Read Online The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot by Thomas Maeder - Free Book Online Page A

attaining this end by forcing her into a divorce.
    Nézondet also now told Judge Berry that he had gone to the police about Petiot. Inspector Gignoux had questioned him about Madame Khaït in July 1943. At that time Nézondet had simply said that Petiot was in prison, without mentioning anything about Maurice’s alleged confidences. When the Germans released Petiot in January 1944, Nézondet said he had been extremely worried and uncertain. He knew that Petiot had killed, but since Maurice had told him about German army uniforms at the rue Le Sueur, and since the Germans had released Petiot, he wildly theorized that his friend was killing German deserters with the approval of the Gestapo. But he wasn’t sure. Nézondet had gone to the Police Judiciaire and told Inspector Gignoux that Petiot was now free, vaguely hoping that the police would keep an eye on him. According to Nézondet, Gignoux told him: “The Petiot affair is over; besides, we can’t follow him.” And another inspector in the room muttered to himself, “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were thirty or forty victims in this case.” All of this led Nézondet to believe the police were completely aware of what was going on. Gignoux and the other inspector denied having said any such thing and said that though Nézondet had come to tell them of Petiot’s release, they had not understood the point of his visit. Curiously, immediately after telling the Police Judiciaire about Petiot, Nézondet, by his own admission, told Petiot that he had spoken to the authorities—perhaps thinking that the doctor would not dare harm him with the police in the picture. Since, as he told inspectors, he feared for his life, he and Aimée Lesage had insisted on meeting Petiot and his brother in a public café.
    The investigators found Nézondet impossible to figure out. Maurice Petiot naturally denied the whole extraordinary tale, and the entire Petiot family called Nézondet a buffoon and a lunatic. “He was very upset when the Germans arrested him,” Maurice explained gently, “and his mind has never completely recovered from the shock. Nézondet always used to keep me well entertained because he told a lot of amusing stories. This time I don’t think he’s very funny.” Maurice’s wife Monique recounted to police and reporters that when Nézondet lived in Lyon, he had reportedly discovered the location of a buried treasure by dowsing with a pendulum. He had bought the field under which the treasure lay, only to have his pendulum change its mind and indicate that the treasure was in an adjacent field. Rather than purchase that field, he began digging a tunnel underneath. Nézondet did not deny this story; he dryly commented: “So? That doesn’t prove that I’m a buffoon.”
    For a week, the investigation remained at an impasse. Though the police could never prove that Maurice had truly told him of the bodies at the rue Le Sueur, Nézondet was charged with non-denunciation of a crime—an offense instituted by the Germans in October 1941 to discourage the French from concealing Resistance activity. Technically the law concerned only those who were witnesses to a crime or who learned of projected crimes, and Nézondet’s lawyer argued that his client fell into neither of these categories. Nonetheless, Nézondet was to spend fourteen months in the Santé prison. The court was using any possible pretext to keep everyone connected with Petiot in custody until the maze of complicity could be untangled. Besides, Commissaire Massu assured Aimée Lesage, her lover was really much safer imprisoned by the French than at the mercy of the Germans.
    * After Batut’s visit, Maurice had gone to Joigny hoping to arrange for his nephew Gérard to be transferred to a school there—so that the youth would be more isolated from the trauma of the investigation. For