanity. Still, it pleased the court when they heard
that Petiot’s wife had arranged for him to spend some time in a sanitorium. But not long after he arrived there, he told
the doctors that he was actually in good shape mentally and he asked to be released. He said this lapse of madness was due to stress. He lied and said he’d been working on a
machine for constipation, a device that literally sucked the poop out of people, and he said
the stress of finishing the device had negatively affected his mental well-being. The main psychiatrist for the court wrote
that Petiot was “chronically unbalanced”, but the judge concluded that Petiot was sane
enough to go back into society. How very wrong he was. After his release at the beginning of 1937,
he actually seemed to start adhering to the law, including taking a break from stealing. Still, his one big transgression was tax evasion,
with him claiming he earned only about 10 percent of what he actually made. He went to court again for that, and again
he turned on the waterworks, claiming he’d been driven to crime because of poverty. Yet again, the psychopath walked out of court
with a great big grin on his face. As you know, in 1939 war broke out, and in
1940 German tanks arrived in Paris. Marshal Philippe Pétain became head of the
Vichy government and French life was about to change in many ways. For a lot of people, this was a distressing
time, but for a psychopath, it afforded many new opportunities. One of Petiot’s first moves was making fake
medical certificates. You see, many French folks were told by the
Nazis that they’d now be working for them, and that meant a kind of slave labor. It seems they could get out of this with a
medical certificate, and Petiot was the man to go to for one of them. On face value, it looked as though he was
on the side of the French Resistance. He treated French people who’d been wounded
or fallen ill in Germany, and through those people, he learned a lot about the movements
of the Nazis and the Gestapo that was busy trying to hunt Resistance fighters. He helped spy on the Gestapo through something
he called the Fly-Tox network, and then he gave information to Resistance fighters so
they could assassinate members of the Gestapo. This is what he told people, anyway. Maybe it sounds quite heroic to you given
what would have happened to Petiot had he been found out. The Nazis would very likely have tortured
him and killed him. But remember he was a psycho, and because
of this, he made up stories all the time to make it look like he was helping the Resistance. He even told them he had some kind of superweapon
that when used, could kill a Nazi and make it look like death by natural causes. He told a big tale about working with some
anti-fascist Spaniards in Paris and he spun all kinds of lies about making bombs and booby
traps with which he killed plenty of Nazis. All these stories only ever really happened
inside his own head, but they were about to help him make lots of money. He started telling people, mainly Jews and
Resistance fighters, but even criminals, that he could get them safe passage out of France
and to somewhere safe on another continent. All they had to do was hand him 25,000 Francs. In 1941, he bought a house on Rue le Sueur
and used it to hide these people before they were sent on one of his so-called Underground
Railways to someplace like South America. Two of his customers were Joseph Réocreux
and Adriene Estébétéguy. These guys had been pimps, but what really
irked the Nazis is that they’d committed an armed robbery while wearing Nazi uniforms. That was definitely a death sentence if they
were caught. Petiot, now calling himself “Dr. Eugène”,
told them no sweat, he could easily get them out of France. These two guys went to that house on Rue le
Sueur, followed by their lovers and also another couple who were said to be a pimp and his
prostitute. And hey presto, all these six people did in
fact just disappear, but rather than spend the time and money on getting them to South
America, Petiot took their money and killed them. They weren’t the only ones to go to that
house and not get where they wanted. In fact, so many people heard about this place
where you could visit and then vanish, that Petiot got quite the name. We don’t need to tell you that he killed
them all, but to others, it looked as though they’d safely escaped France. Even the Gestapo heard these rumors, with
the commanders saying this mysterious man had to be caught immediately. Gestapo documents that were later found noted
that there was “a great deal of talk in public about an organization which arranges
clandestine crossings of the Spanish border by means of falsified Argentine passports.” There was talk, but no one ever left Paris. Then the Nazis put a plan together to get
this man. One of their agents named Robert Jodkum blackmailed
a French Jew named Yvan Dreyfus. Dreyfus was told he had to find this guy and
tell him he had the cash to pay for a quick exit out of France. The plan might have worked, had Dreyfus ever
been seen again after he talked with Petiot. He was certainly making hay while the sun
didn’t shine on Paris. He then killed a pregnant woman, and soon
after he murdered a man named Dr. Paul-Léon Braunberger, a Jew who’d paid Petiot for
safe passage out of France. He also murdered Braunberger’s wife. Petiot did the same with three German Jews,
all members of the Kneller family. Soon after, the entire Wolff family just disappeared
as did a pimp and his mistress, Joseph Piereschi and Joséphine-Aimée Grippay. More and more people went missing. These disappearances were investigated by
the French, but for the Nazis, their beef was with a guy who was getting people out
of France. They had no idea he was killing them and had
they known, they might not have been that bothered. He was saving them a job. Not knowing, they were still intent on catching
him out, and so they devised a plan. In 1942, the French police started making
a bunch of ugly discoveries. Body parts kept washing up from the River
Seine: heads, hands, arms, legs, and other body parts. That, of course, is because Petiot would have
struggled to dump an entire body at once. It worked out well for him because it was
hard to identify the bodies and not possible to link them to any murderer. Still, things were about to get quite difficult
for Mr. Petiot. In 1943, his fake network was infiltered by
a Nazi collaborator named Charles Beretta. Beretta told the Nazis names of people who
had applied to escape, but it seems he didn’t have enough information to lead them directly
to Petiot. Some names were enough, though. Three of them were Raoul Fourrier, Edmond
Pintard and René-Gustave Nézondet. Each was arrested and taken back to the Gestapo
HQ to be tortured. It didn’t take long for them to spill the
beans, each saying they’d paid a guy named Dr. Eugène 25,000 Fancs for safe passage
out of France. Petiot was soon arrested by the Gestapo and
tortured, although it’s not certain if he let the Nazis know much about what he knew
about the Resistance. He was then sent to prison, although it seems
they only ever found his home and not his storing and killing house on Rue le Sueur. If they had, they’d have had quite the surprise. The question is, and it did come up later,
was Petiot being heroic by not speaking to the Nazis? After what you’ve heard today, you’d likely
say no, and you’d be correct. It’s assumed that the only reason why he
didn’t talk is the fact he didn’t really know anything, and anyway if he told the Nazis
about what his real line of business was they’d have probably given him a pat on the back. So, he did eight months in prison and was
released when it became obvious he had nothing to tell. Now he had the best story of all, and one
which made him seem very trustworthy among enemies of the Nazis. He now had torture scars and stories of prison. Business, he thought while smiling, was about
to boom. He was wrong, very wrong. That’s because, on March 11, 1944, the neighbors
of Petiot on the Rue le Sueur had finally had enough and had gone to the police saying
they could no longer put up with the terrible stink coming from next door. That smell was unbearable, as if bodies were
rotting in that house. They also complained about the smoke that
was always billowing from the chimney. Police told the local firemen to check it
out, and when they did, they found a large stove in the basement from which flames were
in full flow. On inspection, they also saw that body parts
were burning in the fire. They found bits and pieces of humans stored
in bags and some other body parts in a quicklime pit. This was a real-life house of horrors, with
enough parts to make up around ten people. Not only that but there were also suitcases
everywhere containing the clothes of many different people. Even though this was wartime, it was still
big news. France had a new mad man on its hands. Petiot was now a wanted man, but let’s remember
that many of his friends and patients thought he was a French hero. They kind of ignored the news reports about
bodies and hid Petiot, thinking he was still a great doctor and a devout enemy of the evil
Nazis. Petiot moved around between these people,
adopting new identities and doing all he could to change his appearance. If anyone asked, he told them the only people
he’d killed were informers and Nazis. This seemed true enough when he joined the
French Forces of the Interior (FFI) while calling himself Henri Valéri. The FFI was basically the Resistance in its
later stage, for which Petiot played a part as captain leading interrogations. His stint didn’t last long, since Paris
was soon liberated. But again, he saw an opportunity. He was captain after all. One day some of his men went to the house
of a wealthy mayor. There, they threatened the man and called
him all sorts of names, including a Nazi collaborator. They took from him 2.5 million Francs and
then they murdered him in cold blood. Some young folks had seen this, and they went
to Captain Valeri (Petiot) to complain. They explained about the murder and all that
cash. Valeri said he’d take care of the matter,
although the men only spent a very short time behind bars, and it seems the sequestered
money just went missing. Only a few days later, the Résistance newspaper
came out with a leading story about some killer and Nazi collaborator named Petiot. The story said he was a “soldier of the
Reich”. At the same time, police in Paris were still
looking for him. Valeria was even hired to look for him, so
Petiot was in fact looking for himself. He knew he had to get away, but he fell at
the last hurdle. At precisely 10.15 am on October 31 he was
recognized and arrested at a metro station in Paris. He was carrying a gun, a large amount of money,
and at least 50 different documents covering a bunch of identities. In court, the defense argued that Petiot had
killed only “enemies of France” and that those bodies at the house were not his doing. Petiot told the court that he’d only found
out about them after his release from prison, but that they were likely the remains of collaborators
killed by members of his patriotic network. He told them he was indeed a great patriot,
one of the best there was, but when his stories of bombing campaigns and killing Nazis with
superweapons were investigated, it was revealed this was pure fantasy. Meanwhile, many members of the Resistance
said they’d never seen him, and those that had said he’d done nothing to help them. Petiot was charged with killing 27 people
and raking in the realm of 200 million Francs in cash, gold, and jewelry. None of this bounty was ever found. Some of the experts involved believed that
Petiot had murdered as many as 150 people. In the end, he admitted to 63 enemies of France,
and as for all the missing people he hadn’t killed, he said, “South America was a big
place” and that’s why those people were never found, adding that some of his victims
were alive and well and just “getting ready for the next war.” In his psychopath way, at one point the judge
got angry with him because he wasn’t paying attention and was instead doodling on some
paper. He then looked up at the judge and said, “I
am listening, but it doesn’t really interest me very much.” When he was told he was to be executed, he
didn’t seem the least bit bothered. On the big day, May 25, 1946, he was said
to have been very calm. He was asked if he wanted to see a priest,
which he declined, stating that he wanted to “take his baggage with him.” A portable guillotine was then brought to
the prison around 3.30 am. When offered a glass of rum, which was protocol,
he said no thanks, but he took a last cigarette. His neck was shaved, his collar was cut, and
his hands were tied. A witness to the execution later said he “moved
with ease, as though he were walking into his office for a routine appointment.” His head was then placed in the machine and
he uttered his last words, “Gentlemen, I ask you not to look. This will not be very pretty.” At 5.05 am, the blade dropped, and as it did,
Petiot smiled for the very last time. Some people later said there was still a smile
on his face as his head fell into the basket. Now you need to watch “ How Nazi Angel of
Death Finally Got Caught.” Or, have a look at some of the most awful
things that happened in those Nazi prisons, with “The Sea Water Torture - Nazi Camp
Experiments.”
