The Murder Plot Twist You'll Never Believe
The police of the ordinarily peaceful seaside spa town of Le Havre, France were struggling in 1887. A case involving a group of missing sailors completely baffled and overwhelmed them, and the local authorities were worried about their town's reputation as it depends heavily on tourism. Fortunately, the Paris police department lent them an ace: Robert Ledru. Ledru was a real-life Sherlock Holmes — a detective of exceptional investigative renown across France for solving murders and dismantling cults. Just three years earlier, he uncovered a conspiracy by political dissidents to overthrow the national government. However, Ledru's arrival in Le Havre would herald a case unlike any he, or anyone else, had ever encountered.
The Murder on the Beach
Just one day after reaching Le Havre, Ledru's superiors asked him to put the missing sailors case on hold. Instead, he was needed at a nearby beach. A body had been found in the sand.
The victim was Andre Monet, a Parisian dress shop owner who had gone to the shore with his wife. He had been killed in the night by a single bullet to the chest.
Strangely, there seemed to be no reason for the murder. Monet had no heirs who might benefit from his sudden demise, no enemies, and no local connections. He hadn't been robbed and there was no evidence of a fight. To the detectives on the scene, it looked like a random stranger had approached Monet, shot him, and walked away.
Ledru began his investigation and found strange footprints in the sand leading and away from the corpse. Yet something about them struck Ledru as unusual... and familiar. He ordered plaster casts to be made of them.
Once the casts were ready, Ledru took them and studied them intensely for hours. Suddenly, he declared that he knew the identity of the killer, immediately went to his hotel room, and locked the door.
The next morning, Ledru appeared before the Le Havre chief of police. The chief presented Le Havre with a new piece of evidence — the bullet pulled from Monet's body.
What happened next would change everything. Ledru pulled out his own pistol and compared the cartridges to the bullet. Satisfied, he announced that his suspicions were confirmed.
He had killed Andre Monet.
A Strange Case of Somnambulism
Understanding what happened to Andre Monet requires a little backstory.
Ledru overworked himself to an extreme. He would stay up for over 24 hours at a time to solve cases, greatly disrupting his sleep hygiene. On the night of the murder, Ledru had felt strange and retired to his hotel room early.
When he awoke the next morning, he discovered that his bag had been opened and that his socks were wet. While at first he thought nothing of it, the crime scene forced him to reconsider. He noticed that the footprints looked like they were made with socks, not shoes. Worst, the casts confirmed the killer was missing his big right toe... just like Ledru.
Once he learned that his gun was missing a bullet — specifically, the bullet found in Monet — he had all he needed. He accused himself of the murder and turned himself in on the spot.
By his own admission, Ledru didn't have any memory of committing the murder, and he speculated that he had been sleepwalking and killed Monet in a trance-like state. While his superiors at first refused to believe the greatest detective in France would commit murder in his sleep, an experiment conducted while Ledru was imprisoned confirmed both his sleepwalking and nocturnal homicidal tendencies. It's one of the very few times a claim of "murder while sleepwalking" has been proven true.
In the End
Ledru was convicted of murder, but both because of the unusual circumstances of the crime and his years of service, Ledru was not imprisoned. Instead, he was secluded on a farm outside Paris, under the observation of doctors and armed guards, where he lived until his death in 1937.
In the end, Ledru's greatest criminal enemy was himself, and he still triumphed.
References: The Most Interesting Case of the 19th Century. Robert Ledru’s Unique Investigation | PRIVATE LIVES | Chief Inspector Ledru, the policeman who caught…himself | The Police Detective Who Caught…Himself? | Odd Historic Moments that Are Almost too Weird to Handle
