Executed by guillotine on February 25, 1922, at the age of 52, Henri Landru was known as the French Bluebeard. He was a serial killer who murdered, it is believed, at least 11 people between 1915 and 1919.
When he was arrested in 1919, police discovered that Landru was romantically communicating with 283 women during WWI. However, the police were unable to track down 72 of those women.
While Landru maintained he was innocent of any murders, he was charged with the murders of 10 women and the teenage son of one of his victims. After a long, drawn out trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Early Life of Crime
Henri Landru was born in Paris, France, on April 12, 1869. His family was Catholic and he went to Catholic school. He was also an altar boy.
Landru met his wife, Marie-Catherine, at church. They had their first child in 1891, before they were married, and eventually had a total of 4 children together.
Marie-Catherine worked as a laundress and Landru fulfilled his obligatory military service. He returned to Paris in 1893 to officially marry Marie-Catherine.
After serving in the military, Landru could not hold down a job and had worked as an accountant, a salesman, and an assistant toymaker. His wife claimed that he was a very good husband in those early years, but that she always knew he was attracted to other women.
In 1898, Landru decided he was going to be an inventor and he designed a motorbike that he named “The Landru.” He found gullible investors and pocketed the money they gave him to build a factory.
Later, in 1904, he was arrested for attempting to defraud a bank. While under arrested, Landru staged a suicide attempt and was sent to see a criminal psychologist.
The psychologist said that Landru was on the brink of becoming fully insane. Marie Catherine was warned about Landru’s descent into madness, but nothing further was done for him.
Over the next few years, Landru was in and out of jail for money swindles. His wife and children were left to live in cheap apartments.
Finally, in 1914, Landru conned investors to give him money for a make-believe car factory he was going to build. As soon as he had the money in his hands, he went on the run.
The Murders
Landru’s first known victims were Jeanne Cuchet, a seamstress, and her 17-year-old son, Andre. She had originally known Landru as Raymond Diard but soon discovered his real name and that he was a criminal on the run.
Jeanne wanted to break off her engagement with Landru, but he convinced her to remain in a relationship with him. He had promised to marry her and they lived together from August 1914 until January or February of 1915.
Both Jeanne and her son disappeared without a trace.
With his first two murders completed, Landru moved on to other women.
During 1914, his busy year of cons and murders, he had made contact with numerous women, and had been engaged to many of them. He had met them through the lonely hearts ads placed in newspapers.
He murdered three more women in 1915. One woman in 1916. Three women in 1917. One woman in 1918, and one woman in 1919 whom he had met after she placed an ad in a newspaper to sell her furniture.
Family Support
His wife and children knew his whereabouts, but protected him from the police.
His youngest son, born in 1900, was known to have helped his father clear out the apartments of at least 5 of his father’s victims.
His oldest son, Maurice, born in 1894, had sold items belonging to his father’s first victim and had helped his father develop a fake story to explain the disappearance of his father’s sixth victim.
His wife had also forged the signature of his eighth victim and went as far as to impersonate her husband’s ninth victim.
His entire family seemed to have benefited financially from the murders.
His Undoing
After Landru was arrested in 1919, he maintained his innocence until 1920.
At first, Landru refused to give his identity to the police. Then he claimed that the other women were his friends and that he had no reason to murder them.
However, charred fragments of bones were discovered in the garden, under a pile of leaves, at one of Landru’s homes. When the bone fragments were scrutinized at the Paris police laboratory, it was believed that the bones came from three victims, but the identity and gender of the bones was unknown.
The dogs and a cat of two of his victims were also found buried in his garden.
Landru’s family was interrogated. His wife claimed that her only crime was that she loved her husband too much. She admitted to forging one of the victims’s signatures, but claimed that she did not know why her husband had her commit forgery.
His sons claimed they knew nothing about the murders and both of his daughters said they had no knowledge of their father’s activities.
The wife and the oldest son, Maurice, were arrested for theft and fraud in December, 1919, but were never formally charged. They were released in 1920.
It was eventually decided that Landru had acted alone in the murders and he alone was charged.
The trial was held in November, 1921 and he was found guilty and sentenced to die.
The entire scene of the execution was surrounded by a huge crowd that demanded to see Landru pay for the murders. 400 cavalry men had to be brought in to keep the crowd in check.
Finally, the execution, from Landru being led out of the prison to him losing his head, took exactly 20 seconds.
