Parents Baptiste Nozière was a mechanic for the railroad and met Germaine Josephine Hézard in Paris in June 1913 at 10 bis rue Montgallet in the 12e. Germaine had been married before but her husband had died before the war started. Baptiste & Germaine married on August 17, 1914, she was already 4 months pregnant with Violette.
Returning to Neuvy-Sur-Loire during the war years, Baptiste became a driver moving troops and equipment during the war and Germaine became a mechanic as the war began as many men were sent out to the front. At the end of the war, the trio returned to Paris in the 12e to 9 Rue de Madagascar to a very small 2-room apartment on the 6th floor near the Gare de Lyon.
The first signs of trouble came when Violette had to bounce around from one school to another. From the 12th to the 4th and ended at the 6th at the Fénelon school where Simone de Beauvoir had also been a teacher until she was fired for having relations with the young girls. Violette had outbursts and was critical of classmates that looked down on her so she began to make up grand stories about her family,
Violette started to make more friends including Madeline Georgette Debrize, Maddy who lived around the corner, and Jean Guillard. Many of the kids that were more in the years of the Great War were a bit lost. And for girls, they were able to work but were still limited to two goals, marriage, and motherhood, neither appealed to Violette. The free-thinking, a bit too free teenager realized early how to get what she wanted.
She liked the finer things like clothes and sitting in cafes for hours with friends drinking but her parents did have that kind of money. At 15 she started to steal things and when she needed more money became a prostitute. She was very selective and would only sleep with older men that had a lot of money and she normally found around the business district of the 1e & 2e.
Her promiscuity also came with the disease of the day, syphilis in April of 1932. Dr. Henri Déron was no match for her manipulation and she convinced him to not tell her parents. At home, there were constant battles between the three and questioning everything she was doing. She also invented a new friend, a sister of Dr. Henri Déron that she used as a cover for the time she was spending out at bars. A few months later on December 14, 1932, she was arrested for shoplifting for stealing a dictionary. Her parents had enough and locked her in the house for days.
Sneaking out overnight, Violette left a note that she was going to go and kill herself by jumping into the Seine. Her parents notified the police and found her sitting in a bar on the Boulevard Saint Michel with friends without a care in the world.
Violette’s stories to friends became taller and taller. She said her father was an executive with the railroad and her mother was the lead salesperson at the Maison Paquin. However, they also became darker. Viollet implied that her father took “liberties” with her to friends in passing but always laughed it off.
Left untreated her syphilis began to take its toll on her body and a return visit to the gullible Dr. Déron was in order. This time she convinced him to write a note to her parents that she was still a virgin and the only way she was able to catch the sexual virus was from them, through birth. On March 19, 1933, the family went to the hospital where the doctor shared the news. Her parents were shocked and embarrassed and knew this could be true as neither one of them was positive for the disease. Returning home another large argument ensued, this time she would take things up a notch.
Four days later on March 23, 1933, she returned home with a bottle of Somenal sleeping pills and passed them off as a prescription from Dr. Déron for their “hereditary syphilis”. In order to really sell it she took some herself but far less than she gave her parents. In the middle of the night, her parents woke up to a banging on the door and the smell of smoke. A fire had broken out in the kitchen and the neighbor alerted them just in time. Taken to the hospital their lethargic symptoms were blamed on the smoke they ingested and they returned home that same day.
Baptiste and Germaine were suspicious that their daughter may have been behind this and left Paris for a month to visit family in Neuvy-sur-Loire. Grandfather Félix kept a keen eye on Violette but she still managed to sneak out and disappear for days at a time after her parents went back to Paris for work and a new promotion for Baptiste. Reporting back to Paris, grandpa Félix was not fooled by the headstrong young lady and suggested they send to her a school but Baptiste and Germaine still didn’t want to see who she really was becoming.
On June 30 Violette was back in Paris and a few days later met a young law student Jean Dabin. Infatuated with this boy she offered to pay for everything and even gave him money that she was stealing from her parents and through prostitution. On July 2 her father was given the honor of conducting the train for the President of France, Albert Lebrun. For his service, he was given a raise and a medal, and even a bonus. A few days later on the platform of the Gare de Lyon, he fell injuring his leg and landing him in the hospital for over a month.
Poor Germaine was no match for Violette who was now head over heels in love with Jean. When Jean told her that he was going to leave to visit his family in the south of France she panicked and tried a find a way to go with him. She had a brilliant idea to offer up a Bugatti that the two could drive through the south of France on a romantic vacation. How could she pay for it was the big question. Back at home, she knew her parents had kept some of the money from his new promotion and even more in the bank.
On August 21, 1933, Violette went to the local pharmacy and purchased three bottles of the same Somenal sleeping pills with a forged prescription from Dr. Déron. Grinding them all up she placed them in three separate envelopes. One marked with a cross. When her parents returned home Violette was away but the money was missing. When she returned their biggest fight yet occurred and now she knew this was the time. Mixing the two packages into the water and a third for herself from the envelope with the cross which was harmless she gave the glasses to her parents with dinner.
Her father drank all of his but Germaine thought it was too bitter and only drank half. This choice saved her life. After dinner, her father stumbled around and collapsed on the bed. Checking on him Germaine fell and hit her head and was knocked unconscious. Violette thought she had succeeded, She took all the money she could find and quietly snuck out of the building in the middle of the night.
For over 48 hours Violette hit the town going on spending sprees and buying her friends drinks and anything they wanted. At 1 am on August 23, she snuck back into the apartment and turned on the gas hoping to create the scene of a double suicide. A few hours later the same neighbor that alerted them of the fire back in March noticed the smell of gas and called the fire department. Upon their arrival, they discovered Baptise dead and her mother barely alive, and Violette nowhere to be seen.