Henri Désiré Landru
| Henri Désiré Landru | |
|---|---|
 Landru photographed 1909 | |
| Born |
Henri Désiré Landru April 12, 1869 Paris, France |
| Died |
February 25, 1922 (aged 52) Versailles, France |
| Cause of death | Decapitation by guillotine |
| Resting place | Museum of Death |
| Other names |
The Bluebeard of Gambais, Many pseudonyms, including "Monsieur Diard" and "Dupont" |
| Criminal penalty | Death |
| Conviction(s) | Murder |
| Killings | |
| Victims | 11 |
Span of killings | January 1915–15 January 1919 |
| Country | France |
Date apprehended | 12 April 1919 |
Henri Désiré Landru (April 12, 1869 – February 25, 1922) (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi deziʁe lɑ̃dʁy]) was a French serial killer and real-life "Bluebeard.
Early life
Landru was born in Paris. After leaving school, he spent four years in the French Army from 1887 to 1891. After he was discharged from service, he proceeded to have a sexual relationship with his cousin. She bore him a daughter, although Landru did not marry her; he married another woman two years later and had four children. He was swindled out of money by a fraudulent employer. He turned to fraud himself, operating scams that usually involved swindling elderly widows. He was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in 1900 after being arrested and found guilty of fraud, the first of several such convictions. By 1914, Landru was estranged from his wife and working as a second-hand furniture dealer.
Murders
Landru began to put advertisements in the lonely hearts sections in Paris newspapers, usually along the lines of "Widower with two children, aged 43, with comfortable income, serious and moving in good society, desires to meet widow with a view to matrimony." With World War I under way, there were plenty of widows upon whom Landru could prey.
Landru would seduce the women who came to his Parisian villa and, after he was given access to their assets, he would kill them and burn their dismembered bodies in his oven. Between 1914 and 1919, Landru killed ten women, as well as the teenage son of one of them. With no bodies, the victims were simply listed as missing, and it was virtually impossible for the police to know what had happened to them, as Landru used a wide variety of aliases in his schemes. (He kept a ledger listing the particular identity he used when corresponding with each woman.)
In 1919, the sister of Madame Buisson, one of Landru's victims, attempted to track down her missing sibling. She did not know Landru's real name but she knew his appearance and where he lived, and she eventually persuaded the police to arrest him. Initially, Landru was charged only with embezzlement. He refused to talk to the police, and with no bodies (police dug up his garden without result), there was seemingly insufficient evidence for a murder charge. However, police did eventually find fragmentary paperwork listing the missing women, and combining this with other documents provided the necessary evidence.
List of victims
- Mme. Jeanne-Marie Cuchet (last seen January 1915)
- Mme. Cuchet's son, André Cuchet (last seen January 1915)
- Mme. Thérèse Laborde-Line (last seen 26 June 1915)[1]
- Mme. Marie-Angélique Guillin (last seen 2 August 1915)
- Mme. Berthe-Anna Héon (last seen 8 December 1915)
- Mme. Anne Collomb (last seen 25 December 1915)
- Andrée-Anne Babelay (last seen 12 April 1916)
- Mme. Célestine Buisson (last seen 19 August 1916)
- Mme. Louise-Joséphine Jaume (last seen 25 November 1917)
- Mme. Anne-Marie Pascal (last seen 5 April 1918)
- Mme. Marie-Thérèse Marchadier (last seen 15 January 1919)[2]
Trial and execution
Landru stood trial on 11 counts of murder in November 1921. He was convicted on all counts, sentenced to death, and guillotined three months later in Versailles. During his trial, Landru traced a picture of his kitchen, including in it the stove in which he was accused of burning his victims. He gave this drawing to one of his lawyers, Auguste Navières du Treuil. In December 1967, the drawing was made public. Landru had written in pencil on the back, Ce n'est pas le mur derrière lequel il se passe quelque chose, mais bien la cuisinière dans laquelle on a brûlé quelque chose (It is not the wall behind which a thing takes place, but indeed the stove in which a thing has been burned). This has been interpreted as Landru's confession to his crimes.[3][4]
In popular culture
Landru is listed as one of the wax effigies at Roger's Museum in H. P. Lovecraft's 1932 short story collaboration "The Horror in the Museum". For some years his waxwork was exhibited in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds in London.
Landru was the inspiration for Charlie Chaplin's film Monsieur Verdoux (1947).
The 1960 film Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons starred George Sanders as Landru.
The 1962 film Landru, directed by Claude Chabrol, was inspired by the murders.
In the 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone entitled "The New Exhibit", a wax figure of Landru plays an important role.
In the 1967 Season 1, episode 21 of Star Trek, "The Return of the Archons", the antagonist is an omniscient computer named Landru.
The case is featured in one of the episodes of the 1976 BBC series Second Verdict.
In the 1989 film "The Burbs", the Klopeks have a dog named Landru.
A 2005 French movie named Désiré Landru is another adaptation of this story.
In 2001, the French satirical journalist Frédéric Pagès, writing under the pseudonym Jean-Baptiste Botul, published a book entitled Landru: Precursor of Feminism (Landru, Précurseur du Féminisme: La Correspondance Inédite, 1919–1922).
In 2010, he was mentioned in passing by a character in Allan Massie's mystery novel, "Death in Bordeaux."[5]
Accounts in English include Dennis Barden's The Ladykiller: The Life of Landru, the French Bluebeard[6] and William Bolitho's Murder for Profit.[7]
Henri Désiré Landru's severed head is on display at the Museum of Death in Hollywood, California.[8]
Landru is the subject of an exhibit in the film Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum.
In 2014, he is mentioned in the fictional crime novel Murder in Pigalle, author Cara Black, publisher, Soho Press.
See also
References
- ↑ Washington Times September 3, 1922 reports she was poisoned and her body deposed in Oolse River and was later found a year later and buried as a Jane Doe.
- ↑
- ↑ Decaux, A. Les Assassins, pp. 260-263. Librairie Académique Perrin, 1986
- ↑ Washington Times September 3, 1922 makes a claim that two unnamed female admirers of Landru ate some poisoned fruit after visiting him and that one-who was rich became ill but survived while one who was poor died of illness!
- ↑ "So many? You must take me for a monster, a veritable Landru." Massie, Allan. Death in Bordeaux, at 194 (2010, London: Quartet Books)(ISBN 9780704371903).
- ↑ London: Peter Davies, c, 1972
- ↑ New York: Harper and Brothers, 1926, Chapter five: The Poetry of Desire Landru.
- ↑ Bob Pool (29 October 2009). "Death takes no holiday at this Hollywood museum". Los Angeles Times.