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WWII’s French Serial Killer Doctor and Other Forgotten Monsters From History

Khalid Elhassan January 27, 2020 32 min

38. How Does a Violent Psychopath Become a Doctor?

Marcel Petiot might have been violent and certifiably crazy, as multiple psychiatric diagnoses declared him to be, but beneath the nuttiness, he was actually pretty intelligent. After the war, he joined an accelerated educational program, intended to benefit veterans who had spent a significant chunk of their youth in the trenches instead of in university lecture halls.

Petiot ended up completing medical school in eight months, did an internship and residency in a psychiatric hospital of all places, and in 1921, received his medical degree and license. He moved to and opened up a practice in the small town of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, in Burgundy. From the start, Petiot was a sketchy MD. He gained a reputation for supplying illegal drugs – he was himself an addict – and performing illegal abortions. When he was not keeping office hours, Dr. Petiot kept himself occupied with stuff like petty thefts.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.