Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
The French capital, Paris, is regarded as the City of Love par excellence, where countless lovers have sworn eternal love at its landmark, the legendary Eiffel Tower. Yet ‘la ville d’amour’ also has a dark side, where murderers and criminals have been wreaking havoc for centuries. One such figure was Charles Dautun, who went down in criminal history for ever with his horrific crime. The year was 1814, when the whole of France was in the midst of the First Restoration, and on 9 November, boatmen fished a severed head, wrapped in a cloth, out of the Seine. On that very same day, a human torso was found not far from the legendary Louvre, and two severed thighs were discovered near the famous Champs-Élysées. To whom did these body parts belong? To answer this question, a plaster bust of the victim – a man in his thirties – was reconstructed and displayed to the people of Paris at the morgue on the Île de la Cité, in the hope of establishing the man’s identity. Indeed, in December, a woman was able to identify the body as that of Auguste Dautun. He was the nephew of 53-year-old Jeanne-Marie Dautun, who, just a few months earlier, on 16 July, had been stabbed to death and robbed in her home on Rue de la Grange Batelière in Paris’s 9th arrondissement. When the gendarmerie searched Auguste Dautun’s flat, they were met with a horrific scene. Blood was splattered everywhere in the flat. The drawers had been ransacked and emptied. They were already familiar with this scenario from the case of his dead aunt. Could this be a coincidence? Charles Dautun, Auguste’s brother and Jeanne-Marie’s nephew, quickly came under the investigators’ scrutiny and was taken to the police station for questioning. Whilst still being questioned, he broke down and confessed to both murders. Charles Dautun was a former, failed medical student who had later become a soldier. He had squandered his entire fortune on gambling and prostitutes. Not knowing what else to do, he asked his aunt and brother for financial help. However, they refused to give Charles Dautun any money, as they feared he would squander it again. Charles lost his temper at this rejection and murdered them both. He then stole their valuables. At the murder trial, which took place in Paris from 23 to 25 February 1815, Charles Dautun was sentenced to death by guillotine. On 29 March 1815, this sentence was carried out at the Place de Grève, the execution site in Paris.
