The murders committed by the French Papin sisters were so gruesome that they still disturb the French psyche and people still debate what drove the sisters to commit such atrocities.
However, most agree that some sort of combination of the sisters’ terrible childhood, the class divide that made the sisters unjust members of society, and mental issues, are to blame.
There were three Papin sisters, daughters of Clémence and Gustave Papin, and their childhood was horrible.
The eldest was called Emilie, born in 1902, to the delight of her parents. Next come Christine, born in 1905, and she is even less well received in the world, and Léa is the youngest, born in 1911, and her birth horrifies Clémence and Gustave even more.
They were all brutally abused by their parents
horrible parents
Clémence was not considered a suitable mother at all, she suffered from severe depression and Gustave was no better for being a father, as he was a bad alcoholic.
Christine was therefore sent to her paternal sister at birth and led a happy life there for the next seven years, then was sent to an orphanage run by the Catholic Church.
Gustave raped his daughter, Emilie, when she was nine and she told her mother what happened.
But instead of being angry with her husband, Clémence got angry with Emilie, accused her of seducing her father and sent her to the same establishment as Christine.
It can be considered probable that all the sisters had to endure the same treatment from their father. Léa soon followed her sisters to the same orphanage.
As soon as Emilie was old enough, she entered a monastery and it is believed that she remained there for the rest of her life.
Inseparable
Christine and Léa were extremely close, even inseparable. When the asylum turned them away for lack of space, they had to go to their parents’ house, but the house was prone to alcohol, tantrums, depression and straight fights from their parents.
They also regularly learned fists.
Clémence and Gustave left a loveless, even miserable marriage in 1913.
Christine and Léa spent some time in a psychiatric hospital after the divorce.
The girls, on the other hand, had received training in cooking, laundry and cleaning at the orphanage, and as soon as their stay in the psychiatric hospital was over, they began to work as servants for the well-to-do.
In particular, they were looking to be able to work in the same household, because they could not imagine being separated.
Effective but slow
Lea has been described as quiet, aloof and obedient.
Christine was much more outgoing, usually speaking on behalf of both, and was considered the smarter of the sisters. They were at work, but easy going and seemed to have no company but each other.
In 1926, the sisters got a job with a well-established lawyer, René née Lancelin, and his wife Léonie. The couple’s daughter, Geneviève, also grew up there.
The working conditions of ordinary workers like the Papin sisters are nothing extraordinary, 14 hours a day and one or even half a day off per week. The Lancelin house was neither better nor worse than what generally happened in those years.
The sisters were happy. They were allowed to be together, they received enough food, a regular salary and, what was most important, they were released from the orphanage and the parents’ house.
The Papin sisters were extremely hardworking and quiet and did not interact with anyone except each other and family members.
Christine on the left and Léa on the right.
Not a word for seven years
But what was wrong?
Various factors played into the growing tension between the sisters and their employers.
Christine is still traumatized by the abuse she suffered as a child and her actions are often unpredictable. Léa was calmer but followed her sister in everything.
On top of that, Léonie Lancelin mistreated the sisters. She flaunted so to speak everything they did, wanted to pinch them, put them down regularly but pretended that they weren’t there in between.
It happened that she stopped talking to them, so to speak, and only wrote orders. It was the same for his daughter Geneviève.
The master later admitted that he never said a single word to the sisters during the seven years they worked for him.
No one had shown them kindness or treated them well in their entire lives. Not their parents, not the orphanage staff, let alone their employers.
They only had each other and it’s hard to say what happened in their private world, but Christine’s anger and bitterness grew every year.
The day of fate
However, on February 2, 1933, the news fell. That evening, René Lancelin was waiting for his wife and daughter at his brother-in-law’s who had invited them to dinner. They had gone shopping but had promised to be on time for dinner.
The mistake of the Lancelin mothers was to stop at home before going to dinner.
That day, the sisters had been sent to fetch an iron. But the repair hadn’t gone any better than when they plugged it in, they cut off the electricity to the house.
Instead of realizing that a broken appliance had caused the power outage, Leonie lashed out at the sisters in her anger.
The approach was terrifying
Murders
And then Christine exploded. She picked up a large pocket and threw it at Leonie’s head.
When Geneviève tried to come to her mother’s aid, Christine attacked her, pinned her to the ground and gouged out her eyes.
Léa looked at Christine and waited for an order from her sister telling her to do the same with Léonie. So Lea sat down on Leonie and also tore her eyes out.
The mothers were both blind and hurt and could not defend themselves.
The sisters grabbed tools and alternately beat and abused them with hammers, knives and basically anything they found in the house that could hurt them.
The attacks lasted two hours and during this time the mothers died. The Papin sisters literally cut off the mothers’ faces, cut off their chests, genitals and cut off part of their buttocks.
It happened that they were exhausted, went to their room, undressed and went to bed and waited for Rene to come home.
scary approach
Rene decided to go home after dinner and find out where his wife and daughter were.
When he got home, all the windows were completely black and the front door was locked. René called the police and a policeman climbed the wall at the back of the house and from there into the house.
The sight before them was indescribable.
The bodies of the mothers lay on the ground and were, so to speak, unrecognizable. Their eyes were closed and their fingernails had been pulled out by the roots. The floor and the walls were soaked in blood.
The police cautiously made their way to the upper floors of the building.
Upstairs, they found the sisters sitting, dressed in kimonos, on one of the beds, holding each other by the arms.
They immediately confessed to killing the mothers, then removed their blood-soaked clothes, put on kimonos, and washed the murder weapons.
They have already been arrested.
Tried to scratch my eyes
When we got to the jail, Lea was quiet and looked scared, but Christine was out of control and tried to scratch her eyes, so she had to be put in a straitjacket.
She claimed she was solely responsible for the murders, Léa was far from close.
Doctors were brought in to assess the sisters and they were unanimous that both sisters were seriously mentally ill and posed a danger to themselves and others.
The murders attracted enormous attention and despite their brutality there was considerable public sympathy for the sisters. They had been through terrible things in their youth, and many felt that the behavior of the Lancelin couple had been shameful.
If the class division in the country was taken to an extreme and it was high time to pay more attention to the behavior of high class people with their staff, they would be whipped, completely unfairly.
Aware of grief
The sisters were separated during the detention, which was bad for them, and especially for Christine. She almost lost her mind and then the authorities took pity on her and allowed her to meet Léa.
Christine threw herself around her sister’s neck and, according to those who witnessed it, could suggest that their relationship had been sexual in nature.
Nothing will be said about it here.
The trial opened in September 1933 before the courthouse in Le Mans. Access was so great that a police team was needed to control the cheering public.
Christine Papin
The courts had no sympathy for the sisters, and the jury did not believe Christine when she found Léa innocent.
Doctors who testified at trial believed that Christine, who was moderately affluent, had dominated the sisters’ relationship and that Léa’s less affluent personality had almost merged with Christine’s.
It was clarified that mental disorders had been observed in their family and that their father had raped the older sister.
The end
Long story short, Christine and Léa were finally convicted and Christine was sentenced to death. Léa was treated leniently due to her position relative to her intellectually stronger sister, and Léa received a 10-year sentence.
The sisters at trial.
Christine’s death sentence was later commuted to life, as was often the case when women were involved.
In prison, she showed signs of mild insanity and it was obvious how much she missed her sister. She fell into depression and was on the verge of starvation.
She was eventually transferred to a psychiatric hospital in Rennes where she deteriorated and eventually died on May 18, 1937.
Léa was released from prison after serving eight years. She moved to Nantes, lived there with her mother and got hired in a hotel under a false name.
It is believed that Léa died in 1982, but there are still those who deny it.
In a documentary about the sisters made in 2000, it was claimed that Léa was still alive, and many believe she died in 2001.
