On May 16th, 1937, twenty-nine-year-old Laetitia Toureaux was found murdered in a carriage on the Paris Métro at the Porte Dorée station. The cause of death was a single stab wound to the neck. Significantly, Laetitia was the first person to ever be killed on the Métro, undoubtedly a tragic claim to fame.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the case was the fact that Laetitia had only boarded the train at the previous stop, meaning that she had been slain in the brief, ninety-second interval between her entering the carriage and the train pulling in at the next station.
Upon investigation into Laetitita’s background, it was discovered that she was originally from the town of Oyace, a French-speaking municipality in Italy, but had eventually moved to Paris with her mother and four siblings. She had married a man named Jules Toureaux in 1930 and worked in a factory during the day.
Police determined, however, that Laetitia was living a double life, moonlighting under a false name in a sketchy dance hall, and making secretive visits to the Italian embassy. She was also believed to have had numerous lovers, which at first caused authorities to suspect that her death had been a crime of passion.
But as investigators delved deeper, they found that Laetitia had actually been operating as a spy, tasked with infiltrating the far-right terrorist group La Cagoule. When police interrogated members of the faction, two of them claimed that their outfit was indeed behind Laetitia’s murder, and one of the informants even gave the name of the man responsible: Jean Filiol. However, these confessions were later recanted, as the men asserted that they had been forced to give the information while under duress.
Whether the admissions of the La Cagoule members were true or not, the entire question soon became a moot point, as upon the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the case was dropped and largely forgotten. The murder of Laetitia Toureaux on the Paris Métro remains unsolved and is likely to remain so until at least 2038, when the case files will finally be released to the public.
Crime Immemorial 