The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot by Thomas Maeder Page A

was living in Paris. Nézondet saw the doctor a few times, and their friendship rapidly resumed. Petiot found Nézondet jobs at a newspaper and as receptionist for a pharmaceutical company. Later, when police questioned Petiot’s concierge about his acquaintances, the only person she could remember seeing at the doctor’s rue Caumartin apartment was Nézondet. Despite their close association, Nézondet pleaded complete ignorance of Petiot’s alleged murders, escape routes, or anything else outside the placid life of a dedicated local doctor. As for the viewers, they had both happened to buy one the same day at a flea market.
    Roland Albert Porchon, Nézondet’s friend, had already voluntarily gone to the police a day or two after the discovery at the rue Le Sueur. An overweight, middle-aged man whose very face inspired suspicion, Porchon was currently running a trucking firm and second-hand-furniture shop—the latest in a long series of semilegitimate ventures. His path had occasionally crossed that of the police, and in exchange for favors or oversights, or simply out of generosity toward close acquaintances, he sometimes supplied information to the police, particularly to Inspector René Bouygues of the Criminal Brigade, a friend for several years. On March 13 or 14 he had telephoned both Bouygues and Commissaire de Police Lucien Doulet saying he had important information to give them about Petiot. But his main reason for calling, police soon learned, was to cover up his own participation in an abortive attempt to send a couple to Petiot’s ostensible escape network. Nothing was simple: the investigators grew accustomed to the fact that each new character who surfaced brought along a host of others—none of whom agreed with anyone else. Porchon brought the Maries.
    In March 1943, a man named René Marie and his wife Marcelle heard, through an obscure chain of friends, that Porchon knew someone who could help them escape from France. According to Porchon, he had sent them to Petiot via Nézondet. According to the Marie couple, however, Nézondet had not been involved—Porchon had sent them directly to Petiot, who told them the escape price was F45,000 per person and that they should sell all their furniture. Porchon offered them F220,000 for their possessions. The Maries were worried and uncertain what to do, and when a friend reported unsavory rumors about Petiot’s professional life, they resolved not to go. Immediately after learning of the rue Le Sueur discovery, Porchon came to the Maries, they reported, and instructed them not to go to the police; he suggested several rationalizations they could give if their names were found at Petiot’s apartment and if the police should come to make inquiries. Porchon had enough problems already without risking implication in a murder case, and he hoped to keep out of it at all costs. He also went to Inspector Bouygues and asked him to cover up his involvement; the police officer initially agreed, believing, he later admitted, that here was a question of an honest escape organization that patriotism demanded he protect. He knew nothing of the Petiot affair at that time. But when he confidentially told an associate at headquarters of Porchon’s visit, Bouygues learned what was now involved and immediately went to Massu.
    When taken before juge d’instruction Berry on March 17, Porchon claimed that he had known of Petiot’s crimes all along. In late June 1942, he confessed, Nézondet had told him everything and had proclaimed that “Petiot is the king of criminals. I never would have thought him capable of such a thing.” Porchon had asked him what he was talking about, and Nézondet told him of “sixteen corpses stretched out” at the rue Le Sueur that he had seen with his own eyes. “They were completely blackened; they were certainly killed by poison or injection.” Why had they been