Marie Besnard was first charged with multiple murder on July
21, 1949. After three trials lasting over 10 years (the first held in
Poitiers), Besnard was finally freed in 1954, then acquitted on December 12,
1961.
Early life
Born in Loudun, France, Marie married her cousin, Auguste
Antigny, in 1920. The marriage lasted until his death from pleurisy on July 21,
1927 (Antigny was known to suffer from tuberculosis). In 1928, Marie married
Léon Besnard.
Suspicious deaths
When Léon Besnard's parents inherited family wealth, the
couple invited them to move in with them. Soon thereafter, his father died,
apparently from eating poisoned mushrooms. His mother followed three months
later, apparently a victim of pneumonia.
Shortly afterward, the Besnards sublet rooms to a wealthy
childless couple, the Rivets, who were friends of Marie's husband. Monsieur
Toussaint Rivet died of pneumonia on July 14, 1939,. Madame Blanche Rivet (née
Lebeau) died on December 27, 1941 from aortitis. The Rivets' will had named
Marie Besnard as their only heir. Pauline Bodineau, (née Lalleron) and Virginie
Lalleron, cousins of Marie, had also named Marie as their only beneficiary.
Pauline died aged 88 on July 1, 1945, after mistaking a bowl of lye for her
dessert one night. Virginie apparently made the same mistake a week later and
died aged 83 on July 9, 1945. Marie's mother, Marie-Louise Davaillaud (née
Antigny) died on January 16. After Marie discovered Léon was having an affair,
Léon remarked to a close friend, Madame Pintou, that he believed he was being
poisoned, saying "that his wife had served him some soup on a bowl that
already contained a liquid." He died shortly afterwards October 25, 1947
apparently of uremia. A few days after Léon's burial, details of his testimony
reached the gendarmerie and were passed to an investigating magistrate. A
forensic surgeon, doctor Béroud, discovered 19.45 mg of arsenic in his body.
Marie was arrested, the bodies of her other alleged victims were exhumed, and
Marie was charged with 13 counts of murder.
Trials
The presence of arsenic in the bodies of her alleged victims
was central to Besnard's trials, the first of which began in February 1952. Béroud's
autopsy report, based on an analytical method developed by Marsh and Cribier,
concluded that the victims had been slowly poisoned by arsenic. Further
analysis by professors Fabre, Kohn-Abrest and Griffon also found that there
were abnormal levels of arsenic in the exhumed bodies. Another report, carried
out by professor Piedelièvre in 1954 confirmed the results of the 1952
analysis, but differed in some respects from Béroud's. The presence of
abnormally high levels of arsenic were also confirmed by another report by
Professor Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Béroud had difficulty in defending his results
under examination from Besnard's lawyers.As a result, the first two trials
ended without a conviction.
The length of the trials, the successful attacks on the
evidence, and the turning of public opinion in favor of Marie Besnard
contributed to her eventual acquittal at her third trial in 1961. Besnard died
in 1980.
Popular culture
The 1986 television film L'Affaire Marie Besnard (The Marie
Besnard Affair) won the Sept d'or French television awards for Alice Sapritch,
best actress in the role of Marie Besnard; Yves-André Hubert, director, for
best movie made for TV; and Frédéric Pottecher, best writer. The 2006
television film Marie Besnard, l'empoisonneuse (Marie Besnard, the Poisoner),
resulted in the 2007 Best Performance by an Actress Emmy Award for Muriel Robin
in the title role.
***
Marie Joséphine Philippine Davaillaud (ne: Marie
Besnard), was born in Loudon, France, on August 15, 1896. An only child
educated at a convent school, some of her childhood playmates described her as
somewhat mean. In 1919, she married her cousin, Auguste Antigny; he died on
July 21, 1927, with the official cause of death listed as tuberculosis. In
1929, she married Léon Besnard, who owned a rope shop in Loudon. The Besnards
lived comfortably until 1940, when Léon's parents inherited family money and
were invited to move in with their son and daughter-in-law. Léon's father died
a few weeks later after eating poisonous mushrooms, and his mother died of
pneumonia three months later; their estate was split between Léon and his
sister, Lucie. Léon inherited the entire estate after Lucie committed suicide a
few months after their mother's death. The Besnards' bank account grew even
more after Marie's father died of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 14, 1940.
Following the string of family deaths, the Besnards took a
wealthy childless couple into their home. Touissaint and Blanche Rivet were so
thankful for the Besnard's hospitality that they made them the beneficiaries of
their wills. Touissant died of pneumonia on July 14, 1940; Blanche died of
aortitis on December 27, 1941. Although the Besnards had suffered an
extraordinary number of deaths over a short period of time, few in Loudon
suspected anything other than bad luck was responsible. That began to change,
however, after one of Marie's elderly cousins, Pauline Bodineau, who was living
in the Blanchard home, died on July 1, 1945. According to Marie, her cousin had
mistaken a dish of lye for a desert and had eaten it. Suspicions were further
aroused when another cousin, Virginie Lalleron, died in the same manner on July
9, 1945. Marie just happened to be the only beneficiary listed on both of the
cousins' wills. Despite neighbors and friends being by now quite suspicious, no
criminal investigation was initiated.
On January 16, 1946, Marie's mother, Marie-Louise
Davaillaud, died, apparently of old age. Not long after collecting yet another
inheritance, Marie learned that Léon was having an affair with a neighbor,
Louise Pintou. Léon died on October 25, 1947; his doctor listed the cause of
death as uremia. Following the death of Léon Besnard, Louise Pintou sent a
letter to the public prosecutor in which she stated that Léon had expressed his
concern to her that he was being poisoned by Marie. Authorities initially
dismissed Pintou's letter, but repeated demands by her and others that Léon's
death be investigated finally forced them to give in. Léon Besnard's body was
exhumed on May 11, 1949, and an autopsy found that he had ingested a large
amount of arsenic over a period of time. This discovery led to the exhumation
of other bodies, and by the time the investigation was over arsenic had also
been found in the bodies of Léon's parents and sister, the Rivets, and Marie's
first husband, cousins, mother and father. Marie Besnard was arrested and
charged with 11 counts of murder on July 21, 1949. Besnard went on trial in
February 1952. During the proceedings, Besnard's attorneys, René Hayot and
Albert Gautrat, questioned the methods Dr. Georges Béroud used to find the
arsenic in the bodies, accused the laboratory that did the tests of losing and
mishandling some of the evidence, and presented evidence that the source of any
arsenic found in the bodies could easily have come from the soil in the
cemetery in which the bodies had been buried. Unable to come to a verdict, the
court ruled that it needed more time to review the scientific evidence and
adjourned. The court reconvened in October, took a little more testimony, and
then adjourned again. The Besnard trial remained on hold, and she remained in
jail, until March 1954. After hearing both sides present very different
interpretations of the scientific evidence the judges again declared that they
needed more time to come to a decision. This time, however, they allowed
Besnard to post a 1,200,00-franc bond and await her next court appearance
outside the confines of a jail. Besnard was not called back into court until
November 20, 1961. As they had before, both prosecution and defense presented
very different interpretations of the scientific evidence. But, unlike before,
this trial actully ended with a verdict. Over eleven years after being
arrested, Marie Besnard was found not guilty on all counts on December 12,
1961. She died a free woman in 1980.
***
The Poison Queen:
Madame Besnard:
Occasionally one comes across a Black Widow with a slight
mix of characteristics found usually in other female serial killer
classifications. Such was Marie Besnard, the most famous of Gallic warlocks.
She worked a good part of her 22-year career with a male accomplice, that trait
of "partnering" being rare among the Black Widow breed. And yet, she
is of that breed, for all her murders were motivated strictly by self-gain and
the majority of her victims were relatives and in-laws. A native of Loudon,
France, Marie Davaillaud married Auguste Antigny in 1920. She was 23 years old,
he closer to thirty and a kissing cousin. What contentment the union brought
rapidly weakened until, by 1927, Marie had had enough of Antigny. The latter
did not live long enough to see 1928. A
year later, the widow had remarried Leon Besnard. He was a scamp and every bit
as formative a no-goodnik as his wife; it was truly a marriage made in hell.
They were cons, the pair of them, swindlers, cheats and eventual serial
killers. Together, the two hatched a get-rich-quick scheme to poison off their
relatives, collecting their inheritances, one by one.
To go about this, they used stealth. For many months the
couple made furtive endeavors to cement their relationships with both their
families — parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, and just about
everyone they could think of within the Besnard and Davaillaud circles — to
insure their place on their respective wills. Marie and Leon Besnard evidently
had acting talent; their plan worked well. Marie is perceived as having been
the "brains" of the partnership. Whether or not this is true, and it
seems to be true, Besnard was a willing and adept disciple. The first to go
were his two spinster aunts, each in the money, each regarding their nephew and
his lovely new wife as a wholesome young couple. One aunt went to her grave in
1938, the other two years later, after sipping a bottle of gift wine. Both
aunts bequeathed a sizable reward for the Besnard's kindness to them in life. Between
the years 1940 and 1947, members of both inter-related families may have
thought that a curse had visited them. The Davaillauds and Besnards dropped
like flies; Marie's father; Besnard's father and sister; cousins Pauline and
Virginie Lalleron, in that order. Causes of death were suspiciously imitative,
either of water in the lungs or of cerebral hemorrhaging, but not a single
doctor noted the similarities. According to the Kellehers' Murder Most Rare,
the villainous man and wife team aimed their poisonous arrows at others besides
their immediate family — another standard Black Widow factor from which Marie
ventures. Neighbors, too, were their targets. The deadly Besnards convinced an
aged, sickly and very rich couple named Rivet to lodge with them that they
might tend to their faltering health. The na? elders, completely duped, moved
in with Marie and Leon, only to pass away just after their arrival. Before they
died, they had shown their appreciation to the Besnards by leaving their total
wealth to these guardian angels.
Leon Besnard fell trap to his own devices in 1947 when his
partner, Marie, spiked his wine with a taste of his own medicine. The lady had
fallen in love with another man and figured it was time for Leon's exit. In control
of all the money now, Marie grew dizzy with power. She became greedier. And
stupid. She killed her mother, then, when she heard the neighborhood was
gossiping, physically went about door-to-door threatening the chatterboxes with
their lives. She was arrested. Leon Besnard was exhumed and his body proved
toxic. So were the cadavers of those family and in-laws whom she killed. She
was charged with thirteen counts of murder. But, in the end, as unbelievable as
it seems, Marie beat the rap. With her vast wealth, and at a time when the
world was influenced by wealth, she was able to hire France's top defense team
who managed to maneuver three separate trials, between 1951 and 1961, into hung
juries.
By escaping justice so remarkably, wrote the Kellehers,
"Marie Besnard rewrote the definition of the perfect crime and eclipsed
even the remarkable legend of Belle Gunness."
***
The Case of Marie Besnard: Queen of Poisoners
Marie Besnard has been called the Queen of Poisoners. She
was accused of having poisoned 13 people in Loudun, France, and was tried 3
times, but was ultimately acquitted on all counts. Marie was born Marie
Davaillaud in 1896, and was remembered by classmates as being "vicious and
immoral" and "wild with boys." She was 23 when she married her
cousin, Auguste Antigny, a frail man known to suffer from tuberculosis. Marie
was 27 when he died, apparently of pleurisy, and two years later she married
Leon Besnard. Leon and Marie lived modestly, but hoped for better things. When
two wealthy aunts of Leon's died, and left the bulk of their estates to Leon's
parents, the couple invited the parents to move in with them. Soon thereafter,
Leon's father died, apparently from eating poisoned mushrooms. Leon's mother
followed three months later, a victim of pneumonia. The parents' estate was
left to Leon and his sister, Lucie, who committed suicide a few months later. Meanwhile,
Marie's father had succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage.
The Besnards then took in a wealthy couple, the Rivets, as
boarders. The Rivets were childless, and soon became attached to the Besnards.
Monsieur Rivet died of pneumonia, and Madame Rivet soon followed, stricken with
nausea and convulsions, which her doctor attributed to "the chest
sickness". The Rivets had named Marie Besnard as their sole beneficiary. Two
elderly cousins were the next to go, Pauline and Virginie Lalleron. Pauline
died after mistaking a bowl of lye for her dessert one night, and, amazingly,
Virginie made the identical mistake a week later.
The Besnards by this time had amassed six houses, an inn, a
cafe, and several stud farms. Leon had taken a mistress, Louise Pintou, who was
the Loudun Postmistress, and had invited her to move into the Besnard home.
Marie had also taken a lover, a handsome German ex-prisoner of war. Leon died
at home, apparently of uremia, but not before he had told friends that he
believed he was being poisoned, and asked them to demand an autopsy if he died.
Marie's aged mother had also died the same year.
Naturally, by this time rumors were flying. Death threats
were sent through the mails to some of the local gossips. Madame Pintou, who
had openly accused Marie, had her home broken into, where the burglar proceeded
to selectively destroy every gift Madame Pintou had ever received from Leon.
Another pair of accusers was forced to flee Loudon after arsonists burned their
home.
One acquaintance remembered that Marie had once recommended
arsenic as an alternative to divorce. Finally, on May 11th, the body of Leon
Besnard was exhumed, and investigators found approximately twice the arsenic
levels in his remains that would have been necessary to kill him. Twelve other
bodies were then exhumed: both sets of parents, Marie's first husband, the
Rivets, Marie's sister-in-law, the elderly cousins, a grandmother-in-law, and a
great aunt. (The autopsy on Marie's first husband was possible only because the
undertaker had accidentally left Auguste's shoes on, and his toenails were
preserved enough to be tested for arsenic.) Of the 13, 12 bodies were found with
significant traces of arsenic. One death had exceeded the French statute of
limitations, so Marie was charged with 11 deaths. At Marie's first trial, her
lawyers attacked the testimony of the toxicologist, Dr. Georges Beroud, in
particular his assertion that he could tell the difference between arsenic and
antimony with the naked eye. The lawyers demanded a new trial, and Marie was
sent to jail in "preventative detention" while a new panel of experts
was assembled.
While Marie was incarcerated, 3 informers reported to the
police that Marie had attempted to hire them to "rub out" some of the
neighborhood gossips.
The new panel of four experts took 2 years to examine the
forensic evidence. They were forced to eliminate 5 of the charges - there was
simply not enough of the physical evidence left to test for arsenic. In the
meantime, Marie's lawyers had learned of a new theory that arsenic could enter
a body from the ground through the actions of anaerobic bacteria.
The second trial was also ended up being ruled a mistrial.
The experts could not agree, and one of them became so upset he left the
witness stand, sat down and folded his arms, and refused to testify.
A third trial was held seven years later. (Marie was free on
bond during this period.) There was very little physical evidence left to test,
and the experts admitted that their techniques were not up to date and that
"too many factors escape us." In addition, the defense attorneys had
learned that the Loudun cemetery concierge had grown potatoes near the burial
sites and had sprinkled his garden with fertilizers containing arsenic.
On December 12, 1961, Marie Besnard was acquitted. The jury
had taken only 3 hours and 25 minutes to deliberate.
***
Arsenic & White Wine
"The devil is active in Chatellerault, in Chinon and in
Domfront, but above all he is active in Loudun." So said Rabelais four
centuries ago; at least, that's what the people of Loudun say he said. Some
people suspect that Loudun, a town of 5,313 in western France, is still a little
proud of its reputation for casual wickedness. "I think," said a
bookseller of Loudun last week, "it is because of our fine white wines.
One can drink liters, like water, but suddenly it hits like a coup de fusil and
even the old feel young." Stranger in the House. One of the few citizens
of Loudun who seemed beyond suspicion of any intrigue was slim, soft-spoken
Marie Besnard, a matron of 53, who owned six houses in the town, the local
White Horse inn, and a number of thriving stud farms. Marie had acquired
property the easy way through the deaths of a succession of relatives and her
purse strings were always loosened when M. le Curé came to call with a worthy
charity in mind. Marie, said the people of Loudun, was "the only woman in
town who could go to communion without first going to confession."
Even Loudun's glib gossips found their tongues slow to wag
when, soon after the war, the unassailable Marie Besnard was apparently
attracted by a handsome German hired hand and. ex-prisoner of war 30 years her
junior. Marie's husband, Leon Besnard, began spending more & more time in
the town's bistros and complaining bitterly that he was no longer master in his
own home. Three years ago Léon died. Local doctors certified his death as
natural, but the gossip grew. After complaints by Marie's neighbors, the
Ministry of the Interior finally decided to examine what was left of husband
Léon.
Evidence in the Graveyard. Last May, while widowed Marie
leaned and sobbed on the arm of a nun at the graveside, and all of Loudun
watched, Léon Besnard's body was disinterred, turned over to a laboratory in
Marseille. Within a few days Loudun heard the shocking news. Léon had died of a
massive dose of arsenic. In the Palais de Justice in Poitiers, a grim little
judge d'instruction asked Marie Besnard how the poison got into her husband. She
had no idea; but at least one neighbor seemed to remember that Marie had once
suggested arsenic as an easy substitute for divorce. [Not a new idea in France. During the 17th
Century one of the principal sources of income for France's alchemists was the
sale of arsenic, or "succession powder," as it was happily known, to
ambitious members of the upper classes. In the 1670s Paris was so beset by an
epidemic of poisonings that a special court, the Chambre Ardente, was set up to
handle this type of crime. One of its most fabulous accused was the glamorous
and charitably-minded Marquise de Brinvilliers (a "much courted little
woman," according to one source, "with a fascinating air of childlike
innocence"), who, assisted by a lover, poisoned her father and her two
brothers for the sake of the family fortune. The good Marquise always assured
herself of success by trying her poisons first on the local poor who came to
seek her. charity, and on the sick, whom she regularly visited].
Judge Pierre Roger then ordered the bodies of Marie's first
husband and other relatives exhumed and analyzed. One by one, as the weeks went
by, the reports came in: Auguste Antigny, first husband of Marie Besnard, died
1927, overdose of arsenic; Madame Leconte, a cousin, died 1939, arsenic; Madame
Rivet, a friend, died 1939, arsenic; Marcellin Besnard, a father-in-law, died
1940, arsenic; Marie Louise Davailland, a sister-in-law, died 1940, arsenic;
Monsieur Rivet, died 1941, arsenic; Alice Bodin, a sister-in-law, died 1941,
arsenic; Marie Louise Besnard, a mother-in-law, died 1941, arsenic; Pauline and
Marie Lalleron, aged cousins, died 1945, arsenic. "UN AUTRE POUR
MARIE!" proclaimed newspapers in big black headlines all over France as
each body was reported.
Judge Roger made an official announcement. "We have dug
up 13 bodies ... in 12 of the 13, death was caused by arsenic poisoning. One of
these cases is covered by the statute of limitations, so let us call it eleven.
Anyway, we have the rough picture." Outside the gloomy Pierre-Levée prison
in Poitiers, where Marie Besnard awaited trial, her dapper attorney Henry de
Cluzeau offered what was perhaps the only possible defense. "In this
country of good wines and fine living," said he, "one might possibly
conceive of one murder, two murders, even three murders. But eleven murders?
Preposterous!"
***
As always, stay safe !
Bird
***
