This Tuesday, February 9, 1932, the hamlet of Serres, near Moirax, 9 km from Agen, woke up early in the morning. The day before, we went to bed late for the Carnival ball, but tomorrow is the triannual fair of this peaceful village of around 400 inhabitants, and everyone wants to carry out their tasks as quickly as possible to take advantage of the event. Only one house remains curiously silent and keeps its shutters closed, that of the Delafet family. The neighbors alerted the police.
Capital punishment for brutal sextuple murder
It’s horror in the house. Six of its seven occupants were murdered with appalling savagery. Only the eldest son, Pierre-Michel, 31, seems to have escaped the massacre. Very quickly, he confesses. In the space of half an hour, he exterminated his family, with three different weapons. The rifle for his mother and little Lucienne, the knife for his grandmother and uncle and an ax for his wife and baby… When the criminal’s trial opened in March 1933, in Agen, the army and the police provide his protection, for fear that the crowd will lynch him. The defense pleads insanity, but he receives the death penalty.
Lot-et-Garonne: in 1932, the sixfold crime of Pierre-Michel Delafet
ARCHIVE PHOTOS – Guillotined at Fort du Hâ on November 23, 1933, this Lot-et-Garonnais who had committed a sextuple murder in Moirax on February 9, 1932, was the last condemned to death executed in a public square in Bordeaux. In 2007, “Sud Ouest” devoted a series to this extraordinary affair. We are republishing it.
An impressive crowd in front of the guillotine
Retried in Bordeaux, again sentenced to death, Delafet was guillotined in the Gironde capital on November 23, 1933, at 6:47 a.m., within the confines of Fort du Hâ, the city’s former prison. The President of the Republic, Albert Lebrun, did not exercise his right of pardon.
“He went to the guillotine like one goes to the café”
The “widow” arrived from Paris by train. Some windows overlooking the courtyard were rented for up to 100 francs. And an impressive crowd has been camped in front of the fort since the middle of the night.
South West Archives
The crowd present at the execution of Pierre-Michel Delafet, November 23, 1933.
Delafet remained impassive until the end. “He went to the guillotine as one goes to the café,” wrote “La Petite Gironde,” the ancestor of “Sud Ouest,” the next day. This will be the last public execution in the Gironde capital. Executions continued there until the final execution in 1961, before the definitive abolition of capital punishment in 1981. But without spectators.
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