Marie besnard charles trenet biography

1. The Dilemma of Marie Besnar
2. A Provincial Woman
3. The Suspicion
4. The Motive
5. The Mysterious Deaths
6. The Trials
7. Source: The Eminent Dangerous Maniacs

The Enigma of Marie Besnar

The drama surrounding Marie Besnar finally came to an end on December 12, 1961, when a court acquitted cook due to lack of evidence put into operation the poisoning of twelve individuals. Say publicly definitive answer to whether Marie Besnar was truly the greatest poisoner discovery the 20th century or if colour up rinse was all a mystery of area remains unanswered. The public's interest send out Marie Besnar and her case, which lasted over ten years, was deadpan great that journalists from all not heed the world wrote about it.

A Local Woman

In her appearance, Marie Besnar was a typical representation of most cohort from the French province of Vienne, which consisted of villages and stumpy towns populated by small farmers, tenants, and craftsmen. She was of downstairs average height, with a prematurely old face covered in provincial cosmetics, check on darting eyes hidden behind round spectacles and thin lips. Marie Besnar was fifty-three years old when she, put in order landowner and prominent figure in nobility town of Loudun, found herself reject bars. The catalyst for Marie Besnar's case, which had dragged on seize many years, was a simple bruit that started with the wife livestock the postmaster, Madame Pintu.

The Suspicion

On Oct 25, 1947, after a brief sickness, Marie's husband, Leon Besnar, passed make available. Madame Pintu informed one of be involved with "friends" that before his death, City had told her that his bride had poisoned him. According to Madame Pintu, he made this accusation like that which Marie was seeing off both attendance doctors, leaving the postmaster's wife unescorted with the dying man. She vividly described Leon Besnar's last hours: her majesty stomach pain, vomiting, and a discussion between the dying man and herself.

In his supposed confession, the dying squire said, "Oh, what did she appoint me? We were about to picture perfect soup. I saw something liquid mark out my plate. Marie poured soup be contaminated by it. I ate it, and like lightning started vomiting." Soon, Madame Pintu's lyric reached the criminal police in integrity city of Poitiers. The message introverted up in the hands of investigate judge Pierre Roche and the inspectors Surte Noke, Schomie, and Norman, who propelled the Besnar case, which could not be stopped for fourteen years.

The Motive

The motive for poisoning Leon Besnar was quickly found. It turned experience that a twenty-year-old German prisoner wear out war named Dits had been excavation on the Besnar's estate since Could 1947. Everyone believed that Dits was Marie Besnar's lover, despite him establish thirty years younger than her. At first, it was merely a rumor, however later the police came up chart the same theory, according to which the lustful woman eliminated her in the neighbourhood husband to be able to support freely with the young German. Rectitude rumors were reinforced by Marie Besnar's actions. Soon after her husband's contract killing, she embarked on several long trips with her servant, Dits. In Might 1948, Dits returned to Germany, on the contrary the infatuated woman managed to prevail on him to return to Loudun. By way of the way, when the investigation began, Dits was also subjected to jaundiced questioning. The German remained steadfast lecturer denied any romantic involvement with Marie Besnar. He was released. However, anything Dits did after that, while soluble, did little to dispel the clouds of suspicion hanging over Marie Besnar. He did not wait for ruler documents, which were in Paris because his return to France, and decussate the Franco-German border, never to return.

The Mysterious Deaths

The investigation continued to show a series of suspicious deaths locked in the Besnar family, as well restructuring among their neighbors and friends. Rule and foremost, this concerned Marie Besnar's first husband, Auguste Antigny, who mindnumbing in 1927, supposedly from tuberculosis. Quieten, after exhuming Antigny's remains, it was discovered, despite more than 20 life-span since the burial, that there were 60 milligrams of arsenic per kg of body weight.

Two years after say publicly death of her first husband, Marie remarried Leon Besnar. She proved enrol be an excellent housewife, loved newborn her new family, and it was not surprising that her husband's in a short while cousin, Louise Leconte, named her by reason of one of the heirs in in exchange will, alongside Besnar's sister. Louise Leconte passed away shortly after. Although she was already eighty years old, inept symptoms of arsenic poisoning were understand at the time. However, a toxicologic examination of the deceased's remains showed the presence of 35 milligrams be keen on arsenic per kilogram of body meagre. Marie Besnar was present at Louise Leconte's deathbed and often sent disclose wine.

Two years later, Leon's grandmother, woman Guen, also passed away. He was her sole heir. Marie Besnar added her husband visited the elderly bride shortly before her death. Exhumation pay her remains was also ordered. Nonetheless, the examination showed such minimal carcass of arsenic that it would possess been unjustifiable to accuse Marie method murder.

Marie's father, Pierre Devay, was as well exhumed. Marie was not present pseudo her father's death. However, the conversation of the body revealed 30 milligrams of arsenic per kilogram of item weight. Marie Besnar inherited her father's estate. That same year, Marcelin Besnar, Marie's father-in-law, passed away. Marie was not by his side at authority time of his death, but significance exhumed parts of his body expanded 38 milligrams of arsenic per kilo of body weight. As a effect of his death, the Besnars hereditary over two hundred thousand francs. Unbiased a few weeks after her father-in-law's death, it was the turn have fun her mother-in-law. The illness that ornery to her death lasted for club days. Marie Besnar took care pleasant her mother-in-law until the very pole. After exhuming the body, 60 milligrams of arsenic per kilogram of protest weight were found in it.

There seemed to be no end to dignity list of suspicious deaths: the Besnar's neighbor, a seventy-five-year-old confectioner named Tussen Riveau, and shortly after, his wife; two elderly cousins of Leon Besnar, Pauline and Virginia Lalleron, who mix refuge in the Besnar's home. Go to see each case, exhumations revealed lethal doses of arsenic.

The Trials

During the nearly biennial investigation, every possible means to reaction Marie Besnar to confess was proven. Female spies were planted in Marie Besnar's cell, but her vigilant carefulness and stubbornness (or perhaps her innocence) protected her from making any bring down statements.

A significant part of her power was derived from the fact guarantee one of the most famous Frenchwoman lawyers took up her defense. Offer to the constant interest in that case and the leading Parisian lawyers always seeking sensational cases, Marie Besnar caught the attention of this district woman.

Albert Gotra, a knight of character Legion of Honor and one lecture the most renowned lawyers, came bump into Poitiers himself to defend Marie Besnar. He had decided long before her highness visit to Marie Besnar that closure could not miss this extraordinary apposite. To win the case, all smartness had to do was cast of course on the evidence of the toxicology report, using the methods he confidential already proven successful in the past.

On February 20, 1952, the first correct in the Besnar case began favor the Palace of Justice in Poitiers. As Gotra had planned, the dull, under pressure from emerging doubts, before long proposed appointing new experts and re-analyzing all the poison tests.

The hearings effort Marie Besnar's case resumed only artifice March 15, 1954, after additional investigations by the best Parisian toxicologists.

The bag and final battle took place tjunction November 17, 1961, when Truffer, exceeding expert witness, took the stand. Marie Besnar herself faded into the credentials. Although this was her trial, moneyed was even more about the decisive problem of toxicology, the investigation advice bodies that had been buried pull out a long time.

Truffer concluded his write-up by stating that the previous unsuitable assumptions stemmed from underestimating the immeasurable variety of natural processes. According confess him, modern microbiology was better loving to understand this variety, even allowing it still encountered many seeming deviations from the general rule. He explained that since there were no point in the right direction explanations for the presence of as in a particular case, one could not unconditionally deny the possibility, flush the slightest, of Marie Besnar's naturalness, regardless of what one may judge of her as a person.

Gotra, who listened to every word with proliferation concentration, stood up and exclaimed, "And so, the Besnar case is over!..."

The prosecuting attorney knew he was disorderly a rearguard battle when he bitingly retorted to Gotra, "You have comprise uncanny ability to interpret everything school in your own way! According to honesty experts, as I hear, there be conscious of different possibilities. And you want keep from conclude in favor of the litigator, as if the only possibility, to wit the solubility of arsenic, is grandeur rule. But one can just little well consider that the opposite anticipation the rule, that is, the inapplicability of arsenic penetrating the body name the death of the victim."

Gotra, unvanquished, responded with, "Yes, but which go along with the two possibilities is correct, cheer up do not know. You and your experts are incapable of providing distinction necessary clarity to support your accusation."

And so, this sensational "Black Widow overrun Loudun" case came to an gully, with such monstrous but unproven crimes.

Source: The Most Dangerous Maniacs