Kriti Mehrotra
If there’s one thing absolutely nobody can deny, it’s that Thierry Paulin was one of the most heinous serial killers to have ever existed considering the fact he targeted no one but elderly women. It’s thus no surprise he gradually garnered the moniker The Monster of Montmartre as well, which has even been briefly elucidated in Netflix’s ‘The Lady of Silence: The Mataviejitas Murders.’ So now, if you simply wish to learn more about him — with a specific focus on his overall background, his harrowing offenses, as well as his ultimate fate — we’ve got the essential details for you.
Who Was Thierry Paulin?
Although born on November 28, 1963, to young parents in the wondrous commune of Fort-de-France, Martinique, Thierry reportedly did not have a comfortable, happy, or stable childhood at all. That’s because his biological father abandoned the family in favor of metropolitan France shortly following his birth, leaving his teenage mother to fend for them both without any resources. He thus wound up in the custody of his paternal grandmother, just to not get much attention from her either since she was a busy restauranter —this allegedly sparked his dislike for older women.
However, Thierry managed to move back in with his now-married mother at the age of ten, where he tried to blend in with his stepsiblings before becoming rather erratic and violent towards them. That’s when he was shipped off to his father, only to find himself in an even more uncomfortable surrounding as he was a mixed-race student in what can solely be described as a sea of white. He hence hated school and didn’t have many friends, driving him to enter military services as a paratrooper earlier than most at the age of 17; but his peers again bullied him for race and homosexuality.
These incidents eventually inspired Thierry to seek revenge by turning to a life of crime, which albeit twistedly understandable owing to the trauma he endured, did not make his actions right or excusable. After all, even though he started with a simple robbery in 1982, for which he received a two-year suspended sentence, he soon moved to outright murder to finance his lavish lifestyle. The 21-year-old actually committed his first set of apparent homicides alongside his then 19-year-old boyfriend Jean Mathurin, all the while spending their nights dancing, drinking, and snorting cocaine.
Regardless, the most horrific aspect is that Thierry and Jean’s attacks on the older women were all rich in violence; they reportedly had ten victims in a two-month period in the fall of 1984, some of whom had either been beaten to death, forced to drink drain cleaner, or had their heads shoved inside a plastic bag. But then the duo split for good owing to some massive arguments once the former’s father made it clear he couldn’t accept them as lovers, which apparently, inadvertently fueled the youngster to make something of himself and kickstart his own organization of transvestite artists in Paris, but to no avail.
This failed venture then ostensibly drove Thierry to slay eight more elderly women between December 20, 1985, and June 14, 1986, yet this time he opted for quicker, far lesser cruel methods. This only stopped because he was arrested in the fall, yet it was not for the homicides but his baseball bat attack on a cocaine dealer, for which he served 16 months behind bars before walking out knowing he was HIV positive. This is when he gave up all care, evidenced by him throwing lavish parties, splurging endless money from stolen cards, and reportedly killing without holding back.
Thierry Paulin Died of HIV Complications
In November 1987, Thierry purportedly attacked an additional three older women in the span of three days, but thankfully one of them not just survived but made a complete recovery. She gave officials a pretty accurate description of her assailant – “a mix-race man in his twenties, with hair like Carl Lewis and an earring in his left ear” – leading to his December 1, 2987 arrest. That’s when he claimed responsibility for 21 different homicides despite being accused of merely 18, but he passed away from complications related to his HIV before he could ever stand trial.
Thierry (aka The Monster of Montmartre, The Grim Reaper of Paris, The Beast of Montmartre, or The Old Lady Killer) died on the night of April 16, 1989, at the age of 25. He was in the hospital wing of Fresnes Prison, where he’d arrived sometime prior in a state of near-paralysis upon suffering from both tuberculosis and meningitis stemming from his STD.
Read More: Juana Barraza Samperio: Where is the Serial Killer Now?
