FRANCE: Long Shot

Dr. Marcel Petiot’s 63 murders did not impress the atrocity-hardened French. But they were impressed by his agile defense and sheer gall last week in a trial in which his condemnation had seemed certain. Ceiling-high rows of victims’ valises (containing 97 petticoats, 57 pairs of socks, and 97 shirts) failed to shake Petiot. Nor was he perturbed during the court’s visit to his fashionable Paris home and ex-slaughter house, where they found a strange conglomeration of expensive Louis XVI furniture, human bones, and 600 volumes of murder mysteries.

When jurors scoffed at his story that he and his mysterious Resistance band killed only Gestapo hirelings, 49-year-old Petiot proved that at least three of his victims were German agents. As neatly as he had carved up his victims, Petiot parried and thrust at the prosecutors and judge, who conceded grudgingly that he had “won almost every point” in the trial’s first days. Points for Petiot:

When asked why he killed the mistresses of his victims, Petiot replied: “What in hell could you do with them?”

He explained his visit to one victim: “Her daughter was pretty.” When the prosecution insisted that, on the contrary, she was “of extreme homeliness,” Petiot demanded that a photograph be brought to court to support his taste.

His reason for refusing to identify his alleged Resistance associates: “I wouldn’t dare name them in this court. There are too many Pétainists here.”

When accused of earning 300,000 francs in 1940 and only declaring 25,000 in his income-tax return, Petiot smiled: “That only proves I am a Frenchman.”

To a judge’s request for a description of the death of one “François the Corsican,” he sneered: “So you want to know the details? I must say you have sadistic tastes.”

As Petiot’s chances for acquittal (still slim) improved, a book he had written in prison was published in Paris. Its title: Beating the Odds.