1939: the last public execution in France by guillotine

Born in Germany in 1908, Eugene Weidman started stealing from a young age and, even as an adult, did not give up his criminal habits.

While serving a five-year sentence in prison for robbery, he met future partners in crime Roger Millon and Jean Blanc. After their release, the three began working together, kidnapping and robbing tourists around Paris.

June 17, 1938. Eugene Weidman shows the police the cave in the Fontainebleau Forest in France, where he killed nurse Jeanine Keller.

They robbed and killed a young dancer from New York, a chauffeur, a nurse, a theater producer, an anti-Nazi activist and a real estate agent.

December 21, 1937. Weidman is led away in handcuffs after being arrested by the police.

Employees of the National Security Administration eventually got on the trail of Weidman. One day, when he returned home, he found two police officers waiting for him at the door. Weidman shot at the officers with a pistol, wounded them, but they still managed to knock the criminal to the ground and neutralize him with a hammer lying at the entrance.

March 24, 1939.

March 1939. Weidman during the trial.

March 1939.

March 1939. Installation of special telephone lines for the court.

As a result of the sensational trial, Weidman and Millon were sentenced to death, and Blanc was sentenced to 20 months in prison. On June 16, 1939, French President Albert Lebrun rejected Weidman's request for clemency and commuted Millon's death sentence to life imprisonment.

June 1939. Weidman is on trial.

On the morning of June 17, 1939, Weidman met on the square near the Saint-Pierre prison in Versailles, where the guillotine and the crowd's whistles were waiting for him.

June 17, 1939. A crowd gathers around the guillotine in anticipation of Weidman's execution near the Saint-Pierre prison.

Among those who wanted to watch the execution of the audience was the future famous British actor Christopher Lee, who was 17 years old at the time.

June 17, 1939. On the way to the guillotine, Weidman passes by the box in which his body will be transported.

Weidmann was placed in the guillotine, and the chief executioner of France, Jules Henri Defourneau, immediately lowered the blade.

June 17, 1939. Weidman is in the guillotine a second before the blade falls.

The crowd present at the execution behaved very unrestrained and noisy, many of the spectators broke through the cordon to moisten handkerchiefs in Weidman's blood as souvenirs. The scene was so terrible that French President Albert Lebrun completely banned public executions, arguing that instead of curbing crime, they help to awaken people's base instincts.

The guillotine, originally invented as a quick and relatively humane method of killing, continued to be used in non-public executions until 1977, when Hamida Jandoubi's death sentence was carried out in private in Marseille. The death penalty in France was abolished in 1981.