Christine and Léa Papin
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Christine and Lea Papin brutally murdered their employer and her daughter in Le Mans, France, on February 2, 1933. This incident had a significant influence on French intellectuals Genet, Sartre and Lacan, who sought to understand it and it was thought of as symbolic of class struggle. The case has forced the basis of a number of films and plays.
Christine (born 8th March, 1905) and Lea (born 15th September, 1911), had not simply killed their employers Madame and Mademoiselle Lancelin, a mother and daughter, but they had gouged their eyes out while they were still alive. After this, they murdered the pair of them with a hammer and knife. Most of the blows were directed at the heads and faces of the victims, with the result that they were literally unrecognisable. Adding to the bizarre nature of the crime was the fact that the two maids made no attempt to escape and were found huddled in bed together, completely naked. The fact that they were naked in bed together seemed to indicate a sexual relationship between them, which would have been both lesbian and incestuous in nature. The two sisters had worked for their employers for seven years and had appeared quiet and demure, with Lea being particularly under the thrall of Christine. The two girls had spent all their free time with one another and were regular churchgoers.
The trial began in September 1933. The case intrigued the people of France and was watched intently by the public and press. Christine was sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. Before long, she was transferred to a mental asylum at Rennes, where she died in 1937.
Lea Papin was released from prison in 1941. She then lived in the town of Nantes, where she was joined by her mother. She was thought to have died in 1982, but this was questioned in 2000 by the French filmmaker, Claude Ventura. Ventura made a documentary film, En quête des soeurs Papin (In Search of the Papin Sisters) in which he claimed to have found Lea alive in a hospice somewhere in France. She was partly paralysed as the result of a stroke and could not speak, though she was shown in the film. This Lea died in 2001. It is not known if Ventura had documentation to prove the identity of his Lea.
Works inspired by or based on the case
- The Maids (Les Bonnes) (1947), a play by Jean Genet
- The Maids (1974), a film based on the play, directed by Christopher Miles
- Les Abysses - a film directed by Nico Papatakis
- Minotaure magazine issue no.3, 1933 (Motives of Paranoiac Crime: The Crime of the Papin Sisters by Lacan)
- La Cérémonie (1995)- a film directed Claude Chabrol
- A Judgement in Stone - a novel written by Ruth Rendell
- Les Blessures Assassines - a film directed Jean-Pierre Denis
- In Search of the Papin Sisters - a documentary film directed by Claude Ventura
