Andre Diner, the last convict guillotined at Le Mans.

Diner's hour was darkest before the dawn. It was also his last.

29 November, 1949 dawned cold and grey at the French city of Le Mans. For convict Andre Diner the weather was of no significance at all. As the old city slowly eased itself into another day in typically relaxed French fashion, Diner’s day would be rather shorter than anyone else’s. Before the sun had fully risen and the traditional coffee and croissants had even been prepared, Andre Diner would be dead.

Diner had seriously assaulted prison officer LeDoux in May of 1948 leaving LeDoux crippled for life, but not dead. French justice saw no benefit in keeping Diner alive even though LeDoux still was. During the recently-ended Second World War, Winston Churchill had remarked that the hour is darkest before the dawn. Diner’s last hour would be no exception. As he sat in his cold, damp cell watching the light begin creeping slowly through the barred window, Diner knew that all too well.

A few months earlier the world-famous Le Mans 24 Hours had been run for the first time since 1939. Also home to an airfield used by both sides in the recent conflict, the legendary Circuit de la Sarthe had been devastated by Allied bombing and had only recently been repaired and re-opened. Even then, one area of the old circuit was off-limits to visitors. It was still heavily-sown with landmines.

In his third win and one of the event’s all-time greatest drives, Luigi Chinetti had driven almost the entire twenty-four hours single-handed. Co-driver Lord Seldson, a talented British amateur, had barely been allowed to turn a wheel on the Ferrari 166 he shared with Chinetti, but Selsdon had been better off than fellow-Briton Pierre Marechal.

Marechal had crashed his Aston Martin DB2 between the slow 90-degree right-hander at Arnage and the lethally-fast right-left-right sweepers at Maison Blanche. Crushed beneath the wreck, Marechal had made a small mistake and paid the ultimate price, his race well and truly run. So now was Andre Diner’s. His end would be almost as fast and no less brutal.

We know little about Diner himself other than his crime and fate. Few records exist of him beyond that. He was a nobody, just one of hundreds whose heads fell to the blade of Jules-Henri Desforneaux. Desfourneaux himself is rather more notable. He had officiated at the last public execution in France, that of German serial killer Eugen Weidmann in Paris on June 17, 1939. Now he would be in charge for the last at Le Mans’ Vert-Galant Prison.

Although involved in executions since 1908, Weidmann was one of Desfourneaux’s earliest jobs as chief executioner, swiftly appointed after the death of his uncle and predecessor Anatole Deibler. Deibler had died at the Porte de St. Cloud Metro station in Paris while on his way to the Jacques Cartier Prison in Rennes to execute murderer Maurice Pilorge. Pilorge would have been Deibler’s 396th execution and became instead Desfourneaux’s first time dropping the deadly blade.

Desfourneaux had assisted Deibler the last time the guillotine visited Le Mans on July 27, 1932. At dawn that morning a crowd of some 3000 people had gathered to see murderer Henri Nicolas pay for his crime. It would have been rather warmer and brighter in July when Nicolas was led directly out of Vert-Galant Prison onto the neighbouring Place de la Republique.

Surrounded by a unit of infantry from the nearby barracks of the 117th Infantry Regiment, their rifles loaded and bayonets fixed to prevent escape or disorder, Nicolas would barely have had time to comprehend the sight before him. A farm worker and native of nearby Arnage, Nicolas had murdered his employer Madame Boutard on June 5, 1932 only weeks before his own death. She had rejected his advances and he had cut her throat with a razor for doing so. Deibler and Desfourneaux would prove equally insistent. Nicolas did not get to say no as his victim had done.

Within a minute or two the hiss and crash of the falling blade was his epitaph. The crowd in the Place de la Republique and those looking out of the many adjoining windows, went for their coffee, croissants and possibly an unusually-early brandy having witnessed a rare event in their city. For Deibler and Desfourneaux, however, it had been just another job. So too was Andre Diner, although he probably begged to differ.

The ‘Timbers of Justice’ had arrived at Le Mans railway station the day before with Desfourneaux and his assistants, causing no small amount of local gossip. Would Diner pay the ultimate penalty for what he had done to Officer LeDoux or would Desfourneaux and his assistants leave empty-handed? Would President of France Vincent Auriol exercise his power to grnat clemency or turn Diner down?

The short answer to that was, yes, probably. Despite his left-wing views Auriola was not known for his merciful attitude to the condemned. Auriol was unusual in that four women were guillotined during his Presidency, itslef a rarity. While France had no compunction whatsoever about executing men, women were often reprieved even if they were condemned at all for similar offences. Under Auriol, however, France’s female condemned had much to fear.

On December 11, 1947 Lucienne Thioux lost her head at Melun for drowning her husband. Dragged kicking and screaming from her cell, Thioux denied her guilt to the very end. Madeleine Mouton was beheaded on April 10, 1948 at Sidi-bel-Abbes Prison in Algeria, then a French colony, for poisoning eleven people. On April 21, 1949 Genevieve Calame met her fate, but not by the blade. She faced a firing squad in Paris for collaborating with the Nazis during the Occupation.

At dawn the very next day Germaine Leloy-Godefroy died at Angers for the brutal axe murder of her husband, the last woman executed in France. In addition to these four women, dozens of men were guillotined or shot in the early post-war period for collaboration, treason, war crimes, murder and assorted other offences. It was the last halcyon period for French executioners, never again would they do such brisk business.

Diner had picked the worst possible time to commit a capital offence, especially if he hoped for the President’s mercy. Under the collaboarationist Vichy regime Marshal Petain had permitted five female executions in four years. Auriol sanctioned almost as many in half the time. Diner was doomed and, regardless of local gossip and speculation, he knew it.

Desfourneaux’s tenure as chief executioner had been a troubled one. Anatole Deibler had been his boss and also his uncle. His having lent money to the Deiblers when they needed it also helped secure his promotion at the urging of Deibler’s widow. That had been to the chagrin of Desfourneaux’s own nephew Andre Obrecht who also regarded Desfourneaux as technically crude, slow and clumsy. Nor did Obrecht take well to Desfourneaux continuin as executioner under the Vichy regime.

The Vichy years had seen Desfourneaux execute not only several women but also a number of Resistance fighters including Marcel Langer. Langer’s death in 1943 had seen assistants George and Robert Martin reisgn in protest along with Obrecht. Obrecht had only returned in 1945 with the firm intention of securing Desfourneaux’s job for himself. Believing Desfourneaux would be replaced for his collaboration, Obrecht resigned again when Desfourneaux went unpunished. He would not inherit the chief’s job until Desfourneaux died in 1951.

Most of Desfourneaux’s assistants loathed him and he in turn loathed most of them, believing them to make deliberate errors in the hope of seeing him blamed and then ousted. He may have been right about the errors. He was certainly right in believing that they hated the sight of him and would have preferred Obrecht who they actually liked and trusted.

As time wore on, chronic illness set in and his alcoholism grew steadily more rampant, Desfourneaux increasingly isolated himself from the men he worked with. They were only too glad that he did so. No doubt Diner would have been glad to avoid him as well if he had had the option, except he didn’t. The word came from Paris days beforehand and, as expected, President Auriol was in no mood for mercy. There would be no clemency. Andre Diner would die as scheduled.

Diner’s final hour was also routine, at least for Desfourneaux and his men. They had done this hundreds of times in dozens of places, it was nothing new to them. Unused to such things, the staff of Vert-Galant House of Detention had to make quite an effort to make things seem as normal as possible. Crowd control would not be an issue now that prisoners died within the prison walls. No longer a public spectacle, discretion was now the order of the day.

As his final moments ticked away, Diner underwent the traditional pre-execution routine known as the ‘toilette du condamne.’ He was issued a clean shirt and trousers along with rum or brandy and a cigarette or two if he wanted them. A priest was on hand if he wanted one.

Minutes before the appointed time Desfourneaux and his assistants cut the collar off Diner’s shirt and tied his hands and feet with string. The bonds were slack enough to let DIner hobble, but not walk or run. His last mile would only as far as the prison yard where Desfourneaux and his men had set up and tested teh guillotine overnight.

When the end came it was mercifully brief. For all the criticism from Obrehct and his other assistants Desfourneaux was calm and fast when the time finally came. Once Diner reached the guillotine he was positioned on the bascule, the tilting board that allowed Desfourneaux to slide his head through the lunette, the top half of the round aperture through which Diner took his last view of life and the world. The very second the lunette was sealed and his assistants stepped clear of the blade Desfourneaux released it. With a hiss and crash that could be heard outside the wals, but not seen, Andre Diner was dead.

Before long Jules-Henri Desfourneaux would join him. Beset by mounting physcial and mental illness and with his alcoholism finally overwhelming him, Desfourneaux grew increasingly sicker and more isolated. He died in Paris in 1951. His last execution had been that of triple-murderer Gustave Maillot at St. Brieuc at 4:20am on June 29, 1951. Desfourneaux was dead three months later. With Desfourneaux gone his nemesis Andre Obrecht finally took the post he had so long coveted.

He would officiate until 1976, one year before the last execution in France, that of murderer Hamida Djandoubi at Baumettes Prison near Marseilles in September of that year. Dying of Parkinson’s Disease, Obrecht was briefly replaced by France’s last-ever executioner Fernand Meysonnier. Meysonnier’s tenure was very brief, lasting only a few years and very rarely were his services required. The death penalty was finally abolished in France and her overseas territories in 1981.

Today, Le Mans is a rather different town. The old prison now holds several local businesses and the yard where Diner died is a restaurant. The Place de la Republique remains much as it was, as do the surrounding buildings from whcih so many people watched Henri Nicolas die in 1932. The spot outside the gate where Nicolas died sees thousands of feet every day, most having no idea they are walking across the spot where Nicolas’s head rolled and his blood stained the cobbles. Standing there at dawn with a cigarette and a coffee is an odd experience.

There are still cafes with coffee, croissants and maybe an early-morning brandy if you should want one. I’d certainly recommned them as it can be very cold at night, even in June. Hopefully it would be for happier reasons than watching a man die though Nicolas and Diner deserve little sympathy. Far more should go to Officer LeDoux, Madame Boutard and those who cared for them. The city’s principle claim to fame, the legendary Le Mans 24 Hours, continues to run every June and today’s competitors are usually far safer than Andre Marechal in 1949. Very few, though, do as well as Luigi Chinetti and Lord Selsdon.