101: Bad Blood: The Papin Sisters

Corpus Delicti

CDM Productions

True Crime

4.4 • 608 Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2019

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we bring you the story of the Papin sisters whose crimes inspired great debate in France. In 1933, the sisters brutally murdered their employer's wife and daughter in a gruesome, long lived attack. Because of the gore involved, many argued that they must be mentally ill. However, many saw it as a sure sign of the struggle between the rich and the poor, and felt the sisters were heroes.

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Music by:
Kai Engel
"Daemones"

Blooper music by:
Art of Escapism
"Coal Miners"

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

Transition Music by:
Nick Scarantino
Scarytino.com

Sources:
●https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_and_L%C3%A9a_Papin
●https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/05/12/the-papin-sisters-and-the-murder-case-that-still-haunts-france-after-more-than-80-years/
●https://allthatsinteresting.com/papin-sisters
●https://www.historicmysteries.com/papin-sisters/
●https://www.ranker.com/list/crimes-of-the-papin-sisters/melissa-sartore
●From newspapers.com – The Semi-Weekly Spokesman-Review, December 17, 1933 – “Can France Go Through with the Guillotine for the Most Brutal Murderess? (By a “staff correspondent”)
●From newspapers.com – The Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph – Jan 6, 1935 – “After Seven Years of Ill Treatment They Abruptly Turn on Their Mistress, Kill Her, and Her Daughter and then calmly Await the Police
●From newspapers.com – The Detroit Free Press – Dec 17, 1933 “Such a Horrible Crime that the Jury Said ‘Off With Her Head’” by Morris Gilbert

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone is Jen.
0:24.8	And this is Lindsay.
0:26.2	And welcome back to another corpus delicti.
0:28.9	Tonight we have an amazing story for you.
0:31.4	It's about two murdering sisters.
0:34.9	Yeah, and we've actually had this one on deck for a while, and it kept getting pushed
0:38.8	back for various reasons. So I'm excited to finally get into this one. You know, the live show and
0:44.0	everything else that popped up? Yeah, those few little small things. So I will start off by saying
0:50.9	that this story does have some graphic parts. So if you're squeamish, just
0:56.0	know going into this, there are a few parts that are kind of gross. Tonight we're going to talk
1:00.7	about Christine and Leah Papin. They were French sisters who worked as live-in maids and cooks.
1:07.7	Now, in the event that would spark a huge debate for years to come, the sisters were
1:14.0	convicted of murdering their employer's wife and daughter in Le Mans, France, on the 2nd of February
1:21.9	of 1933. Christine was just 27 and Leah was 20 at the time of the incident.
1:29.2	So this story became kind of a cultural crux for a time because it sparked an argument over class struggle and just kind of the abuse of the poor people by the rich people. And there were
1:49.6	several French intellectuals who took a particular interest in the case. And because of this,
1:55.4	there were tons of publications, plays, films, essays, songs, even art was based on this story. So it definitely
2:05.7	had an impact on society as a whole in France. So let's get into it and find out exactly
2:11.6	what happened. The Papin sisters had a rough childhood. Their parents, Clemise and Gustav Papin, married when Clemese became pregnant in 1901.
2:24.5	Their daughter Amelia was born five months later.
2:28.5	Now, this is according to town gossip.
2:31.4	An affair took place between Clemites and her boss while her and Gustav were dating.
	...

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