J. R. Tournoux, L'Histoire secrète: La Cagoule ( Paris: Plon , 1973). Among the effects the police found on Toureaux's body was a carnet of metro tickets; four of the twenty were first class, which would support her family's contention that she only rode first class on Sundays, to protect her nice clothes.
2.
Benjamin F. Martin, Crime and Criminal Justice Under the Third Republic, The Shame of Marianne ( Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press , 1990), 82-124.
3.
3 AN, F7 14816, `Monsieur Georges ALBAYEZ, Commissaire de Police Mobile à L'Inspection Générale des Services de Police Criminelle (Sûreté Nationale)'. The information in Albayez's report went to M. Bru, the juge d'instruction for the case. `C'est [sic] importante affaire d'assassinat n'est pas perdue de vue par les enquêteurs, et dès qu'un fait nouveau parviendra à leur connaissance, celui-ci sera exploité immédiatement, et les résultats des nouvelles investigations seront consignés dans un rapport ultérieur.'
4.
4 Archives de Paris (AP), 212/79/3, `Affaire du C.S.A.R. - Comité secret d'action révolutionnaire - et autres mouvements nationalistes de droite', Le Commissaire de Police Mobile Belin Chef de la 1ère Section à Monsieur l'Inspecteur Général, chargé des Services de Police Criminelle', Paris, le 17 juillet, 1937. See also, Jean Belin, Secrets of the Sûreté: The Memoirs of Commissioner Jean Belin ( New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons , 1950), 213-214, 229-236.
5.
René Rémond, Les Crises du catholicisme en France dans les années trente ( Paris: Éditions Cana , 1979, reprinted 1996). The name `Cagoule' was first used by a writer in the Action Française and then quickly adopted by other journalists: Belin, Secrets of the Sûreté, 210.
6.
6 AN, F7 14816, `Déclaration de Locuty', 7 janvier, 1938; See also AP, 212/79/3, `Copie du PROCES-VERBAL D'INTERROGATOIRE de LOCUTY [Réné] Pierre Jules, 27 ans Ingénieur à l'Usine MICHELIN...'; Joseph Désert, Toute la vérité sur l'Affaire de la Cagoule, sa trahison, ses crimes, ses hommes ( Paris: Librairie des Sciences et des Arts , 1946), 72-73.
7.
7 AN F7 14816, `Renseignements Fournis par la 2ème. Section de l'Inspection Générale des Services de Police Criminelle, Relativement à l'Enquête Menée sur le CSAR', 1 August 1938., p.3; AN BB18/3061/5.
8.
8 Toureaux clearly had worked as a `mouche' (small-scale informant) for the police for some years prior to her death. She showed a special penchant for socializing with military men at a time when the extreme right was known to have found willing recruits in the armed forces. An ethnic Italian, she was working as an informant for the police during a period when they were keen to keep a close eye on the expatriate Italian community in France, and recruited women in particular for this type of espionage. The police characterized the manner of the crime - a single stab wound to the neck with the weapon left in the wound - as a distinctly Italian assassination technique. Police sources connected Toureaux with `garagistes' (owners of garages which rented and repaired cars) at a time when Gabriel Jeantet, a garage owner and member of the Cagoule, was smuggling weapons in his rented cars from Switzerland to Paris. Moreover, the police found evidence that she corresponded with someone who went by the initials `I-CH', who was a sympathizer with the extreme right, and who wrote to Toureaux from a fascist rally in Brussels, which was also the base of operations for a major arms supplier to the Cagoule. Ibid. See AN, F7 14816, `Enquête effectuée au sujet de la dernière information,' p.5; `Déclaration de Locuty,' 7 January 1938, stating that Laetitia Toureaux worked for the `Intelligence Service' and Locuty's subsequent `Déclaration' of 6 January 1940, retracting his earlier confession, AN BB 18/3061/5.
9.
9 Paris-Soir, 14 January 1938. The information is also cited in AN, F7 14816.
10.
10 AN, F7 14816, `Rapport Le Commissaire de Police Mobile Chenevier à Monsieur le Commissaire de Police Mobile, Chef de la 1ère Section à l'Inspection Générale des Services de Police Criminelle', 15 March 1938. For more on Chenevier see, Jean-Émile Néaumet, Les Grandes Enquêtes du commissaire Chenevier: de la Cagoule à l'affaire Dominici ( Paris: Albin Michel , 1995).
11.
11 David Walker, Outrage and Insight: Modern French Writers and the fait divers ( Oxford: Berg , 1995), 6.
12.
Robin Walz, Pulp Surrealism: Insolent Popular Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Paris ( Berkeley: University of California Press , 2000), 148-149.
13.
13 Paris-Soir, 19 May 1937.
14.
14 For more discussion of the cultural readings of early twentieth-century French newspapers see Walz, Pulp Surrealism.
15.
Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley; A Panorama of the 1930s ( New York: Alfred A. Knopf , 2000).
16.
Elizabeth Wilson, The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women ( Berkeley: University of California Press , 1991).
17.
17 Delporte, Les Journalistes, 229, 282-283, 314-318.
18.
Marcel Sicot, Servitude et grandeur policières, quarante ans à la Sûreté ( Paris: Les Productions de Paris , 1949), 196-200.
19.
19 Christopher Prendergast, Paris and the Nineteenth Century ( Oxford: Blackwell Publishers , 1992).
20.
Paul Cohen-Portheim, The Spirit of Paris ( New York: J. B. Lippincott , 1937), 33-34.
21.
21 Claude Dubois, La Bastoche, Bal-Musette, Plaisir et Crime, 1750-1939 ( Paris: Éditions du Félin , 1997).
22.
22 Rearick, The French in Love and War, 142.
23.
Jacques Wolgensigner, L'Histoire à la Une, la grande aventure ( Paris: Gallimard , 1989), 105-113.
24.
24 Marcel Montarron, `Les Musettes de Paris', Détective No. 451 (17 June 1937).
25.
25 Walker, `Cultivating the fait divers', 72.
26.
Siân Reynolds, France Between the Wars, Gender and Politics ( London and New York: Routledge , 1996).
27.
27 Hawthorne and Golsan, Gender and Fascism, 7.
28.
28 L'Oeuvre, 25 May 1937.
29.
see: René de Livois, Histoire de la presse française, tome II, De 1881 à nos jours ( Lausanne: Éditions Spes , 1965), 471-476.
30.
30 Paris-Soir, 19 May 1937; AN, F7 14816, p.5.
31.
31 Ibid., 23 May 1937.
32.
32 Ibid., 21 May 1937.
33.
33 Ibid., 19 May 1937.
34.
34 Henri Nourrissat, `Ma dernière danse avec ma soeur', Détective No. 449 (3 June 1937), 4.
35.
35 Paris-Soir, 21 May 1937.
36.
36 L'Humanité, 25 May 1937.
37.
Delpêche, Affaires Classées, 26-28.
38.
38 Le Populaire, 25 May 1937.
39.
39 Marcel Montarron, `Les Musettes de Paris', Détective No. 450 (10 June 1937), 2.
40.
see, Francine Amaury, Histoire du plus grand quotidien de la 3e République, Le Petit Parisien, 1876-1944 ( Paris: Presses universitaires de France , 1972).
41.
41 Le Petit Parisien, 27 May 1937.
42.
42 Ibid., 17 May 1937.
43.
43 Oral interview with authors of former boyfriend of Laetitia Toureaux who wished to remain anonymous, Paris, France, 3 August 1997.
44.
44 Nourrissat, `Ma dernière danse', 5. Nourrissat recounted that on the last day of his sister's life, she put on a new green dress and had her brown hair coloured blond.
45.
45 APP, `L'affaire Laetitia Toureaux', Procès-Verbaux 57/1 Interrogation of Giovanni Gasperini. Gasperini claimed their relationship only lasted a few months, but they remained friends afterwards. It's hard to decide what Laetitia was doing with Gasperini since he was a known fascist. Was their relationship part of her sleuthing? The fact that Gasperini was married at the time of his affair with Toureaux doomed it to failure. Gasperini was also linked tangentially to Jean Filliol, a member of the Cagoule who may have been Laetitia's assassin.
46.
46 Nourrissat, `Ma dernière danse', 5.
47.
47 Détective, No. 448 (27 May 1937).
48.
48 Paris-Soir, 23 May 1937.
49.
Police Magazine, 6 June 1937.
50.
50 Paris-Soir, 22 May 1937.
51.
51 L'Oeuvre, 25 May 1937.
52.
52 Paris-Soir, 23 May 1937.
53.
53 L'Intransigeant, 6 June 1937.
54.
54 In the 1948 trials of the suspected members of the Cagoule arrested in 1937, government prosecutors accused the organization of the murders of Dmitri Navachine, Carlo and Nello Rossi and Laetitia Toureaux, among others. The police also attributed several terrorist bombings and attempted bombings to the Cagoule, which stockpiled significant arsenals in Paris and the provinces. AN, F7 14816, `Affaire Toureaux', `Affaire Navachine', AP, 212/79/3, `Affaire du C.S.A.R.'.
55.
On police corruption, secrecy, and mistrust see, Martin, Crime and Criminal Justice, 102-106; the government also pressured the Sûreté in 1938 not to pursue Cagoulards who had fled to Italy since France was trying to cooperate with Italy at that point to keep Mussolini away from Hitler.
56.
56 AN, F7 14816, Août, 1938, ` Renseignements Fournis par la 2ème. Section de l'Inspection Générale des Service de Police Criminelle, relativement à l'enquête menée sur le CSAR'.
57.
57 France-Soir, 2 July, 1962.
58.
58 Paris-Soir, 23 May 1937.
59.
59 For example some of Détective's most sensational reporting included: `L'Affaire de la Malle Sanglante', in 1929, `L'affaire Violette Nozières', in 1933 and `L'Affaire Prince', in 1934.
60.
Le Petit Parisien, 27, 29, 31 May 1937.
61.
Le Populaire, 27 May 1937.
62.
62 Miller, Shanghai on the Métro, 69.
63.
Gary S. Cross, Immigrant Workers in Industrial France. The Making of a New Laboring Class ( Philadelphia: Temple University Press , 1983), 106-107, 115-116.
64.
64 Le Petit Parisien, 22 May 1937.
65.
65 Quoted in Paul Bringuier and Marcel Montarron, `Le Crime du Metro', Détective No. 448 (27 May 1937), 14.
66.
66 APP, `L'Affaire Laetitia Toureaux', Rapport Général, 306.
67.
67 Ibid., Interrogation 64/1 of Victor Riou and Yvonne Cavret. Essentially coat rooms were used as information drop sites for clandestine operations between the wars. Rouffignac was involved in 1937 in placing operatives in the bals musette to work for him gathering information.
68.
68 Le Matin, 25 May 1937.
69.
69 Paris-Soir, 22 May 1937.
70.
70 Le Matin, 25 May 1937.
71.
71 Paris-Soir, 26 May 1937.
72.
72 L'Intransigeant, 26 May 1937.
73.
73 Le Matin, 27 May 1937.
74.
74 AN, F7 14816, `Déclaration de Locuty', Police memo detailing Laetitia's work as a private investigator, c.1938.
75.
75 AN, F7 14816; AP, 212/79/3.
76.
76 La Liberté, 26 May 1937.
77.
77 APP, `L'Affaire Laetitia Toureaux', file 84/1, `Verifications au CSAR'.
78.
78 L'Humanité, 29 May 1937.
79.
79 L'Oeuvre, 29 May 1937.
80.
80 Le Populaire, 28 May 1937.
81.
81 Paris-Soir, 31 May 1937.
82.
82 Ibid., 30 May 1937.
83.
83 Ibid., 19 May 1937.
84.
84 Ibid., 31 May 1937.
85.
Le Journal, 6 June 1937.
86.
Roberts, Civilization without Sexes, 46-62.
87.
87 For information on Parisian views of immigrant women see Rearick, 92.
88.
Charles Rearick, The Pleasures of the Belle Epoque: Entertainment and festivity in turn-of-the-century France ( New Haven: Yale University Press , 1986).
89.
89 Nourrissat, `Ma dernière danse', 4.
90.
90 Paris-Soir, 19 May 1937.
91.
91 Ibid.
92.
92 Schlör, Nights in the Big City, 194.
93.
Roberts, Civilization without Sexes, 15.
94.
94 Rearick, The French in Love and War, 92.
95.
95 Roberts, Civilization without Sexes, 158-159.
96.
96 Ibid., 159.
97.
97 Paris-Soir, 23 May 1937.
98.
98 L'Humanité, 25 May 1937.
99.
99 L'Oeuvre, 25 May 1937.
100.
100 Ibid.
101.
101 Ibid.
102.
102 This article does not seek to grapple with the literature on French fascism. The authors, nonetheless, take the position that the Vichy regime was fascist, at least by 1943. See Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave.
103.
103 Bringuier and Montarron, `Le Crime du Métro', 4.
