M. Landru's Successor

Shepherded by two officious French detectives, a crew of workmen invaded an ugly, yellow plaster suburban villa not far from Napoleon's Chateau at Malmaison last week and started digging under the front porch. Within 18 inches they uncovered first a white handbag, then the body of a young girl, fully dressed, doubled up like a jackknife. She had been strangled. With their chests out, officers of the prefecture of police presently announced that they had solved the mystery of the disappearance of U. S. Dancer Jean De Koven, had arrested the most heinous mass murderer since France's famed Henri Desire Landru. Dancer De Koven's brother Henry, a U. S. theatrical director, commented bitterly:

"The Paris police laughed at the case for nine weeks, and intimated that it was all a publicity stunt. . . ."

Despite the belief of the Paris press and police, 22-year-old Jean De Koven was neither a night-club dancer nor a chorus girl, but a student of ballet whose only professional appearance was as a child dancer with a road company of The Miracle. With her aunt, Miss Ida Sackheim of Brooklyn, she arrived in Paris on July 19. A few days later Jean De Koven was picked up in the lobby of the Hotel des Ambassadeurs by a young man known only as "Bobby," who spoke English with a strong German accent. Jean De Koven made a date with Bobby, slipped away from her aunt in the middle of the street, and was never seen again.

Despite ransom messages and mysterious telephone calls, despite the appearance of several of Jean De Koven's traveler's checks, obviously forged, the French police stubbornly refused to believe that a kidnapping could occur in present-day France. Petit Parisien headlined its story: "American Dancer Runs Away and Tries to Extort Money from Aunt." French police were not entirely remiss, however. The mysterious Bobby was suspected of being an habitue of the Pavilion Bleu at St. Cloud. Night & day detectives watched the Pavilion Bleu, abandoned their vigil only when wreckers arrived and tore it down.

But other events followed. On November 29 the body of one Raymond Lesobre, real-estate agent, was found in an empty villa in St. Cloud, shot through the back of his head. In his pocket was the visiting card of "Herr Schott." Among people mysteriously missing in recent weeks was a young German, Arthur Frommer, who had an uncle named Schott. Aroused at last, secret police agents traced Uncle Schott to Nice. He had no recollection of giving any visiting cards to his nephew, but did remember giving his card to a plausible young German named Eugene George Weidmann. Eugene George Weidmann was discovered living at St. Cloud under the name of Siegfried Sauerbrey. Inspectors Poignant and Bourguin of the Paris police dropped in on him. Before they were halfway through the doorway Weidmann whipped out a pistol, wounded them both. Plunging ahead, they beat him into submission.

At the police station he began confessing. Yes, he had shot Frommer (whose cigarette lighter he was using) and Lesobre (whose car he was driving), but when confronted with the blue folder of Jean De Koven's traveler's checks, he suddenly burst into tears.

"Last July I did something terrible . . ." he sobbed.

Soon came more confessions that set French police on edge. Rooting through the half acre of grounds of the St. Cloud villa, detectives found the body of Arthur Frommer, killed for a paltry sum of money.. Inside the house were bundles of lingerie and scorched photographs suggesting that five or six other women might have been murdered. Accompanied by his mistress, one Roger Million, described as a dope peddler, whose tool they believed Weidmann to have been, surrendered to the authorities at Versailles prison.

The French press, excited by the Hollywood melodrama of the whole affair, promptly dubbed Murderer Weidmann "The New Bluebeard."

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