Marcel Petiot
Dr Marcel Petiot was a 49-year-old physician and resistance member who was charged with murdering twenty-seven people at his Paris residence, 21 Rue Lesueur.
In March 1944 attention was drawn to Petiot's house because of a bad smell emitting from his chimney smoke. When the police searched his house they discovered the remains of twenty-seven people in his basement furnace.
Petiot had fled from police but they captured him nine months later. He confessed to killing sixty-three-persons, saying that they were all traitorous Nazi collaborators.
21 Rue Lesueur, was a death-house which, in addition to the basement furnace, contained a sound-proof room with a spyhole. Petiot had used this to obtain money from his victims. It was alleged that he promised to arrange escape routes out of German-occupied France for wealthy Jews. Among the exhibits in court were forty-seven suitcases which contained over 2,000 items of clothing - most with identification marks removed.
Petiot’s profits from his wartime escape route were estimated at over a million pounds, but the doctor insisted that he had only killed members of the Gestapo. The evidence against Petiot was overpowering, he was found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was guillotined on 26 May 1946.
