Real Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Theories Book III

Serial Killer: Henri Landru

Henri Désiré Landru (12 April1869 – 25 February 1922) (French pronunciation: ​[ɑ̃ʁi deziʁelɑ̃dʁy]) was a French serial killer, nicknamed the Bluebeard ofGambais, who murdered at least seven women in the village of Gambaisbetween December 1915 and January 1919. Landru also killed at leastthree other women, plus a young man, at a house he rented fromDecember 1914 to August 1915 in the town of Vernouillet, 35 kmnorthwest of Paris. The true number of Landru's victims, whoseremains were never found, was almost certainly higher.

Landru was arrested on 12 April 1919 atan apartment near Paris's Gare du Nord which he shared with his24-year-old mistress, Fernande Segret. The police eventuallyconcluded that Landru had met or been in romantic correspondence with283 women during the First World War, including 72 who were nevertraced. In December 1919 Landru's wife Marie-Catherine, 51, and hiseldest son Maurice, 25, were arrested on suspicion of complicity inhis thefts from his victims. Both denied any knowledge of Landru'scriminal activities. Marie-Catherine was released without charge onhealth grounds in July 1920, on the same day that Maurice wasreleased because the authorities could not establish his guilt.

Landru continued to protest hiscomplete innocence during an investigation that lasted more than ayear. He was finally charged with the murders at Vernouillet andGambais of ten women and the teenage son of his first victim.Landru's trial in November 1921 at Versailles was attended by leadingFrench celebrities, including the novelist Colette and the actor andsinger Maurice Chevalier. On 30 November Landru was found guilty by amajority verdict of all eleven murders and sentenced to death. He wasexecuted by guillotine on 25 February 1922.

Early life and career (1869–1914)

Henri Landru was born in central Paris,the son of a furnace stoker and a laundress who were both ardentCatholics. He was educated by monks at a Catholic school on the ÎleSaint-Louis, serving as an altar boy at the adjacent church where hisparents and elder sister worshipped. By his late teens, Landru hadgraduated to sub-deacon, a secular post which involved lightingcandles and helping the priest on with his vestments. According tohis future wife Marie-Catherine, she first set eyes on the youngLandru at mass one Sunday in 1887. "We got talking as we wereleaving church and so my love story began."

Landru and Marie-Catherine's firstchild Marie was born illegitimately in 1891, shortly after Landrubegan three years' obligatory military service in the northern Frenchtown of Saint-Quentin, rising from private to the position of deputyquartermaster. In the autumn of 1893 he returned to Paris and marriedMarie-Catherine, who was already pregnant with their second childMaurice. The couple had two more children: Suzanne, born in 1896, andCharles, born in 1900.

During the 1890s, while his wife workedas a laundress, Landru drifted from one job to the next. He wasemployed for short periods in Paris as a plumber's accountant, afurniture salesman and an assistant to a toymaker. In a laternewspaper interview, Marie-Catherine described Landru as "amodel husband" and father in the early years of theirmarriage, even though she also told police that he was "a skirtchaser" from the very beginning.

Landru's drift into crime and possibleinsanity seems to have been associated with his ambition to become afamous inventor. In 1898 he designed a primitive motorbike, which hecalled "The Landru", and then deceived severalwould-be investors into giving him money to build a factory tomanufacture it. Having pocketed the money, Landru vanished. Otherprojects that Landru began in the late 1890s and early 1900s includeda plan for a new suburban railway line west of Paris and an automatedchildren's toy. Meanwhile, he was constantly on the run from police,seeing little of his family and lying low for a year in Le Havre.