Des crimes presque parfaits

In 1887, the Henri Pranzini affair hit the headlines. A handsome man, cultivated and intelligent, this oriental seducer with languid charm is an adventurer, coupled with an avid gamer. In 1887, he met Marie Régnault, known as Régine de Montille, a famous courtesan of the time. This meeting will end with a bloodbath.

In September 1869, in Pantin, near Paris, the atrociously mutilated bodies of Madame Kinck and her six children were discovered. The father remains untraceable. After investigation, the culprit, Jean-Baptiste Troppmann, is identified. The Troppmann affair is one of the most astonishing and sinister in the French criminal annals of the 19th century. It caught the imagination of public opinion like that of some of the greatest writers of the time: Flaubert, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Tourgueniev or Rimbaud.

On May 16, 1937, in Paris, at the end of the day, Laetitia Toureaux, a beautiful young woman of 29 years old, rides in the metro at Porte de Charenton station, head of line 8. She takes place, alone, aboard the first class wagon. Less than three minutes later, the travelers who go up to the next station discover his stabbed corpse. Passionate crime or political execution?

On August 21, 1933, Violette Nozière, 18, poisoned her parents with sleeping pills, before going out to dance. When she returns, she makes sure they are inanimate before opening the gas to make it look like a suicide, then calls for help. Her father did die, but her mother survived. After the survivor's testimony, Violette, already suspicious in the eyes of the investigators, is arrested. The young woman accuses her father of having abused her, but it is the financial motive that justice retains. The case will fascinate public opinion and intellectuals of the time.

On March 11, 1944, the nauseating smoke that escaped from the chimney of the mansion at 21 rue Le Sueur, in Paris, led the neighbors to alert the police. The owner, a certain Doctor Petiot, is absent. The firefighters break a window to enter. In the cellar, near the boiler which is running at full speed, they discover human remains. It quickly turns out that Doctor Petiot murdered those he claimed to want to help leave occupied France.

While at the end of the 19th century, a bloodthirsty killer, described as a "vagabond" in the cities where he rages, crisscrosses France, judge Emile Fourquet examines the unresolved case of the little Victor Portalier. After a long work of profiling, he manages to identify the culprit: a certain Joseph Vacher, who recognizes all the murders. This case marks a turning point in the history of the French police: it was in reaction to the ineffectiveness of his men on this file that Georges Clemenceau created the famous "Tiger Brigades".

In Rodez, in 1817, the former imperial prosecutor Antoine Bernardin Fualdès was found dead in the waters of Aveyron. The man was slaughtered. At a time when royalists and Bonapartists are tearing each other apart, the trail of political crime should not be overlooked. The affair fascinates the whole of Europe, and makes noise as far as the United States. The ensuing trial will be the first to be so widely publicized.

On October 26, 1831, fishermen discovered the body of an old man murdered on the bank of the Allier. This is the start of the infamous "red inn" affair. Located between Clermont-Ferrand and Aubenas, in the hamlet of Peyrebeille, the inn of the Martin couple was the theater. The murders - real or supposed - that they committed with their servant, Rochette, ignited the minds of the time and inspired, since then, novelists and filmmakers.