Frenchman may be another Bluebeard

PARIS A French house painter who served 20 years in prison for bludgeoning and slashing a man to death has been charged with five more killings. There is speculation the toll may mount and newspapers are comparing him to the celebrated mass-murdered Bluebeard.

Bernard Pesquet, 53, was formally charged with two new counts of murder yesterday after identifying badly decomposed corpses dug up in his cellar as those of his 33-year-old wife Christiane, who disappeared two years ago, and Henri Francqui, 62, a businessman who may have been her lover.

Pesquet denies the murders last month of businessman Emile Bergaud, his wife and maid in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly.

Police charged Pesquet with their murders after finding in his house jewlry and a handbag containing foreign money belonging to Mrs. Bergaud and a credit card belonging to her husband. Also found were documents belonging to a dozen other people who have not been accounted for.

Police said Bergaud had called his banker the day of the Neuilly murder and asked for 30 million francs ($6 million) in cash to be handed over to a man he was sending to the bank.

Newspapers said Pesquet may have had a homosexual encounter with Bergaud and was blackmailing him, but this has not been substantiated.

In front-page stories, the French press has called Pesquet "diabolical" and a "monster" capable of murder "by any method."

Some stories compare him to Henri Landru, the "Bluebeard of Gambais," who was executed in 1922 for the murder of 10 women he lured to his home with matrimonial advertisements.