User:Jahsonic/Henri Désiré Landru @140  

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Henri Désiré Landru @140

Schopenhauer mentioned [1]

When Verdoux is told that he appears to dislike women, he protests: "On the contrary, I love women, but I don't admire them. He goes on in a chthonic trope to add "Women are of the earth, realistic, dominated by physical facts."

Henri Désiré Landru (born April 12, 1869 in Paris, France – executed February 25, 1922 in Versailles, France) was a notorious French serial killer and real-life Bluebeard.

At 45, Landru was estranged from his wife when he 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 underway, many men were being cut down in the trenches, leaving plenty of widows upon whom Landru could prey.

Landru would seduce the women who came to his Parisian villa and, after he been given access to their assets, he would kill them - probably by strangulation or stabbing - and burn their dismembered bodies in his oven. Between 1914 and 1918, Landru claimed 11 victims: 10 women plus the teenaged son of one of his victims. With no bodies, the victims were just 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. His aliases were so numerous that he had to keep a ledger listing all the women with whom he corresponded and which particular identity he used for each woman.

In 1919, the sister of one of Landru's victims, Madame Buisson, attempted to track down her missing sibling.

Landru stood trial on 11 counts of murder in November 1921. He was convicted on all counts, sentenced to death, and guillotined three months later in Versailles.

Landru was the inspiration for Charlie Chaplin's film Monsieur Verdoux (1947). The method of lonely hearts killing was also used by the real-life couple portrayed in The Honeymoon Killers.

There is a pretty good YouTumentary on the guillotine here[2] with an incredible soundtrack, "Élégie" by Igor Stravinsky.

digital video montage dealing with guillotine execution in the early part of the 20th century; most notably that of eugene weidmann in 1939. the enthusiasm of the crowd, as well as the fact that the event was filmed from an apartment window, became major factors in the french governments decision to ban public executions. as a result, the weidmann execution was the last public guillotining in france before the death penalty was finally abolished in 1981. musical setting is the viola solo "elegie" by igor stravinsky.