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

Khalid Elhassan January 27, 2020 32 min

7. Exposure and Execution

Bluebeard, a fairy tale inspired by the real-life crimes of Gilles de Rais. Wikimedia

As investigators discovered, de Rais routinely lured children from peasant or lower-class families to his castle with gifts, such as candies, toys, or clothing. He initially put them at ease by feeding and pampering them, before leading them to a bedroom, where they were seized by de Rais and his accomplices. As he confessed in his subsequent trial, de Rais got a sadistic kick out of watching their fear, when he explained what was to come. And what was to come was nothing good. Suffice it to say that it involved torture and sodomy, and ended with the child’s murder, usually via decapitation.

The victims and their clothing were then burned in the fireplace, and their ashes dumped in a moat. After de Rais confessed to his crimes, he and he and his accomplices were condemned to death. He was executed on October 26^th, 1440, by burning and hanging, simultaneously. His infamy inspired the fairy tale of Bluebeard, about a wealthy serial-wife killer.

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.