In 1840, a carefully baked cake arrived in Paris. One bite set off a chain of vomiting, convulsions, and death that would captivate an entire nation.

Marie-Fortunée Lafarge, a refined young Parisian trapped in a loveless marriage, stood accused of slowly poisoning her husband with arsenic. Her trial became one of the first to hinge on forensic toxicology—and left France bitterly divided over whether she was a cold-blooded killer or the victim of a tragic miscarriage of justice.

Host Alexander Lawson unravels the marriage built on lies, the mysterious white powder, the sensational courtroom battle, and the scientific test that changed criminal justice forever.

In 1993, in a Liberian village square, a man’s chest was split open with an axe. His heart was cut out, cooked, and eaten in front of the community. One of the men who took a piece was a young rebel commander named Kunti Kamara.

Thirty years later, that same man sat in a glass box in a Paris courtroom — the first Liberian war criminal tried in France under universal jurisdiction.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson examines the atrocities committed by ULIMO forces in Lofa County during Liberia’s first civil war, the survivors who crossed continents to testify, and the landmark French trials that finally delivered a measure of justice.

A story of cannibalism, sexual slavery, forced labor, and delayed accountability that proves no one is beyond the reach of the law.

Rennes, 1932. A bomb explodes under a statue. One of the young extremists rounded up afterward is twenty-two-year-old Théophile Jeusset. Investigators find he has been in contact with German agents.

Over the next decade he will move from antisemitic pamphlets and secret Breton nationalist cells to active service in the Bezen Perrot—a collaborationist militia affiliated with the Waffen-SS. When the war ends, a French court sentences him to hard labor for life.

Host Alexander Lawson traces the path of Théophile Jeusset: from radical Breton separatism and early terrorism to full collaboration with the Nazi occupation. This is the story of a man who chose the black flag—and paid for it.

Paris, 1946. The war is over, but a French courtroom delivers a different kind of justice. Claude Jeantet—journalist, propagandist, and high-ranking collaborator—is sentenced to hard labor for life.

He never fired a gun. Instead, he used newspapers, influence, and carefully chosen words to support the Nazi occupation and help normalize one of history’s darkest chapters in France. From the far-right underground of the 1930s to the propaganda machine of Vichy and a desperate flight to Germany in 1944, this is the story of a man whose crimes were committed with a printing press.

Host Alexander Lawson uncovers the life, ideology, and postwar reckoning of Claude Jeantet in this episode of A True Crime Podcast.

In 1927 Abel Hermant became one of the forty “immortals” of the Académie française — a celebrated novelist, language purist, and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. Eighteen years later the same man, now eighty-two, stood in a courtroom and received a life sentence for treason.

This episode examines how a pillar of French letters lent his pen, prestige, and name to the Nazi occupation, the post-Liberation purge that stripped him of everything, and the quiet, devastating power of intellectual collaboration. Host Alexander Lawson opens the file on one of the most unsettling falls from grace in modern French history.

He was one of France’s literary Immortals — elected to the Académie française, celebrated for his sharp novels of high society and his defense of the pure French language. Then came the Occupation. At nearly eighty years old, Abel Hermant aligned himself with the enemy: writing for a pro-Nazi newspaper, supporting Vichy, and joining the Groupe Collaboration.

In December 1945 the same man was sentenced to life in prison for intelligence with the enemy, stripped of his Academy seat, and erased in disgrace.

Host Alexander Lawson tells the story of the writer who traded literary immortality for collaboration — and paid the price.

On January 30, 1976, seven-year-old Philippe Bertrand vanished after school near Troyes, France. Within the hour, his parents received a ransom demand. Eighteen days later, police found his body wrapped under a hotel bed.

The man who rented that room had already appeared on national television, declaring that anyone who harms a child deserves to die. His name was Patrick Daniel Henry.

In this episode, host Alexander Lawson examines the calculated kidnapping, the chilling public performance, the trial that nearly sent Henry to the guillotine, and how one of France’s most infamous crimes helped bring about the end of capital punishment.

A story of deception, national outrage, and a courtroom battle that changed a country forever.

Between 1984 and 1992, a quiet, drifting man with no car and no fixed address left a trail of brutal, impulsive murders across France. Hitchhiking, jumping trains, sleeping in shelters and psychiatric wards, Francis Heaulme — later dubbed “le routard du crime” — killed without pattern or warning. Children, elderly women, a nurse on a crowded beach… no one was safe when he “saw red.”

In this episode, host Alexander Lawson follows the eight-year path of one of France’s most elusive serial killers: the childhood violence that shaped him, the sudden explosions of rage, the gendarme who finally tracked him down, and the long series of trials that still continue today.

Three victims. No clear pattern. No elaborate plan. Just opportunity, impulse, and sudden brutality.

In 1992, a French teacher is poisoned and asphyxiated in his Beauvais apartment. A decade later, an elderly woman is found with her throat slit in a hostel room. Weeks after that, a young cameraman is drugged and stabbed to death in Saint-Étienne.

All three murders lead back to one man: Jacquy Haddouche — a chronic offender who spent most of his life behind bars and still left a trail of bodies across France.

Host Alexander Lawson examines the chaotic crimes of a killer who targeted strangers at random, the forensic clues that finally stopped him, and the unanswered questions that linger even after his death in prison.

In August 1907, a leaking trunk at a Marseille train station revealed a horrific discovery: a woman’s dismembered body. The couple who left it claimed it was just poultry. One of them had once stood as a Wimbledon finalist.

Host Alexander Lawson uncovers the shocking fall of Vere Thomas “St. Leger” Goold—from Irish tennis champion to convicted murderer in the Monte Carlo Trunk Murder. A story of gambling, addiction, borrowed titles, and a crime that still stands alone in sporting history.