By the time of her arrest in 1949, Marie Besnard owned six houses in Ludun, an inn, a cafe, and several stud farms.

She had also over the course of 22 years and an extraordinary sequence of family deaths become the principal beneficiary of the estates of a remarkable number of people who had been close to her.

The deaths began with Leyon’s parents who were invited to move in with the Bessnards after inheriting family money.

Leon’s father died within weeks of the move reportedly from eating poisonous mushrooms.

His mother died 3 months later of pneumonia.

Their estate went to Leyon and his sister Lucy who then committed suicide and whose share passed to Leyon.

Marie’s own father died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

A wealthy childless couple named Rivet who had moved in with the Bessnards as paying borders and named Marie as their sole beneficiary died within two years of each other.

First Tusant of pneumonia, then Blanch of what her doctor called chest sickness.

Two elderly cousins, Pauline Bodino and Virginia Lerin, both of whom had named Marie as their only heir, died within a week of each other in July 1945.

According to Marie, both women had mistaken a dish of lie for dessert on separate occasions.

Finally, in October 1947, Leon Bessnard died of uremia, but not before telling his mistress, the local post mistress Louise Pinu, that he believed his wife was poisoning him and asking her to demand an autopsy if he died suddenly.

Pinu sent a letter to the public prosecutor.

Authorities initially dismissed it.

Pinu persisted.

Others in Ludun added their voices, and in May 1949, Leyon’s body was exumed.

A forensic examination found arsenic in quantities nearly double what would have been necessary to kill him.

This discovery triggered the exumation of 12 additional bodies.

Arsenic was found in 11 of the 12.

Marie Busard was arrested on July 21st, 1949 and charged with 11 murders, the 12th case having exceeded the statute of limitations.

At the time of her arrest, she was 52 years old, softly spoken, and according to the locals who had known her for decades, a woman you would not suspect of anything.

The first trial opened in February 1952 at Poet.

The prosecution’s case rested almost entirely on the forensic testimony of DR.

Gorge Barrow, who had conducted the autopsies and found the arsenic.

Defense attorneys Renee Hayatt and Albert Gotrat proceeded to systematically dismantle his credibility.

They demonstrated that Barrow had claimed to be able to distinguish between arsenic and antimony with the naked eye, a claim that was scientifically indefensible.

They raised questions about the chain of custody of the exumed samples, suggesting that evidence had been lost or mishandled by the laboratory.

And they introduced a theory that would prove central to all three proceedings that the arsenic found in the bodies might have come not from poison but from the soil of the Ludan cemetery where the deceased had been buried through the action of anorobic bacteria on organic compounds.

The judge unable to resolve the conflicting scientific testimony adjourned the trial and ordered a new panel of experts to re-examine everything.

Marie Besnard was returned to preventive detention while the new experts spent two years going over the evidence.

At the second trial held in Bordeaux in 1954, three informers placed in Marie’s cell by police claimed she had tried to hire Marseilles gangsters to eliminate some of the local gossips who had spoken against her.

But the second trial collapsed as dramatically as the first.

One of the expert witnesses had a complete breakdown on the stand.

sitting down, folding his arms, crossing his legs, and refusing to speak.

A third panel of super experts was ordered.

Marie was released on bond.

She went home to Ludon.

7 years passed.

The third trial opened in Bordeaux in November 1961.

By this point, much of the physical evidence had degraded beyond reliable testing.

The super experts admitted on the stand that their methods were not up to date and that too many factors escaped them.

The defense had also gathered evidence that the concierge of the Luden cemetery had grown potatoes near the grave sites and regularly applied arsenic containing fertilizer to his garden.

The contamination theory now had a named source.

One by one, the scientific pillars of the prosecution crumbled.

After 3 hours and 25 minutes of deliberation, the jury acquitted Marie Besnard on all counts.

On December 12th, 1961, she walked out of the Bordeaux court a free woman.

She died in 1980 aged 83 still in Ludan.

One weary attorney who had observed all three proceedings said afterward that the whole case was a powerful argument for cremation.

Another analyst wrote that Marie Besard had rewritten the definition of the perfect crime that by outlasting three separate prosecutions, she had demonstrated how completely a determined defense could neutralize even overwhelming circumstantial evidence if the forensic science was sufficiently uncertain.

whether she killed 11 people across two decades for their inheritances or whether she was an extraordinarily unlucky woman surrounded by a string of genuine misfortunes was never definitively established by any court.

The arsenic was real.

The inheritances were real.

The 12 exumations were real.

But proof in the legal sense that a jury would accept was something that the prosecution never managed to deliver.

12 bodies, 11 with arsenic, three trials, 11 years, 3 hours and 25 minutes.

Not guilty.

She went home to Ludan.

She died there in 1980.

The question was never answered.

Case 10.

Margarite Steinhile, 1899 and 1908.

Paris, France.

The president of France died in her presence.

Nine years later, her husband was strangled.

She was acquitted of both.

Margarite Steinhile was born in Boart in 1869.

The daughter of a wealthy industrial family named JP, and she was determined from an early age to be at the center of things.

She married the painter Adolf Steinhile in 1890.

He was established enough to give her access to Parisian society, but his talent was modest and his ambitions did not match hers.

She established a salon at their house in the Impass Ranson off the route of Agarard and filled it over the years with some of the most prominent men in France.

Emil Zola, Pierre Loi, Jules Masinet, Ferdinand Delesups.

She cultivated connections with politicians and financiers.

She thought of herself as a modern Madame Dempador, a woman who wielded influence through proximity to powerful men.

She was not entirely wrong.

In 1897, Adolf Steinhile was awarded a contract by President Felix for which brought the president to their home for was captivated.

He was a portly vain man who collected mistresses and changed his clothes three times a day in an effort to give his Republican office some of the grandeur of monarchy.

He and Margarite began a discreet affair conducted in the private quarters of the Elise Palace.

She was ushered in through a side entrance by a presidential detective and received in what staff called the blue drawing room.

She would later describe their meetings in her memoirs as work sessions in which she served as his psychological adviser.

On February 16th, 1899 for telephoned Margarite and asked her to come to the palace that afternoon.

Within a short time of her arrival, servants heard alarming sounds and rushed into the room.

They found the president collapsed on a couch or in some versions of the account on a bed while Margarite adjusted her disordered clothing for died several hours later of a cerebral hemorrhage.

The circumstances of four’s death immediately became the subject of speculation, rumor, and eventually legend.

The left-wing press described his passing with undisguised ribbry.

One paper wrote that he had been sacrificed on Venus’s altar.

A play on words in French between the term for undertakers and a vulgar expression attached itself to Margarite permanently, earning her the nickname La Pampa.

Some farright newspapers, unwilling to accept a natural death accused her of having poisoned him.

None of these accusations was ever substantiated.

For’s death was recorded as a stroke brought on by overexertion.

Margarite adjusted her clothing and continued her life.

After four’s death, Margarite moved through a succession of wealthy and powerful lovers.

In February 1908, she became involved with Borderol, a powerful industrialist from the Arden.

3 months later, on the night of May 30th to 31st, 1908, the household at the Impass Ronin was struck by what Margarite would describe as a violent attack by four strangers in black robes.

When servants investigated in the morning, they found two bodies.

Margarit’s stepmother, Emily JP, who had choked to death on her own false teeth, and her husband, Adolf Steinhile, who had been strangled with a cord.

Margarite herself was found on a bed, bound and gagged, unable to move.

She told police that three men and a woman in black had broken in, tied her up, and committed the murders.

Possibly, she suggested, in search of secret documents that President For had entrusted to her keeping, documents that might relate to the Drifus affair.

Police were skeptical from the start, but had no hard evidence.

The case was formally dropped.

Then Margarite, apparently unable to leave it alone, began making moves that attracted renewed attention.

She concealed a small pearl, which she claimed had been stolen the night of the murders.

in the pocketbook of her manservant Remy Quillard, then told police she had found it there.

The fabrication was quickly exposed.

She then accused another person, Alexander Wolf, the son of a former housekeeper, who was able to prove an alibi.

The deliberate attempts to frame innocent people convinced police to arrest her.

In November 1908, she was taken to St.

Lazar prison.

The trial that followed in 1909 was a sensation by any measure.

It was revealed that Margarite had enjoyed lovers from across the spectrum of Parisian society.

The list of men named in proceedings was long enough to fill several columns of newspaper.

The courtroom was packed for every session.

On the stand, Margarite performed with extraordinary skill, weeping, protesting, maintaining her story with unwavering conviction through days of cross-examination.

She provided an explanation for every inconsistency.

She wept at the right moments.

She was outraged at the right accusations.

Her stories were called tissues of lies by the judge.

Then, in a moment that no one in the courtroom had anticipated, a mysterious man in a red wig and a black cloak appeared and gave testimony claiming to have been involved in breaking into the house.

Testimony that was incoherent but profoundly confusing.

The prosecution’s already fragile case fractured further.

The jury deliberated for 2 and 1/2 hours and acquitted Margarite Steinhile on November 14th, 1909.

She left France for England immediately afterward.

In London, she was known as Madame Deseriniac.

She published her memoirs in 1912, presenting herself as a victim of political intrigue and journalistic malice.

In June 1917, she married Robert Brookke Campbell Scarlet, the sixth Baron Abbinger, becoming Lady Abbinger.

He died in 1927.

She remained in England living in Hoveve on the Sussex coast for the rest of her life.

She died on July 17th, 1954, the same date 161 years later, on which Charlotte Corde had been guillotined in Paris.

She was 85 years old.

The murders of Adolf Steinhe and Emily JP remain officially unsolved.

The president who died in her presence remains officially the victim of a stroke.

Margarite kept her secrets until the end and then took them with her to a nursing home in Hoveve where no one who walked past her room knew anything about any of it.

The president died in her presence.

Her husband was strangled.

Her stepmother choked.

She was found bound on a bed.

She framed two people.

She was acquitted.

She moved to England.

She married a baron.

She died at 85.

Nothing was ever proven.

10 women, 10 cases, one country that could not look away.

Simone Weber, who loaded garbage bags into her car before sunrise.

Florence Ray, who kissed her dying boyfriend and then fell silent for the rest of her life.

Christine Malevra, whose patients died at three times the expected rate when she was on duty.

Dominique Catres, who gave birth eight times and told no one.

Avon Chevier, who shot her husband five times and was cheered in the street when the jury freed her.

The Mares De Brinvilliers, who practiced on the poor before she moved to her own family.

Gene Weber, who was handed back to the children three times before anyone stopped her.

Charlotte Corde, who wrote her explanation before she bought the knife.

Marie Besnard, who outlasted three trials and went home.

Margarite Steinhile, who was in the room when the president died.

and still told nothing to anyone.

These cases span three centuries and touch almost every form of violence that courts have had to grapple with.

Premeditated murder, crimes of passion, political assassination, infanticide, serial killing, professional betrayal, and the blurred territory where compassion becomes crime.

France produced all of them.

France also produced the legal proceedings, the acquitts, the scandals, and the public debates that followed each one.

Some of these women were convicted, some were not.

Some cases remain officially unresolved.

What none of them left behind was silence.

Each trial, each verdict, each acquitt produced argument, reconsideration, and in several cases, genuine legal reform.

The people who died in these stories did not choose the way they died.

Marcel Fixard, Bernard Hedier, Amidu Dio, Lauron Gerard, Cherry Mayard, Guy Jacob, the patients in the neology ward, the eight children who were given no names, Pierre Chevalier, the hospital patients who came for charity, the 10 children Gene Weber strangled, Jean Paul Morett, the 12 people whose bodies were exumed in Ludun, Adolf Steinhe, Emily JP, their names belong in any account of these cases.

The women who killed them or who were accused of killing them are remembered.

These are the names we owe equal memory to.

Remember them.

If these 10 stories have stayed with you, if even one of them has made you think, please like this video, share it, and subscribe to this channel.

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