Hello and welcome to Serial Killing, a podcast where we also venture off the serial killer path to delve into other true crime topics within our beloved community. I of course want to give a special thanks to some of my patrons. Sophie, Nanette, Emily, Gabrielle, two Emmas, Galen, Cassandra, David, Teresa, Sarah, my girl Judy, and a user that goes by the name of Wannabe Sleuth. Thank you guys so much.
Now this podcast is going to be about two sisters from France, Christine and Lea Papin. Now I am not French, and I think the one year of French that I took in high school does not qualify me as being any kind of expert, so I'm going to mispronounce things, and I apologize for that in advance. So Christine was born on March 8, 1905, and Lea on September 15, 1911, both in Pays de la Loire, France, so let's get into some history in that time frame. Starting with 1905 in St.
Petersburg, Russia, a large demonstration of workers marched to the Winter Palace with a petition to the Tsar. Troops fire on protesters in what becomes known as Bloody Sunday. Albert Einstein finished his scientific paper detailing his quantum theory of light, one of the foundations of modern physics. A Japanese fleet destroyed the Russian East Sea fleet in the Battle of Tsushima, the only decisive clash between modern steel battleships in history.
U.S. Secretary of War William Howard Taft made a secret agreement with the Japanese Prime Minister Katsura agreeing to Japanese free reign in Korea in return for non-interference with the U.S. in the Philippines. The physics journal Annalen der Physik publishes Albert Einstein's paper, quote, Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?
Unquote, introducing the equation E equals MC squared. Christian Dior, Howard Hughes, and Joan Crawford were also all born in 1905. Now as for 1911, American explorer Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. The famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, the Mona Lisa, was stolen from the Louvre by Vincenzo Perugia, recovered though, in 1913.
The first aerial reconnaissance missions is flown by an Italian pilot over Turkish lines during the Italo-Turkish War. Norwegian Roald Amundsen's expedition is the first to reach the South Pole. Some other famous people born on this year were Ginger Rogers, Jack Ruby, Ronald Reagan, and Lucille Ball, all in 1911. And so this was the atmosphere that the sisters were born into.
So Christine and Lea's parents were Gustave Papin and Clémence Déer. Gustave was born in France in 1875 and was described as a pretty severe alcoholic with a violent temper. Clémence was, quote, considered to be of low morals and unsuited for motherhood, unquote. She suffered with depression and some other mental illness, though I wasn't able to find exactly what those others might have been.
It was rumored that while she was dating Gustave, she was also having an affair with her boss. In 1901, she discovered she was pregnant and there was definitely some question as to who the father might be. But Gustave married her out of social obligation, as they used to say. And then Gustave wanted to move away from that area to a new city to get away from the rumors.
But Clémence would not hear of it, stating she would rather take her own life. Their first daughter, Amelia, was born in 1902. But at some point, Gustave was able to get his wife and baby to move from where Amelia was born to a new town in 1905. Christine was then born.
Not long after she was born, she was then given to Gustave's sister and brother-in-law to take care of because the environment in that house was so very toxic and Clémence was so deeply and severely depressed, she just truly was not able to focus on taking care of an infant. And so in the care of her aunt and uncle is where Christine stayed happily until she was seven years old. Now, Lea, of course, was born in 1911 when Amelia was nine years old and Christine was six. Lea, much like Christine, was handed over to yet another family member to raise, but this time to Clémence's brother to raise.
And she reportedly lived with him until he died. During all of this time, Gustave's drinking and physical violence was aimed at his wife and his young daughter, Amelia. Now, it is heavily speculated that when Amelia was around 10 years old, Clémence discovered that Gustave had been forcefully sexually assaulting their eldest daughter for some time. So she sent Amelia to live at the Bon Pasteur Catholic orphanage.
Not long after, Christine was sent to the same orphanage and was united with Amelia. Lea also came to the orphanage not long after her uncle died. At the same time, Clémence filed for divorce, but she also blamed young Amelia for seducing her own father, which was, of course, absurd. And so this orphanage didn't really have a great reputation, as it turns out.
It was known for taking in, quote, disgraced women and girls, unquote, but it also was described as cold and loveless, and it doled out extremely harsh punishments for even the smallest of infractions. But nonetheless, the girls actually did quite well in that environment, all things considered. Now, it is said that their mother had planned on them living at the orphanage until they were old enough to be employed, barely, if you will. And then she intended on bringing them back to live with where they would immediately begin to work and planned on them being live-in maids.
So when Clémence discovered that Amelia had decided to become a nun and had already taken her vows and was joining the convent, Clémence flew into a rage. But really, from this point on, Amelia all but severed completely her ties with her family and probably a good thing. Now, Christine, too, felt the call to join a convent once she had become old enough to do so, but Clémence would have no part of that. She removed Christine from the orphanage, and though she was barely an adolescent at this time, her mother placed her in the home of a middle-class family to be a maid.
And with the life and duties that she had grown accustomed to in the orphanage, she actually fit in beautifully. The household were quite happy with Christine's work, but Clémence was unsatisfied with the amount of pay and wound up removing her from several employers' homes. Lea, once she was barely of age, was then also removed from the orphanage by her mother to be put to work as domestic help. Now, Lea and Christine, though they had not actually been raised together in their early childhood, would cross paths as they performed their duties and ran errands, and they found out that they wholly enjoyed each other's company, even requesting to work together at any time the opportunity presented itself.
In turn, the sisters became inseparable. Now, keep in mind, France had suffered some pretty heavy losses during World War I. It is reported that around 1.3 million people died and another 3 million were wounded, and their economy didn't fare well either, and they too struggled terribly to recover from the war. And that was really basically their entire childhood, so let's get started.
Now, both girls were clearly born in a very negative situation. Their mother suffered from severe depression and some, quote, other mental illnesses, though we don't know what those were. It was said in several sources that she had no maternal instinct, which seems pretty evident in her care for her daughters, which was basically none. She did keep the eldest daughter, Amelia, home and care for her, though the thoroughness of care would be highly debatable.
Christine and Lea were given away to family in infancy. Now, their father was a pretty bad alcoholic who would get violent and physically assault his wife, and it seemed, at least to me, pretty clear that Clémence was never in love with her husband to begin with. Now, since the girls went to family members who, as far as we know, were loving and cared for them at least adequately, might not have suffered from some of the attachment disorders and other issues that we would see in some children who do not get the opportunity to bond with their caregivers. This would most likely actually be an advantage to the girls over being with their own parents.
And it also appears to be a positive thing for Christine and Lea to be out of the home because it did come to light that their father was assaulting Amelia, and thankfully they were able to escape that as well. And though the orphanage was described as extremely strict, regimented, and harsh, all three girls really seemed to flourish in that environment. Now, their mother predictably, after Amelia joined the convent, removed both girls from the orphanage and put them to work straight away to go make her money. But again, the girls took to their ever-changing circumstances surprisingly well.
So while we are used to studying murderers who either had horrible childhoods that contributed to their later actions or idyllic childhoods that then confuses us as to why they turned out the way they did, this is kind of a unique story. Yes, the circumstances in their parental home were not positive at all. Their father was clearly unacceptable and their mother really didn't present much better. But Christine and Lea were never really there.
They were cared for by other family members, so this presents kind of a new situation for us. But let's continue. So Christine was described as a good and hard worker and also a great cook, but her employers did comment on the fact that she would, at times, be insubordinate, push back at Yes. So even though they had ample time off, they rarely left the house other than on Sundays to go to church or to go to the local farmer's market.
But they did on occasion visit a fortune teller. Now, this is where things kind of get interesting. The fortune teller told Christine and Lea that in a previous life they had been bound together as husband and wife, and this is why they were so closely bonded. Their relationship did spark a little bit of gossip over the years, of course, because they were so obviously close, and some even described them as cold and distant to people outside of the home that they worked in.
And it didn't help that neither one seemed to be at all interested in meeting potential husbands, which for the time was pretty common. They were often turning down invitations to dances and so on. But the family that they worked for adored them, and it was said that the wife became sort of a mother figure of sorts to the girls. They loved the wife dearly and called her Maman and referred to their own birth mother as just, quote, that woman, unquote.
You see, they had been sending their wages back to Clemence for years, and the wife finally told them to stop sending their mother their money. The wife even went so far as to write a letter to their mother, effectively, in so many words, telling her to fuck off and leave the girls alone. Now, how Clemence reacted to that letter, I couldn't find, but I can't imagine it was positive. So in 1932, about six years into their employment with that family, the wife, Leonay, started showing signs and symptoms of mental illness.
Now, sources say that it was depression, but I have my doubts that it was that simple. But regardless, her whole demeanor changed drastically. A once happy and jovial socialite who treated the now 27-year-old Christine and 21-year-old Lea nearly as her own daughters began to get verbally abusive. The verbal abuse evolved into physical abuse.
She began scrutinizing every single thing that the girls did. She began to have these fits of rage and would scream at the girls about how they were performing their duties, which were completely fine up to this point. The wife also began doing these kind of, quote, white glove tests, which, side note, I actually use that term a lot because I like my house pretty pristine. And if the wife found even one small speck of dust, apparently she would physically pinch the girls and scold them harshly.
Then it escalated to her slapping them if something as insignificant as a button on their blouse not being just right. It then grew to her waking the girls up in the middle of the night and demanding they go downstairs and scrub the floors over and over on hands and knees just to then dump trash on it and make them start all over again. This abuse got so bad that Leonay even started slamming their heads into walls if she felt that they did something that wasn't quite to her specifications. So one night as the girls were in their beds after a long and taxing day, Lea announced that she was done putting up with the abuse and from that moment on she would be fighting back.
That she intended on defending herself. And really, who can blame her? So guys, keep in mind that this abuse had been going on for about a year. So in February of 1933, on a cold, dreary, and rainy day, Leonay took her daughter Genevieve to go clothes shopping for a dinner party that they had planned to go to later that evening at another residence.
The father did what he always does. He went into the office, his normal routine, and then it was planned that once he was finished he would go straight to the dinner party. So, after shopping, mother and daughter came back home and realized that the house was completely dark. The sisters explained that there was a power outage in the house.
Now, I found two different explanations for this power outage. One source said that Lea told the madam that Christine had urinated in an electrical socket and another said that it was due to a faulty iron that Christine had left plugged in. I'd wager that the second story is the correct one, but regardless, Leonay flew into her normal fit of rage, as the sisters had been prepared for, and began hitting and slapping both of them on the first floor landing. She was hitting them full on in the face, ripping at their hair, and as she did so, Christine reportedly picked up a pewter jug and bashed Leonay over the head with it and then supposedly yelled, quote, I'm going to massacre them, unquote.
Then Christine threw herself at Genevieve and proceeded to literally gouge her eyeballs out. Yes, my friends. And as Christine was working Genevieve over, she told Lea to do the same to the madam. Then Christine jumped up, went downstairs and into the kitchen where she grabbed a knife and a hammer.
She then made her way back upstairs. Both sisters, using the knife, the hammer, the pewter jug, what have you, continued to physically assault the two women. And the crime scene photos are actually quite brutal, looking a bit like what was left over in Lizzie Borden's father's living room. Experts determined the attack to have lasted about two hours.
Their heads were completely bashed in. They had cut and mutilated their bodies all over. Then the sisters set out to prepare the bodies for cooking. Christine would later say that they followed a recipe for a rabbit dish from a 1901 cookbook.
Now, folks, this next part requires a huge disclaimer, disclaimer, okay? Skip a few seconds ahead if you're squeamish. The sisters butchered the women, disemboweled them, and proceeded to mutilate their genitals. It would also seem that Genevieve was on her monthly cycle, so the sisters collected the blood and smeared it all over both of the victims.
They cleaned up around the house when they were done, save the bodies, of course, and began their nightly routine as if they were preparing to go to bed like any other night. So the husband came home and found the front door to be locked, which was kind of odd, and he was confused, but he thought perhaps his wife and his daughter had already left the house to go to the dinner party, so he went on to meet them there. But once he arrived, he saw that in fact they were not there, and he became worried. He asked a friend to accompany him, and together they went back to the house to see if the women were there.
Now you have to understand that at this point it's pitch black dark night outside. They saw that the house was also pitch black other than a single candle that was lit in the sisters' shared bedroom upstairs. So they backed away without unlocking or opening the door, and they went straight to the nearest police station, bringing a policeman back with them. The officer entered the house through the backyard and used his flashlight to look around.
According to the website wesawthedevil.com, the light settled on a single eyeball that was lying on the ground in a pool of blood. The policemen then finally discovered the beaten and mutilated women's bodies. The madam's eyes were found around her neck, nestled inside of her scarf. Now the policemen believed that the sisters might have suffered the same fate, so they of course went upstairs to check on them.
The policemen found the door to be locked, but could hear them whispering to each other from behind it. He knocked on the door several times, but the girls would not answer. Finally, the door was unlocked, and inside they found Christine and Lea in bed together, naked, holding each other, and softly kissing one another. Now inside the room, they found the blood and brain covered hammer, knife, and so on.
Now the sisters never actually denied that they had murdered the two women, but insisted that they had killed them in self-defense, though I think the post-mortem would have obviously proved otherwise. They were then taken down to the prison and separated. It was reported that they both cried terribly for each other, and Christine became so upset and suicidal that she even tried gouging her own eyes out. She also became violent toward the guards, suffered horrific hallucinations, she refused to eat, and they were forced to put her in a straitjacket to keep her from hurting herself.
And on the couple of occasions the sisters were allowed to be near each other, they would passionately kiss each other, and Christine would desperately try to remove Lea's clothing. Now reports of this, of course, came out and Christine was labeled, quote, the masculine one, unquote, and Lea the mistress. And then after all of this, the girls were actually found sane and the case went to trial where they were both found guilty of murder. Christine was sentenced to death by guillotine in the public square in the fall of 1933.
Lea was just considered an accomplice and was given 10 years of hard labor. But then the president changed Christine's sentence to life imprisonment in an asylum. She went on another hunger strike and this time she successfully killed herself from it in 1937. Four years later, the now 30-year-old Lea was released on good behavior in 1941.
She went to live with her mother and as far as anyone knows, she lived a quiet life there after changing her name, working as a maid in people's homes. Now in the year 2000, someone claimed that Lea was living in a hospice center after suffering a stroke and was paralyzed and unable to talk. This woman passed away in 2001 and while it is speculated heavily, it's not certain that the woman was actually Lea or not. So guys, what do you make of this story?
To be honest, it has actually left me feeling a bit out of my