Find out what was the last public execution through the guillotine

Although we usually associate the guillotine with the madding crowds that gathered during the French Revolution to see heads rolling in the public square, this efficient death machine was used to execute criminals in France until very recently! By the way, he is the last person to be beheaded publicly with the use of the guillotine in the country that we will talk about now: Eugen Weidmann, in 1939.

Eugen was not French but German, and was sentenced to death after a long career in crime - and admitted to being responsible for the murder of six people. He began to steal as a boy after losing his family in World War I and over time the severity of the offenses increased, earning him a five-year stay in a prison in Germany.

Dangerous Friendships

While serving his sentence, Eugen became friends with Roger Million and Jean Blanc - who were not "flower smells" either - and the three became partners in crime. When they got out of jail, they decided that kidnapping wealthy tourists was an easy form of money, but their first attempt was a fiasco, as the victim, a young boy, fought so hard that they had no choice but to let the guy escape.

Eugen Weidmann

By the way, it would soon become apparent that the trio had little talent for kidnapping, because a short time later, in the summer of 1937, Eugen and his cohorts decided to kidnap a young New York socialite named Jean de Koven who was visiting family in Paris. The girl was 22, but was murdered by the criminals before the ransom was paid.

After the American tourist, the trio killed five others outside Paris, and all the crimes also happened in 1937. The victims included a woman named Jeanine Keller, who responded to a job posting for a housekeeper job, the taxi driver Joseph Couffy, theatrical producer Roger LeBlond, a German named Fritz Frommer, whom Eugen had met in prison, and Raymond Lesobre, a real estate agent.

Eugen being tried in Versailles

Although the initial idea was that the trio were dedicated to kidnapping, they simply stole their victims' money and, according to some sources, the total amount that the offenders were able to accumulate was just over 14, 000 francs. A trifle when we think that six people were murdered for money.

Catch

Authorities arrived in Eugen because he carelessly forgot a business card in Raymond Lesobre's office, and investigators simply followed the lead. Only he didn't give in easily, no! The German was extremely aggressive and was only captured after exchanging gunfire with the police and taking a few hammer blows to the head.

Eugen with his head bandaged from the hammering

After arrest, Eugen confessed to murdering the six victims and was tried along with his cronies by a court in Versailles. In the end, Jean Blanc and Roger Million escaped the death penalty and were sentenced to life imprisonment - and Eugen was the only one to be sentenced to be executed in the public square at the guillotine.

The execution

In fact, the intention was that public beheading would serve as an example and discourage criminality in France. However, the authorities underestimated the bloodlust of the crowd, for on the day of execution, June 17, 1939, it turned out that people were going crazy in front of the (barbaric) spectacle! In fact, the excitement was so great that the place of the sentence had to be changed and its compliance postponed by several hours.

First place chosen for Eugen's execution

But these measures were not enough to calm the crowd. The guillotine was mounted in front of the Saint-Pierre prison in Versailles, and as Eugen was led to it, people kept shouting, whistling and crying out to the criminal. In addition, several photos were clicked from the occasion, and there are even films at the time of execution.

As if by little, according to witnesses who witnessed the execution, after Eugen lost his mind, many women waited until the police left the place to wet tissues with the criminal's blood.

In this video you can see below you can get a better idea of ​​how many people attended the performance:

In the days following the incident, the French press made harsh criticism of the population's hysterical behavior. In addition, the president of the time, Albert Lebrun, was horrified by the spectacle that was formed in Versailles - and prohibited public executions in the country.

Guillotine registration at the time of Eugen's execution

But remember that the guillotine was not retired after that! The last person to be sentenced to death by beheading in France was the Tunisian killer Hamida Djandoubi in September 1977, and capital punishment was not made illegal until 1981.

* Posted on 21/09/2016