I was born on April 12th 1869 on Rue Puebla, close to the Rue des Pyrenees and not far away from the Buttes-Chaumont park, . My father, Julien, works as a driver at the "Forges de Vulcain" company and my mother, Flora, is a laundress. The park of the Buttes-Chaumont was inaugurated two years before I was born. Haussmann and Belgrand had received instructions from the Emperor Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte to transform a middle-age looking Paris in to a modern city, just like it had been done in London.
The year I was born, a new department store by the name of La Samaritaine (The Samaritan woman) was inaugurated close to the river Seine, by the Pont-Neuf. I was two years old when the communards built a huge barricade on boulevard Puebla during the events of the Paris commune.
(Serial Killer André-Désirée LANDRU who " operated" in the early part of the 20th century in the Paris area)
The year I was born, the world has been transformed by the opening of the Suez Canal. The “Eagle”, the French imperial yacht hosting Empress Eugenie de Montijo, was the first boat to cross the canal, leading a bunch of other ships on their way to the red sea and a shortened route to India and the rest of the oceans.
Suddenly the red sea coasts are becoming of importance, and I can see many European nations becoming envious. Everyone now wants to have a share of this adventure.
(The Saint-Louis-en-L'île church were Landru had been a choir boy during his youth)
If only I had money, I could also do much better but short of a steady situation, I have an imagination for frauds and scams that will not quit. With the money I made, I even managed to rent a small country house close to Gambais, not far away from Dreux, in the west of Paris, about an hour and half by train…I Like it better than the other house I rented near Chantilly and Ialso like the train schedules to get there much better.
I recently became a big-time fraudster by selling to people gasoline moped that I have not even manufactured! This century will be the century of speed! Everyone wants to move and move fast so I placed an offer and commercials in the papers and people who want to buy one of my mopeds have to send a completed order form with one third of the buying price as a deposit!
Needless to say, that I collected quite a lot of money, but also had to change my name. In the future, I will have many names, up to ninety different ones, that I will use to defraud people. I’ve got four kids, you see, and kids cost money, so I need plenty of it. I also rented a garage just close to Porte de Chatillon, near the former line of outposts protecting Paris.
One of my customers, Jules Romain, a writer of some kind who lives on Avenue du Parc Montsouris referred to me as a “a gentleman with good manners whose voice reflects good education” He also said that I was an elegant and polite. You see, I am certainly not a villain! Talking about me with my lawyer, Moro-GIafferi, he also added that I look like a pharmacist, a doctor, a solicitor or a lawyer. It is quite possible that I have kept some posture or mannerism dating back to the period when I was a choir boy and then a deacon at the church of Saint-Louis en L’Île !
(The victims...9 of them...)
My wife Marie-Catherine does not yet know it, but officially for the rest of the world, I am a widower and enjoy an excellent income. I have plenty of experience in cartography, accounting, zinc roofing, and even plumbing! I also worked in an architect practice at BISSON, ALLEAUME and LECOEUR. Motherland you say? Yes, I gave three years of my life for my country and was honourably discharged after having made it up to the rank of sergeant.
I enjoy seducing young women if they have money because I need it. I do not care for Grisettes (1) and will privilege women closer to their forties. I have several pseudonyms or aliases and I place matrimonial ads in several newspapers such as “L’Aurore”, “Ce soir”, “La Croix”, “Le Figaro”, “l’Echo de Paris” or “Le Petit-Journal”. So, that I don’t make mistakes, I keep things as simple as possible and the ad I use is always the same:
“M. 45ans, seul,s.famille,situation 4000ay.inter.désir épous.dame âge situation,rapport,C.T 45 Jal” which translates into Gentleman alone, without family, good income of 4000 francs is interested in marrying woman in similar situation. Contact the newspaper under reference 45.
Here we go! Things are that simple.
(On the way to court with three "gendarmes"...He will face guillotine!)
With this stupid war going on, many women have already lost their husband and do not want to stay alone. I will make meeting annuitants one of my priorities! Then as a second choice, I will concentrate on women with savings…These are my plans at this time, but of course I will adjust as needed.
In the Luxembourg gardens, near boulevard Saint Michel I met a pleasant woman by the name of Jeanne Cuchet? She tells me she has a son, André, living with her. I will have to think it over. First things first: I need to buy the train tickets, 2 one way and 1 return!
From the time when I worked as an accountant, I have kept a liking for numbers so I maintain an account book and do my bookkeeping on a daily basis, listing all of my expenses such as meat, veggies, newspaper, rent, and even tobacco!
Keeping an exact accounting of my expenses makes me feel good and in control.
Thérèse Laborde is a little more exotic than Jeanne! She was born in Argentina. She has a bit of money stashed away so it will help. (I never asked her but I suspect that she is from a Basque origin as many of them emigrated at one point to North and South America…)
(Newspapers make fun of me and represent me as a "chef" just because I burnt all of my victims in an oven after chopping them in parts)
Thérèse answered my ad early June in 1915! I remember that because shortly before or after, I read in the papers about the horrible massacres of the Armenian people organized by Turks and I thought that in France we were lucky not to go through such situation in spite of the war dragging along!
Then came the turn of Marie-Angélique Guillain whom I met in August of 1915. She was formerly a governess and had spent months setting aside some money to start a new and better life if she ever remarried.
All of these women were ready to marry me. One because she thought I was a nice man, one other because she loved the countryside around Gambais and wanted to live there, the third one because she believed that I would take care of her for years to come. Marie-Angélique beeing gone to a better world, there will be five more victims contributing to my financial wealth!
In November of 1918, the war ends. The various high commands get together, exchanging information and the result is terrifying: a total of 18.591.701 individuals have lost their life in the conflict. But I do not go for politics! I have enough to do with myself and my trips West of Paris, the Friday evening trains on the way to the countryside, and my lonely returns on Sunday afternoon to Paris!
In 1919 I meet « the last one ». I better stop with all this. It is getting out of hand! On the top of this, I have the feeling that the black greasy smoke is becoming a nuisance for the neighbours although they have never complained about it! Marie-Thérèse Marchadier was born in Bordeaux and told me straightaway that she was a former prostitute, had managed a bordello in Paris on Rue Saint-Jacques and now had enough money set aside to simply quit the job and enjoy freedom and comfort!
She will gladly go with me for the week-end in Gambais she says! I will happily take her for her last train ride and have no regrets about it.
On Rue de Châteaudun, at number 22, in the Parisian building where I lived with Fernande SEGRET, the cops will certainly find my account books covering the last 15 years and so what? My barrister told me yesterday that the prosecution has already collected about 5000 pieces of paper representing incriminating evidences but no proof as such.
But he also told me that in the houses that I had rented in Vernouillet and in Gambais the police had found all kind of human debris in a pile of ashes, in the fireplace, and in the oven. Altogether it represents 4,176 kilos of bone fragments including 1,500 kilos of human origin. The cops also found bits and pieces of girdles, hair pins and 47 teeth. Forensic experts claim that all of the debris found amount to the equivalent of three heads, five feet and six hands.
I can’t believe it! I had asked my son Charles (2) to clean it up all of that time! I can’t even trust my own child!
© 2017 Sylvain Ubersfeld for Paris-Mémoires
(Popular verdict : guilty . Public execution in Versailles . Exit Landru !)
(1) The Word grisette (sometimes spelled grizette) has referred to a French working-class woman from the late 17th century and remained in common use through the Belle Époque era, albeit with some modifications to its meaning. It derives from gris (French for grey), and refers to the cheap grey fabric of the dresses these women originally wore. The 1694 edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française described a grisette as simply "a woman of lowly condition". By the 1835 edition of the dictionary, her status had risen somewhat. She was described as: "a young working woman who is coquettish and flirtatious."
(2) Henri-Désirée had 4 children including two boys ( Charles and Maurice-Alexandre the elder) He often asked one of the boys ( but which one) to come with him to the houses and clean up the places. When with his sons, Henri-Désirée pretended to be a building contractor renovating places before selling them.