Eugen Weidmann was a German career criminal who killed six people in and around Paris between July and November 1937. The police arrested him at a rented villa west of Paris in December 1937, and he confessed within a day. A jury at Versailles convicted him in March 1939 and he was sentenced to death. On June 17, 1939 he was guillotined in the street outside the Versailles prison, in front of a crowd. Photographs and film of the scene were published, and a week later the French government issued a decree that moved all executions inside prison walls. He was the last person executed in public in France.
The French press of the time spelled his first name Eugène. German and English sources use Eugen. In France he lived under false names, chiefly Karrer, and on the night of his arrest he first gave the police the name Sauerbrei.
Weidmann was born in Frankfurt am Main in February 1908, according to the weekly Détective, which published a special issue on the case within days of his arrest. A longer profile in the same magazine said he grew up in Sachsenhausen, a district of Frankfurt, in a comfortably off family, and that he was a quiet, well-behaved pupil. The magazine reported that in July 1924, at 16 and a half, he passed his school-leaving examination, and that on the same afternoon he stole a wallet and a watch from a changing cabin at a bathhouse. He confessed, spent a month in custody and was placed in a reformatory.
According to Détective, his father sent him to Canada in 1928, when he was 20, to work on farms. The magazine wrote that he soon fell in with bootleggers, and that about a year later he was arrested while trying to seize a grain truck, sentenced to three years in a penitentiary, served one year and was expelled. A radio news script from early 1938, preserved in the papers of the broadcaster Lowell Thomas, also said he had a criminal record in Germany and in Canada.
Back in Germany, Détective said, he dealt briefly in cars and then led a series of burglaries in Frankfurt with two accomplices, for which he served five and a half years. The magazine's December 1937 special issue placed him in prisons at Frankfurt and at Saarbrücken and said he worked as a prison librarian at Frankfurt. In prison he met the three men who would matter most in France: two Frenchmen, Roger Million and Jean Blanc, and a younger German, Fritz Frommer. Détective reported that he was released at Frankfurt on June 15, 1937, and that Million and Blanc came to collect him. The Lowell Thomas script reported that he was said to have left Germany to avoid military service.
In France Weidmann first stayed at a hotel on the rue Saint-Sébastien in Paris under the name Eugène Karrer, on a passport that, Détective reported, reached him through Million. Blanc put up the money for a house. The villa La Voulzie, on the avenue Pigault-Lebrun at La Celle-Saint-Cloud, west of Paris, was rented in June 1937, and Weidmann moved in soon afterward. The Lowell Thomas script placed it near Malmaison, the former home of Napoleon and Josephine.
Weidmann, Million, Blanc and a young woman, C. T., were described in court and in the press as a group. According to a 2024 account of the trial by the journalist Hélène Molinari in Actu-Juridique, a French legal publication, the plan was to use the crowds of foreign visitors drawn by the Paris International Exposition of 1937 to kidnap wealthy foreigners and demand ransoms. At the trial a gendarme described a room in the villa fitted out to hold captives, Détective reported.
The first attempt failed. Détective reported in January 1938 that Weidmann met an American businessman from Baltimore at a restaurant near the Opéra in June 1937, offered him a car ride and drove him out of Paris; the man jumped from the car where the road was under repair and escaped. Million's father later told the court about this episode, and Million denied any part in it. A few days after that plan was dropped, the magazine said, came the first killing in France.
Jean de Koven was an American dancer. The Lowell Thomas script said she was from Brooklyn, and the Détective special issue gave her age as 24. She had landed at Cherbourg in early July 1937 with her aunt, Ida Sackheim, and the two were staying at the Ambassador hotel on the boulevard Haussmann. Euronews, reporting in 2019 with Agence France-Presse, said she had come to Paris to see the World's Fair.
She left the hotel on July 21, 1937, according to Détective, and did not come back. At La Voulzie Weidmann strangled her and buried her under the front steps of the house. She was found months later still dressed, in her hat and gloves.
On July 30 her aunt received a letter demanding 500 dollars, to be left at a café at 20 rue Nollet in Paris. The money was never sent. Her traveler's checks were forged and cashed, and her checkbook was later found among Weidmann's things. The Lowell Thomas script said her family went to the Sûreté and got little help at first, because officers assumed a romance, as they often did when young Americans went missing. At the trial a police inspector, Challier, described what the family went through in the months of not knowing, and Weidmann was seen to be shaken by it. After the discovery her body was taken home to New York.
Joseph Couffy was a chauffeur who also kept a hotel in Levallois, just outside Paris, according to Détective. At the trial the magazine reported that his widow sat on the bench of the civil parties and wept as his death was described, and that he left three children. Weidmann hired him and his car, a Vivastella, for a long drive. Couffy was shot on September 8, 1937 on National Route 20 near Orléans, according to the Détective special issue, and a forensic doctor from Orléans later testified at Versailles. His car was found at La Voulzie, where its number plate had been repainted.
Janine Keller, whose first name was also printed Jeannine, came from Strasbourg. She answered a newspaper advertisement for a governess or companion, one of several such advertisements Weidmann placed. Détective reported that she was taken to the Caverne des Brigands, a rock shelter in the forest of Fontainebleau, and shot from behind there; her body was found in the cave. A hotel cashier who had seen her on her last night testified at the trial. Her passport was used after her death, and a money order for 1,300 francs in her name was cashed. Her clothing was found at La Voulzie.
The reports do not agree on the date of her death. The Détective special issue of December 1937 grouped her killing with the autumn deaths; a magazine report from March 1939 said she had disappeared in early October; and a profile of December 1937 called her the fourth victim in order of time. Weidmann said Million came with him to Fontainebleau. Million denied it.
Roger Le Blond was 23, the only son of his mother, Mme Reyner, who was represented at the trial as a civil party and whose composure in court was remarked on by the press. Détective described him as a broker of theater advertising and, in another issue, as a former soldier. He had placed a classified advertisement looking for capital for a business venture, and that advertisement brought him to Weidmann and Million.
He was killed on October 16, 1937 at La Celle-Saint-Cloud, according to Détective. His car, a green convertible, was found the next day on the rue Victor-Noir in Neuilly with his body inside. Weidmann told investigators that Million fired first and missed and that he himself then fired. Million admitted helping to lure Le Blond, as Détective reported his position, but denied the killing. Who fired the fatal shot was argued at the trial, and in March 1939 Weidmann told the court that Million had played the main part.
Fritz Frommer was born in Frankfurt. Détective, which printed little about him, said he had had a happy childhood and a studious youth. Weidmann knew him from prison in Frankfurt, and Frommer had come to Paris, where he lived at the Idéal Hôtel on the rue Saint-Sébastien. He was last seen on November 22, 1937. He was shot at La Voulzie and buried in the cellar, where his body was found after the arrest. Détective reported that Weidmann killed him for 300 francs. At the trial one of Weidmann's lawyers, Roger Planty, argued that his guilt in Frommer's death had not been proven, according to Actu-Juridique.
Raymond Lesobre was a real estate agent who handled rentals. He met Weidmann at the Saint-Cloud railway station to show him a property, Détective reported, and was shot at a villa called Mon Plaisir in Saint-Cloud at the end of November 1937. The special issue gave the date as both November 27 and November 29. His family was represented at the trial by Lucile Tinayre and Jacqueline Lang, two of the first women to practice at the Paris bar, according to Actu-Juridique. His widow fainted in the courtroom as the defendants were brought in on the first day.
The Lesobre killing led to Weidmann. Accounts of how differ. The Lowell Thomas script said a visiting card was found on the dead agent and that the police traced the man named on it to a friend of one of the victims, and from there to Weidmann's false identity. The Détective special issue said Commissaire Primborgne of the Sûreté led the investigation and traced the name Karrer to La Voulzie. Another Détective report said a rental agency linked the tenant of La Voulzie to a neighboring family.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, December 8, 1937, at about 3 p.m., inspectors Bourquin, Poignant and Vedrenne went to the villa, Détective reported. Weidmann drew a pistol and fired. Poignant was hit in the shoulder and Bourquin was wounded above the eyebrow. Poignant was the only armed officer, the magazine reported, and his pistol was stuck in an old holster. Bourquin knocked Weidmann down with an upholsterer's hammer that was lying in the house and handcuffed him. The two officers were later awarded a silver medal, raised to gold, according to Détective.
Weidmann was taken to Versailles. At first he gave the name Sauerbrei and then admitted the identity Karrer, according to Détective. He confessed to the Lesobre killing, speaking in German. Before the examining magistrate, M. Berry, he confessed to the deaths of Jean de Koven, Couffy, Le Blond and Frommer, and then to that of Janine Keller, whose death had not yet been connected to him. Détective printed a facsimile of a handwritten statement that began "J'ai tué Joan de Koven" ("I killed Joan de Koven"). He showed investigators where the bodies were. When he was told he would attend the exhumations at the villa, he refused, saying he did not want to see them again, the magazine reported.
Police found a metal box of the victims' belongings. Détective calculated at the end of 1937 that six people had been killed for about 25,000 francs in all. Actu-Juridique called the sums involved derisory.
The magazine also reported that he refused to name several women who had answered his advertisements, saying they were alive. Investigators translated dozens of letters seized at La Voulzie and, through letters rogatory to the English police, found three British correspondents unharmed. Two German émigrés told investigators he had invited them to the villa and proposed a trip to Frankfurt, which they turned down. A placement agency manager on the faubourg Saint-Honoré grew suspicious of a man calling himself Prat, the secretary of an American family, who offered a well-paid post at Vichy to an older woman seeking teaching work; she telephoned the hotels he named, found they did not exist and warned the woman, who did not go. The planned trip, Détective said, was to have been made in Couffy's car.
Roger Million gave himself up to the police after the arrest, according to the Détective special issue. Blanc had driven Million and C. T. to the Riviera and then to Nantua, where gendarmes seized letters and other evidence. Million denied knowing of the killings. C. T. at first said she knew little, then told the examining magistrate what she said she had learned, including that she had found Jean de Koven's checkbook after it fell from Weidmann's jacket, according to Détective. Confrontations between her, Million and Weidmann in the judge's office were heated; at one, guards had to separate her and Million. She said Weidmann had shot her in the leg when she tried to leave; he denied it.
The magazine reported in January 1938 that Weidmann's mother came from Frankfurt to visit him in Versailles. A reporter who described his prison routine in March 1939 said the only time he was seen to cry was when she said goodbye.
The judicial investigation lasted thirteen months, according to Détective. Weidmann was held at Versailles. A Détective reporter wrote in March 1939 that he was in a ground-floor cell that had once held Henri Landru; the Lowell Thomas script, written earlier, placed him in a Paris jail next to Landru's old cell. The same March 1939 report said he shared his cell with two other prisoners, earned small sums making fans and party favors, read history and science, asked for a dictionary, an atlas and a life of Jesus, and followed foreign politics closely. He started to write memoirs and gave up. Letters and money from strangers reached him, which Détective found troubling.
Vincent de Moro-Giafferri, one of the best-known defense lawyers in France, joined his defense in May 1938, according to Actu-Juridique. He was in his sixties and had defended Landru in the same Versailles courtroom, and before that, in 1913, a member of the Bonnot gang. Weidmann's other lawyers were Roger Planty, head of the Versailles bar, Jean Raoult and Renée Jardin, all appointed by the court.
The trial of Weidmann, Million, Blanc and C. T. opened before the assize court of Seine-et-Oise at Versailles on March 10, 1939 at 1 p.m., according to Détective; Actu-Juridique gives March 11. The president of the court was M. Laemlé. The prosecution was led by M. Balmary, whom Détective called both procureur de la République and avocat général; a deputy, M. Rolland, spoke against Million, C. T. and Blanc. Eighty-four French and foreign journalists were accredited. The French writer Colette covered the trial for Paris-Soir.
The four defendants sat together on a raised bench facing the twelve jurors. As Détective reported the charges, Weidmann faced six counts of murder; Million was charged with complicity in the de Koven and Keller killings and with the murder of Le Blond; Blanc, who had been released on bail, was charged with harboring criminals; and C. T. was charged with receiving stolen goods. Million was defended by Henri Géraud and Alexandre Zévaès, Blanc by Me Parés and C. T. by Jean Ravat. The civil parties were represented by Me Delaunay for the de Koven family, Jean Gallot for Couffy's widow, Lucile Tinayre and Jacqueline Lang for the Lesobre family, and Me Chandey for Le Blond's mother.
Weidmann admitted the killings in court. Détective reported him saying, in a list, that he had killed Frommer, Lesobre and Jean de Koven. He took responsibility for his own acts but held to his account that Million helped with Keller and played the main part with Le Blond. During the hearing on Le Blond he broke down, spoke of his childhood and his religious faith, and said he would never kill again, the magazine reported. He wept when Jean de Koven's death was discussed and asked for his mother's letters.
Witnesses included the two wounded inspectors; the gendarme Joyaux, who reported remarks Million made during transfers; Million's own father, whose testimony largely harmed his son; the hotel cashier who saw Janine Keller on her last night; the keeper of a refreshment stand in the Fontainebleau forest; the woman who had nearly answered Weidmann's Vichy offer; and two forensic doctors. Restaurant owners told the court they had heard of the de Koven kidnapping from Million and C. T. C. T. accused a neighbor of the villa, who was never charged, of having supplied a pistol and of knowing about the crimes. He told the court he knew nothing of them.
Balmary's closing speech against Weidmann lasted more than three hours and asked for death. Lucile Tinayre ended her plea for the Lesobre family by wishing that Weidmann would not die a wicked man, as Actu-Juridique quotes her. For the defense, Raoult argued against the death penalty itself; Planty disputed the proof in the Frommer case; Renée Jardin presented Weidmann as repentant and read letters signed Kate. Moro-Giafferri's speech, delivered on the Wednesday before the verdict, asked the jury not to kill him. He argued that Weidmann was not insane but abnormal, describing what he called an instinctive constitutional perversion, while also calling him fully lucid.
The jury retired with about 80 questions to answer and deliberated for about six hours, Détective reported. On the evening of Friday, March 31, 1939, the foreman read the verdict. The jury refused extenuating circumstances to both Weidmann and Million, and both were sentenced to death. Jean Blanc was sentenced to 20 months in prison, according to Actu-Juridique. C. T. was acquitted. When the sentence was read, part of the public cheered, and Million's lawyer Géraud shouted back at them, Détective reported. Million had told the court shortly before that he was innocent and had only ever been Weidmann's instrument. Weidmann shook hands with his lawyers afterward and, near midnight, remarked on how late it was.
A per-count record of the jury's answers was not reported. Détective reported that Moro-Giafferri claimed the jury had first granted extenuating circumstances on the Frommer and Lesobre counts and then reversed itself after the president explained the questions, and that a passage on the answer sheet had been struck out without being initialed. The magazine said that if the omission was real, the defendants had a serious chance before the Cour de cassation.
Several grounds were put to the Cour de cassation, and the court rejected all of them, Détective reported in the summer of 1939. President Albert Lebrun received the lawyers for both men. On June 16, 1939 he commuted Million's sentence to life imprisonment and refused clemency to Weidmann, according to Actu-Juridique. Détective reported that Weidmann understood there was no hope when Million was moved to another cell, and that the execution was announced on the radio a day in advance.
Executions in France at that time took place in public, at dawn, outside the prison. The guillotine was set up on the place Louis Barthou, in front of the Saint-Pierre prison at Versailles, and the executioner was Jules-Henri Desfourneaux, according to Actu-Juridique. People queued for hours to get a view, Euronews and AFP reported. The execution was supposed to take place before sunrise, but controlling the crowd delayed the preparations, and by the time it was carried out the light was good enough for press photographs and even film. Weidmann was brought out with his hands tied behind his back and the collar of his white shirt turned down.
The English actor Christopher Lee, then 17, was in the crowd with a family friend who was a journalist. In his autobiography he described a powerful wave of howling and shrieking from the crowd when Weidmann appeared, and he said in a 1998 documentary that he turned his head away but still heard it, Euronews reported. Lee said spectators then pushed forward and soaked handkerchiefs and scarves in the blood on the pavement as souvenirs. A man identified as Marcel, who was 15 at the time, described similar scenes to AFP in 2001. Détective reported that a woman dressed as a man had tried to get close to the scaffold, was recognized before the execution and spent the night at a police station. The magazine also criticized the radio announcement, the delay and the publicity around the event.
The machine was taken down quickly and the pavement washed. Euronews reported that ordinary life resumed when the first tram went by and the two neighboring cafés opened. Weidmann was buried in the Gonards cemetery at Versailles, according to Détective.
The photographs and accounts that went around the world embarrassed France, and President Lebrun moved to end public executions, Euronews and AFP reported. A decree dated June 24, 1939 required executions to take place within prison premises, attended only by officials such as magistrates, doctors, police and a priest. In Actu-Juridique's account, the scandal around Weidmann's execution led to the decree-law that abolished public executions.
The historian Emmanuel Taïeb, in a 2011 study of public executions in France from 1870 to 1939 reviewed by Arnaud-Dominique Houte in La Vie des idées, set the decree in a longer history. Houte summarized Taïeb's account this way: the Daladier government's discreet decree-law moved the guillotine into the prison courtyard a week after the disorder at Versailles, and the Weidmann affair may have hastened the decision, but the retreat of executions from public view was already well under way. Executions had been moved from afternoon to dawn to limit crowds and pictures, and the scaffold had been moved from town centers to the edges of towns, next to the prisons.
The guillotine went on being used in France inside prisons. The last execution was that of Hamida Djandoubi at the Baumettes prison in Marseille on September 10, 1977, and France abolished the death penalty in 1981, Euronews reported.
The case stayed in print. Détective covered it in at least a dozen issues from December 1937 to the summer of 1939.
Spelling and age of the first victim. Détective printed both Jean and Joan de Koven; most reports use Jean. Her age is given as 24 in the Détective special issue; no other age was reported.
Dates. Détective gives July 21 for Jean de Koven's disappearance, September 8 for Couffy's death and November 27 or 29 for Lesobre's. Reports are not consistent on the date of Janine Keller's death. The trial opening is March 10 in Détective and March 11 in Actu-Juridique.
Who killed Le Blond and whether Million was at Fontainebleau. Weidmann said Million fired first at Le Blond and helped with Keller; Million denied both. The jury sentenced Million to death; the jury's answer on each count has not come to light.
The jury's answers. Moro-Giafferri's claim that the jury first granted, then withdrew, extenuating circumstances on the Frommer and Lesobre counts is reported only as his argument. The Cour de cassation rejected the appeal.
A seventh death. In January 1938 Détective reported that investigators looked at the killing of a chauffeur named Drouillard near Charbonnières on the night of October 1 to 2, 1937. Weidmann denied it, and Million's alibi for that night was confirmed by a hotel bill. It was not among the counts tried.
Canada. Détective's 1937 profile said he was suspected in Canada of the death of a motorcycle policeman and took part in a gunfight with agents. No court record confirms it; the claim rests on that magazine alone.
The wound to C. T. She said Weidmann shot her in the leg; he denied it and said the wound came from a quarrel with another man. A doctor found two scars that could have come from a bullet, Détective reported.
How he was traced. The Lowell Thomas script (a visiting card on Lesobre's body), Détective's special issue (the alias Karrer traced to La Voulzie) and another Détective report (a rental agency) give different accounts.
Rumors. A March 1939 Détective report said an "interview" with Weidmann in his cell published elsewhere came from an impostor, and another said reports that Jean de Koven had survived were an invention of American journalists.
February 1908: Weidmann born in Frankfurt am Main.
July 1924: arrested for theft on the day he finished school; held a month, then sent to a reformatory.
1928: goes to Canada; later imprisoned there for about a year and expelled.
After Canada: serves five and a half years in Germany for burglaries; meets Million, Blanc and Frommer in prison.
June 15, 1937: released at Frankfurt.
June 1937: La Voulzie rented at La Celle-Saint-Cloud; a kidnapping attempt on an American visitor fails.
July 21, 1937: Jean de Koven disappears from her Paris hotel.
July 30, 1937: her aunt receives a ransom letter.
September 8, 1937: Joseph Couffy shot near Orléans.
Autumn 1937: Janine Keller killed in the forest of Fontainebleau.
October 16, 1937: Roger Le Blond killed; his body found in Neuilly the next day.
November 22, 1937: Fritz Frommer last seen.
November 27 or 29, 1937: Raymond Lesobre shot at Saint-Cloud.
December 8, 1937: Weidmann arrested at La Voulzie after wounding two inspectors.
December 9, 1937: confesses to six killings before the examining magistrate.
May 1938: Vincent de Moro-Giafferri joins the defense.
March 10, 1939: trial opens at Versailles (March 11 in one account).
March 31, 1939: Weidmann and Million sentenced to death; Blanc 20 months; C. T. acquitted.
1939: Cour de cassation rejects the appeal.
June 16, 1939: President Lebrun commutes Million's sentence to life and refuses clemency to Weidmann.
June 17, 1939: Weidmann guillotined in public outside the Versailles prison.
June 24, 1939: decree requires executions to take place inside prisons.
September 10, 1977: last execution in France, in Marseille.
1981: France abolishes the death penalty.