Henri Désiré Landru

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

Life

Born in Paris, he seems to have had a fairly uneventful early life. After leaving school he spent four years in the army, after which he seduced his cousin. She bore him a daughter, although Landru did not marry her but instead married another woman two years later and had four children. He was shortly swindled out of money by a fraudulent employer, which apparently both infuriated and inspired him at the same time. He turned to fraud himself, operating scams that usually involved swindling elderly widows. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment in 1900 after being arrested and found guilty of fraud, the first of several such convictions.

By 1914, Landru was estranged from his wife and working as a second-hand furniture dealer.

The murders

Landru 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 - 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 voluminous that he had to keep a ledger listing all the women with whom he corresponded and which particular identity he used for each woman.

Arrest and trial

In 1919, the sister of one of Landru's victims, Madame Buisson, attempted to track down her missing sibling. She did not know Landru's real name but she knew his appearance and where he lived, and she eventually persuaded the police to arrest him.

Originally, Landru was charged only with embezzlement. He refused to talk to police, and with no bodies (police dug up his garden, but with no results), there was seemingly not enough evidence to charge him with murder. However, policemen did eventually find various bits of paperwork that listed the missing women, including Madame Buisson, and combining those with other documents, they finally built up enough evidence to charge him with murder.

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. Forty years later, there was a rumour that the daughter of Landru's lawyer (Vincent de Moro-Giafferi) found a picture Landru had drawn whilst awaiting execution, and on the back of it he had apparently written, "I did it. I burned their bodies in my kitchen stove".

In popular culture

Landru was the inspiration for Charlie Chaplin's film "Monsieur Verdoux" (1947). The original story was written by Orson Welles, who originally wanted to direct the film with Chaplin in the title role. However, since Chaplin did not like to be directed by anyone but himself, Chaplin bought the story from Welles. Chaplin then wrote, directed, and starred in "Monsieur Verdoux" himself.

A 1960 film, "Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons", starred George Sanders as Landru.

A 1962 film, directed by Claude Chabrol, "Landru", was inspired by the events.

A 1963 episode of "The Twilight Zone", "The New Exhibit", featured a wax museum statue of Landru armed with a garrote as part of a collection of notorious serial killers.

In the 1989 Joe Dante movie The 'burbs, the murderous Klopek's have a pet dog named Landru.

A 2005 French movie named [http://imdb.com/title/tt0442768/ Désiré Landru] is another adaptation of this story.

The best account in English is Bardens, Dennis. "The Ladykiller: The Life of Landru, the French Bluebeard". London: Peter Davies, c, 1972. Also recommended is Bolitho, William. "Murder for Profit" New York: Harper and Brothers, 1926, Chapter five: "The Poetry of Desire Landru".