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

killed, Porchon asked? “I suppose he asked them for money to pass them into the free zone and instead of helping them escape, he killed them.” Nézondet had asked Porchon to remain silent about the murders and had assured him that he would go to the police himself as soon as the war was over.
    Judge Berry was stunned. This was the first time anyone had admitted to knowing anything and, if it was true, the case against Petiot was suddenly blessed with firm support. But as questioning continued, Porchon showed himself to be a more and more unreliable witness. He had told Inspector Bouygues, for example, that he had once seen Petiot dressed in work clothes toiling away at foul deeds in a cellar. Called before the juge d’instruction again, he retracted this story, saying that he had recently undergone a minor foot operation, and that when he spoke to Bouygues he had been hallucinating as a result of the anesthetic.
    Nonetheless, Porchon had certainly known something long before the police did. Commissaire Doulet, another of Porchon’s many friends on the force, now remembered that the year before, on August 2, 1943, during the period that Petiot was in the Gestapo prison at Fresnes, Porchon had come to his office about some minor police matter and had told the commissaire he was about to go to the Police Judiciaire to discuss a very important case. “According to him,” Doulet said, “it concerned a Parisian doctor who, under the pretext of passing young people out of the country, asked them for sums of money between F50,000 and F75,000 and then did away with them after payment. This doctor supposedly got rid of the bodies by burying them in the courtyard of his building.” Porchon, according to Doulet, claimed to have heard about the murders from the Gestapo, “who did not want to interfere since it was a purely French matter.”
    Doulet encouraged Porchon to report immediately and without fail to the Police Judiciaire. When Doulet later asked if he had done so, Porchon assured him: “Yes, I saw a police officer whom I know well. He didn’t seem to take the matter very seriously, but in the next few days I intend to give him additional information which should interest him.” The officer in question, of course, was Bouygues, who now recalled that, yes, sometime in the summer of 1943 Porchon had briefly mentioned something about someone who sent people “to the other side,” but had also said that this unnamed person was then arrested and imprisoned by the Germans. Porchon had never furnished additional details, nor had he mentioned Petiot’s name until after the rue Le Sueur discovery, and Bouygues had completely forgotten the event until he was reminded of it. Judge Berry was dumbfounded. Witnesses rarely agree completely, but this case was truly incredible. Now, on top of everything else, he was faced with police officers who were told about mass murders and not only didn’t investigate the reports, but soon forgot all about them.
    Hoping someone would crack, Berry had Porchon and Nézondet confront each other in his chambers. Nézondet said Porchon’s story was laughable, and to prove his point he laughed. He had never heard anything so ridiculous in his life! A day or two later, however, the police interrogated Madame Marie Turpault, a friend of Nézondet’s mistress Aimée Lesage, whom the couple had once sent to Petiot for rheumatism treatments. In December 1943, Madame Turpault said, she had been at Nézondet’s apartment and had asked about Petiot. “He’s a real bastard,” Nézondet had told her. “He’s in prison right now, and he should stay there.” Nézondet further said, according to Madame Turpault, that he had met Petiot’s brother Maurice, who had found bodies in a pit at the doctor’s house and a book with a list of sixty names. Maurice had asked Nézondet to help him dispose of the