French Serial Killer Henri Desire Landru: the Widower with Two Children

"Widower with two children, aged 43, with comfortable income, serious and moving in good society, desires to meet widow with a view to matrimony." Would you have answered this enticing advertisement if you were a lonely widow living in France during the First World War? Many women did...

Like the Bluebeard of legend, Henri Desire Landru delighted in luring women to his abode with promises of marriage and then, once they had entered the forbidden room of knowledge, he delighted in killing them. Landru foreshadowed the Lonely Hearts Killers, Fernandez and Beck, but, unlike Fernandez who responded to advertisements, Landru placed advertisements to attract lonely, middle aged woman of means. In this he was similar to HH Holmes, who often advertised for potential love interests when he needed new victims for his Murder Castle.

Landru was very successful with his schemes and this was mainly because he operated in a time and place where many women had lost their husbands - and their security - and were desperate to regain stability in their lives. Unlike the Brides in the Bath murderer, George Smith, though, Landru would never marry his victims before he killed them. His usual method involved inviting the hapless females to his villa in Paris and then, once they had come to trust him and had agreed to sign over control of their fortunes to him, he fatally stabbed or strangled them. He then dismembered their bodies and burnt them in his ovens so that there was never any trace of the killings. The women were simply listed as missing and, in war torn Europe, a few missing women were not going to get a lot of attention. Like the British killer John Christie, he even forged letters to their friends and servants to make it seem as though they were still alive. He killed at least ten women in this way, and absorbed their fortunes, and, as he dealt with each woman under a different alias, he kept a ledger so that he would not get confused as to what his name was supposed to be with each victim.

In the Bluebeard legend, the callous killer is brought low by a curious young woman and, once again, the Landru case uncannily reflects the fairy tale. Landru's downfall was brought about when Mademoiselle Lacoste, the sister of victim Madame Buisson, would not accept that her beloved sibling had run off without keeping in touch with her. Lacoste suspected foul play and somehow knew that the nameless suitor that her sister had gone to live with was the one behind it all. She watched him for months, all the while building a case against him to take to the police. When the police were finally brought in, however, all they could charge him with was embezzlement as there was just no evidence suggesting that any other type of crime had been committed. The wily Landru also refused to talk and it initially appeared as though the case was going nowhere. The police did not give up, however, and eventually located evidence, including Landru's ledger, linking him to Madame Buisson and a number of other women who, up till then, had been considered merely missing.

In November 1921, Landru was tried on eleven counts of murder (one of the ten women that he killed had had a son that he had also done away with). He was convicted on all eleven counts, although he always denied his guilt, and was sentenced to death. A few months later he was guillotined at Versailles.

His final communication to his lawyer was discovered forty years later by his lawyer's daughter: he had drawn a picture while he was awaiting execution and, on the back of it, he had written, "I did it. I burned their bodies in my kitchen stove.".

Sources:
Mark Gribben Henri Landru TruTV Crime Library
Jean-Marc Lofficier Henri-Desire Landru Masters of the Obscure
David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace Trivia on Henri Desire Landru the Bluebeard Trivia-Library.Com
Henri Desire Landru Henri Landru Wikipedia