Ten women.
One young man.
The disappearances stretched from 1915 into early 1919.
The pattern began at Vernouillet and continued at Gambais.
They were not all identical.
Their ages differed.
Their family situations differed.
Their finances differed.
But they shared one critical fact.
Their lives intersected with Landru shortly before their disappearance.
And after the intersection, there was almost nothing.
No reliable later sighting.
No ordinary correspondence proving a new life.
No independent explanation.
Just Landru.
The Case Becomes a National Obsession
By the time the investigation became public, France was fascinated.
The war had ended.
The country was trying to return to civilian life.
Then newspapers discovered a story that seemed almost unbelievable.
A small bald man with a long dark beard.
Dozens of names.
Hundreds of women.
Missing widows.
A country villa.
A stove.
Human bone fragments.
A chimney that smelled terrible.
No bodies.
Landru became "the Bluebeard of Gambais."
Bluebeard, the murderous husband from folklore who hides the fate of his wives.
The nickname simplified a complicated case into a recognizable monster.
Crowds came to Gambais.
Journalists followed every development.
Songs and jokes appeared.
Landru became a celebrity before he was ever convicted.
That would create a problem for the prosecution.
The more famous he became, the easier it was for the defense to argue that France had already decided his guilt.
Two Years of Silence
The judicial investigation lasted more than two years.
Landru remained remarkably controlled.
He did not confess.
He did not lead police to graves.
He did not explain where the women had gone.
When investigators confronted him with one contradiction, he supplied another answer.
When asked about property, he said it had been entrusted to him.
When asked about women, he invoked private relationships.
When asked where someone was, he might suggest another region.
Nice.
The south.
Somewhere away.
He understood the central legal weakness perfectly.
The state could demonstrate disappearance.
Could it demonstrate death?
November 7, 1921
The trial opened at Versailles.
By then Landru was one of the most recognizable defendants in France.
Journalists packed the courthouse.
Writers attended.
Celebrities appeared in the gallery.
The proceedings became entertainment as much as law.
The celebrated writer Colette reported from the courtroom and described the curious difficulty of reconciling the ordinary-looking man before her with the monstrous crimes alleged against him.
Landru did not appear physically imposing.
He looked controlled.
Respectable.
Almost administrative.
Which was exactly why the case disturbed observers.
There was no obvious monster to see.
Only a man consulting papers.
Taking notes.
Correcting details.
Occasionally making jokes.
The courtroom wanted horror.
Landru offered bookkeeping.
"They Are Missing"
The prosecution described eleven murders.
Landru rejected the premise.
Missing was not dead.
The distinction became his shield.
The women were adults.
Adults are allowed to leave.
Adults are allowed not to write their families.
Adults are allowed to give possessions to another person.
Adults are allowed to travel.
Adults are allowed to have private romantic lives.
Why should he violate their privacy simply because the police wanted answers?
When asked where the women were, Landru repeatedly refused to provide meaningful explanations.
He even invoked respect for private life.
The strategy was infuriatingly clever.
His relationships with the women were intimate.
Therefore, he said, details were private.
Their disappearance created suspicion.
But suspicion did not establish homicide.
The Marriage Advertisements
Prosecutors produced the advertisements.
Why had a man claiming merely to deal in property and furniture repeatedly advertised for marriage?
Landru provided one of his characteristic explanations.
The matrimonial notices, he suggested, had simply helped him meet people who might have furniture or property to sell.
A commercial trick.
Nothing more.
Then prosecutors produced romantic letters.
Landru minimized those too.
At one point, when confronted with a love letter, he characterized it essentially as a draft, a literary exercise.
He never seemed cornered for long.
Every piece of evidence could be reclassified.
Romance became business.
Possessions became deposits.
Disappearance became privacy.
Human bone became disputed forensic material.
Smoke became household activity.
It was the cumulative pattern the prosecution needed the jury to see.
Not one clue.
All of them.
"Sans Fortune"
Then came Landru's own selection notes.
Why did he reject some women with observations indicating they had no fortune?
If the advertisements were merely a harmless commercial trick, why was personal wealth so important?
Why did he record intimate details?
Why did he categorize women?
Why did finances repeatedly appear beside romance?
Landru avoided the larger inference.
He answered individual questions.
That was another key part of his defense.
Never allow the prosecution to turn 100 small facts into one story.
Fight every fact separately.
A ring?
Explain the ring.
A chair?
Explain the chair.
A bank transaction?
Explain the transaction.
A missing woman?
Say she is missing.
The prosecution's task was the opposite.
Combine.
The Families Enter the Courtroom
One by one, relatives of the missing women testified.
Mothers.
Sisters.
Children.
People who knew the women's habits.
People who insisted their relatives would never voluntarily disappear forever without writing.
The emotional contrast became striking.
Family members cried.
Landru remained composed.
At one hearing, when the sister of Jeanne Cuchet accused him directly, Landru challenged her.
Did she have proof that he had murdered her sister?
Her answer went to the heart of the prosecution's argument.
Jeanne had cared deeply for him.
If she were alive and knew he faced execution for her supposed murder, why would she remain silent?
Why would none of the ten women appear?
Why would not one write a letter?
Why would not one contact police?
Landru had built his defense on the absence of bodies.
The families turned that absence against him.
If the women were alive, where were they?
All of them?
Eleven People Cannot All Choose Silence
This became the prosecution's strongest common-sense argument.
One person can vanish voluntarily.
Two can.
Three can.
But ten women and one young man, each connected to the same man, each disappearing after contact with him, each leaving property he later controlled?
At some point coincidence becomes a theory harder to believe than murder.
Landru did not need the jury to believe a single alternative explanation.
He only needed them to doubt the prosecution.
His lawyer would later turn that principle into the center of the defense.
But first came the science.
The Bones Enter the Courtroom
On November 25, forensic specialists testified.
The prosecution had no recognizable bodies to display.
Instead, boxes of fragments.
Approximately 295 pieces of human bone from Gambais.
Tiny remnants.
Burned almost beyond identity.
Experts argued the fragments represented multiple human beings.
Part of three skulls.
Elements from several hands.