On this date in 1939, French murderer Eugen Weidmann dropped his head in the basket outside a prison in Versailles. France's signal history of public beheadings died along with him. The career criminal Weidmann knocked around prison in his twenties. Further to the maxim that penitentiaries are the school of crime, Weidmann's stint for robbery connected him right up with a couple of accomplices who started up a kidnapping-robbery-murder ring when they got out.
They left several bodies (and miles of newspaper copy) in their wake in late 1937 before the inevitable capture, confession, condemnation. (Weidmann's accomplices all managed to avoid the chop.)
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