Strange Case of Marcel Pettiot
On March 11, 1944, firemen in Paris were called into the Rue Leseur. For several
days now, said the occupant of No. 20, the chimneys of the neighboring home had
belched forth some sort of foul-smelling black smoke. They received no answer to
their knocks on the door, but a card directed any inquiries to 66 Rue Camartin.
This home proved to be that of a medical doctor, Marcel Pettiot.
Although told to wait by the doctor, the firemen returned to 21 Rue Leseur and
broke their way into the house. They reached the cellar, from whence the smoke
came - and quickly sent for the police. The inspectors proceeded into the
cellar, finding the smoky chamber filled with piles of dismembered corpses. All
in all, they counted at least 27 victims.
Then Dr. Pettiot arrived. He came into the cellar, returned up the steps, and
left through the front door. When accosted by the police sergeant, Pettiot
replied that they had found the execution chamber of the Resistance. All the
bodies were those of Germans or their supporters, Pettiot said. The Gestapo
would surely track him down were word of this to get out.
The sergeant released him, and Pettiot disappeared without a trace. Nothing more
was heard of him for several months, when a newspaper article revealed the
horrors of the house on Rue Leseur, and speculated that Dr. Pettiot was an agent
of the Gestapo. The newspaper Resistance received a letter from the doctor,
maintaining that he killed only Germans or sympathizers. The letter was given to
the Chief of the Parisian Resistance, who identified it as being written by
Henri Valery, who had joined the Resistance six weeks before.
Dr. Pettiot was eventually apprehended and tried in March, 1946. He freely
admitted to killing 63 people, but he still maintained his earlier position that
they were all traitors and he was only fulfilling his duty as a loyal Frenchman,
even claiming to have been the leader of a Resistance cell code-named Grey Fox.
But when asked who else had served in Grey Fox, Pettiot could give names only of
famous Resistance members, all deceased.
One fact for which Pettiot failed to provide a convincing explanation was his
arrest by the Gestapo in 1942, and his subsequent release the next year. In any
case, he was executed on May 25, 1946.
Andrew D. Gable
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