The last public execution by guillotine in Paris 1939

The last public execution by guillotine in Paris 1939

Eugene Weidmann became the last person to lose his head in public. He was executed for several kidnappings and murders.

One person to witness this execution was the famous actor Christopher Lee(may he rest in peace) when he was just seventeen years old.

This wasn't the last execution by this old device, it was used in non-public executions into the 70s.

Here is the story 

Eugen Weidmann (5 February 1908 – 17 June 1939) was a German criminal and serial killer who was executed by guillotine in France in June 1939, the last public execution in France.

Their first kidnapping attempt ended in failure because their victim struggled too hard, forcing them to let him go. In July 1937, they made a second attempt, Weidmann having made the acquaintance of Jean De Koven, a 22-year-old New York City dancer visiting her aunt Ida Sackheim in Paris. Impressed by the tall, handsome German, De Koven wrote to a friend: "I have just met a charming German of keen intelligence who calls himself Siegfried.

Perhaps I am going to another Wagnerian role – who knows? I am going to visit him tomorrow at his villa in a beautiful place near a famous mansion that Napoleon gave Josephine." During their meeting they smoked, and "Siegfried" gave her a glass of milk. De Koven took photos of Weidmann with her new camera (later found beside her body; the developed film showing her killer). Weidmann then strangled and buried her in the villa's garden. She had 300 francs in cash and $430 in traveler's cheques, which the group sent Million's mistress, Colette Tricot, to cash. Sackheim received a letter demanding $500 for the return of her niece. De Koven's brother Henry later came to France offering a 10,000-franc reward from his father, Abraham, for information about the young woman.

On 1 September that year, Weidmann hired a chauffeur named Joseph Couffy to drive him to the French Riviera where, in a forest outside Tours, he shot Couffy in the back of his neck and stole his car and 2,500 francs. The next murder came on 3 September, after Weidmann and Million lured Janine Keller, a private nurse, into a cave in the forest of Fontainebleau with a job offer.

There he killed her, again with a bullet to the back of her neck, before robbing her of 1,400 francs and her diamond ring. On 16 October, Million and Weidmann arranged a meeting with a young theatrical producer named Roger LeBlond, promising to invest money in one of his shows. Instead, Weidmann shot him in the back of his head and took his wallet containing 5,000 francs.

On 22 November, Weidmann murdered and robbed Fritz Frommer, a young German he had met in jail. Frommer, a Jew, had been held there for his anti-Nazi views. Once again, the victim was shot in the back of his neck. His body was buried in the basement of the Saint-Cloud house where De Koven was interred. Five days later, Weidmann committed his final murder. Raymond Lesobre, a real estate agent, was shot in the killer's preferred fashion while showing him around a house in Saint-Cloud. Five thousand francs were taken from him.

On 17 June 1939, Weidmann was beheaded outside the prison Saint-Pierre in Versailles. The "hysterical behavior" by spectators was so scandalous that French President Albert Lebrun immediately banned all future public executions. (Executions by guillotine continued out of public view until the last such execution, of Hamida Djandoubi on 10 September 1977.)

Christopher Lee, who was then seventeen years old, witnessed the event. Nearly half a century later, he portrayed headsman Charles-Henri Sanson in a 1989 French TV drama about the French Revolution, in which his character made prolific use of the device

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