According to Mark Braude, in 1938 and 1939 the French public was transfixed by the heinous activities of a single German man. Not long before, he had been a complete unknown—a drifter with few accomplishments to his name—but he was now the subject of horror and fascination. In fact, he was infamous. In that feverish period, as his personal magnetism, amorality, and knack for manipulation became clear, people openly questioned his sanity. His behavior had put the French authorities, whom he had long deceived, in an awkward position. One way or another, he would have to be dealt with. But deciding what to do about him would raise questions about good and evil, about French values and German militarism, and about the state’s power over human life. His trial would be a sensation.
Eugen Weidmann, a good-looking young man with some murky connections to the Gestapo, killed at least six people in and around Parisbefore being apprehended in 1938. He had killed them in cold blood and for reasons that, though apparently money-related, would never be clear to anyone—even, perhaps, to the defendant himself. The press went wild with speculation. As the American journalist Janet Flanner put it to her editors, the case was, “for a connoisseur, one of the best crimes in the past ten years.” It gained attention in the U.S. because one of the victims, Jean de Koven, was a young American tourist—a typical one, according to Flanner, “but for two exceptions”: “She never set foot in the Opéra, and she was murdered.”
