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TO all who knew him, he was the most devoted, benevolent doctor in Nazi-occupied Paris.



Dr Marcel Petiot provided free care for the poor and risked his life helping persecuted Jews flee to safety.



Or so everyone thought – until locals in his affluent neighbourhood reported a foul stench from his home and thick black smoke pouring out of his chimney in March 1944.



Two police officers rushed into his elegant townhouse expecting to put out a chimney fire – and instead stumbled upon a scene of barbarity so appalling they both vomited.



Mutilated bodies in various states of decay were strewn across two floors of his 19th-Century mansion.



Down a marble staircase were canvas bags full of severed legs, arms and heads – enough parts for at least 10 complete bodies.

More remains were burning in two basement stoves – the cause of the thick smoke.



DUSTBINS



Police later took away “33 pounds of charred bones, 11 pounds of human hair, including more than 10 whole scalps, and three dustbins full of pieces too small to identify”.



Finally, three months before D-Day, one of history’s most gruesome serial killers – the Butcher of Paris – had been unmasked.



Officially he murdered 27 men, women and children, but he admitted to killing 63 and the toll could be at least 160.

Now French authorities have released for the first time the police records which led to Dr Petiot being guillotined, aged 49, in May 1946.



David King, author of new book, Death in the City of Light, says: “Parisians at first refused to believe he was capable of such barbarity.

Here was a highly articulate, cultured man who apparently cared deeply for the poor.

He was known throughout Paris as a freedom fighter who would help smuggle away anyone being hunted by the Nazis.



“Yet it turns out he preyed on their hopes and dreams and murdered them.



“I spent months trying to find at least one person who he’d actually helped to flee, but I found no one. I could hardly believe how evil he was.”



Petiot had taken warped advantage of the horrors of war to unleash his own murderous reign of terror.



He claimed to run a secret network which offered safe passage to South America via Portugal.

(Image: Getty)

CYANIDE



Charging 25,000 francs from each “refugee”, he told them to arrive at his home with their most valuable possessions packed in their luggage.

Police later found 49 empty suitcases at his home.

They were persuaded to write a letter to their relatives which stated they were now safely in Argentina but any more further contact would be dangerous.



He then informed them that Argentina required inoculations, and led them to a triangular room, where he injected some with cyanide.

Through a peep-hole in the wall, he would watch them die.



Other victims would be gassed with Zyklon B – which was used by the Nazis to kill millions in concentration camps.



Petiot even went to some of the victims’ houses to steal their furniture, informing neighbours it was part of the deal.



In all, Petiot is believed to have stolen 200million francs from his victims – around £15million today.



At first he dumped the bodies in the River Seine, or threw plastic sacks of body parts into passing trucks.

By August 1942, Parisians were aware a murderer was at large.



A police report detailed a macabre discovery in a truck. It read: “Two human heads without skin or fingertips, two feet with no toenails, skin of two legs including heel and three scalps, the first with reddish blonde hair, the second almost black, and the third grey.”



Among the dead was a family of three German Jews who escaped Paris’ largest mass round-up by the Nazis. In July 1942, 13,000 disappeared in 48 hours.

Kurt and Margaret Kneller and their seven-year-old son Rene hid in a neighbour’s house before approaching their family doctor.



Mr King says: “This case shocked me, because it was a family and Petiot had been their doctor for years. Petiot took their money and got their son to take a photo for his fake passport.

He later turned up at their home and took all their furniture.



“Two months after they had survived the Nazis, their dismembered remains were fished out of the Seine.”



Between 1942 and 1943, nine heads, four thighs and numerous other pieces were recovered from the river.



As the body count grew, Petiot knew he had to find another means of disposal. So he had two incinerators installed in his basement, and a lime pit for decomposition.



Petiot also recruited two middle-men to approach potential victims. They believed the doctor was a brave freedom fighter helping people start new lives.

But they, too, would eventually suffer the same fate as the victims.



As police uncovered his house of horrors at 12 rue La Sueur, in the chic 16th Arrondissement, Petiot went on the run.

Investigators discovered he was injured fighting for the French in the First World War, and was locked away for a time after being diagnosed with schizophrenia and manic depression.

Despite this, he qualified as a doctor in 1921.



In the next few years he was elected mayor of a town in Burgundy but was caught embezzling and suspected of murdering a girlfriend. And yet still he was allowed to practise.



After seven months on the run, he was caught in a Metro station in October 1944. He was charged with 135 crimes, including 26 counts of murder.



Petiot said his victims were Germans or Gestapo informers and told the chaplain: “My conscience is clean.”



One witness at his execution noted: “He approached the guillotine with ease, as if he were walking into the office for a routine appointment.”



Petiot then told the people present: “Gentlemen, I ask you not to look. This will not be very pretty.”

It was a brutal end to a savage life.



Death in the City of Light by David King is published by Sphere as a trade paperback, £12.99; eBook £13.