In just over a year, I’ve read about some truly horrendous behaviour. But the woman who earned the moniker La Diabolique de Nancy is a person who I believe to be truly heartless and soulless.
Jeanne Veber was born in Ancerville dans la Meuse, near the city of Nancy, France, in 1929. Her father was a mechanic, and her mother worked odd jobs – which was unusual for the time period.
Her parents divorced when she was four years old. She stayed with her father, along with her sister Madeleine, with whom she was very, very close. Somewhere along the way, Jeanne changed her name to Simone Weber.
She left school at an early age, incapable of earning her diploma. Simone and her sister soon went on to marry a pair of brothers.
Simone and her husband went on to have five children, two of which died young. These deaths made Simone extremely paranoid. She already had a habit of lying pathologically, but the paranoia made it so much worse.
Simone, at some point, decided to leave her husband and his alcoholism behind, keeping her children with her. In order to earn and income, she worked odd jobs and did what she had to do to support her children. Somewhere between 1977 and 1980, Simone met and married a man named Marcel Fixard. She seemed to be doing well. Until 1985.
On July 1st, 1985, Patricia Hettier reported her father, Bernard Hettier, missing to police. He hadn’t been seen since June 22nd, 1985, and hadn’t gone to work on the 24th as he should have. He seemed to just vanish – which was unusual behaviour for the 55-year-old.
A week after reporting her father missing, Patricia put an ad in a local publication appealing to the public for help locating her father. She stated that he’d last been seen with blond-gray hair, wearing a beige jacket and gray pants with brown shoes. She hoped beyond hope that her father would be found.
As the police began their investigation, they came across Simone Weber – a woman who had been having an affair with Bernard since 1981.
Weber, it turned out, had quite a temper. Bernard had broken off the affair due to her paranoia, rabid jealousy, and possessive behaviour. He was afraid of her. And it seemed he had a good reason to be.
As police questioned Bernard’s neighbours, they discovered that Weber had been seen threatening Bernard outside of his residence with a rifle on June 22nd. She demanded he follow her to her residence. Under pressure, it seemed that he did.
That evening, other witnesses claimed they heard loud noises during the night at Weber’s residence. They also saw Weber leave the residence multiple times carrying garbage bags. There was no sign of Bernard’s vehicle, though it’d been seen there on the 22nd.
It was also reported that Weber had made an odd inquiry of these witnesses – she wanted to be shown how to use an electric carving knife.
Police also discovered that Weber had rented a piece of equipment from a shop – a cement grinder. What could an elderly woman need with a cement grinder?
Police wasted no time in bugging Weber’s phone. They were especially interested in phone conversations between her and her beloved sister, Madeleine.
Listening in, the police found the sister talking in code – making odd references and listing odd number sequences. These numbers were later determined to be payphone locations and a time for placing calls. Weber’s paranoia was ever present.
Police also heard Weber ask her sister to get rid of specific items – including Bernard’s chequebooks, his passport, and documents for falsifying doctors’ prescriptions among many, many other things. Madeleine did not hesitate to help her sister.
Investigators wasted no time in conducting a search of Madeleine’s home. There, the found the registration for Bernard’s vehicle. They also found a rental contract for a storage container which was located outside of Madeleine’s home. Inside, was Bernard’s vehicle. A search of the vehicle produced the cement grinder – which still had human flesh and blood on the wheel.
On September 15th, 1985, a fisherman found a torso in Poincy. The torso dud not have a head or limbs, and it was in a suitcase which was weighted down with a breeze block – a decorative cement block, matching blocks that had been seen in Weber’s garden.
The torso was never formally identified. However, it was strongly believed to be that of Bernard Hettier, as the age and the blood type matched. Patricia also positively identified the suitcase in which the torso was found as belonging to her father.
On November 8th 1985, Simone Weber and her sister Madeleine were arrested.
Madeleine was charged with concealing evidence, obstructing justice, and destroying evidence.
Simone, as the grisly details of the murder are reported to the public, earns the moniker La Diabolique de Nancy.
The investigation continued after the arrests – and it was a very, very long one. Everyone involved wanted to be absolutely sure that Simone Weber had murdered Bernard Hettier.
But that didn’t stop people from theorizing. The popular theory was that Weber shot Bernard in the head with the rifle she used to threaten him. It was later found in Weber’s residence with a silencer. It was then theorized that Weber used the carving knife the witnesses told police about to dismember the body, place the parts in garbage bags, and then used the cement grinder to rid her floor of the evidence. She never returned the grinder, hiding it instead in Bernard’s car, because she didn’t want to risk being discovered if it contained Bernard’s blood.
In the end, Simone Weber’s paranoia was her downfall.
Looking further into Weber’s past, investigators found another strange death – that of her husband, Marcel Fixard.
Marcel was an 81-year-old retired soldier. He’d never had children.
Marcel placed an ad in a newspaper in 1977, saying he was looking for a service woman to help him around the house. Weber, debt ridden and desperate, lied her ass off in her reply to the ad. Marcel hired her. She was simply supposed to help him out. But Weber had other plans.
On April 22nd, 1980, Mercel Fixard and Simone Weber were married. But not really.
Weber hired an actor to pose as Marcel for the ceremony. She then had the actor forge his signature on documents making Weber the beneficiary of Marcel’s military pension and property – the residence she occupied when she knew Bernard Hettier.
Barely a month into the false marriage, Marcel Fixard was found dead, and Simone Weber was now much more financially secure.
However, there is no evidentiary proof that Weber had anything to do with Marcel’s death. But it certainly made for an interesting turn of events in the case of Bernard Hettier’s murder.
After five years of investigation, the investigators produced a case file containing 18,000 pages. This was used to prosecute Weber and her sister.
The trial took place from January 17th, 1991, to February 28th, 1991. The press, and the courtroom were riveted.
There was a tedious, and often tense back and forth between the defence and the prosecution. Weber herself was quite a spectacle. She was often found insulting the witnesses, or laughing – just laughing – at the severity of the charges against her.
On February 28th, 1991, Simone Weber was found not guilty of murdering Marcel Fixard. (To be fair, that one was kind of a stretch.) However, they did find her guilty of murdering Bernard Hettier without premeditation.
At the age of 60, Simone Weber was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.
She was released on November 17th, 1999 due to a reduced sentence, and for good behaviour.
As recently as 2017, Simone Weber continues to maintain her innocence – surrounding herself with her casefile, and attempting to reach out to anyone in the press to declare that she is the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
No matter what she believes, I believe La Diabolique de Nancy to be both heartless and soulless.
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Sources:
Simone Weber, l’octogénaire meurtrière qui croyait dur comme fer à son innocence – Sandrine Issartel – Slate
Simone Weber – She Used an Electric Knife and Power Saw to Murder – Max – Wicked We
Simone Weber Murderpedia page
Simone Weber Wikipedia page