Perpetrator
Henri Désiré Landru
- Born
- 12 April 1869
- Died
- 25 February 1922, aged about 53
- Record
- Wikidata Q534708 · Wikipedia
Perpetrator in The Bluebeard of Gambais
Fraudster and fugitive who used dozens of aliases; convicted of eleven murders and guillotined at Versailles.
1915–1922 · Vernouillet and Gambais, near Paris · Executed
A fugitive swindler answered wartime France's lonely-hearts columns. Eleven people who went with him to rented villas outside Paris were never seen again. Read the case.
Dated events
Henri Désiré Landru is born in Paris.
Already a repeat offender, Landru is convicted of fraud in his absence and sentenced to prison and transportation for life.
Landru rents a villa at Vernouillet, where Jeanne Cuchet and her son André move in with him.
Landru takes the Villa Tric at Gambais; Berthe Héon, the first woman to go there, disappears soon after.
Célestine Buisson is last seen, the date and hour later found noted in Landru's book.
Police arrest Landru, living as 'Lucien Guillet', at 76 rue de Rochechouart in Paris.
The jury convicts Landru of eleven murders and he is sentenced to death.
Landru is guillotined at dawn outside the prison in Versailles.