March 18, 2022 • 13 mins
Holly and Tracy talk about Eugen Weidmann's executioner, public fixation on the case, and the availability of the images and footage of most gruesome details of the murders and beheading.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and Happy Friday. Am Holly
Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Listen. I'm sorry about
all the murder. Um. I'm drawn to very dark stuff
(00:23):
right now. I'm fine. Just in case anyone's worried about
my mental state, I just I don't know's It's been
interesting this one. This story has always been interesting to
me because I will tell you the way I came
across it, which is very strange, Okay, and then um,
and then I'll talk about some of the other things
about it that came up as I have read about
(00:44):
it over the years that I really wanted to touch on.
They didn't all make it into the episode. But the
way I learned about this is because there's an interesting
bit of trivia, and I don't remember where I read it.
During the trial, there was a handwriting expert that was
called in for the case by the court. I do
not know that handwriting expert's name, but I know that
she was yours Saul's granddaughter, which I saw in some
(01:09):
like history trivia thing, which is how I learned about
this um that would have been her granddaughter through her
son Maurice, because her daughter, though she had two children
of her own, they did not survive childhood, I don't believe,
So that was just an interesting way to intro it.
There were a few other things I wanted to talk about.
One is actually the executioner Jus, because this is one
(01:32):
of those weird things. There is a write up his
obituary when he died, which I believe was ninety one.
The one that appeared in American in papers in the
US and English language papers abroad, paints an interesting picture
that um I had certainly not considered before I started
researching this, which is that he was publicly known as
the executioner of Paris, and that inherently came with stigma
(01:56):
and it was literally like something that had been in
his family for a long time. And then, uh, and
we'll get into this in a moment. You know, this
was right before World War two, of course, and then
there were some very objectionable instances where he was called
to have to do his job that he did not love.
And he is described by the few people that were
(02:17):
good friends with him as really struggling with this and
knowing that people whispered about him like he was a
monster when he thought he you know again, this was
kind of a family job that he inherited, UM, and
he eventually had problems later in life with misuse of alcohol.
But what's really interesting is that even though people tended
(02:38):
to scorn him and want to keep away from him,
after he died, he was lauded by a lot of
those same people. It's like, you know, this really amazing,
great man, and isn't it incredible that he did this
very difficult and sometimes horrible job with a great deal
of dignity. And it's like this weird dissonance that people
can't manage to find kindness in their hearts for a
(03:00):
person who is alive, but have a very comfortable time
eulogizing him in very kind ways. And it just was
one of those things that, um makes you think about
the way people behave and I even, you know, question
my own behavior and I'm like, am I doing that
thing where I take the easy path? Because that's but UM,
I don't know any executioners that part of it. But
(03:23):
the same kind of thing will come up in life periodically. UM.
It was just an interesting story. And he, you know,
is a person who bore a lot of moral burden
for an entire country essentially, and doesn't get talked about
very often, so I wanted to make sure we at
least mentioned him. I just mentioned that this was happening
right before World War Two, which we mentioned in the podcast,
(03:45):
But I think that helps give a little bit of
uh an informative lens on why this was a case
that was globally fixated on. It was like, it's kind
of like we talked about poverty voyeurism when we were
talking about the Stork Derby and Millar's will, and it's
(04:07):
kind of the same. I think this is a horrible,
terrible thing at a time when the whole globe is
recognizing that it is on the precipice of horrible terrible things.
But this is is tiny and something that people could
process and be like, no, but it was terrible. But
he is caught, and he is in prison, and they're
(04:27):
putting more guards on it in case he gets out,
And so I think it just became a way to
focus stress and that unrest and make it about this
thing instead of having to constantly be under the strain
and cloud of the impending global conflict. And then the
(04:56):
last thing I want to talk about is the press
because as voyeurism, Um, you know, we mentioned that the
French government was very angry that all of these things
had been photographed and and taken out and what was
really interesting and I didn't ever find any commentary on it,
(05:17):
but like, there is a Life magazine article that I
found from the nineties that is full of the most
graphic images of like the bodies being exhumed of and
I don't know how they got all of the police
photographs of when they were examining his house, and like
(05:39):
just photo after photo after photos. It's like a basically
a picture book of the whole thing as it played out,
which is very horrifying. In addition to all of this,
you could, if you wanted to right now, go look
at a video of this guillotine name, because someone filmed
it and it is all over online, um, which is
(06:03):
very weird to me and troubling. Um especially I didn't know.
I knew about the video because it had come up
when we did the Christopher Lee episode, which, as I
had mentioned before, he was also at this guillotining. Uh,
he was a teenager at the time. I think he
was seventeen, and so I had known the video existed
(06:25):
because of when I was doing that research, and in
one of the articles I had read, it was there
was like an in bed. And I have not watched
this video. I don't feel like I need to, um,
but I had not read that statement from the French
cabinet about being upset that there was so much coverage
and candid photographs. And I'm like, I can't imagine what
(06:49):
happened when they discovered that someone had filmed it and
then scared that film around. I have no idea how
anybody officially in any government feels about it now, but
it's sure is easy to find if you have a
taste for such things. It's very weird. Yeah I did that.
So I have some go to places that I look
(07:11):
for imagery to go on our social media or whatever. Uh,
And interestingly none of them had photos of this particular
Like I would not have chosen of gruesome beheading picture,
but it had there been a crowd, like a shot
of the crowd or the guillotine being set up or
(07:32):
something like that like that I probably would have been
comfortable with. But just like the places that I normally
go to to look for pictures. None of them seemed
to have anything, and I was like, that's weird, and
I guess it's just that the pictures have not made
it to any of those particular sources. Yeah, there are.
It's it becomes really interesting. There are lots of photographs
(07:53):
of for example, and you know, photographs of her later
in her career, but all of them that I saw
that I stumbled across mentioned where it's like in the caption,
it's like, here's Renee d in her office in nineteen
so thirty years later, and they're like, she was one
of the defense attorneys in the vin case, and it's like,
(08:15):
thirty years later, that is still the thing she is
most well known for, which is kind of fascinating. Um. Yeah,
like invite man, it's so strange that he was in
it for the money and so sloppy about money, you
know what I mean. Like there wasn't ever any sense
that he planned like, oh okay, if we rob this
(08:40):
wealthy person will be set for. It's more like you've
got like, in some cases, just chump change. In some
of them, they weren't carrying much cash and so it's
super weird. There's a disconnect there, which I think is
also part of why he became such a as we
called him a mythic boogeyman to people, right, Like, there's
an aspect of it that none of it makes even
(09:01):
though he was very very smart, really articulate when he
talked about, you know, the things he was willing to
talk about, he could never articulate really what was going on,
and then saying, well, we just wanted the money. I'm
like sometimes like and if you if the money is
(09:22):
what you're after, Like, there are many ways to con
money out of people that don't involve murdering a huge
assortment of different people, which becomes a big speculation. Right.
It's it's pretty widely accepted that gene to Covin was
the first murder he committed, and then you'll read very
sensationalized versions of like and then he had a taste
(09:42):
for it, and it's like, I don't know that that's
the case. He didn't ever indicate that, like he had
a compulsion or an urge, So it's a little it's
still a little strange where he then just started to
adopt that as his functioning criminal mode rather than just robberies,
which he had done his entire life up to that point. Well,
(10:04):
and because the Internet is the place of like taking
the least generous, most reductive read on anything anybody said.
I'm not saying I'm not advocating robbing people for their money, right,
Like somebody's gonna send me an email saying likes to
calm people. That's not No, she's saying, you don't have
to take the most violent course. Yeah, it's it. It
(10:28):
doesn't you know. We were doing it from the for
the money just seems like a questionable defense to me,
when like there's lots of crimes that people could get
money from that aren't murders. Well, and I always have
the very this is probably the most vanilla thought on
it ever. To me. It seems like so much more
work to commit a murder, hide the evidence, worry forever
(10:49):
about getting caught than just like doing a job, like
a regular job job. I'm gonna have a heist, right,
I don't have the energy for that. I'm just gonna
have a hist where nobody gets are and an insurance company.
I'm just gonna have a job. That's fine. I couldn't
(11:12):
live with that kind of stress obviously, So again, sorry
about all the murder, but it is it's a case
that you see sensationalized a lot, and I really didn't
want to pick it apart a little bit to really
look a little bit more at the nuance and how
you know, we didn't even talk about like the French
police being like Americans don't understand how we do things,
(11:32):
and they're acting like we're imbeciles and we were not
bothering and they had the whole like frustration That was
interesting to me. And I completely understand the family feeling
like they had been kind of ignored and not really
um and that Jean's case wasn't taken seriously. Like there
are so many psychological profiles within this that all, I mean,
(11:54):
every one of these people is a person who you know,
comes with the package of hopes and fears and desires
and you know, whatever part of the story they're in
worth considering. We we lose that when we talk about
like the statistics of crimes. I think so anyway, that
was my moment to have a soapbox about the way
(12:16):
criminal behavior is covered, in the way way things are
handled historically when stories are sensationalized. Thank you for hanging
out with us and hanging in through all of this gruesomeness. Um,
if your weekend is what is ahead and that means
time off, I hope that it's really really good and
relaxing and that you can put all these unpleasant thoughts
(12:37):
behind you. Uh. If you have obligations that make this
not really your weekend in terms of time off, I
hope that everything that you have to do goes as
smoothly as it possibly can, and that you have as
good a time doing it as you possibly can, and
that everyone is kind to one another. We will be
right back here tomorrow with a classic, and then on
Monday we will have another episode, which I don't think
(12:59):
is going to be as dark. We'll see stuff you
missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows,
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and Happy Friday. Am Holly
Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Listen. I'm sorry about
all the murder. Um. I'm drawn to very dark stuff
(00:23):
right now. I'm fine. Just in case anyone's worried about
my mental state, I just I don't know's It's been
interesting this one. This story has always been interesting to
me because I will tell you the way I came
across it, which is very strange, Okay, and then um,
and then I'll talk about some of the other things
about it that came up as I have read about
(00:44):
it over the years that I really wanted to touch on.
They didn't all make it into the episode. But the
way I learned about this is because there's an interesting
bit of trivia, and I don't remember where I read it.
During the trial, there was a handwriting expert that was
called in for the case by the court. I do
not know that handwriting expert's name, but I know that
she was yours Saul's granddaughter, which I saw in some
(01:09):
like history trivia thing, which is how I learned about
this um that would have been her granddaughter through her
son Maurice, because her daughter, though she had two children
of her own, they did not survive childhood, I don't believe,
So that was just an interesting way to intro it.
There were a few other things I wanted to talk about.
One is actually the executioner Jus, because this is one
(01:32):
of those weird things. There is a write up his
obituary when he died, which I believe was ninety one.
The one that appeared in American in papers in the
US and English language papers abroad, paints an interesting picture
that um I had certainly not considered before I started
researching this, which is that he was publicly known as
the executioner of Paris, and that inherently came with stigma
(01:56):
and it was literally like something that had been in
his family for a long time. And then, uh, and
we'll get into this in a moment. You know, this
was right before World War two, of course, and then
there were some very objectionable instances where he was called
to have to do his job that he did not love.
And he is described by the few people that were
(02:17):
good friends with him as really struggling with this and
knowing that people whispered about him like he was a
monster when he thought he you know again, this was
kind of a family job that he inherited, UM, and
he eventually had problems later in life with misuse of alcohol.
But what's really interesting is that even though people tended
(02:38):
to scorn him and want to keep away from him,
after he died, he was lauded by a lot of
those same people. It's like, you know, this really amazing,
great man, and isn't it incredible that he did this
very difficult and sometimes horrible job with a great deal
of dignity. And it's like this weird dissonance that people
can't manage to find kindness in their hearts for a
(03:00):
person who is alive, but have a very comfortable time
eulogizing him in very kind ways. And it just was
one of those things that, um makes you think about
the way people behave and I even, you know, question
my own behavior and I'm like, am I doing that
thing where I take the easy path? Because that's but UM,
I don't know any executioners that part of it. But
(03:23):
the same kind of thing will come up in life periodically. UM.
It was just an interesting story. And he, you know,
is a person who bore a lot of moral burden
for an entire country essentially, and doesn't get talked about
very often, so I wanted to make sure we at
least mentioned him. I just mentioned that this was happening
right before World War Two, which we mentioned in the podcast,
(03:45):
But I think that helps give a little bit of
uh an informative lens on why this was a case
that was globally fixated on. It was like, it's kind
of like we talked about poverty voyeurism when we were
talking about the Stork Derby and Millar's will, and it's
(04:07):
kind of the same. I think this is a horrible,
terrible thing at a time when the whole globe is
recognizing that it is on the precipice of horrible terrible things.
But this is is tiny and something that people could
process and be like, no, but it was terrible. But
he is caught, and he is in prison, and they're
(04:27):
putting more guards on it in case he gets out,
And so I think it just became a way to
focus stress and that unrest and make it about this
thing instead of having to constantly be under the strain
and cloud of the impending global conflict. And then the
(04:56):
last thing I want to talk about is the press
because as voyeurism, Um, you know, we mentioned that the
French government was very angry that all of these things
had been photographed and and taken out and what was
really interesting and I didn't ever find any commentary on it,
(05:17):
but like, there is a Life magazine article that I
found from the nineties that is full of the most
graphic images of like the bodies being exhumed of and
I don't know how they got all of the police
photographs of when they were examining his house, and like
(05:39):
just photo after photo after photos. It's like a basically
a picture book of the whole thing as it played out,
which is very horrifying. In addition to all of this,
you could, if you wanted to right now, go look
at a video of this guillotine name, because someone filmed
it and it is all over online, um, which is
(06:03):
very weird to me and troubling. Um especially I didn't know.
I knew about the video because it had come up
when we did the Christopher Lee episode, which, as I
had mentioned before, he was also at this guillotining. Uh,
he was a teenager at the time. I think he
was seventeen, and so I had known the video existed
(06:25):
because of when I was doing that research, and in
one of the articles I had read, it was there
was like an in bed. And I have not watched
this video. I don't feel like I need to, um,
but I had not read that statement from the French
cabinet about being upset that there was so much coverage
and candid photographs. And I'm like, I can't imagine what
(06:49):
happened when they discovered that someone had filmed it and
then scared that film around. I have no idea how
anybody officially in any government feels about it now, but
it's sure is easy to find if you have a
taste for such things. It's very weird. Yeah I did that.
So I have some go to places that I look
(07:11):
for imagery to go on our social media or whatever. Uh,
And interestingly none of them had photos of this particular
Like I would not have chosen of gruesome beheading picture,
but it had there been a crowd, like a shot
of the crowd or the guillotine being set up or
(07:32):
something like that like that I probably would have been
comfortable with. But just like the places that I normally
go to to look for pictures. None of them seemed
to have anything, and I was like, that's weird, and
I guess it's just that the pictures have not made
it to any of those particular sources. Yeah, there are.
It's it becomes really interesting. There are lots of photographs
(07:53):
of for example, and you know, photographs of her later
in her career, but all of them that I saw
that I stumbled across mentioned where it's like in the caption,
it's like, here's Renee d in her office in nineteen
so thirty years later, and they're like, she was one
of the defense attorneys in the vin case, and it's like,
(08:15):
thirty years later, that is still the thing she is
most well known for, which is kind of fascinating. Um. Yeah,
like invite man, it's so strange that he was in
it for the money and so sloppy about money, you
know what I mean. Like there wasn't ever any sense
that he planned like, oh okay, if we rob this
(08:40):
wealthy person will be set for. It's more like you've
got like, in some cases, just chump change. In some
of them, they weren't carrying much cash and so it's
super weird. There's a disconnect there, which I think is
also part of why he became such a as we
called him a mythic boogeyman to people, right, Like, there's
an aspect of it that none of it makes even
(09:01):
though he was very very smart, really articulate when he
talked about, you know, the things he was willing to
talk about, he could never articulate really what was going on,
and then saying, well, we just wanted the money. I'm
like sometimes like and if you if the money is
(09:22):
what you're after, Like, there are many ways to con
money out of people that don't involve murdering a huge
assortment of different people, which becomes a big speculation. Right.
It's it's pretty widely accepted that gene to Covin was
the first murder he committed, and then you'll read very
sensationalized versions of like and then he had a taste
(09:42):
for it, and it's like, I don't know that that's
the case. He didn't ever indicate that, like he had
a compulsion or an urge, So it's a little it's
still a little strange where he then just started to
adopt that as his functioning criminal mode rather than just robberies,
which he had done his entire life up to that point. Well,
(10:04):
and because the Internet is the place of like taking
the least generous, most reductive read on anything anybody said.
I'm not saying I'm not advocating robbing people for their money, right,
Like somebody's gonna send me an email saying likes to
calm people. That's not No, she's saying, you don't have
to take the most violent course. Yeah, it's it. It
(10:28):
doesn't you know. We were doing it from the for
the money just seems like a questionable defense to me,
when like there's lots of crimes that people could get
money from that aren't murders. Well, and I always have
the very this is probably the most vanilla thought on
it ever. To me. It seems like so much more
work to commit a murder, hide the evidence, worry forever
(10:49):
about getting caught than just like doing a job, like
a regular job job. I'm gonna have a heist, right,
I don't have the energy for that. I'm just gonna
have a hist where nobody gets are and an insurance company.
I'm just gonna have a job. That's fine. I couldn't
(11:12):
live with that kind of stress obviously, So again, sorry
about all the murder, but it is it's a case
that you see sensationalized a lot, and I really didn't
want to pick it apart a little bit to really
look a little bit more at the nuance and how
you know, we didn't even talk about like the French
police being like Americans don't understand how we do things,
(11:32):
and they're acting like we're imbeciles and we were not
bothering and they had the whole like frustration That was
interesting to me. And I completely understand the family feeling
like they had been kind of ignored and not really
um and that Jean's case wasn't taken seriously. Like there
are so many psychological profiles within this that all, I mean,
(11:54):
every one of these people is a person who you know,
comes with the package of hopes and fears and desires
and you know, whatever part of the story they're in
worth considering. We we lose that when we talk about
like the statistics of crimes. I think so anyway, that
was my moment to have a soapbox about the way
(12:16):
criminal behavior is covered, in the way way things are
handled historically when stories are sensationalized. Thank you for hanging
out with us and hanging in through all of this gruesomeness. Um,
if your weekend is what is ahead and that means
time off, I hope that it's really really good and
relaxing and that you can put all these unpleasant thoughts
(12:37):
behind you. Uh. If you have obligations that make this
not really your weekend in terms of time off, I
hope that everything that you have to do goes as
smoothly as it possibly can, and that you have as
good a time doing it as you possibly can, and
that everyone is kind to one another. We will be
right back here tomorrow with a classic, and then on
Monday we will have another episode, which I don't think
(12:59):
is going to be as dark. We'll see stuff you
missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows,
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com