"A HUMAN WOLF.”

Taranaki Daily News, 4 March 1922, Page 12

"A HUMAN WOLF.”

LANDRU'S PERSONALITY. PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITY. “HE KNEW HOW TO PLEASE.” Landru, who was recently condemned to death for a series of murders, is a strange human freak, of a type which is fortunately uncommon, and which is, for the good o-f society, rigorously suppressed when it appears. Commenting* generally upon the man and his career, the Paris correspondent of the Manchester \Guardian provides an interesting picture of his life and character. I have not yet heard of anyone who believes the man is innocent,' he writes, equally one-minded is the judgment that there is not enough evidence to send him to the “arms of the Widow” —the guillotine. If public opinion is right, there has rarely been a murderer who has so well hidden the proofs of his crime. Of the thirteen women who disappeared utterly after visiting the ramshackle villa of Gambais, all the material evidence that the prosecution is able to claini that it has found is a child’s fistful of burnt bones and threeor four strips of mouldy cloth. There are also a few dark notes written in Landru.’s dairy. ’ If these bones and tags are not taken by the Court as authentic remains of the vanished women, the circumstantial evidence, seven thousand type-written documents, is what stands between Landru and, not freedom, for he has already been condemned-to five years’ exile in the South Sea penal settlements, but life. This evidence includes, in the Fernch way. detailed and censorious account of his life from the moment he was born, his dishonesties. his imprisonments, and a thirteenfold, account of what he did with the lost women’s poor possessions. To those who believe in his guilt the mystery in the case is not the absence of the bodies. It lies in the fact that Landru is alleged to have been a human wolf, shadowing the verges of the flock, seeking out the isolated, the unprotected. ingeniously detaching them from what rare connections they still had, and killing them at leisure and convenience. Among the round score of these wolf men that the justice of two .continents has killed out this last fifty years, most stalked their victims under cover of matrimony. Professional mur-’ derers often start- their quarry by an advetisement in a paper addressed “To lonely widows, with a little money.” Bloch, for instance, the German Bluebeard, who killed many of his fifteen “wives” between 1895 and 1904. worked his way in Chicago. The variant case of Smith, who drowned women in their bath in England, will be remembered.

“A LONELY MAN. ANXIOUS TO * MARRY.” Landru’s tactics, say his enemies, were the same. Pi' ifessing to be a lonely man, a widower himself, anxious' to marry back into the human family, he sniffed out and drew into the Gambais gin-snare, they say, thirteen poor women. Bloch confessed that he chose middle-aged women “because they were easier to separate from their money.” Landru was not particular about their fortune. Any woman above the destitution level, the prosecution allege had enough portable property, sticks of furniture. or gewgaws of jewellery to pay for the trouble of her killing. It is the personality of Landru which is most interesting feature of the case. His life history, it is true, is not exciting. Borq in 1869, in Paris, he was the son of aii honest but melancholic foundry-hand. It is said, that as a boy he was popular for the sweetness of his disposition (like , Palmer, the English poisoner)and for the confidence of the hopes placed in him by his parents. He was a model choir-boy. a. persevering scholar at the technical night schools, a well-condupted conscript soldier, and a faithful husband in the first years of his married life. He seems to have suffered from not having been apprenticed to a trade. Like so many hundred of Parisian boys of his condition, he was deprived of a specialised education for life by the years spent in army service. He married on his return from the army, and set himself up as a man of business, the vaguest of all occupations for a boy of his class. He was agent for anything that came his way, and a ‘general small intermediary for commission. To the moral economist this trade of “commercial adventuring'’ is a parasitical but seemingly inevitable factor of the economic organisation or modern France. An “agent” such as young Landru wanders in the shadows and bycorners of the jungle of private enterprise in Paris, seeking out paths' by which minute centres of production and distribution may com? into new contact with each other. Sooner or later the temptation comes to such pettifogging “knights-errant of industry,” when pressed by hunger or unsuccess to try a shoyt-cut forbidden by law. Landru, after'a few years' of honest efforts to induce independent hucksters to sell or buy from each other, fell, was caught, and imprisoned. From that day he is no longer an honest pathfinder in the economic forest, but a shady 'business man. He was first condemned in his thirty-first year. The urlon'sldng numher of trades he is -aid to have followed is a natural corollary of that period.’ He was engineer, traveller, inventor, lie sold soap and half a hundred different things, he kept a garage and a furniture repository. These are not separate trades but incidents on his way. They are not a proof o-f versatility, but of unsuccess. S F.NTIME XT ALLY MUSICAL; Landru’s character is illumined by the love letters written b.v him. which are being published in a morning paper (they do these things in France). They were addressed to a girl, whom he mad • his mistress, bin did nc*t -..ttempt to kill. They light up the siting for trial. The glib sentiment, the still more facile plausible, even graceful, imagination which creates an attractive history and )■>*!■<. naljtv for 1-im-elf < untrue as ideal, are notable. IT? is the fluent liar, who begins by deceiving himself. After the irregular start of the acquaintance (either a chance encounter in the street or b.y means of an advertisement). his first care is to I;? delicate. He begins a new relationship of this sort by smoothing away, by polite.nesand tact, the secret impression in the woman’s mind, no matter how vulgar she may bv. that the whole, business is grossly improper and subtly dangerous. The facile imagination helped his boastful. interestin it' conversation which all those women brought into contact with him admired. He had a. great fund of storie- about himself and his doings. He was an amateur of indolent, melodious music, and sang tunefully the sentimentalities of grand opera. With the women whom the flattery of

/ music wearied he had other -ways of pleasing. He was not above sprightly parlor acrobatics, and coffld twist his legs in a way that brought roars of laughter from the most matter-of-fact of his fiancees. In those days of food restrictions he earned golden opinions for his talents (developed in his agency days) of procuring foulddden delicacies —white bread, and butter, petrol, sugar, and coal tickets. He was careful, too, to begin every new conquest with a tender reference to his mother, whom he always claimed (after she was dead) to be the only woman in the world who understood him. Last and most complete refinement of attraction, he possessed and wore a suit of evening clothes. To know the secret of his bedazzlement it is not necessary to wonder about his “hypnotic gaze” or “the mysterious magnetism of his glance.” He knew how to please his victims, that is all. Usually, as a matter of fact, we know that he made a bad impression physically. But he talked of marriage to lone women; he moulded his conversation to flatter their conventions. No one better than Landru knew what the petite bourgeoise likes to hear, and he said it. His affection for his mother, his “smoking,” his honest economies, his imaginations, and his ■“misunderstood” grimaeings were trump cards in the game these doting women. THE VILLA AT GAMBAIS. If anything more were needed, the villa at Gambais would convince. What more natural than that the prospective bride, a woman old enough to take care of herself, should go with him to inspect the little property in the country not too far from Paris? To the women he knew it was the crown of a perfect ambition. A younger woman, indeed, would have been disappointed with this illboding house, gone to rack and ruin in a wild, tangled garden of -weeds, where the nettles grew as high as young saplings. The corridors inside were damp, and the wallpaper hung down like lank ra.ngs. To the middle-aged woman, however, all this was one more sign of the affecting of bachelorhood of the man. In any case she had lived long enough to have lost taste for perfection. His appearance has been often described, rarely without exaggeration. He was not haiiusome. i ’"'even passable looking, except to an easily-contented mind. He was a bald gnarled fellow, with a red-dish-brown beard, which gave him an k air of respectability. His face had none of the lopsidedness of the born criminal, but his ears were odious, purple, and long-lapped. His eyes were black, with a lighter glaze. If what they say of him is true, they might well have the basilisk fascination which too romantic observers have lent to them. But they were expressionless and undisturbed. For the rest he was mean, awkward with his coarse hands, and with a bend of the shoulders that is the stigma of the small cheat. He walked slowly, with long steps. This gnomelike man. such as he was, understood the secrets of , ■ poor women’s hearts and had not falter- 1 ed to use them.