Bittersweet Infamy - #11 - Jeanne Weber

Episode Date: March 21, 2021

Taylor tells Josie about the French serial killer known as "The Ogress." Plus: an update on Ashley Judd's bonobo-watching injury.

Hello, and welcome to Bittersweet Infamy, the podcast about infamous people, places, and things. I'm Josie Mitchell. I'm Taylor Basso. My friend Taylor is going to tell me a story. I don't know what it will be about, but the only rule? The subject matter must be infamous. Hey Taylor.

Hi Josie. How you been doing? I've been doing okay, a bit depressed, but I think it's that second, that pandemic, second wave, getting me a bit. I think that, you know, ups and downs, they are what they are. I think knocking at the anniversary is a little hard. It doesn't feel like it's been a year, and yet it feels like it's been so much longer also. It's been 40 years.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. We're all kind of an old lady at the end of Titanic mode here. Yeah. Don't even remember what Leonardo DiCaprio looked like at this point. Right. But I loved him. Well, this might make you feel better. Did you hear that Ashley Judd fractured, shattered her leg in the conco?

Friend of the podcast, Ashley Judd. I know. Sweet, sweet baby, Ashley J. Yeah, I did hear that. You sent me the article. This always seems to happen on these things. I know. Yeah, so Ashley Judd was in the middle of the Congolese jungle, and she shattered her tibia.

I don't know how did she... I think she fell off a root or something, right? You gotta look out for those roots. They'll jump right out at you. Oh, they're huge. They're massive. Yeah, I mean, apparently, so she went 55 hours to... At some point, she slept on the floor of a hut.

They had to air evacuate her, and that lasted hours and hours and hours. And now, I guess, she's in recovery. She was taken to South Africa, so she was... That's quite far away from New Jersey. Yeah, so she was taken via helicopter or airplane? Right. Her reason for being in this jungle, though, was that she's really into bonobos. Yeah.

And was spotting them? Like, what was she doing in there, vis-a-vis bonobos? Bonobos? I don't know. I'm not too sure. I think she must have been doing some research, or not research, but doing like... She had beakers and test tubes, and she was pouring red liquid into blue liquid. A lot of beakers in the jungle.

No, I think she was... You know who has the biggest beaker in the jungle? The chicken? Yay! That was good. I like that. Yeah, Nesa. Yeah.

No, I think she is just being like a celebrity persona for bonobos, for letting them know. Did you know that January Jones is the celebrity shark activist? Really? Yeah, she's big into shark activism. I saw a video of her where she was subtitled... It was January Jones, and then the subtitle was Shark Activist. Huh. And she's really into like...

Maybe because Betty Draper is so misunderstood, and people can't get beyond the exterior. Yeah. She seems to feel similarly about sharks. Huh. Yeah. When your art changes you, you know? When your art changes you. Yeah.

I wish Ashley Jett all kinds of a speedy recovery. I know. And I, you know, of all the cast members of Double Jeopardy, I didn't anticipate that she would be the one who shattered her to be a studying bonobos. No. But here we are. The cards, yeah. Yeah.

And she seems to be pretty upfront about the fact that she was deep, deep in the jungle, and then got airlifted out, got taken care of by all these people. So, she seems very aware of the privilege she has in that situation. For sure. And as you'd have to. Yeah. As you'd have to. And I saw her say something in one of her statements about like, you know, advocating for the kind

of indigenous folks, the Congolese indigenous folks and stuff like that. And I'm like, you know what? If you have to, if you have to shatter a tibia as a white lady in Africa, I think that's a respectful way to do it. This podcast, man. Sentences you never thought you'd have to say. She says that she may have been in a situation where she would have lost her leg. It sounds like she was laid out there for a while.

Yeah. It sounds like it was like not, we're sitting over here laughing about it because she lived, but fucking, it sounds like it was a pretty unenviable situation. Yeah. Yeah. Be pretty gnarly. Ashley J. Ashley J.

Taylor. Yes. I believe it was, hold on to my chones. Yeah. So. So. I'm ready. Okay.

I'm holding tight. This might be the most bizarre story that I've covered. I don't, you really, you tell me at the end whether you agree with that. Okay. Um, I went a little old school. Oh. So I want you to hop in your time machine. Done.

You just had that. It's not, it's not on the grid. Hey. Myself sufficient. Myself sustainable. Generator. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, uh, we are going back over a hundred years. Oh, historical. Yes. Old, old timey. Okay. Uh, I'm going to tell you a little bit about a woman named Jean Webert. Webert. So it's J E A N N E space W E B E R.

So Jean Weber. Jean Weber. Jean Weber. Jean Weber. Jean Weber. Jean Weber. Jean Weber. Jean Weber.

Uh, this story is a bit of a past story of mine. I don't even remember how I came across it initially. I find that it's a bit of a hidden gem and I, I'm often the one who is telling people this story for the first time and they're like, what the fuck was that? So, so this story, uh, as I said, it takes place over a century in the past. Sources are sparse and often conflicting. Okay. Um, where possible I will know where the sources contradict each other, but know that my method

of choosing which source that I put to you is to choose the most, um, outrageous version. Oh good. Good. That's what I'm hoping for. I've cherry-picked the most dramatic potential lies, uh, in this situation. Good. So. Good.

Uh, Jean-Marie Mouliné, uh, is born on October 7th, 1874. In. October 7th is my brother and my sister's birthday. Not twins. Feel like the story then. Uh, in a small fishing village in the north of France called Carite. Okay. Carite?

Carite, yeah. Um, just to, uh, obviously underscore what you surely already realized, I am not a French extraction and I will do my best. Um. I couldn't tell. There you go. Uh, the family is poor and there's barely enough to go around, uh, too many mouths to feed, so when she's a teenager, she goes to Paris with 25 francs in her pocket.

She becomes a nanny for a wealthy family and while in Paris, she meets a coachman named Jean Webert, like J-E-A-N. Okay. Okay. This, this will become confusing. Good. So ever, listen. Uh, they strike up a romance.

She falls pregnant. Falls pregnant. I like that. I deliberately used that verbiage and as I used it, I thought, ha, ha, I love the term falls pregnant. So I'm glad you caught that. Whoopsie. You used that fall and stand up and you're like, oh god damn it, pregnant.

You know, it's, it's like falling in love. Oh. But pregnant. Whoopsie. Yeah. Different. Okay. Cool.

Keep going. Uh, so the two of them get married. They're both 20 at the time. Um, she takes on his name and so she too becomes Jean Webert. Um, and I will try it, confusing. In instances going forward, I will try to distinguish between the two as best I can. Okay. So boy Jean has three brothers, um, and they all have wives and so Lady Jean, the new wife

is quickly accepted into the family and she forms a close relationship with her siblings in law and eventually she gives birth to a son, Marcel in 1894. Okay. Marcel. Good. Marcel. Yes. Not Jean, Marcel.

Yeah. Marcel is in this story named Marcel by the way. Oh god. Yeah. Well, more than Jean's even. Um, unfortunately tragedy strikes. Uh, Marcel dies of unknown causes in January 1895. So he's just a wee babe.

He's just a one. He was like three months old or something. Oh god. Um, undeterred Jean becomes pregnant again. Falls pregnant again? You're right. That's my oversight. Please forgive me.

Uh, she gives birth to another son. Also named Marcel. That's weird. Yeah. Uh, both my grandfathers, same thing. Um, she gives birth to him in 1898. Wait, I'm sorry. Both your grandfathers were named after the sibling who preceded them who then passed away.

They had died. Yes. Oh. Um, later in 1900, she gives birth to a daughter named Juliet. Uh huh. Um, tragedy strikes again. No. Uh, in 1901, at a little over a year old, Juliet dies.

Uh, death is, death is attributed to pneumonia. So impacted by the deaths of their children, both Jean's Jean Webert and Jean Webert, um, are drinking heavily. And Jean, the wife in particular, has become really withdrawn and stoic. Um, and by 1902, she starts taking on little childcare jobs, watching local children. She still has, she still has the one son, Marcel. Uh huh. In 1902, one of these jobs that she took on takes a turn when tragedy strikes.

Um, Jean is taking care of a little girl named Lucy, who's the daughter of a widower named Alphonse Alexandre. Um, Alphonse returns home one day to find Lucy taken by a mysterious illness. Oh, shiitake. And at 4pm on Christmas Day. No. Lucy dies. Once again, the diagnosis is acute pneumonia.

Hmm. In 1903, Jean takes on a job watching over the children of the Poyata family, who are dairy farmers. And Josie. As, as you would be. Tragedy strikes. No. All the cows have pneumonia. All the cows seem to have come down with mysterious pneumonia.

Um, at some point she's left alone with three-year-old daughter, Marcel Poyata. The family returns to find Jean clutching Marcel's lifeless body in her arms. The cause of death. Yet again. Pneumonia? Cow pneumonia? Pneumonia, yes. Holy fuck.

That was a good dab. Thank you. I'm glad you dabbed that. I will dab all over these hoses as much as I would like. Um, I was literally talking about the death of a child. I should rein it in. Um, so a few days later Jean returns to the Poyata farm. And she tries to take a little Jacques, the four-year-old brother of Marcel, out with her.

Just around. Erin, you know, gets some fresh air or whatever. She's working for the, for this family, right? Or she a friend or... She was, she, they were paying her to look after their kids. Okay. So when she comes and says, let me take Jacques out for a while, he freaks out. He says, abso-fucking-lutely-not.

Angel of death? No thank you. He said it in French. Uh-huh. And he flees in terror. March 1905. Oh god. Jean was pregnant.

Where were you? Where were you? In 1905. I was really concerned about cars. They're just going to ruin everything. Um. Continue. That's my answer.

Um. John is pregnant again. Okay. No children have mysteriously died around her for at least two years. So things are looking good. Hey, looking good. Uh-oh. Her in-laws, Pierre and Blanche Webert, invite her over to look after their children.

Okay. Okay. Tragedy strikes. Oh. 18-month-old Georgette Webert suddenly falls ill and dies. The examining physician notices but ignores strange bruises on her neck. Oh god. The cause of death is noted as unspecified convulsions.

Ha ha ha. Nine days later. Whoa. Pierre and Blanche invite Jean back to care for their remaining children. Oh. Tragedy strikes. Jesus Christ. Two-year-old Suzanne does not survive the visit.

Once again, red marks on the child's throat are ignored and once again the cause of death is named as convulsions. Okay. Two weeks later. Jean is babysitting for different in-laws. Leon and Marie Weber. These are her own nieces and nephews. Yes. Yes.

So she's babysitting for these in-laws. Tragedy strikes. Their daughter, Germaine, suffers a sudden and mysterious attack of choking. She survives. Oh shit. And all is well. How old is she? Uh, young.

Young. Okay. Young. A babby. Okay. Little wee babby. Okay. Anyway, all is well until one day later.

Tragedy strikes. Leon. Sorry, what was that? Tragedy strikes. What makes you think the tragedy is going to start? Why would tragedy strike? Okay, can I tell you? Surely.

No. No. This woman is at the end of her bad luck. I really, I want you on board with how she flourishes in the second, the second part of the story. Okay, okay. I'm here. I'm here. One day later.

Leon and Marie invite Jean back to look after Germaine again. The next day. The next day. And wouldn't you know, tragedy strikes. I knew it. Told you. So Germaine dies on March 26, 1905. The cause of death is listed as diphtheria, although strange marks on Germaine's neck suggest that perhaps something else is afoot.

Who is this fucking doctor? Jesus Christ. He's really, he's got like a pneumonia quota that he really needs to make. Yeah, big pneumonia is behind this. Big P. Big P. Four days later. Tragedy strikes.

These are just coming in hot. Jean Webert's own son, Marcel Webert, dies under similar mysterious circumstances. You know, good for him though, because he's been. He was in there a while. He was in there a while. He put up a good fight. He put up a good fight. So let's, this seems like a good place to stop and take inventory.

So eight children have died. Jesus Christ. In the care of Jean Webert under mysterious circumstances. Jean Webert the wife. Jean Webert. Girl Jean. Lady Jean. She's a lady.

Lady Jean. Three of them are her own children. Four deaths have happened within a single month, March 1905. And in nearly all of the cases, Jean has devised a pretext to get all of the other members of the household to leave. They've returned to find the lifeless child clutched tightly in Jean's arms. And many of the witnesses report finding Jean in a strange, trance-like state of excitement. And in many cases, strange markings were found around the children's throats. A strange trance.

I'm excited. That's how she's being. Cool. And everyone's like, huh, man. Tomorrow. She's weird. Three PM. Do you think you could stop by?

There's a new, there's a new pony. I gotta go see it. There's a new car. I'm really worried about it. There's a new pony. They had to go look at the pony. Oh my God. So.

Jesus. So by now, rumors have started to swirl. Hmm, interesting. But the typical view, especially amongst family, is that Jean LaBeurre is an uncommonly unlucky person to whom death has taken a shine. Okay. I have a few things I'm thinking. Leah, Leah, I'm on me. Listen, let's, let's do some free exchange here because I would love to defend this woman to you.

Um, well, okay. Well, I guess I'm in, cause I'm very convinced that it's her, of course, cause it's her, but I guess I'm already, I'm already. You saw her standing over a child with a demented expression clutching her hands like this. Breathing heavily. I would know. What does that prove? We all laugh when we're nervous. Everyone grieves definitely.

Um, no, I think infant mortality is something that happens much more often than. Yes. We'll say that or much more often and it's maybe talked about more as well because it's more often. Like I think that's something about now it's not talked about at all. Yeah. I don't profess to be an expert on this time period in Paris or whatever, but I feel like more often. Um, it was, we know much more about medicine than we do now and we know much more about solving crimes than we do now and we know much more about, you know what I mean, like forensic science and stuff like that than they did at the time. I think another thing though is that I'm sure there's rampant sexism going on and the idea that a woman would be able to kill a child is just so unfathomable.

Quit giving spoilers for the story, Josie. No, I will not. Let me guess. Tragedy strikes in. No, she's bored now, surely. Um, Tragedy will strike again. Okay. And okay, good.

Um, no, you've obviously hit the nail on the head that you'll, you'll see, you'll see. Okay, okay. Tell me more. Tell me more. Tell you more. Um, so, uh, April 5th or 7th, 1905, different sources have different dates. Um, but either way, it is either six or nine days after the death of Jean's own son, Marcel. Um, sorry again that everyone in this story is named Jean or Marcel.

That will continue to be the case. We'll get more of them. They had like eight names tops. Like back then. Um, the grieving women of the Weber family are spending a lot of time together. They've all very suddenly and mysteriously lost children. Yeah. So they're, they're leaning on each other.

That's sweet. That's sad. Yeah. It's sweet from every side, but one, I agree. It's bitter, sweet. Yeah, for me. Jean, Jean in particular, uh, is taking the whole thing very hard and her mental condition seems iffy. Uh, seems a little erratic.

Um, so one evening she invites two of her sisters-in-law over and the three women share a meal. And then afterwards she implores the two, go out, enjoy an afternoon of shopping and I will stay home and look after my nephew, little Maurice. Oh, no. What? I just, I, I just have a feeling- You're worried about them, you're worried about them shopping too much. Right, they might buy a car. Who needs, I don't like them.

So, um, the two women go off to town, do whatever they're going to do, enjoy some shopping. But as fate would have it, they returned home a little early. At which point they discovered Jean Webert standing over a bruised covered, gasping Maurice with a crazed maniacal expression on her face. They, yeah, they, it turns out, listen, I don't want to blow your mind, but it turns out Jean might have been killing these kids. Oh my god. I had no idea. So they took Maurice away from Jean's grasp and they rush him to the hospital where the medical student who treated him diagnosed- Ah, pneumonia.

An attempt at strangulation. Brr brr brr brr brr. Medical students. I told you, you're looking for these protagonists, they jump in where you least expect. It's true. So, uh, Maurice has to spend the night in intensive care, but he does survive and he's one of the few to escape and encounter with Jean. Way to go. So, in the wake of this, Jean's brother-in-law Charles and his wife go to the police and they formally file a report on the attack on little Maurice.

Good. And then Pierre and Blanche not only file a report on the deaths of their children, Suzanne and Jargette, but they also report the mysterious deaths of Jean's own children. Good. And then Leon and Marie file a report on the death of their daughter, Germaine. And with the police digging around, naturally the deaths of Lucie Alexandre, who is the widow's daughter, and Marcel Poyata, the girl from the dairy farm. Uh huh. They emerge as well. And all of a sudden, Jean LaBeurre is staring down the barrel of eight counts of murder.

And one attempted. Hey, I don't know if they charged her for that, actually. Oh, okay. Okay, so actually the numbers don't add up here. There's nine dead kids. I think maybe they didn't charge for one of Jean's kids. Okay. I don't think it's ever been 100% confirmed whether Jean did her first two kids.

Pattern of behavior seems to point to that, but this could also be a postpartum depression. My baby died and I lost my shit thing. It's unclear. But at least seven to eight of these children, she seems to have very clearly strangled to death, allegedly. Don't sue me, a state of Jean Webert. Cool. So, point being. Jean defends herself haphazardly.

She claims she's the victim of a cabal of, quote, slanderers and infamous villains. So I did some of my research for this was actually on Francaise, so I had to translate it. Oh. That was a translate. Yeah, there's a really good blog called Vain-Huit-Rouafre, do my best. That seems to tell back in time stories about Paris' various enclaves and stuff like that. And they had a story on this and that's where I got a lot of this. Cool.

But point being, sometimes when I quote things, they'll often have been translated back from not even just French, but like Florid turn of the century French. Right, yeah. So keep that in mind. She's held in custody awaiting trial, during which time she miscarries her pregnancy of three and a half months. She would have strangled it. Fair.

She is subjected to psychiatric examinations which find her neither, quote, neither mad nor hysterical. Because you either mad or you're hysterical or you were fit to stand trial, I guess. Right, yeah. Okay. Three options. So as you might imagine, the case and the subsequent trial become a media frenzy. Well, yeah.

It's the talk of Paris. People are horrified that a woman, let alone a mother, could be capable of this. Yeah. The press gives her the nickname that would come to define her in the public memory, the ogres. Whoa. Her full title is l'Ogress de la Goutte d'Or, which is Goutte d'Or is like the, um, the arrondissement or the street or the district or whatever that she was from.

Okay. So for our purposes, we're calling her the ogres, just for short. Okay. Okay. So opinion is sharply divided as to whether Jean is a persecuted, unfortunate, or a crazed, serial murderer. Very two opposite ends of the spectrum. Yeah.

Two opposite ends of the spectrum. Um, the conservative tabloid rags take Jean's side and they collect money for her. Oh. To, because she's so poor and pitiable and unfairly accused. And two of them called Le Matin and Le Petit Genel take interviews with her and they propagate her version of events and they really become the mean, the main media sources propelling Jean's defense. Okay.

So at this point, two major figures enter the story. Uh, the first is a forensic scientist named Dr. Toineau. Cool. So with photography being scarce at the turn of century, the only image I could find of Dr. Toineau is a caricature of him where he has like a big head and he's walking around a morgue with a glass jar full of organs and there's a cute little pair of like gray corpse feet sticking out behind him. Jesus Christ.

It's great. Like the Adams family kind of day. He's darling. It's, it's really precious stuff. Um, Dr. Toineau exumes the bodies of the dead Weber children. Uh, and he conducts examinations and whatever he sees, he determines that the children could not have died of strangulation, any of them. Oh.

So this obviously puts a major crimp in the prosecution's case. Because now you've got a big name medical dude being like, this wasn't strangulation. Impossible. Impossible. The other big name to take the stage, and this is someone that I want to do a lot more digging into. I'm not going to do it in this podcast, but like in my private time, I want to dig into this person.

To push you to sleep at night kind of deal. No, he's great. Um, keep me lively. Uh, Jean's defense attorney, Henri Robert, so Henri Robert is a big name defense lawyer and he has made his bones taking on these high profile damsel in distress society scandal type of cases. Cool. Um, the most famous of which are incredibly interesting in their own right.

I'll give you the quick gloss on two. There is one of them involved a woman claiming that she was hypnotized into murdering a man with a contraption made of police. Okay, okay. Like proper Sherlock Holmes murder mystery shit. Yeah. And then there was another that involved this con artist who was like, I made this acquaintance with an American man and he gave me all of this money.

I'm his heir and like living large in society, but then it all comes, it's a con and it all comes crashing down and she flees town, but on the way out manages to pin it on the family of the painter, Henri Matisse and so it ends up with them being defended by Matisse in court. Wow. So there's all like, Henri Robert is literally like, if you have a big like media salacious, there's a woman at the center of it and she's maybe been wronged, like, this is the guy you call.

Yeah. He was described in 1903 by the Paris correspondent of the New York Times as quote, an exceptionally successful lawyer, the favorite advocate of the criminal classes who has already saved innumerable heads from the guillotine. The guillotine is still in practice. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Okay. Or metaphor, but yeah, cool.

So the trial begins January 29th, 1906. And as your gut told you in the early going, Henri Robert really lays on thick that this is a poor grieving mother and that women are inherently incapable of this sort of violent crime. And, and his benevolent sexism strikes a real chord with the jury. And on top of that, Dr. Toino's forensic evidence seems to exonerate Jean of any wrongdoing. Right. So you have society and science behind it all.

Society, science, the media, the media's is taking up Jean's side. And the jury deliberates and the verdict comes back and Jean Maver is acquitted of all charges. Whoa, not a single one, hey? She is back out on the street. She's like, give me that child. I'm going to babysit it. I'm going to babysit the fuck out of this whole town. This is just the whole another level of babysitters club.

I feel like they should do a remake. I don't know that they should do this remake. It's a tough sell. I like it. Like if you got David Lynch in, that's a pretty good shit, but I don't know if the kids would like it. Just because she's acquitted, though, doesn't mean she's innocent in the eyes of Parisian society necessarily.

Right. She becomes a pariah. Both Jean's are drinking very heavily. He's still married to her? If there's one thing I've learned from consuming a lot of true crime, it's that the bar for marriage for a lot of people is really low. Did you know that both Menendez brothers got married after they went to jail? Like, I don't know why I'm out here having standards.

It just makes no sense. It just makes no sense. So people are cursing them, spitting them on them in the street, really hate their guts. John Mann, Sylvain Bavouse, is a farmer in a rural town called Champagne, and he has read some of the more favorable coverage of the Weber case, and he feels very sympathetically toward Jean, who he's convinced is innocent. Uh-huh. Lady Jean.

Lady Jean. So he writes to Jean with a proposal, and he says, come out to the boonies, and you can be my live-in nanny and help me raise my children. No. Don't do that. Why do you say that? Because how will she get there but a car, and that's unsafe? She could hit a child.

I feel really seen by you. Terrible, terrible. She could. That would be a shame. So Lady Jean, Ogress Jean, is Ogress. The Ogress is all over this offer, but Man Jean doesn't want to leave his work in Paris and move out to the provinces. Right.

So the plan is nixed, and Ogress Jean is just like, okay, why don't I just kill myself instead? Oh, God. So that becomes her next big project. Listen. I guess I did sat through seven to eight child deaths. Nine. It was actually nine.

Oh, yeah. Nine, and then a couple of attempted. Right. She throws herself into the Sen. She gets fished out, so she doesn't die. Okay. After that, she jumps off the Bersey Bridge, but her old-timey undergarments inflate with air on the way down, and it creates a buoy.

No. So she just hits the water, and it's cold as hell, and she's dazed, and what the fuck, where am I? But she doesn't die. Are you? That's a lie. No, it's true. Her undergarments inflated and created a buoy.

Maybe I shouldn't have said undergarments. Her garments in general. Her like, petticoats. Her like, yeah. Yeah. No, I know what you mean. I don't even want to say under, like I might, undergarments may be wrong, it might just be her garments, but in any case, she caught like a stiff gale going down, and she just

flying none down to the surface. So finally, she's like, okay, what's that guy Babuze's number again? And you know, assuming that there are phones, it's probably like, send a telegram to Babuze. Yeah. A letter. Yeah. Write a letter. She relocates without her husband, and she takes on the role of living nanny to the

Babuze children, 16-year-old Jermaine, 11-year-old Louise, and nine-year-old boy, Auguste. Okay. Okay. So they're a little older. That's good. Um, so she, she takes on a false name, either Madame Mouliné or Madame Glaze, depending on your source, and she is presented as the cousin of the late Madame Babuze. So Babuze's wife has died, and they, they bring the ogres in saying this is her sister.

Yeah. The new arrangement is short-lived because Alas, Tragedy Strikes, um, yeah, tragic part of the world, France, and a month after Jean's arrival in Chambon, Sylvain Babuze and her, and his daughters arrive home to find young Auguste taken suddenly ill with Jean hovering around him. And that's the nine-year-old? Yes. The youngest.

Sylvain and Jean keep vigil together through the night, um, and then the next morning, Sylvain and his daughters leave to undertake errands, um, and then when they return, Auguste is dead in his cot, um, there are modelled bruises around his neck, and a physician is called in, um, and kind of can't figure out the cause of death. Huh, weird, yeah. So, they just bury him. Oh god. So obviously, uh, Babuze starts to have some creeping doubts about this woman he's led

into his home. He informs his daughters of Jean's true identity, but he swears them to secrecy. He's like, keep this on the low. That is the ogre. Your brother may have died because of that. But I'm telling you in case, if it happens one more time. There's two of you, so. Let's flip a coin.

So his teenage daughter, Germaine, is like, fuck that. Paraphrasing, she said it in French, um, and she goes right to the gendarmerie, and she drops a big old fucking dime on the ogre. So the cops are initially skeptical because of course Jean Laverre was cleared in court, and this may just be another horrible, unfortunate coincidence in an incredibly long string of them. Right, yeah. But local doctors conduct an examination of the bruises on August's throat, and eventually

Jean Laverre is once again arrested on suspicion of murder. So she retains Henri Robertre again in hopes of getting a similar outcome, but the judge assigned to the case is absolutely convinced of Jean's guilt, and this time, this time it seems Jean is finally going to get what's coming to her. How do you like that, Saig, what do you think is going to happen next? I think she will get off scot-free, and I don't know, we'll go to another part of France, Belgium, Canada, I don't know, this is exciting. Uh, intervention arrives in the form of a certain Dr. Toineau.

Oh, the cutie with the little bot with the jar from Aldehyde. He's not so cute now. What happened? The good doctor refuses to suffer the black eye of his findings of natural death in the previous case being deemed illegitimate. So he, based on his own pride, he wrangles his way into conducting his own autopsy of Auguste Babuset, he looks over the body and he's like, there can be no mistake. This child died of typhoid fever.

These podunk provincial doctors have botched their autopsy. Right, yeah. So now the whole case explodes into a litigation of forensic science itself and its role in the French justice system. Oh God. People are arguing about it in university classrooms, in journals, they're conducting experiments on rabbits for some reason, strangling them, I suppose, unclear. So after Toineau comes in and diagnoses typhoid fever, it gets so heated up that they're

like, okay, we need to bring in three more doctors and they conduct their own autopsies of Auguste and they conclude that the boy died of natural causes. So Henri Robert takes the defense lawyer, Henri Robert takes this pronouncement to the authorities and demands that Jean be released. And on January 4th, 1908, nearly two years after her first acquittal, Jean Webert is once again cleared of all charges and sent on her merry way. Jesus Christ. Jean now finds herself helpless and penniless, she picks up some vagrancy charges, and eventually

she's like, this shit is too hard, I'm just gonna turn myself in and admit to murdering the Babuset child. Oh shit. They don't believe her. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. She's under two court cases, two criminal investigations. Yeah, but she's a woman. Women don't kill.

And women obviously lie all the time too, so. Women don't kill, they lie all the time and you can't trust them to give an accounting of what they've actually said and done. And so with that kind of just really lovely pro-gender equality mindset in their heads, they put it down to grief and madness. They're like, you've clearly gone mad from grief from all these deaths and you're confessing to things that you haven't even done. And eventually a judge named Bon Jean, he takes pity on her and he gives her a bit of

work to, quote, make up for the wrongs that justice has inflicted upon an innocent woman. And so under the name Marie Le Mon, she dives into her new role as an orderly at a children's hospital. Oh, why would you? Or as she calls it, a buffet. Oh, she eats them? Just hang with me here. So yeah.

So yeah. Jesus. Okay. Because you even said. Step in. Step in. Talk some sense into this situation. I can tell a lot's percolating up there.

Yeah. Yeah. The spout is... Because even when she tried to turn herself in, they're like, you're obviously mad. This is like a post-part, you're just like, the grief is overtaking you. But considering her track record, how about like an old folks home? How about like picking up trash in the park? Like why are they...

An old folks home? Yeah, she wouldn't strangle them. Yeah. Well, I'm just like, it seems like children, because she always goes for the youngest child. Sorry. I shouldn't say strangles them. Technically at this point, she is innocent of all crimes. Right.

Yes. Yes. Innocent of proving guilty. But I just don't see how a judge could be like children. You should be around as many children as you can. Do you know what I mean? Like there has to be some other... He's convinced that she is innocent and that this is like...

Okay, so I will touch on this later. I actually really want to have a discussion about this after the fact, but I'm laying the seed now. This is a black comedy. This story, you have to laugh at some of the shit that people do in this story. Even though it has such nuts, fatal graphic consequences. The way she gets off her strangling eight kids, she gets a job as a nanny off it. She kills that kid and then off that she gets a job as an orderly at a children's hospital.

You have to laugh. At a certain point too, it's kind of like she becomes a bit of a protagonist because it's like you're putting these situations. Do you know what I mean? You are obviously volatile and yet you are constantly... I wouldn't go as far as protagonist. The anti-hero? The anti-hero.

The anti-hero. The anti-hero. This is breaking Mal. Is that French for bad? Did I do that right? Oh, I don't fucking know. Mal is Spanish. Yeah.

It's bad in French. I don't know if you can look at that. No, I don't want to. Next part of the story. Okay, so according to... So sorry, just to stop off. How do you think that job at the children's hospital is going to go? I think there's going to be a lot of dead kids.

A lot of kids with pneumonia. No dead kids. No dead kids. She lasted three weeks on the job before she was discovered strangling a child. Okay. I guess a lot more vigilance, perhaps, around the children. Slash maybe some other nurses were like, you're a who? Okay.

Well then we're going to have this candy striper follow you. Nuts to butt and just, oh god. What was... Nuts to butt. Nice. What was that term you used in the tickling episode? Was it past the trash? Yes, past the trash.

So the owners quietly dismissed Jean and the incident was covered up. Oh my gosh. So whatever kid she tried to strangle there, we're just not talking about that. We made a boo-boo hiring Jean. We own that internally in staff meetings. But let's not tell our husbands and wives, okay? No. Thanks.

Also, I've noticed that we haven't been emptying the coffee machine after we use it. Stanley, Marcel, John. So in 1908 in a French town called Alfredville, Jean who's been living under a pseudonym reveals her true identity. Why? Don't do that. A lynch mob gathers. Okay.

Okay. A little bit of justice. Okay. But police intervene. Oh. Okay. So she tries to kill herself again. Okay.

Police intervene. Is this her underskirts saving her? Cannot confirm nor deny. There. She confesses again. Okay. But once in front of the judge, she recants her confession. Okay.

And then the judge is like, wow, you've obviously been driven to madness by a hostile society so much that you're giving false confessions. That's really sad. And he releases her. Jesus Christ. Where's the women's lib when you need it? No. Listen, there's a feminist interpretation of this story that I'm not comfortable broaching,

but someone could. Fair enough. Eventually she drifts into sex work and she, now estranged from her husband, she picks up a common law husband named Boucherie. Boucherie? Boucherie. Her boo. Boucherie.

On May 8th, Jean and Boucherie check into an inn in Comercy, and it's run by a couple named the Poirots. And the Poirots have a lovely six-year-old son named Jean, Marcel, and via coin toss. You were 50-50 there, you just picked the wrong one. So that evening Boucherie goes to work, whatever he does, and Jean is feeling a little bit lonely, so she asks the Poirots if little Marcel could spend the night in her room to keep her company. Okay.

Okay. Okay. I'm not a parent, but if somebody, some stranger was like, can you smell child sleep with me tonight? But it was, it was, it was France in 1908, and I mean, I don't know, I don't know why I say that. Like, I know parenting in France in 1908, but it's a good point. I'll just let you get away with that.

Yeah, that's a good point. Thank you. So Marcel obviously begs his parents, please don't stick me with this creepy looking woman. She looks like an ogreess. I would personally call her the ogreess, like do not do this to me. I imagine him like trudging up to this little six-year-old self, trudging up with like a scrapbook being like father, mother, father. Have you been reading Limit 10?

Yeah. But the Poirots insist and little Marcel is sent to sleep with John and wakes up dead. Tragedy strikes. I think that's 11 if you're keeping count at home. So that evening, another tenant hears strange noises emanating from John's room. When the owners get the door open, they find that John has strangled a lifeless Marcel with a bloody handkerchief. According to Wikipedia, the innkeeper has to punch John three times in the face to get

her to let go of the body. Whoa. John has arrested. Oh. Again. We are going to make a stick this time. Oh, really? I can't promise that.

Okay. Have you heard this story? I'm sorry. Have you heard this story? Come on. Okay. Three separate autopsies are conducted to make damn sure they agree. It's Audrey Robert, one of the investigating forensic scientists.

Okay, good. The autopsies agree that the cause of death is Jean Webert killed Marcel Poirot. Oh, God. Good. Good, good, good. This time, a psychiatric examination declares her insane. Good. You know that they had an examination.

If she's not insane, who is? Fair. Say it. The tabloid media that had so thoroughly defended her gives up her cause and Jean is institutionalized at an asylum in Marieville still proclaiming her innocence. Even though she's confessed two, three times now? Jovan Mad with grief. Oh, right.

A hostile society. She's a woman. You can't expect her to. And also, you know, typhoid, diphtheria. These are common childhood illnesses. Me personally, I think that she should work in a children's hospital and so forth and so forth. Okay, fair, fair.

April 1909, rumors start to swirl that Jean Webert has escaped the asylum. No. What? You thought that she would finish strangling kids there? Come now. No, but I didn't think she'd escape. Cause the ceiling can't hold us. Cause the ceiling can't hold us.

Jean is out. Fuck. Okay. So Le Petit Journel sends an envoy out to the Chappelle district to search for her and finds a woman of uncommon resemblance to Jean. She insists there's been a mistake. She says, I used to live in this neighborhood. I'm merely searching for old acquaintances.

That is not enough to quell the violent mob, slowly beginning to form, which is only dispelled by the arrival of the man who knows her best, her husband Jean, who is still legally married to her. Whoa. And he observes that while this woman very closely resembles Jean, it is not her. For once in this story, it actually is a ghastly coincidence. Whoa. That would have blown chunks if they killed her.

Oh my God. They then telegraph the asylum and they find that Jean is actually still there. That wasn't their first move? Okay. Listen, telegrams are expensive and take a while. Better to just go by rumors. To quote the source that I got this from, this is the French source and I include this cause it's so sweet and it makes me laugh.

It is not known if the unfortunate woman has finally found her old acquaintances. She showed up to like have dinner with friends. Oh no. That poor creature. She's the protagonist of this story. Ogres, what the fuck are you talking about? What? So Jean, the husband, by the way, he eventually requests and is granted a divorce from Jean

the Ogres. Okay, okay. He remarries and he dies at the age of 76 in 1950 and that is him bowing out of this story. That's a pretty good run. Yeah, I mean, was it? Anyway, later that same year, 1909, rumors once again swirl that Jean has escaped the asylum and is prowling the countryside.

This time, Lipetit Jeanelle sends someone directly there and they find Jean still bedridden another false alarm. Okay, okay. But she's definitely coming into that like mythological zone where it's like, if you don't eat all your broccoli. The Ogres will come and strangle you in your bed. Yeah, yeah. I heard she escaped and she's roaming these hills looking for little boys and girls who

don't say their prayers before they go to sleep. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Okay. January 1910, Jean escapes for real. Wow. Wow.

Because the ceiling can't hold us. Okay. This escape only lasts a few weeks. She was apprehended. Crowling the countryside? She was trying to get a job on a farm, presumably as a child strangler. Oh, gosh. She gets returned to the asylum.

Okay. Okay. Okay. And on August 23, 1918, Jean Webert is found dead in her quarters at the asylum in Marais Ville, having manually strangled herself to death. No fucking way. Don't lie to me. Why would you lie?

Here's the treat. Here's the God's honest. Here's the God's honest. Okay. Different sources indicate different causes of death. Okay. One says she hanged herself, one puts her death down to, quote, a fit of madness. However, there is one account that says that she strangled, put her hands around her throat,

and strangled herself to death. And I choose to believe this account. Yeah, you do. Because despite its improbability, based simply on the body of circumstantial evidence pointing to this woman's undying passion for strangling, her vast portfolio of work, she loves to strangle more than I love anything in my life. Yeah. It seems to me she would accept no other death.

Also, if she can stare like a six-year-old in the eye as she's strangling them. She likes it. That's her favorite thing. She has afforded to, yeah, to manually strangling herself. I agree. I agree. I agree. I don't know, I don't know what the medical realities of that are.

Seems likely you'd pass out or something, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But if anyone could do it, this is the Michael Phelps of strangling. That's usually put, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's your title right there for this episode. There you go. Jesus.

So, since so much of this story played out in the turn of the century, French tabloid media, here is a contemporary account to finish this out. Oh, oh, okay, okay. Quote, she had enjoyed her last debauch, save for dreams, and in the asylum in which she was confined, it was noticed that she would crook her fingers around invisible throats until at last they crooked around her own, and she was found dead with dried foam around her lips. Jane Weber, my God.

That is insane. Would you, do you agree that that's the most, I think that's the most bizarre story I've covered yet. That's, yeah. The stakes are really high. There's like a, there's an 11-child body count on this one. Yeah. Yeah.

And there's some really dumb, dumb decisions. Some really bad decisions. That aren't her fault either. That aren't her, that she does not make. I mean, she makes 11 bad decisions, 12, she can't have her, but like, do you know what I mean? I'm full, yes. Like the situation just kind of like, she just gets shepherded into these opportunities

to be her worst self. It's, I think, part of what makes it such a strange story. I mean, there's a few things I can think of why this story resonates with me, and I don't, I don't want to, because I'm conscious that I've just spent a lot of time talking, so I want to hear from you too. But one of the, one of the things about this story that really strikes me is it's so absurd. Like it's so, for, and I don't say that in any way to diminish the gravity of the fact that this person killed 11 children.

Like that's so gnarly. Most people go their whole lives without killing one person, let alone one child named Marcel for every season of the year. Every month of the year. Not even season. Yeah, basically. So I think that part of it is, and I like this nickname that she ends up with, the ogres, because it's so, because these characters in this story, and I'm, and now I've switched

to talking about it as a story as opposed to a thing that actually happened to people in real life, which it is. But in this story, the characters are a legion of faceless, interchangeable, unfortunate And then this woman, this ogres, this monster about whom we have no other insight than she fucking loved to strangle children, could not stop, would go out of her way to put herself in situations where she had a child to strangle, and then she'd strangle them, and yet somehow it took until, and it's the world's most obvious thing. Oh god, yes.

And yet somehow it takes until like the 11th one. Right, yeah. Before, I don't know, it's so absurd, it's such a strange story. It's, I agree, yeah. Yeah, the idea that so many people would just be like, well, I mean. She's a woman. No. No.

Why would she do that? That's weird. And then like not, well, and then what is, what is Henri Robert getting out of this too? Like why? The fame notoriety, she's a big name, he wants to take on big names and this is his bread and butter, this kind of case. Fair, fair, okay, okay, I mean. And then he does the next one, makes a lot of money off it, gives the journals his interview

and gets attention from it. Yeah, yeah. Which is, I guess it's just so strange because she's definitely not the protagonist. No. But she's also used. Yeah, oh, she's very much like, and she sort of becomes symbolic of the whims of a lot of the men in this story. Yeah, yeah.

Like for Dr. Toineau, she just becomes this symbol of like his arrogance and how he can't have been wrong in diagnosing or naming as the cause of death for her own children, natural causes or whatever. So he comes in and like, once she's finally caught, he like, his ego won't let him stay out of it. He comes in and screws up the case because he can't have been wrong, you know? Yeah, yeah. And I think, I guess like, that's the other thing that maybe feels absurd about it because

when you talk about gender equality, you're talking about like equal pay, you're talking about, you know, like, these things that can be have a much more positive interaction. But it's also like, yeah, women can, women can strangle a dozen children. Yeah, that's, that's a thing too, dude. Yeah, I think that, I think that's just like, that's pretty, that's pretty wild because no suffragette is out there wearing all white being like, we need the vote being like, we need the vote and we can kill children just so you know. Do you know what I mean?

No, it's so, it's so dark, like, like I said, so this is, this is kind of what I want, like I, because I've been thinking consciously about this as I prepared to tell this story. So I like, I hope this isn't a little too inside baseball or whatever, but I'll tell you a little bit about how I approached it as a story. I love being inside the baseball. Let's get inside, let's hollow that baseball out and let's just stick in it. It's just a pack of threads. It's like a yarn.

It's like a knot. Do you know the number one rule of being in there? No crying in baseball. Oh God. So, so try those tears. No crying in the baseball. No crying in the baseball. We're trying to cultivate a vibe here.

So I, when I was, when I was typing this story out, I was a little bit like, this is a challenging story to tell to another person because it's so repetitive. There are, there are 12 identical murders. And if you haven't figured out by the third or fourth murder, what's happening? Half of them are Marcel too. Yes. They're all named Marcel. They're all named Jean.

She confesses they don't believe it. She gets out. She gets arrested. They let her off. She gets arrested. They let her off. She tries to kill herself. It doesn't work.

She tries to kill herself. It doesn't work. Yeah. And so really for me, the way that this story works best and the way I think the reason that it has stayed with me for as long as it has, because I've known this story for years. The, the reason that it stayed with me is, is you can really only tell it as a dark comedy. Yeah. It's, it's so weird and dark and outlandish and yes, for a moment.

And I think that like, I think that maybe the distance from it helps in that retelling because it's, it's a difference talking about, you know, someone who was gunned down yesterday as, as a symptoms of the current society around you and the various social epidemics and literal epidemics that plague us and, you know, whatever, but this story is so far in the past and it's so apocryphal and half the details I told you, I couldn't even be a hundred percent that they were exactly right unless I happened to see a primary source or whatever. Because it's, because it's so, you can detach yourself from it in that way. You can kind of tell it as a comedy without feeling so intensely guilty that, oh my God,

this woman is standing on a pile of dead bodies. Yeah. Yeah. Like even as you said that it's like, yeah, what if somebody adapted this and made it into like a dark comedy film, but it took place in the nineties? It's like, no, it wouldn't work. It needs that separation. Yeah.

No, it's, it's, it's interesting and I find that sometimes it's, I find this sometimes when I look up these old timey, especially like old timey true crime things, is, is it somehow feels less urgent and I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. It's just something that I've observed. But I also think that it is a little bit of these historical stories because of the distance, first-hand accounts are getting passed down through many, many people. Exactly. The level of absurdity kind of goes up and I think because the, you know, the average

lay person has watched a lot of fucking CSI and we're just like, oh, they could never do that. They would know it's blood type, that wouldn't work, you know, like all these things that like a 1905 dairy farmer would be like, well, I don't know that one guy said it was okay. So yeah. Okay. For sure. People in authority legitimately, you know, behaving badly in whatever way, whether it's

obviously on Rero Bear as the defense lawyer was doing what he was paid to do and doing it very well. But you see these guys, Dr. Toynone, you hear that all of these different scientific accounts and autopsies and stuff are in conflict with one another, then you just have to stand there and be like, and, and, and you've got, again, the news media, you've got the conservative news media telling you that she didn't do this shit. Yeah. So they're like, what is to believe?

However, I will say this, I will say this, if you even have a shadow of maybe having strangled eight kids to death, I would not invite you to work as an orderly at my children's hospital. No. And if that makes me superstitious than it is, come, if you want to work front till at my hardware store, be my guest. If a kid comes in, we might send you to the back. If you want to come and work at my slaughterhouse, come on down.

After you want to do them by hand, I can save a lot of money this way. Oh, gosh, that's wild. That is wild. That's a wild story. All done without cars. All done without cars as it should be. One last thing. Like us.

Yo, OK, last thing. This is stupid. Neither of us wants to do this. We're supposed to tell you to rate our podcast. Good. Don't not bad. Like it and subscribe. If you want to hear more from us, it will go directly into your podcast feeder.

And the next time some French woman just just does like 80 kids, you will hear all about it. Thanks, mom. Thanks, mom. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks to Taylor for that story and to all of you for listening in. If you want more infamy, we release episodes every other Sunday on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and at bittersweetinfamy.com. Stay sweet.

The sources that I used for this episode were Wikipedia articles for Henri Robert and, of course, Jean Robert. A blog called Van Ruit Rueffa, the article was Jean-Weber l'Augresse de la Goutte d'Or by JRB on November 27th, 2014. And I watched a YouTube video called A Moment of Crime, Tale of the Ogres, Square Brackets, French Murderous Jean-Weber, by True Crime Man's Dark Imagination, February 8th, 2020. The song you're listening to is called T-Stream by Brian Steele. Thanks for listening and protect you, dad.