"Murderous Maids: The Papin Sisters"

the papin sisters did somthing hoorendous ,,,truly horrendous 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Bizarre Podcast. On today's episode,
we're going to be looking into the gruesome murders committed
by two sisters, Christine Pappin and Layer Pappin at the
Lanceln family home in the city of La Marne in France,
were the two sisters had found employment as living maids.
But before we get to the gruesome murders committed by

(00:21):
the Papping sisters, and believe me, they are gruesome, we
need to first go back and look at the family
history of Christine and Laya Pappin. Christine Layer Papping were
the daughters of Gustaf and Clements Pappin. Gustaf and Clements

(00:42):
tied they're not in nineteen oh one, and in nineteen
oh two welcomed into the world the first daughter, Amelia,
Although the world did not quite welcome baby Amelia, as
we will find out a little later, the word rumors
that baby Amelia may not have been Gustaf's daughter. Gustaf
believed Clements was having an affur and Amelia was another
man's child. Gustaf decided to treat baby Amelia as his

(01:05):
own and moved the family away in order to put
an end to the affair, but make no mistake, Gustaf
was not a good man and he was not a
good father, which will become a parent very soon, and
in turn Clements wasn't exactly a very good mother either.
In nineteen oh five, Christine was born, but the normal

(01:26):
happiness and joy that comes with a newborn baby was
somewhat lacking from her parents, who were not exactly nurturing
to the children. In fact, when it comes to parenting,
the maternal and paternal instincts seemed non existent. In fact,
they saw children as an inconvenience, and so it was
decided that baby Christine were better off living with Gustaf's sister,

(01:49):
and when Lea was born in nineteen eleven, she was
added over to her uncle on her mother's side, whilst
the couple's first born, Amelia, remained with her parents. But
when the child turned ten years old, Gustaf, her father,
as far as she was concerned, raped her and shockingly,
her own mother, Clemens, accused Amelia, a ten year old child,

(02:13):
of seducing Gustaf and sent her away to live at
an orphanage. But eventually Clemens and Gustaf's marriage did come
to an end in nineteen thirteen. Shortly after Amelia entered
the orphanage, her sister Christine followed, and in nineteen eighteen,
Amelia decided to enter a convent to become a nun,

(02:34):
and there she stayed for the remainder of her days,
leaving her past behind as best she could. Christine apparently
also showed interest in becoming a nun, but her mother refused.
You see, the mother decided that the two remaining sisters,
Christine and Lea, should actually find work, probably to line
her own pocket. In fact, this was her intentional along

(02:54):
to keep her children in the orphanage until they were
old enough to work, so that she could actually claim
all the money that they went out earning. And I'm
sure you will agree that the mother sounds like a
real class act. Now, Christina actually had a few jobs
here and there as a living maid. She was actually
very good at her job. She was a good cook

(03:15):
and a hard worker. The bond between Christine and Leah
was immensely strong, and they literally needed each other to
be happy, so much so that they didn't feel the
need to actually socialize with anybody else. They stayed away
from all kinds of social events, and they didn't need
anything apart from each other. In a cruel world that

(03:37):
was not exactly kind to them, they found a comfort
to each other that no other person could match, and
I think it's safe to say that it went beyond
a sisterly love. In fact, there may have been a
incestuous relationship between the two sisters and at later details
as we go on will strengthen this theory. Due to

(03:59):
this extreme bond the sisters had with each other, it
was essential that they worked together. They could not bur
to be separated. It was almost like they needed each
other just to stay alive. An exaggeration on my part,
but possibly an accurate assumption of the feelings for each other.
In February nineteen twenty seven, Christine was employed by the

(04:20):
Lancelins as a living maid, not a particular well paid job,
but a living maid would get a accommodation and food
for free. So to actually get a wage, even if
it was not much, and also not have to worry
about rent and food made it a good job to
have in those days. Christine's employer was mischeur Rennie Lancelin,
who was a retired solicitor, and his wife was named

(04:43):
Madame Leoni Lancelin and her daughter, Genevieve Lancelin. They did
also have an older daughter who was married but no
longer lived in the family home. Christine Pappin was a
very good maid and she worked extremely hard. Maybe this
is a reason Leo was also hired to work alongside
her sister in the Lanceoln house after Christine convinced Rennie

(05:04):
Lancelin to employ her. And at first, the sisters had
a very good relationship with their employers, especially Madame Lancelin.
You see, she had actually took care of the sisters.
When she found out that they were sending the wage
to their mother, she put a stop to this immediately.
She stopped the sisters sending their money, and then she
told the sisters to actually call her mother. So it

(05:26):
seems like she'd actually tried to actually take care of
the sisters. She may have actually had their best interests
at heart, and working together was like her dream come true.
It's all that they desired. When together, they did not
really need anyone else in their life. They were more
than happy to just be in each other's company and
for a while, life was good. The sisters worked hard

(05:50):
and did an immaculate job, but like I said, it
was clear that the sisters were close. They were very close,
and they preferred the company. This does not mean that
the sisters were impolite. In fact, in a statement made
after the murders, Missiel Lancellin stated that the girls were
indeed polite, but conversation was basically only about their duties

(06:13):
around the house, and over time conversation between Madame Lancellin
and the sisters became more or less non existent. This
may have been due to the sisters' personalities and the
fact that they were so bound to each other and
hardly let the outside world in. Or maybe it was
the divide in classes between employer and employee. Maybe the

(06:35):
sisters were simply not worthy of conversation from the Lancellns
unless it was to give them instruction or to dish
out complaints of the work not done to a certain standard. Now,
if there was some kind of classified between the family
and the sisters, it would only get worse when Madame
Lancellin was diagnosed with depression and became more and more

(06:56):
hostile against the sisters. Allegedly, this include assaulting the sisters,
including pinching of the skin as punishment, and she would
often go around checking for dust with a white glove
on and if she found it, the Lancelen's sisters would suffer.
On Thursday of the second of February nineteen thirty three,
Madame Lancellin and her daughter Genevieve returned home to find

(07:19):
the house in darkness. This was due to a faulty
iron that Christine had collected from the repair shop and
paid for with her own money, blowing the fuses in
the house. Now, according to Christine, when Madame Lancellin came in,
she was enraged that the house had no power, that
the house was in darkness, and she wouldn't listen to
the explanation of what had actually happened, and she actually

(07:43):
went to attack Christine. Now, when she did this, all
hell broughtloose. What you're about to hear is not going
to be pleasant. Now, according to Christine, Madame Lancellin became
angry and went to attack her, but before she could,
Christine threw herself Genevieve and with her birth fingers tore

(08:03):
out both of her eyes. And at the very same time,
Leah leapt at Madame Lanceln and did the very same thing.
She dug her fingers into the sockets and dug in
deep scooping Madame Lancelln's eyes from a skull. After the
eye gouging was done, Madame Lanslen and Genevieve could not
do much other than squat and lay on the floor blind,

(08:25):
howling in pain. Christine then ran to the kitchen and
grabbed a hammer and a kitchen knife, and then stood
over Madame Lancelin and Genevieve, who were still clutching at
their empty eye sockets and laying on the floor, and
commenced to hit them over the head with the hammer
and stab them repeatedly with the knife. It was truly

(08:47):
a frenzed attack, each taking turns hitting them over the
head with the hammer and slashing the mother and daughter
with the knife, all the while exchanging weapons several times over,
as well as grabbing a pewter jug to bludgeon the
two women. Eventually, Madame Lanceln and a daughter stopped howling,
and the sisters looked upon their two massacred bodies. At

(09:08):
six point thirty pm, Monsieur Lancellin returned home himself. His
wife and daughter were due to have dinner at his
brother in law's house, but they didn't appear. But when
he arrived home, he found he could not get into
the house as it had been bolted from the inside.
After a lot of knocking, he decided something was a
miss and he went to the police station. He returned

(09:29):
with three policemen, two of which entered the house for
a window at the back of the house. As a
police officer walked to the first floor landing, he found
Madame Mancelin and Genevieve on the floor in a bloody mess.
They were simply unrecognizable. The faces had been caved in,
and Madame Lancelln's eyes lay within the folds of her
own scarf that was still wrapped around her neck, and

(09:52):
a kitchen knife lay underneath her body. One of Genevieve's
eyes were found under her body, whilst the other had
found its way upon the stir across the hall, along
with a battered pewter jug. Of course, upon finding the
mother and daughter in a dark, whitet house murdered in
such a way, it did not leave much hope for
the two living maids, who the police feared had met

(10:13):
the same fate somewhere else in the house. The police
searched the house until they came to the lock door
of the sister's bedroom. After knocking and receiving no response,
a locksmith was brought in and as far as everyone
was concerned, they were going to find something quite horrendous
on the other side of this door. As the locksmith
managed to unlock the door, it swung open. Everyone braced

(10:34):
themselves what awaited them inside. What they did find was
the papping sisters naked in bed together, whilst over on
a nearby churl lay a hammer covered in blood, with
her clinging to the head. The sisters confessed straight away
to the killing, but claimed it was in self defense.
The sisters were kept separate whilst awaiting trial, and this

(10:57):
was proving to take its toll on them. Both refused
to eat or drink for a week, and as time passed,
it became clear that the sisters became more unstable every
day that they were apart, especially Christine, whose grief seemed immense,
so much so that Christine actually tried to claw out
her own eyes and was placed into a strait jacket

(11:19):
for her own protection. Due to the fact that the
sisters were not coping with the separation, it was arranged
for them to meet. Upon seeing each other, Christine threw
herself at Leah and immediately started to unbutton her blouse,
begging her to please say yes. This suggested that there
was indeed an incestuous relationship between the two sisters. Whilst

(11:41):
the trial went on, an angry crowd gathered outside the
court demanding the death penalty, whilst inside the sisters looked
like a shell of their former self, disheveled and worn out.
The weight of the murders had become tremendous upon them,
and both of the sisters took an equal amount of
the blame and fessed fully to the murders, although it

(12:03):
was believed that Christine was the instigator, the leader, and
Leo was the weaker willed sister who simply followed suit.
In September nineteen thirty three, the sisters awaited the fate.
The verdict of the case only took four minutes to
be delivered, and the verdict was guilty. Christine would be
executed beheaded by the guillotine in the main square of Lemon,

(12:26):
whilst Leo would receive ten years hard labour. And upon
hearing that Christine faced at the guillotine, Lea appealed against
Christine's sentence, but Christine refused and accepted her fate, although
a year later the sister's sanity was brought into question
and Christine's death sentence was changed to hard labor for life.

(12:49):
Over time, Christine's mental stability worsened, and eventually she was
placed in an asylum, where she died of lung infection
due to self inflicted malnutrition on the eighteenth of May
nineteen thirty seven. Leah was released from prison in nineteen
forty three, and she lived fifteen miles away from La
Mans in a town called Nante's with her mother. Upon

(13:10):
leaving prison, she had a name changed to Marie and
worked as a chambermaid and a cleaner. Lea or Marie
was believed to have died in nineteen eighty two. However,
a French film producer who was working on a film
about the Papping sisters claimed to have found Leah living
in a hospice center in the year two thousand, but

(13:32):
the woman was unable to speak after suffering from a stroke,
and she passed away the following year. In two thousand
and one. It was said by her neighbors that she
was a delightful old lady who trotted around chiefly and
loved looking after children. Whether this old lady was actually
Leah or not remains a mystery. And though we have

(13:53):
it that was a pappin sisters. Quite a horrendous story,
I think you'll agree. Apparently there's not been a murder
case like that ever since, with the eye gouging and
just the just the relentless ferocity of the attack as well. Yeah,
it's definitely one of a kind. Before we end today's episode,
just a quick reminder if you want to contact the show.

(14:15):
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(14:37):
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(14:59):
got for today, So until next time, take care of
yourselves and each other, and I will see you very
very soon. Take care, guys. Bye bye,