On January 29, 1906, the Île de la Cité, in the heart of Paris, was in turmoil. The one that all the press has nicknamed for several months already “the Ogress of the Goutte d’Or” or “the strangler of Montmartre” – Jeanne Weber of her real name – is about to be judged for a series of murders of children, including her own son and three nieces. Around the gates of the courthouse, hundreds of people made the trip, mainly women, says the press of the time, to demand his killing. But when it appears, it is astonishment, it does not look like the “monster” that one describes. She is “a young woman of 30, with a placid face, with a vague and indifferent gaze, reflecting only a serene conscience”, notes the reporter from Small Journal, on the first day of the hearing.
For eight months now, the affair has regularly made the front pages of the major dailies of the time. It all started on April 6, 1905 when the head of the pediatric service at Bretonneau hospital gave the alert: the day before, a woman urgently took her son, Maurice, then one year old, to him, choking. . The child escapes but the doctor is categorical: he has a very clear trace of strangulation on his neck. Above all, the mother of the young victim gave him a funny secret. The tragedy occurred when she had entrusted her son to her sister-in-law, Jeanne Weber, the time to do some shopping. However, in the space of a month, three other children of his entourage died in the care of this woman.
“Heart congestion”
On March 2, 1905, Jeanne Weber looked after little Georgette, 18 months old, when she suddenly died. “A local doctor attributed this strange death to a congestion of the heart”, specifies an article of the Little Parisian, dated April 10, 1905. Eight days later, Georgette’s older sister, Suzanne “suffered the same fate as her sister and again the doctor declared that she had died of congestion of the heart”. At the end of March, it is another niece, aged 7 months, who succumbs while she was entrusted to Jeanne Weber. “It was noted that the little girl had suspicious marks on her throat, but since she had suffered from bronchial pneumonia, it was this diagnosis that was accepted”, continues the journalist.
“We have to put ourselves back in the context of the time,” specifies the psycho-criminologist, Michèle Agrapart-Delmas, author of Femmes fatales, the criminals approached by an expert. At the time, the child was not considered today, there was much less emotion around the death of a child, especially because of the very high infant mortality. “
In this case, it is the number of victims that shocks the public. Half April, The Voltaire reports that the son of a neighbor of Jeanne Weber died in mysterious conditions “after he had been kept by the accused”. What about the suspect’s children as well? All three died, two in infancy, the last one at the age of 7, a few weeks before the affair broke out. Officially, he died of “lightning meningitis”, but the authorities doubt it and Jeanne Weber is also expelled for this murder.
Miscarriage of justice ?
It is therefore in this context of extreme tension that the trial opens. However quickly, the case deflates as the investigation was sloppy. On February 1, 1906, the Advocate General himself asked the jury to acquit Jeanne Weber for lack of evidence. From “ogress”, Jeanne Weber becomes “martyr”, “dragged before the assizes, on simple gossip and absurd assumptions”, insists in her columns The French Republic a few days after his acquittal. And the journalist insisted: “Science considers that it is very natural to see several children of the same family die in a similar way, quite simply because these children all have the same defect”.
We then think the case is over. It bounced back two years later in the Indre. Hired in 1907 under a false name to take care of the three children of a farmer, the youngest died in mysterious conditions a few months after his arrival. Quickly unmasked, it is finally cleared, for lack of evidence. The following year, Jeanne Weber reappears in Commercy, in the Meuse. She then lives with her new companion in a small hotel. A few days after their arrival, she is surprised above the bed of the hoteliers’ son, the child is strangled to death. “It is no longer possible to believe that she was the victim of an appalling fatality, and that the death of so many children, which occurred while they were in her arms or playing near her , was only due to an appalling combination of circumstances ”, estimates the Loire Memorial.
Despite everything, Jeanne Weber will never be sentenced for the crimes attributed to her. In 1908, she was declared “insane” and interned in an asylum. “At the time, female criminals were almost systematically considered ill,” continues Michèle Agrapart-Delmas. As if a woman couldn’t do harm on purpose. This look has evolved, but there is still this basic thought according to which a woman who commits a crime has her reasons, that there is no gratuitous violence. She died ten years later without ever having confessed to her crimes.