An exhumed corpse provides new evidence against the "Queen of Poisoners" serial killer - May 11, 1949

On this day in 1949, French authorities exhumed the body of Léon Besnard and found telling evidence that he may have been murdered by his wife.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class as a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that uncovers a little bit more about history
every day. I'm Gay Bluesier, and in this episode, we're

(00:20):
looking at the crucial breakthrough that finally brought a string
of brazen murders into the life. The day was May eleven,
nine French authorities exhumed the body of Leone Baynar and

(00:42):
found telling evidence that he may have been murdered by
his wife. A toxicology report revealed Leon's body contained a
high dose of arsenic, an odorless, tasteless poison that had
been a popular choice among killers for centuries. A large
dose of arsenic can kill a person within a few hours,

(01:02):
but since the poison builds up in the body, it's
also possible to kill someone gradually by administering small doses
of arsenic over time. This slow and steady approach often
produces signs of regular illness in the victim, making their
eventual death seem less suspicious. Arsenic poisoning had been notoriously

(01:24):
difficult to detect until the early eighteen thirties, when a
reliable test was finally developed. However, Since gradual poisonings were
still hard to recognize, many arsenic killers got away with
multiple murders before their crimes were discovered. This was the
case with Leone's wife, Marie Josephine Philippine de Vaio, or,

(01:48):
as she would later be known, the Queen of Poisoners.
Marie had been married once before to a cousin, but
he died of tuberculosis in Or, at least we think
it was tuberculosis at any rate, Marie married Leone the
following year, and the couple settled into a modest life together,

(02:10):
one they grew to resent. Not long after the wedding,
the trouble arose when Leone's parents inherited a large sum
of money from his great aunts. It didn't seem right
for an aging couple to live so well while their
children lived in poverty. To correct this imbalance, the Beaynars
invited Leone's parents to move in with them in Loudoun,

(02:33):
a commune in western France. Leone's father died shortly after
the move, allegedly from eating a bad mushroom by mistake.
A few months later, his mother passed away supposedly from pneumonia.
With his parents out of the way, Leone stood to
inherit half of his family's fortune. The other half went

(02:56):
to his sister Lucy. As you can probably s Lucy
wasn't long for this world. She died soon after the
money was divvied up, and though her death was ruled
as suicide, it almost certainly wasn't. Marie and Leone took
possession of Lucy's half of the fortune, but they decided

(03:17):
why stop there. They took in a married couple, the
reves as Borders, and wouldn't you know it, both of
them died suddenly under the Baynar's roof. Their short time
together must have left a strong impression, though, because the
Reves will actually named Marie as the soul beneficiary. Next

(03:38):
up on the chopping block were Pauline and Virginie la Laurent,
a pair of Marie's cousins. Pauline was the first to die,
and her sister followed suit about a week later. As
Marie explained, in both cases, the women had died from
accidentally consuming lie. You'd think that virgin Any would have

(04:00):
exercised a little more caution after what happened to her sister,
but according to Marie, she did not Oh, and to
answer your question, yes, both sisters had named Marie as
their soul heir. By that point, the bey Nars had
inherited a total of six houses, two farms, one in

(04:21):
and a cafe. Now fabulously wealthy, Leone took the head
of the town post office as his mistress. He even
invited her to move in with him and his wife.
Perhaps in retaliation, Marie took a lover herself, one who
was supposedly thirty years younger than she was. Leone objected

(04:41):
to the arrangement, and it wasn't long after that he
became violently ill and dropped dead over lunch. The town
doctors ruled that his death was due to uremia, a
deadly condition that occurs in the final stage of chronic
kidney disease. That explanation satisfied the local police, but the

(05:01):
local gossips of Ludon, France, had a theory of their own.
For years, they had whispered about the so called Beynar
family jinks, but as they watched nearly all of Marie's
family members die strange and untimely deaths, they eventually realized
there was more than just bad luck at play. With

(05:21):
the death of Leon in ninety seven, Marie inherited all
of the couple's accumulated wealth, seemingly confirming the neighbor's suspicion
that she had been the mastermind behind all the mysterious
deaths all along. Still, despite all the rumors of poisoning,
authorities didn't look at Marie as a suspect until fifteen

(05:43):
months after the death of her husband, when her own
seventy eight year old mother died under suspicious circumstances. Soon after,
on the morning of May eleventh, ninety nine, the body
of Leon Beynar was exhumed and traces of arsenic were
discovered in his body. Two months later, fifty two year
old widow Marie Baynar was taken into custody and charged

(06:07):
with the murder of thirteen people. That's all of the
ones I've mentioned so far, along with her own father,
her great aunt, and her grandmother in law. The state
spent nearly three years building its case against the Queen
of poisoners. They interviewed townspeople, including Leone's mistress, who revealed

(06:28):
that he had suspected his wife might try to kill
him and asked that an autopsy be performed. In the
event of his death. In the end, the bodies of
all thirteen of Marie's alleged victims were exhumed and examined.
Each of them had two things in common. They had
all named Marie Beynar and their wills, and they all

(06:49):
contained traces of arsenic. The evidence was strong enough to
take Marie to trial three different times, in fact, over
the course of a decade, but ultimately it wasn't enough
to convict her. Toxicology was still a relatively new science
at the time, and the methods behind it left some
room for doubt. This uncertainty led to two mistrials and

(07:12):
eventually to an acquittal. It was pointed out during the
third trial that some of the bodies exhumed had been
buried for a decade or longer and had contained only
faint traces of arsenic. It was possible, then, the defense
argued that arsenic could have entered their bodies through the
soil of their grave sites. After all, witnesses testified that

(07:34):
potatoes had been grown near the Ludon cemetery, and some
of the fertilizers used were known to contain arsenic. Scientists
were forced to admit the possibility and as a result,
the jury took less than three and a half hours
to acquit Marie. On December twelfth, nine, after twelve years

(07:55):
of litigation, Marie Beynar was cleared of all charges and released.
By most people's reckoning, she had gotten away with thirteen murders,
though it's possible the number could have been even higher.
If you're expecting a third act twist or maybe some
kind of late stage come up ince for the killer,

(08:16):
this isn't the story you're looking for. Marie Beynar was
a free woman when she died of natural causes in
nineteen eighty at the age of eighty four. There's no
clear cut takeaway for a case like this, though one
despondent states attorney did consider it a compelling argument for
cremation over burial. True, that would make it harder to

(08:39):
determine if you'd been killed by poison, but at least
you could be certain that you wouldn't be hauled out
of the ground for nothing. That's small comfort, but in
the case of the Queen of poisoners, that's the best
you're going to get. I'm Gabe Louzier, and hopefully you
now know a little more about History today and you

(09:00):
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Thanks as always the Chandler Mays for producing the show,

(09:22):
and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back
here again tomorrow for another day in History class.