The century-old horror of France's most notorious serial killer



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On April 12, 1919, the Paris police arrested Henri Désiré Landru, who entered history as the first serial killer in France. Convicted of having murdered at least 11 people, including 10 women, he was guillotined in February 1922. Today, documents related to the Landru case are available online and offer a scary image. of the life and times of "Bluebeard".

On Saturday, April 12, 1919, around noon, a police team led by Inspector Jules Belin of the Parisian mobile brigade broke into a small apartment on the first floor of 76, rue de Rochechouart, not far from the train station. North, and stop Henry. Désiré Landru. Born April 12, 1869, Landru was fifty years old that day.

Recent research has uncovered documents that shed new light on the Landru case. Police investigations revealed that Landru had contacted 283 women, many through advertisements "solitary hearts". Due to the climate of chaos and anxiety created by the war and the general lack of police personnel, it has never been possible to locate dozens of these women.

Ultimately, Landru was sentenced to death, accused of murdering a small number of his likely victims.

"The police have not found any women," said Richard Tomlinson, author of the recently published book Landru's Secret – The Deadly Seductions of the Lonely-Hearts Serial Killer. Tomlinson, who has gone through thousands of pages of criminal records and criminal records, has shown that the police have been negligent and that many questions remain unanswered. "The records that Landru kept in his garage" and other records "clearly show that they have not found 72 women," he says.

Today, many documents, newspaper articles, images and testimonials about the Landru affair are easily accessible to the public.

The online archives of Yvelines, in the suburbs of Paris, where many murders of Landru took place – he favored the villa Tric near the village of Gambais – give access to a collection of documents on the First World War, military registers of more 250,000 soldiers between 1867 and 1940, and an impressive collection of almost a century of local newspapers, more than 200,000 in total. A search function facilitates the search.

"It is not well known that the departmental archives of Yvelines contain much more documents on Landru than the archives of the Paris police," says Tomlinson, who spent weeks in paper files before the authorities decide to put them online .

"In addition, the recent digitization of the entire Yvelines collection relating to Landru means that, for the first time, researchers have instant access to the original statements of witnesses who reveal flaws in the file. accusation, "he said.

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