French writer, woman of letters, militant feminist, salonnier, lecturer, and ardent suffragist, also the killer of several lovers and husbands, a nymphomaniac and drug addict.
The daughter of a silk merchant, Marie was convent educated. She went to work for her dad’s failing firm, traveling to Mexico in 1892. While there, she had dramatic love affairs; one lover reportedly killed himself over her rejection. At one time, a lover was found dead at her feat, allegedly shot to death by bandits as she hysterically sobbed.
Marie met Paul Jacques in Mexico City. He was twice her age and a wealthy silk merchant with a thriving business in Mexico and Europe, servants and a lifestyle of ease. They married and moved to Paris where their daughter Pauline was born in 1904. Marie formed a salon, a literary circle where she could share her writings of romantic stories and poetry. Under the nom de plume of Hera Myrtel, she penned a romantic novel that had some success and she was commissioned to publish more. She took many lovers, which her husband meekly accepted as she bullied and dominated him for 20 years.
Her literary pretensions left Marie little time for her husband and child, and she began to press him for a trip to Mexico, where she felt that she would be acclaimed as an authoress. He refused. One evening in January 1914, she ordered the maid to take a tureen of soup to her husband, who was working late in his study. The maid saw her slip a white powder in the soup and said to her master, “I hope you like the flavoring that Madame put into your soup.” Paul did not eat the soup, but had a portion of it analyzed by a chemist; it contained a lethal poison. Not wanting a scandal, he foolishly considered that it was a temporary act of pique by his wife. He admitted to friends that he “would never understand the dark corners of her mind.”
On the evening of 5 March 1914, the maid was summoned to Marie’s bedroom. Her husband, Paul, was dead, shot in the right temple. It was declared to be a suicide.
In mourning, Marie made her long-wanted trip to Mexico, taking Pauline with her. A rich dilettante once she liquidated her husband’s Mexican assets, she billed herself as a “mystical novelist,” establishing a salon peopled by sycophants. Soon she met a mysterious, handsome man named Charles Bessarabo, a Rumanian of dubious interests with a possible criminal background. He proposed marriage to the aging and vain Marie. She promptly accepted, and the couple returned to Paris in 1916. They moved into luxurious quarters where Marie set up a new literary salon, inviting any males into private conference whom she chose, driven by outstanding sexual energy. For years she indulged in drugs, becoming particularly fond of hashish.
Once more, she dominated and cuckolded her husband. If he put up any objection to her extravagance or sexual indulgence, she turned on him in fury. Once in 1918, he awoke to find her on top of him, wild-eyed, trying to choke him to death. He flung her off and she wept, “I don’t know what came over me.”
On 8 July 1920, when Bessarabo arrived home for dinner, he found her scantily clad and preparing for an “interview” with a male writer. She grabbed a pistol and yelled at him to get out. He dove for the floor as a bullet whistled over his head. Marie threw down the gun and calmly went to her dinner. When Bessarabo told her he could no longer tolerate their life together, she replied that if he left, she would expose his shady business dealings.
On 31 July 1920, c. 8:00 PM, Marie shot Bessarabo to death, put his body in a trunk and sent it to Nancy, France. When he failed to show up at work, his chauffeur went to the police, relating what he knew of his employer’s marital problems. Marie insisted that he had gone away to visit his (alleged) mistress and that he had taken the large trunk. The trunk was soon located and found to contain a naked corpse, shot and with a battered head and face. Confronted with the evidence, Marie promptly confessed to shooting Bessarabo, saying that she had been jealous of his mistress. Their daughter had been wakened by the shots and stood by her mother.
Both Marie and Pauline were place on trial for murder on 15 February 1921. The trial was sensational. At one point, Pauline leaped to her feet and screamed, “I must and will tell the truth.” She laid the blame at her mother’s feet as Marie shouted at her to shut up.
Pauline was set free but Marie was convicted of murder and given 20 years prison in Rennes, where she died on 21 March 1931 at age 62.
Link to Wikipedia biography