MULTIPLE MURDERER

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 262, 4 November 1944, Page 1 (Supplement)

MULTIPLE MURDERER

French Doctor Suspected Of 62 Killings VANITY HIS UNDOING (Rec. 4.30 p.m.) PARIS, Nov. 3. Dr. Marcel Petiot, who is accused of murdering over 50 persons in his house on Rue le Sueur, was arrested in a Paris suburb. He was disguised as a captain in the French Forces of the Interior. The police state that Petiot confessed that he "executed" several persons, but all were members of the Gestapo.

The police allege that Petiot killed victims who had given him money believing that he would help them to escape from the occupied zone. Dr. Petiot, who is aged 47, and is alleged to have murdered 62 persons, was an investigating officer in the F.F.I, under the name of Captain Henri Valeri, from September 27 to the time of his arrest says the Daily Mail Paris correspondent in a later message. His vanity probably led to his arrest. He wrote to the newspaper Resistance on October 18, protesting his innocence and stating (hat he was an officer in the F.F.I. The police checked his handwriting with the signatures of all F.F.I, medical officers and established that Yaleri was identical with Petiot.

An officer said: "Petiot was one of the best investigators we had. He invented a new method of making prisoners talk by kindness. He never hit anyone."