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".
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.
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.
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