Marcel Petiot was born on the 17th of January 1897 in the provincial town of Auxerre in France. The Second World War began on the 1st of September 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. In May 1940 German panzer tanks burst through the Ardennes forest and reached the English Channel in six weeks. France fell, the collaborationist government of Marshal Philippe Pétain set up its seat in Vichy, and Paris became a grey city under Nazi boots. Swastikas were hanged on city buildings, cafés closed early for curfew and Jewish families queued at municipal offices to register property, hoping compliance meant safety. Marcel Petiot adapted instantly, issuing false disability certificates to young Frenchmen summoned for forced labor in the Reich and continuing long standing tax evasions. He also broadened his sideline as a provider of illicit morphine, now more valuable than gold. By late 1941 he saw his greatest opportunity in the city’s growing terror. He invented an escape line and, adopting the alias “Dr. Eugène,” circulated word through intermediaries that he could spirit anyone – including Jewish families, draft dodgers, and petty crooks pursued by police – out of occupied France to South America via neutral states. The fee was fixed at twenty-five thousand francs in cash or jewelry. Introductions went through his accomplices. Clients arrived at 21 Rue Le Sueur, a handsome townhouse Petiot had purchased near the Arc de Triomphe. There, after a polite welcome, he explained that Argentine immigration law required immunity certificates against yellow fever and typhus. But it was a ruse – in reality, he injected cyanide under the guise of it being vaccine, and watched as the victims convulsed and died. After that he stripped them of their watches, rings, and passports, and dragged the bodies to a basement. His early experiments involved dumping corpses into the Seine at night, but later he discovered quicklime’s caustic efficiency, and finally he installed a coal stove large enough to reduce human remains to small fragments.
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