On February 2, 1933, in Le Mans, two discreet maids massacre their employers in a bourgeois house on Rue Bruyère. A shared madness, forbidden love, or class hatred? A look back at a case that still fascinates.
On February 2, 1933, in Le Mans, two discreet maids massacre their employers in a bourgeois house on Rue Bruyère. A shared madness, forbidden love, or class hatred? A look back at a case that still fascinates.
It is just after 8 PM on Thursday, February 2, 1933, when a small group grows impatient in front of number 6 Bruyère Street in Le Mans. The house, a sturdy bourgeois residence, is completely shrouded in darkness. Nothing alarming in itself... except that several people should be inside.
In front of the door stands the owner, René Lancelin, a retired lawyer, who has come with his son-in-law and eldest daughter. Inside are supposed to be waiting for him his wife Léonie, their youngest daughter Geneviève, as well as the two maids, employed by the family for seven years: Christine and Léa Papin.
Mr. Lancelin slips his key into the lock. To no avail, the door refuses to budge: the bolt has been pushed from the inside. Someone is indeed there, somewhere in this silent house, and two gendarmes have been called to understand what is happening.
The two gendarmes from Le Mans are perplexed. Mr. Lancelin is relentlessly pressing the doorbell, and everyone can hear it ringing distinctly inside: the electricity is working, then. So why are no lights on, and why is no one coming to open the door?
One of the officers, a certain Vérité (it can't be made up), decides to go through the neighboring house. The elderly lady who lives there guides him to the garden and assures him that she hasn't noticed anything unusual... except for the cat, locked in the laundry room, which has been meowing for two hours without anyone letting it out. Now that she thinks about it, she no longer hears it.
The officer sets up a small ladder against the shared wall, climbs to the top, and scans the Lancelin house, equally dark and silent from this side. He jumps into a flowerbed, reaches the service door, which is only locked, and forces the bolt with a shoulder shove. His first instinct is to sniff: no smell of gas, one hypothesis ruled out.
A little earlier, Mr. Lancelin's son-in-law thought he saw a faint light moving on the second floor, precisely in the servants' room. A candle, he thought. Strange idea, when the bell proves that the current is flowing... At the moment, no one pays attention to it.
With a revolver in one hand and a flashlight in the other, Officer Vérité crosses the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, and then heads up the stairs. His shoe crunches on a hairpin, then on another. And on a step, right in front of him, he discovers a human eye.
On the landing, Mrs. Lancelin and her daughter lie head to toe in a pool of blood. One is lying on her stomach, her thighs slashed, the other stretched out on her back, her skull smashed, her eyes torn out. The gendarme backs down, secures the family in the living room, positions his colleague at the foot of the stairs, restores the power, and calls for reinforcements.
The four rooms on the first floor are empty. On the second, the electricity is not working, and the last door in the hallway is locked. Too solid for a shoulder charge: they send for the locksmith from Gougeard Street.
Thirty minutes later, the craftsman is working on the lock. A brigadier, the commissioner, and a journalist from the newspaper La Sarthe have joined the gendarmes. At a signal from the locksmith, Vérité kicks the door open, and everyone rushes into the small room.
Stupefaction. Illuminated by flashlights and the flickering flame of a candle on the bedside table, the two maids, who were thought to be dead as well, are lying in the same bed, pressed against each other, bare shoulders, disheveled hair. The commissioner, stunned, asks them if they were the ones who did it. The elder, Christine, confidently replies that they fought and that they "had their skin" before the two women had theirs.
The commissioner tries to prolong the exchange (it's often in these first minutes that the truth surfaces). A wasted effort. With hateful looks and a defiant tone, the two sisters respond in a clearly rehearsed manner, with one goal: to share the responsibilities. They have conspired together, there is no doubt about it.
"You will explain yourself before the investigating judge. Stand up!" The commissioner has to repeat this several times. When the two young women finally pull back the sheet, they stand completely naked, as if they have given up all modesty.
The gendarmes even have to push them to agree to get dressed. They only put on their stockings and their bathrobe, nothing more. It is in this attire that they are taken to the central police station, and then incarcerated in the Vert-Galant prison.
Keep in mind this shared bed and this nudity, as they are not anecdotal. At the moment, it seems like nothing but provocation. Later, these details will weigh heavily in understanding the case, which is only just beginning.
To understand, the investigation traces the lives of the two sisters. The first surprise: they are not two, but three. The eldest, Émilia, is born in February 1902, just four months after Gustave and Clémence Papin got married. He is a gentle, shy man who works hard, while she is a proud and authoritative young woman who, according to rumor, is considered frivolous in Saint-Mars-d'Outillé, her village.
Christine is born on March 8, 1905, in Marigné. The couple then lives in a single, unhealthy room, damp with humidity, and the infant is entrusted to a sister of Gustave, who raises her with much love until she is seven years old. In August 1910, during the village festival, the five-year-old girl witnesses a fight between her parents. The couple then moves to Le Mans, into an attic room on Rue du Tertre-Saint-Laurent, where Léa is born on September 15, 1911.
In 1913, Clémence obtains a divorce and custody of the children. Lacking options, she entrusts Léa to her brother and places Émilia, eleven, and Christine, eight, at Bon-Pasteur, an orphanage run by nuns that also serves as a reform school. Life there is under strict discipline, beatings are common, but one learns cooking and household chores, and many residents leave to become the "maids" of the local bourgeoisie.
Émilia, however, will take another path. During the 1914 war, very attached to her father, she prays for his safe return. Gustave survives, and the young girl decides to take the veil, much to her mother's dismay.
In 1916, Christine left the Bon-Pasteur to work as a maid in a bourgeois household on Boulevard Négrier (her sewing skills were quickly appreciated there). Léa followed the same path in 1924, working for a bourgeois family in Tuffé. Their wages were paid to their mother until they reached adulthood, and Clémence did not hesitate to move them to another position whenever an employer refused a raise, even though they always satisfied their employers.
The tasks, however, hardly varied from one house to another:
washing, ironing, and mending the laundry,sweeping, dusting, polishing silverware and brass,cooking and serving at the table,helping the ladies with their morning routines,doing the shopping, which was about the only time they got fresh air.
At Easter 1925, at Madame de Dieuleveult's, the two sisters worked together for the first time. In the spring of 1926, they joined the Lancelins, who were then settled at Place de la Préfecture: Christine as a cook, Léa as a chambermaid. René Lancelin was fifty-six years old, his wife was also fifty-six, and their daughter Geneviève was twenty-one.
Madame was demanding but fair, and Christine would acknowledge that they were "treated fairly well and fed adequately," even having two free hours in the afternoon to sew in their room. Only Madame spoke to them (Monsieur and Mademoiselle limited themselves to greetings), and in the summer, during the family's vacation, the two sisters kept the house. In 1929, the Lancelins moved to Rue Bruyère: nothing, on the surface, distinguished Christine and Léa from the hundreds of other small maids in Le Mans.
So, how did we get here? The first crack lies in money. Since 1926, Christine, who is of legal age, places her wages in a savings account, while Léa, a minor, must always hand over her salary to their mother, according to a custom (and a right) that was very common at the time. At the end of 1929, a violent scene reportedly erupted between Christine and Clémence over this issue.
In August 1931, the two sisters even went so far as to request an audience with the mayor of Le Mans, Arsène Le Feuvre. Léa said not a word, Christine got flustered, spoke of persecution and emancipation, then, sent back to the police station, accused her mother without being able to specify her grievances. Clémence, warned, reacted so violently that her daughters broke off relations with her. As for the commissioner, he warned René Lancelin that these two young women seemed concerning to him, and that if he were in his position, he would not keep them.
They remained, however, but became dark, sullen, irritable, and no longer left their room on Sundays. A year and a half passed without any notable incidents. On February 2, 1933, at dusk (around 6 PM), Léonie Lancelin returned home with her daughter, while a short circuit in the electric iron had caused the power to trip on the second floor. According to the defendants' account, Madame reproached Christine for this, who, after a violent exchange, allegedly knocked her out with a tin pot before turning on Geneviève.
According to the version presented at the hearing, Léa, arriving at that moment, would have gouged out the eyes of the dying Léonie Lancelin at her sister's furious command, while Christine inflicted the same fate on Geneviève. However, the investigation would reveal inconsistencies in this account and conclude that Léa struck already lifeless bodies. The paradox of the case lies here. An act of unprecedented savagery, stemming from a banal domestic incident, committed by two maids who had been impeccable in their service until then.
The trial opens on September 29, 1933, at 1:30 PM, in the courthouse of Le Mans. Only a small portion of the public was able to enter the courtroom, guarded by soldiers with bayonets fixed, while two hundred police officers are mobilized outside to prevent any overflow. The entire national press has made the trip.
Christine is defended by a court-appointed lawyer, Me Germaine Brière, while Léa has chosen a defender from Tours. During the investigation, the two sisters initially maintained the same version: Mrs. Lancelin provoking them, threatening gestures, and each committing her own murder. However, the investigation revealed inconsistencies: Christine likely killed both women, with Léa then delivering blows with a hammer and knife to already lifeless bodies (these wounds had not bled), as if to take part in the crime and share the fate of her elder sister.
At the witness stand, the accused speak in such a low voice that their lawyers must repeat their words. The forensic doctor of Le Mans, Dr. Chartier, is categorical: there was no real struggle; the victims were attacked without being able to defend themselves, then killed with brutality, and their eyes were gouged out by hand while they were still alive. The verdict is delivered: death for Christine, ten years of hard labor for Léa.
Nota Bene: the assize court judges the most serious crimes with a jury of laypeople. In 1933, this jury was composed solely of men, drawn by lot. As for the term enucleation, it is the medical term that refers to the removal of the eye from its socket.
A question arises: could a "crisis of madness" stemming from a trivial reproach have seized Christine, then instantly spread to Léa, to the point of producing such a murderous delirium? Three psychiatric experts examined the accused, and all concluded that they bore full and complete responsibility.
The main one, Dr. Schutzenberger, who runs the asylum for the insane in Le Mans, sees in her an average-intelligence Christine, without memory impairment, aware of the gravity of her act, and without any particular obsession. He rules out epilepsy: no seizures, no impulses, no fugues. Curiously, he draws exactly the same conclusions for Léa, even though the two sisters have very different personalities, and his two colleagues, who only briefly saw the accused, agree with him.
The defense then calls upon Dr. Logre, a national authority, who points out what doesn't add up. First, the absence of any apparent motive, in total contrast to the ferocity of the attack. Then, the eyes torn from both victims, a gesture that judicial history has never known. And finally, the unusual bond that unites the two sisters.
Dr. Logre speaks of an "extraordinary moral duo," in which Léa's personality would be literally erased by Christine's. This mechanism has deep roots. At Bon-Pasteur, Christine, more intellectually fragile, lived under the protective influence of Émilia, who was better regarded and had a strong character. Later, she would replicate this exact pattern with Léa.
During Sunday outings, Christine always has a small gift in reserve for her younger sister, who is quickly won over and then captivated. She also passes on the advice of the aunt who raised her: to beware of men, whatever they may be, and never to believe what they say. In fact, neither sister will have any romantic relationships, and as early as 1925, Mrs. de Dieuleveult notes the affection that binds them and the influence the elder sister has over her sibling.
The bond between the two sisters seems to tighten even further. Christine secures Léa's emancipation, with their father's consent, and it is perhaps at this time that the two sisters begin to call Mrs. Lancelin "mom" among themselves. On the night of the crime, if we follow the investigation, Léa strikes already lifeless bodies, as if to irrevocably link her fate to that of Christine.
Nota Bene: emancipation allowed a young minor to manage her own income before reaching adulthood, which was set at twenty-one years. This is precisely what Christine naively hoped to obtain from the mayor of Le Mans in 1931.
Dr. Logre does not stop there. He evokes sexual connotations, both in the crime itself and in Christine's behavior in prison. The word is unleashed, and in 1933, it encompasses all the taboos of society: that of homosexuality, between two sisters no less. No one wants to hear it, and it will take until the 1960s for this avenue to be brought to light.
Dr. Schutzenberger, for his part, merely noted that Christine's affection was "elective," solely directed towards Léa, while refusing to see any "unequivocal explanation." Yet he knew the facts. From the day after the crime, the two sisters, found naked in the same bed, protested very aggressively when they were told they would be placed in separate cells.
Christine's fellow inmates describe her crises: she cries out for Léa, makes obscene remarks, lifts her skirts, also asks for "her husband and her child," and several times she needs to be put in a straitjacket. On the night of July 12 to 13, the crisis reaches its peak. Christine clings to the bars of the window, implores forgiveness, and tries to tear out her eyes.
To calm her down, the guards bring Léa. Christine hugs her tightly, tries to remove her shirt while begging her to "say yes," then Léa struggles, and they are separated: from that point on, Christine will never again utter her sister's name. Later, Léa would confide to a guard that Christine was in the same state at the time of the murders, before adding, "That night, we were disturbed..."
On January 22, 1934, the President of the Republic, Albert Lebrun, commuted Christine's death sentence to life imprisonment with hard labor. Transferred to the Rennes prison, she immediately sank into despair. She refused to eat, refused to work, remained prostrated for entire days, sealed in complete silence.
Hoping to provoke a reaction, the prison doctor placed her in the presence of Léa. Christine remained indifferent to her younger sister's tender gestures and murmured that she was not her sister, that she was "someone else," kind but not Léa. The doctor eventually admitted in his report that she was "unsuited to life in prison."
In May 1934, Christine was sent to Rennes, to the psychiatric ward of the Saint-Méen asylum. She died there on May 18, 1937, from a pulmonary condition (tuberculosis) resulting from malnutrition.
Léa, on the other hand, was released on February 2, 1943, exactly ten years after the crime. She retreated into total silence, without even changing her name, and worked as a chambermaid in a hotel, then as a seamstress. Found at the end of the 1990s for a documentary, she died in Nantes on July 24, 2001, at the age of eighty-nine, and was buried near her mother in the Nantes cemetery of Bouteillerie.
Very quickly, the case escapes the courts to become a symbol. As soon as the trial is over, L'Humanité completely reverses the roles: the real victims would be the Papin sisters, who supposedly lived through a "hell" in a bourgeois family that treated its servants like dogs. However, nothing in what we know about their life with the Lancelins supports this portrayal.
Philosophers get involved as well. In 1939, Jean-Paul Sartre analyzes two photographs of each sister, one taken before the crime and the other after, to support his theory of "social hatred." This exercise seems, today, at the very least, surreal: deducing the motive for a double murder from the expression on a face in a snapshot...
Subsequently, Sartre takes up The Maids, the play by Jean Genet, where he claims to find Christine and Léa. The author had, however, denied this connection. It didn't matter: the thesis of class revolt was too enticing to be hindered by a denial.
The harshest criticism comes from Simone de Beauvoir in 1960. From a class struggle perspective, she writes that the tragedy of the Papin sisters was "immediately intelligible" to her, referring to the bourgeois women of Le Mans who charged their maid for every broken plate out of her wages, or who checked for dust while wearing white gloves, and even goes so far as to assert that Mrs. and Miss Lancelin "deserved death a hundred times over." This judgment reveals more about her convictions than about the case itself.
In reality, everyone has interpreted this crime through their own concerns. In December 1933, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan speaks of paranoia and "delirium à deux," one of the oldest forms of psychosis, without resolving the question of possible homosexuality. In 1963, Louis Le Guillant sees the domestic condition as a contradiction capable of causing illness: the maid opposes Madame while identifying with her, both present and foreign in the house, to the point that violence sometimes becomes the only way out. Other doctors, finally, have built their theses on partial documents, the only ones they had access to.
So, was it a crime of passion or social revolt? The facts hardly support revenge against odious employers: the Lancelins treated them correctly, and crimes committed by domestic workers remained extremely rare in the 20th century. The exclusive bond between the two sisters remains the most debated aspect, with no one ever able to resolve it. What should be noted:
a crime with no apparent motive, stemming, according to the accused, from a trivial incident (a short-circuited iron),a fusion duo, Léa completely under Christine's influence,a possible sexual dimension, alluded to but never established,ideological readings imposed retrospectively.
If you are interested in the case, make it a habit to separate what is established (dates, medical findings, testimonies) from what falls under interpretation. Always ask yourself who is speaking, on what date, and with what documents in hand. This is the best way to avoid making a news item say what you wanted it to say.
Author Audrey on 14 September 2016
Art and Culture : Literature
Author Audrey on 09 May 2023
Art and Culture : Festival