Marie Besnard: Undertaker's Best Friend?

at least once they had served their purpose. The most amazing thing about Marieo not that she was accused of poisoning at least a dozen people, but that she got away with it and with each time she got wealthier. Spoiler alert. I know. Marie was born Davao to a farming family in lou De France, in and she was educated at a convent school, not all that unusual for the place and time, and she was remembered by her classmates though as being quote vicious and immoral and wild

with boys. Well you know, they also described her as a mean so she didn't really curry a lot of favor from early child. When she was twenty four, so we're fast forwarding a little bit to which she's an adult. She married her cousin, August Aunty. The two actually were first cousins. Um. The way that that worked out was her mother was his father's sister. Now, this was not an arranged marriage. This was just your yeah, just the

just just a friendly cousin marriage. Moving along, So these two cousins in love had been married for seven years when August became ill and he died and the official cause of his death was listed as tuberculosis. But where we're going to find out later is that he did not die of TV or, as it was commonly called at the time, the galloping consumption. Um. But let's not gallop ahead of ourselves. So when he died, Marie's husband

left her seven thousand, two hundred forty francs. And while that wasn't like a huge amount, she wasn't set for life. It also was not a meager sum to come into right. Um. She was still she was living with her parents, and say she didn't have to worry about her rent or anything. This was her money. Um. When she was thirty one, that's when she became a widow. And it didn't take very long for her friends to start encouraging her to find another husband, as she that's what one did at

the time. Her parents, too, encouraged her to remarry, although they may have been more concerned about gaining an extra hand for their farm than about Marie's love life or her personal security. Listen, I'm from farm stock. I understand this ideology. I'm not saying it anything wrong with that. It just, you know, like wishing your daughter to be in love is also a good thing, right. There's a there's a reason that a lot of farm families have late in life babies, and it's because the more hands

I'm not kidding, right. Grieving for her husband, Marie initially turned down every potential suitor that her friends and family suggested, but then in Marie met Leon Bernard, and it is said that her cousin Pascaline made this match and remarried

him within a year after her first husband's death. Ley All ran a saddle and harness shop which was about forty eight miles away from her parents farm, and although their marriage remained childless and there were some rumors about infidelity, we'll talk a little bit about that, the two of them actually appeared to be a pretty contented couple together. Neighbors and friends could never recall ever seeing them fight. So Leon had a nickname for his new ride, which

was Moose, which means fly in French. And I'm actually really not sure if that should be in the positive or the negative category of their relationship, but there it is. Uh. You know, it's also common for French people to call their beloved a cabbage. So great it could be perfectly lovely like and and among couples, you know, you never you never know what's going on between people, like it might have been a very loving, happy, funny nickname. It could have just been that she was a past I

have no idea sweet little fly because it's French. It sounds cute, it's right. Over the years, Leon and Marie actually became pretty wealthy. They did really well for themselves. They ended up owning six houses, They had an inn, they had a cafe, and they also owned two farms where they bred horses. So not too bad. So that's that's money. Yeah. Um. Not very long after they got married, Leon began disappearing in the evenings and it was not

for work. Uh, And the local gossips didn't hesitate to point an accusatory finger at two women in particular in town. One they told Marie was her cousin Pasquleen Um, the very same woman who had introduced the two um. And he was also said to be having an affair with the postmistress Louise Pinto. And it turns out that Leon did have a roving eye, but it always seemed like Marie just kind of turned a blind eye to his indiscretions. When he died in October of nine, his doctor did

not list the cause of death as anything suspicious. It was listed as euremia. So, knowing what Marie's future would hold, as we have this great perspective, his cause of death is actually pretty interesting, okay. And this is why. So this is a condition that most commonly develops when you've already been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. This isn't something that you're just like, oh, like a U T I or something, you know. This is something that's long standing

disease or your kidneys. Um happens when all the toxic waste products in your body start to build up because your kidneys just can't remove them from you anymore. And once they get to a toxic level that can be fatal. So here is why we are telling you all of this and why it is interesting. This type of kidney damage can also be caused by repeated long term exposure to arsenic what's happening in this little French town chill domage.

So though the investigation into the murders surrounding Marie initially focused only on the death of Leon Um, we'll get to that. It turns out that she wasn't just targeting a husband. When we come back, we're gonna expose Marie as a serial poisoner. Welcome back to Criminalia, where we're about to name Marie's targets. So, nine years before Leon Bernard died of uremia, Leon's great aunt, Madame Marie Louise le Comte, died, presumably of natural causes due to her

old age. She was eighty six at the time and she had been ill for a considerable period before this. It was actually Marie who was sort of her nursemaid and cared for her at the end of her life. So, because she had never had any children, there was great speculation over who would be remembered in her will, and the whole family knew that Marie Louise had a considerable amount of satings, and Marie and Leon thought that they

were going to be the recipients of her wealth. After all, she had moved in with them at that point and Marie had been her caregiver. But it turned out it was neither of them that was named in the will. Leon's parents, who were still alive, inherited everything, furious they received nothing for their good deeds. Neither Marie nor Leon attended the funeral and the second death that Marie is accused of at this point, because remember we're going back

in time before her husband is actually her husband's best friend. Interestingly, according to some accounts of this story, Toussaint was one of the men Marie may or may not have had an affair with. Maybe there were some infidelities in this marriage. The other affair speculation was that there was a German handyman who worked at their home and on their farm. Marie's infidelities, though may or may not have been factual. Both men denied the affairs over the years, and Marie

never seems to have even addressed them. Uh. This is probably the gossip mill in her small town at its finest but you never know, because sometimes rumors have bases in fact. So to go back to that first person, Maria mentioned to Saint Rivas and his wife Blanche may have actually been borders in Marie and Leon's home, or

they might have actually just been neighbors. The record gets a little unclear on this point, but what we do know is that Toussaint and Leon were very good friends, so to still have been unwell, and Marie had helped his wife care for him during this time. He wasn't a poor man. I read in one source that he was a baker, but I couldn't verify that really anywhere. Um, he was a poor when he died, and probably no surprise that his wife was named as his soul heir

in his will. As one does. This was really not acceptable for Marie. She felt once again as though she had been slighted since she had once again been his deathbed caregiver. But as we'll see, she had some other projects going on. Was definitely this is definitely a woman who knew how to diversify her potential revenue streams. That's one way I'm saying it again, through nefarious means, but it's still a revenue stream, right, She's she's making herself

wealthy here. Um. So it was Marie's father who was the next pass away. In May of nine, which was about ten months after Toussaint's death. Marie and her mother shared the assets, which included two farms, and after her father's death, Marie's mother moved in with her and Leon never move in with Marie. Leon, yes, that they just don't board at their house. Good life advice, solid life advice. It's like dine with the Borges, right, yes, uh, which

makes they're in a whole fascinating right, I think. Didn't they have a cafe to she were delicious? Just four months after the death of Marie's father, Leon's grandmother fell ill and Marie stepped into care for her, and when dear Colmer died, she left her assets once again, they went to Leon's parents. So if it sounds like it's a bad time to be Leon's parents, it was. Yeah.

A short two months later, Leon's father accidentally eight poisonous mushrooms and collapsed and died, and he had willed his assets to his wife, So now she had all the things as also makes sense. So as you might imagine as we continue down this list of victims. Leon's mother was not a widow for very long um. Four months.

That's a really short time. Four months after Leon's father's death. Um. Where that puts us now in January of one For anybody who's keeping score here, Uh, Leon's mother fell ill um. So guess who nursed her on her deathbed? Marie. So here's the thing. You would think the line of the line of deaths for them to finally get this at this point accumulated hefty inheritance would go right to them,

but no, neither Marie nor Leon were named in the will. Instead, Leon's mother left all of her assets to her daughter, Leon's sister, Lucy. Two months go by after Leon's mother's death, and Leon discovers that his sister Lucy had hanged herself in her home. So, while we don't know very much about Lucy or her story, which is very clearly a

tragic one. Her death was suicide, not by poison, it is still an interesting death in Marie's lineup because Lucy didn't have a will when she died, and she had at this point just inherited a whole lot of real estate and a substantial amount of money from her parents. I mean, I think it was fairly substantial. It was like close to like three thousand francs or something, and like at least two houses. It was. It was a nice chunk that I'm sure Marie thought should be hers.

Um So during the time she knew Marie. It said that Lucy had remarked at least once um and we quote this, I will not leave that Marie woman even a teaspoon, so that a woman really kind of says it all, doesn't it like, But under French law, her assets without a will would go to her next of kin, and that was Leon. Uh. Yeah, I think that Lucy probably talked to Marie's classmates. Maybe they didn't. She's she's mad,

She's like none of them liked him. So less than a year after Lucy's suicide, Blanche, remember she was to Saint Rivet's widow, also died and Marie had stayed by her side as she lay dying, and Leon very thoughtfully bought her house right out from under her. What happened there was under a life annuity contract, which you can still do now. It was very popular at the time in France. An ownership of Blanche's house would have been transferred to Leon and he would pay her monthly until

she died. But she died so quickly that he actually never ended up having to pay her anything. So Blanche a, grateful for Marie's comfort, is the one person who did name Marie as her soul heir in her will. Finally right, She's like, I'm getting the recognition I deserve. She's like, I feel all whole now I can just take my money. And I don't think she ever felt whole, But that's my speculation. I think A probably onto something there. So, but for three years it was quiet in her family.

Three years went by without any deaths among Marie and Leon's friends and family, and they spent this time just generally buying things and enjoying their wealth. But you know, they've had a lot of mourning and death, so people probably thought, oh, at last they're getting to have a good time. They were black all the time, right, the Baynard's are finally enjoying life. Yes, good for them. In Marie's elderly cousins, Pauline and Virginie were the next to go.

The two of them had made that foolish mistake of moving in with the Baynard's and Marie was carry for them. This gets so strange because under Marie's care, first Pauline died after she mistook a bowl of Lie left on the counter for her dessert one night. Now, I do want to say that lie at the time, it wasn't so weird to have it on the counter because you could wash your dishes with it, right, But the idea that you would mistake it for like a bowl of

ice cream or something seems really suspicious. Um. And the other thing that's really suspicious is that amazing as it may sound, Virsionie made the very same mistake not even a week later. So this might be a good teachable moment. Uh. Just as a rule of thumb, don't eat things you find left behind on the counter, but if they look like ice cream. Um. And I have a I have a family member who accidentally ate a spoonful of butter

that way and they are horrified it. But when you discover it's fly also, I'm like, how much did they eat before they realize? Like? Were they just what's going on? I would think that it would sort of feel funny in the mouth before you would swallow, But I don't spit it out right. We know that both Pauline, as we said, and Virginie were poisoned. However it may not have been with Lie. Right. Um, you know this is sometimes it's just a it makes the story a little

bit better. But when you when you go back and you recall what's going on, Lie doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense here. But hey, maybe it was like and we don't know, like this is the account given by Marie Baynard, right, yes, So, I mean sure her cousins really really dopey andate Lie. I thought it was dessert. I mean it probably won't surprise either that Marie and Leon were air to both of their will. However, so

she made them a lie Sunday. Um not long, not long at all after Leon Emrie inherited both Pauline and Virginie estates, Leon, who was fifty five at this time, started to experience terrible abdominal pain and he also had vomiting and symptoms of kidney failure. He had a heart attack, and he finally fell into a coma and in October of nine he passed away, and there was only one heir named on his will. Like they had no children, he has lost his family and his sister. Uh so

Marie inherited everything. But wait, there's there's one more. I feel like there there. We could all benefit from a flow chart at this point of like how the wealth has transferred and who has died and what's been accumulated. So right, so there's one more. Less than two years after her husband died, Marie's mother, who was elder and who was losing her sight, became sick with the flu, which was apparently um really quite strong that year, so

everyone was sort of falling down with it. But at this point Marie was her mother's only air and her mother died and she inherited a sizeable nest egg from her. So this is once again maybe a good time to pause. We haven't even gotten to any of the crazy trial business yet, and when we returned, we're going to talk about why all of these deaths were not simply bad Bernard family luck. Welcome back to criminal Lea, where we're talking about how there was no such thing as the

Bynard family chinks. Although the Bynards had suffered an extraordinary number of deaths in a really short period of time, still no one suspected that it was anything more than just bad luck. I mean, think about the number of funerals they went to, like what five years um The locals actually started referring to it as the Bynard family jinks until Leon died. And when he died, Marie inherited all of their accumulated wealth and she finally emerged as

a suspect. But not at first, as it turns out that when he fell ill, Leon became suspicious of his wife and he told his possible lover, Louise, that Marie was trying to poison him. In the days after Leon's death, his possible mistress, Louise, concerned and very suspicious of Marie, sent a letter to the public Prosecutor's office, and initially her claim that Leon suspected his wife of poisoning him

was just outright dismissed. But that, along with the suspicions of other citizens that had been brought to the prosecutor's office uh caused investigators to finally be swayed to at least take a cursory look into this vast swath of deaths. The first of the bodies that they exhumed was Marie's first husband, So dial it way back here two toxicologists found a significant amount of arsenic in his organs um, and so you know, maybe he didn't die of tuberculosis

after all. And recall when we mentioned earlier that euremia can be caused by arsenic poisoning. When Marie's second husband was exhumed, an autopsy found that he too had ingested a large amount of arsenic over a period of time. So at this point, these two bodies both come back with arsenic, and the judge orders the bodies of every member of Marie's family who died within twenty five years

before this to be exhumed. So by the time this investigation was over, fatal levels of arsenic had been found in eleven bodies. Each time a body was exhumed and then the findings were that it had been poisoned, the headlines would announce another one for Marie. So it's interesting to note that of all of the bodies that were exhumped, no arsenic was found in the remains of Marie's mother in law. Her cause of death had been pneumonia. So I mean, actually, perhaps this was really one case where

mother Nature did the work for Marie. Yeah, she was probably like, who I can put the Arsenic away. Marie was arrested. That took place on July twenty one, nine and she was charged with the poisoning of a total of eleven people, including her two husbands, parents, two cousins, a great aunt, too close friends, and possibly a couple of in laws. She may have been accused of more than the poisonings, though there's an account of her trial report, and it only appears in in one write up of

her trial that Marie was also accused of fraud. They reported that she had cashed pension payments that had been meant for one of her aunts, but it never comes up again. While awaiting trial, Marie's a turn Ernie A dapperman named Henri Ducluzzo explained her defense. He said, quote, in this country of good wines and fine living, one might possibly conceive of one murder, two murders, even three murders, but eleven murders. Reese first trial took a little while

for it to begin. It begin in February. Remember she was arrested in Well, they had to dig up all those bodies and do tests. They did, and then that does take a while. Exhamations are not you don't rush them so in the courtroom, Marie's attorneys questioned the coroner's methods and the tests that we're being used for finding arsenic in a body. They accused the scientists who conducted the tests of mishandling evidence or in some cases altogether

losing the evidence. They also led with a new theory suggesting that arsenic could enter a corpse from the soil around it through the actions of anaerobic bacteria, and no one tested the soil, so the defense could just go with that theory. Unable to come to any sort of verdict, the court ruled that it needed more time to review the scientific evidence and adjourned. So a new panel of experts comes in and it takes them two years to

review the forensic evidence from the first trial. They were forced to eliminate five of the charges at this time because there actually was no longer in a physical evidence to test anything in the corps whatever they exhumed for arsenic.

So Marie's second trial was also declared a mistrial. Seven years later, Marie went on trial again, but by now we are talking about nineteen sixty one, so that means that like over the twelve years since this all began, in a legal sense, even more of the physical evidence had been lost, and that left very little physical evidence

against her. After all, we are talking about even in a best case scenario, like going from the first trial nine years at this point having gone, I was twelve from the first and maybe nine from the second at least.

It's like a decade that we're talking about here. Yeah, So experts admitted in court that the techniques that that had been used to detect the arsenic were actually outdated tests, and that there were too many factors to put the pieces together anyway, which I thought was really who says that, Like you're in court, You're like, there's too much to do here, just I can't do it. It's such an

epic case of like I don't know anymore. Marie's attorney, in the meantime, had learned that the caretaker of the Ludin Cemetery, just where many of these people were buried, had grown a garden near the burial sites, and his garden included potatoes, which, as is the case with many root vegetables, contained naturally occurring arsenic in their skins. The caretaker also admitted that he had sprinkled his garden with fertilizers that contained arsenic, and so both of these things

could have contaminated the soy around the bodies. At least that was the defense's argument. So in addition to a problem with this evidence, there were witnesses now who have retracted their earlier testimonies from the first and second trials um and one of those witnesses to retract her testimony was his potential mistress that we talked about with Leon, Louise, who now admitted that Leon had actually never told her that he suspected his wife of trying to kill him.

His fabrication, it kind of seems like she suspected the wife and added Leon's name to make it have more gravity. I feel that way too. The Queen of Poisoners, which is another nickname that Marie came to be known by, was acquitted during her third trial in December of nineteen sixty one. The jury took only three hours and twenty five minutes to deliberate, So in the end, Marie's case lasted across twelve maybe thirteen years. She was in prison for about five of those years, but for most of

the time she was out on bond um. But when she walked straight faced, as they reported from the courthouse on December twelfth, nine. She remained a free woman, a free woman with a lot of inheritances. She lived almost

twenty more years. She died in nineteen eighty on Valentine's Day. Yeah, Maria is one of those interesting cases because you and I have talked many times about the fact that in researching any of these women that we've talked about on the show so far, there's almost always something that you admire or identify with them, or you know, Maria is a little harder, like there's not a lot that's likable about her. Yes, No, I completely agree. Uh in less

mean thoughts, Mario, It's time for what's your poison? What is your poison? This week? Hollie? So uh, this week we are going with the suassonquez, which is the French seventy to those of us who don't speak well. And in case you've ever wondered, also, numbers are always hard in any any foreign language. But the it's just a little fun quirk that in French sois san cans really means sixty. Yeah. Before I even start with this, I will say that if you go looking for recipes for

the French seventy five or sans uh. You will see variations because some use gin and some use kognac. Oh, I didn't see that. I only saw the ones that used gin. This is a fun argument to get into with bartenders, um or just to just not an argument, even just a discussion. There's there's room on my bar tab for all kinds of delightful cocktails. But I went with gin because I am not by nature a gin drinker,

so I'm trying to expand my horizons. So this one is one ounce of gin, a half ounce of fresh lemon juice, a little dash or two of simple syrup. Some recipes call for a specific amount uh, and then three ounces of champagne or another sparkling wine is fine if you don't have champagne. So this is kind of like a ricky It's it's very similar to a lot of other drinks. Yeah, I mean, the base ingredients are all there, um. So you just put the gin, the

lemon juice, and the simple syrup into a shaker. You can also use a flavored syrup if you want to kick it up a notch um. Throw it in your shaker and shake it up with some ice. And then you strain it into a chilled champagne flute and you top it with the champagne and the sparkling wine. I'm not really a gin person myself, but it sounds delicious. It's amazingly delicious. I used vanilla syrup instead of just a plain simple syrup because I like vanilla and everything obviously,

so uh so remarkably delicious. So you also tried a different cocktail this week as well, which which is the Henning Way, which I actually was really curious about because the Henning Way is absinthe and champagne, right. It's actually called Death in the Afternoon. It was invented by Hemingway, and I texted Maria death in the Afternoon should be renamed Black in the Afternoon, and broke my heart because it was I was like, I would have tried the Hemingway,

and maybe I don't. That was not a delightful. Of the two cocktails, one was an absolutely delightful romp and one I could not finish, no, ma'am. I like to think of of Marie and Leon sitting out those three years where they were just enjoying their wealth and buying horses and houses and stuff. That they would sit out on their porch and have because it would have been invented by then. There's some there's some debate about when it was invented, but this is twentieth century, you know,

this is you know, yeah, it would have existed. But one of the things that drew me and you too, it is the fact that it kind of was a nice representation because it contains shamping of like Maurice ascendency financial. I liked that it had Champagne, and I liked that it had this really like Edi because that you know, like lemon juicy kind of like squirt that went into it as well, And I was like, I could really

see that being Marie. Yeah. Yeah. Criminalia is a production of Shawonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shawonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.