Was he a sadistic mass killer who lured innocent people to their deaths in his mysterious triangular room, or a hero of German-occupied Paris who liquidated members of the Gestapo and helped persecuted Jews and underground fighters escape from tormented France? This was the question as one of the twentieth century's most sensational murder cases came to trial in Paris in 1946, and Dr. Marcel Petiot savagely fought for his honor and his life. Here Thomas Maeder meticulously reconstructs one of the most horrifying true stories in the annals of crime: the vile murders themselves (presumably Dr. Petiot dismembered his victims, then buried them in a lime pit), an incisive psychological portrait of the doctor, and a re-creation of his Daumieresque trial, in which he was charged with luring twenty-seven people with the promise of escape, then murdering them for plunder. Just how the crimes were committed was a secret Dr. Petiot took to his grave; why he committed them remains to this day a chilling mystery. In a century in which murder became almost commonplace, Dr. Petiot's story is an alarming chapter in the saga of sadism. With 16 pages of black-and-white photographs.