Episode 543: The Execution of Hamida Djandoubi (with Special Guests Alvin & Fran From Affirmative Murder Podcast)

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You're listening to a morbid network podcast.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

And I'm Alvin, and I'm Franco.

And this is morbid with a little crossover.

Man, first of all, I have to let you guys know that we're bringing in behind the closed curtain, We're going to open that curtain up. Like, Whiz, you guys are fulfilling something for me and Fran, we've been beefing for years now.

Oh my God, thank you.

Yeah, so I think the last time Alvin maybe hired somebody to, like, flat my tires, so I couldn't go to the hospital. You can't prove that, that's why I didn't make it, you can't prove that.

We're happy to have you, you guys, I love that. So as soon as we got on, I was like, Fran is here, like the whole crew is here. We had so much fun collabing with Alvin last time, but we were like, we need a Fran.

It's his fault, it's his fault, let's blame it on him.

We'll blame it on Alvin.

This took a turn I did not expect.

Alvin, Why don't you just go? I'm just kidding?

I'll be all by myself. Let's just get out of here. First of all, we're in my house.

I know that's been so fun, too, I know we've done a couple of those over the years.

Yeah, so yeah, you guys are cool peeps.

We try so. Are you right back at you? This is a beautiful family right now.

Hey Fran, why don't you get out of here? Suddenly it's flipping, turned them back on my side.

We can all be in this together, we're a family here. Alina's like, Stop arguing. No, I don't want the kids arguing, but we, you know what?

I felt like you guys would enjoy a conversation about a medieval tool of execution and how things come to an end, you know? One day people just stopped planking, like, one day a guy did a plank, and then everyone was like, Oh, that's not it anymore.

That's not cool.

And so this is the execution version of that. I felt like this is. It's always cool. It's interesting to see when trends, you know, subside, and this happened in this case with the guillotine.

You know, like TikTok sounds go out of style, yeah, they're like, why are you using that sound? don't use that sound? yeah.

And I'm going, Hell, no, hell, no. It's got like a couple more weeks left, you know, and then someday somebody's going to do that, and I'm like, No.

No, we don't do that anymore. You're old.

Yeah, gross.

This is the exact same thing, and I think, so what we're going to be talking about today? And you're going to be able to hear Fran and Alvin tell this story for the most part, which is great because you're going to hear what amazing storytellers there are. And it's going to make you want to listen to this. And then jump right over to their feed and start gobbling up everything that they have to offer.

That's up to you guys, of course, but we do have a podcast called Affirmative Murder, so if you like what we do here, come check us out, please. There's more, there's room for you.

We're the conductors, trains, planes, automobiles.

Automobiles, yes, boats, all of the above.

However you get there is your business, we highly recommend it.

We don't transportation.

We won't say we're we're not going to force you over there, but we are highly suggesting by like, shoving you as hard as we can over there. Yes, but like, gently, you'll love it, yeah.

So should we just should we go, should we get into it?

So let's let's go, let's do it, I love you, let's do this.

Like, Lil Jon, Okay, so let's start with, like, the history of the guillotine, right?

Yes.

So the guillotine's inception, guys, like many things in modern history, is steeped in, like rich white man smoking mirrors. So one day this guy named, his name was Joseph Ignis Guillotine. This was in 1789. He comes into a room and he's all like, shop a box, he got a box, bam, zip a box, he did, which basically-.

That was actual audio from that moment, actually. yeah, we sourced it. yeah, very rare audio.

Yes, exactly, that was archival, archival audio from the French parliament. But basically, what he said was, Hey, guys, like, the way we're killing people is super like, barbaric and gross and torturous. And we need to, like, streamline this, clean things up, let's get more inundated in the future and leave that stuff in the past.

Put my name on it, absolutely.

And put my name on it, and I'll trademark it and patent it as well. So they wanted to make something that's more barbaric and gross, but less painful and quick. Oh no, I would disagree. Anybody who wants to look up like the Western European modes of killing people before the guillotine, straight up, some of the craziest things I've ever heard of. There was one. There was a chair, like a metal chair, that they would just put over fire, and the chair would get really hot. And then you just would burn to death on the chair.

And then we put you out.

Yeah, they're like, all right.

Breaking on the rack Was that breaking on the rack?

And they, like, break your bones, like misery.

One by one, just like, like, slow as fuck, oh so like, as they crank, you turn you into like a scorpion, essentially like, and then I feel like.

It's awful, and it's like you stole some bread to the rack, you go and then the rack wouldn't kill you. And then they would like let the birds eat you slowly.

So now, after you break all your bones?

You'll die in like three days from like stomach cramps.

They were like sepsis.

Yeah, exactly, that'll kill you, you'll die eventually. But so yeah. But it's kind of. It's kind of weird hearing a name now, where it's like, we know his name. But it being named after a machine that was like beheading people is kind of it's crazy.

And some people say guillotine. When I was younger, everyone said, guillotine, guillotine, and then it like, switched over into guillotine. I feel like, yeah, because we have this conversation all the time.

Is this a Mandela effect thing?

Sometimes I'll refer to guillotine, I think it might be I say guillotine, though, and I always have, yeah.

I might have made this up. I have imposter syndrome, so I'm like, it's French, and I'm like, I'm going to say it French. But if I was just being myself, I would say guillotine.

They both feel right.

Yeah.

I don't think either is wrong, I don't either, it's dialect, it's all right.

Yeah, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's a fucking duck, so shut the fuck up, you know?

Absolutely certainly not a moose, and it's a guillotine.

They weren't calling it Guillie Hicks.

There you go.

That's a very deep cut reference. I don't know if anybody shot the Guillie Hicks. I used to work, I worked in the Abercrombie umbrella, so I was, you know.

Guillie T-v-t.

Shout out to Guillie Hicks, No. But, as we all said, all jokes aside, though, the guy, even though he just had an idea, the idea was, you know, steeped in some level of dignity and not torturing people. So the criminals of France's past should really thank this guy, because, like I said, the stuff was very torturous, it was bad.

Could have been worse.

Yeah, you could have been melted on a chair for like, punching your friend.

Yeah, from the butt up.

Yeah, butt up.

Which is way worse.

So the guillotine, or guillotine, went on to become the symbol of the French revolution. Because the people saw it as this great equalizer, because of the, you know, the ideas behind its inception. People believed that whether you were royalty or you came from the lowest of the low, the guillotine was the great equalizer. Like everybody who commits the same crimes, they die by the guillotine. And this was enforced by the fact that Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, ever heard of her.

Queen, literally.

Literally, she. They were both beheaded during the French revolution, like the people revolted against them and cut their heads off in a mutiny damn. And they were kind of like the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce of the 17th century.

I would say, so they kind of were.

You know, they were the IT couple until the tides.

Until they weren't.

Like everybody loved them until they didn't, everybody loved Marie Antoinette, had great gowns and she was, like, super trendy.

Until the Super Bowl.

So, you know, we'll see how the Super Bowl goes, but hopefully it doesn't end the way that. Marie, Antoinette and Louis went on. We can all hope, we can all hope. Yeah, it would be a more interesting Super Bowl.

But.

In a different way, in a very different way, so....

It would hit a little different.

It would hit very.

So so, Wi-fi, this thing has Bluetooth.

People were like, Whoa, this is revolutionary, like this is next level stuff. It's like you're cutting off somebody's head and it falls in the basket.

So, like, you can wear a button up shirt while it happens.

This is dignified. What song do you want to go out to? We all can watch this publicly. It's super clean, nobody gets blood on them because it's so fast.

Yeah.

But it's a barbaric tool that slices off your head and it falls in the basket. That's what it's always been. But then when Hitler started using it, people were like, This is nasty. Actually, it's not the dignified tool that we thought it was. It was like it was always this gross thing.

That's great, but I'm glad, you know now, yeah.

At least we're starting to have conversations now around capital punishment and you know, and those kind of things. But it took kind of the turn of the century, you know, the industrial age, people driving cars and stuff. To go slicing off people's heads in public is wrong. Kind of fun.

Kind of gnarly.

Yeah, it's like it's a little hardcore, I don't know so...

Look at us as humans, just takes us a minute, look at us, go.

Yeah, upon reflection, I don't think I'd like to see somebody's head cut off in broad daylight. I'd like to go to the cinema. Yeah, now that I think about it.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

So, just a couple of decades removed from World War II, the nation of France was so far from the barbaric stances that they had so long ago. That this idea of a falling blade being this distinguished, decent way of killing people was now starting to be the subject of conversations in France and all across Western Europe. Because Europe did, in a lot of countries in Europe, did away with capital punishment long before the United States did, because we also didn't federally in the United States, we still do that.

Yeah.

But a lot of countries in Western Europe don't kill people as a form of punishment. But yeah, this became an outdated concept in France during the 40s and 50s and 60s. It started to become like this conversation that was had, like, should we be doing this? If we really are the dignified people that we say we are, is killing people in the first place, even dignified at all? It's like an eye for an eye.

Perhaps not, probably not.

The answer is, Nah, that might not be that chill. It was the 60s. They're like, you know what, that's not chill, that's super not chill.

We're moving into a chill vibe century here. Got to leave some stuff behind.

Calm down. So all of that backstory brings us to the final time. A state-sanctioned guillotining, or guillotining, took place in France, which was in the year 1977. Hilariously, in a sense, the same year that Star Wars A New Hope came out. So there was....

Yeah, when you put those two events together, you're like, at the same time.

That's wild, yeah, it's super crazy, the idea of such an old form of torture being still used. While, you know, my boy Harrison Ford's doing his thing. Looking super lean in those bootcut black pants, those gauchos.

Hell yeah.

You could bounce a quarter off that thing, so.

They were cheering and whistling. It was the Super Bowl.

Is this coachella?

Is that Coachella Festivals?

This was yes, this was Coachella.

Coachella Yes.

Can I get there early?

They had, like, souvenir stands out there.

This was Coachella 1939.

They picked out their outfits ahead of time.

Yeah, exactly, people were wearing glitter.

It's straight up medieval like, it is straight up like from the 1600s like, and it's 1939 like that is wild to me.

Damn like flowery headdresses. Oh yeah, yeah. It was a very big fashion moment. It's like, what are you wearing to a game?

Yeah, Lana del Rey was there in a past life.

Yeah, Lana del Rey, in a normal spirit, Lana del Rey, she's a thousand years old and she was at this because, of course, she would be.

Always, Christopher Lee was actually at that one who Christopher Lee from Star Wars and Dracula and Lord of the Rings.

He was at the he was at this.

He was 17 years old and he was actually at that one, the 1939 one. Yes, and he said he didn't look, he said. He turned at the last second.

Oh, my goodness, probably like a crunch or something crazy, I know, because it feels like it would be no, but hearing like the membrane of the spine.

And then the head fall.

Oh, sure, like if it's like, if they used like a Narell Cove razor, it probably is.

It should be sharp.

Yeah.

But then you hear a thump, you would hear that thump, though.

If it was a Bic, you'd hear everything. a bic blade they use. Bic Bic was sponsored by BIC. This one. this was the last public when it was sponsored by BIC.

A great sponsoring opportunity.

It's like Bic ruined everything, the guy didn't die.

That's why Gillette is the best the band can get, because they did not fall for this.

Yeah, but so so this last, this last one, this last public one. People were going crazy. The beheading took place at like 4 a..m and people lost their shit. They were throwing their sausage sandwiches.

Wow.

It can't happen. No, it's not even outrage. They were. The crowd was so excited and ravenous that the French government was it disgusted at itself and was like, we're not doing this anymore. Guys are having too much fun, you guys are having too much fun.

You know what it was? They were like. We see that you are all humans and that humans are terrible, and we don't ever want to see that again. We'd like to pretend we're not this way.

This is why the government exists to protect the people from themselves, the government makes the decisions that the people would never make. Because you guys are animals, so they had to do that.

Which is pretty horrifying.

It's really horrifying. Yeah, somebody left that and was like, I'm going to frame a dude for thievery tomorrow so that they can behead him. And there'll be another one tomorrow, it's going to be awesome.

I fucking hate my neighbor.

Let's go, let's frame him, and then he'll be beheaded publicly.

Because we look back at these public executions from King Henry VIII and all that shit. And we're like, Oh my god, people were bringing their kids to this, they were just coming out for this. Times were so different, people were so terrible back then, and then we're like, 1939, we're all like, Woo.

People listen to this on the radio.

You can watch this guy die.

When everybody's got on Lederhosen and those Big man sparkly dresses, I don't know what William Shakespeare's always depicted in. When I see them in those, I'm like, Yeah, those people got beheaded. But when you see somebody in a suit, yeah, see people in those kind of suits. Got somebody with a pocket watch and a big bow tie.

And a pompadour.

People had product in their hair and brushed their teeth, and they were like, let's go to the beheading party.

Hygiene was a thing.

Exactly also off topic a little bit. I was having a discussion with my girlfriend the other day and we were talking about how that Fifty Shades of Grey moment. We all just kind of looked back on that. Or we did look back on it and was like, people were going to the movie theatres in droves to watch Smut. Yeah, like it was sold out.

Oh, my just watching girls are united.

When you look back on it, that's really weird to do. It feels like it's wild elbow to elbow, with a stranger just being like, in heat, that's crazy.

We're a weird species of people gathering to watch fanfic. people are really something. Yeah, we don't get better, we just get weirder.

Carpool to a guillotine is.

And that's a real thing, like the sausage sandwich thing is a real thing.

Yeah, the shops. There was two shops right there in the town square that were like, we got to load up on sausage sandwiches. Because there's going to be a packed crowd tonight.

That'll change you. And there were waiters like joking around.

So was the money to be made? Vendors? All the vendors out there like popcorn, get your popcorn.

It's straight up medieval.

Oh, yeah as hell. But it was 1939..

1939.

So let's get back to this guy named Hamida Jandubi, the man in question, so Hamida Jandubi was born on September 22nd, 1949. He was actually born in Tunisia, which I have not been to, but when I looked up pictures, it's gorgeous, it's like a coastal city.

Oh, it's gorgeous. Yeah, this place is gorgeous. No, this is gorge.

I want to go, yeah, so I guess for whatever reason. By the time Hamida was 20 years old, he was like, Fuck all this blue water and sun.

It's just New York.

Every restaurant down by the Eiffel Tower sucks, like they're all like, they want you to leave quickly because it's touristy. I think that's called something. It's like, New York, you don't go to Times Square.

That's true. Yeah, no, there's a word for that. Like when you go to Paris and you get disappointed, because it's like a thing a lot of people experience, yes.

Yeah, it's.

It's called Paris Syndrome, by the way. It's a thing. Oh, there you go. People get hallucinations, increased heart rate, nausea because they're so disappointed, damn.

Yeah, really, you're like, Wait, I thought that this was like, Amelie, everybody thinks it's Amelie. Yeah, everybody thinks it's that.

Oh, that's a lot of your leg.

That's a lot of your leg, that's almost all of it.

Yeah, pretty much all of it.

Yeah, but I like, see what they did in that. Remember that two, that two-part movie thing that came out with Rose McGowan when she made it a gun? Oh yes.

The Grindhouse.

He lost about that much of his leg, like up, most of it up to his quad. I forgot about that movie. Yeah, that was a really bold idea for, like, 2,000 miles, that was a wild one, a double feature horror movie.

Just happens. Whenever the theme of a movie is, Don't worry about it, that's when I love it, that's fun, like when you ask a question, you just go, don't worry about it.

Deal with it, yeah, don't ask questions, just enjoy what's happening.

Take the ride.

Yeah, so unfortunately, Hamidah did lose about two-thirds of his legs and he did not get a cool gun leg. He just they gave him a prosthetic. Eventually. He struggled to find work for years after this accident, and this is when he started to take up drinking and using controlled substances.

I think you should still call biscuits bisquettes, you shouldn't be ashamed.

It's the same thing as what was the other word we were talking about. It's guillotine. It looks like biscuit, it has a Q and an I in it. That's what I call my dog.

When they're fancy.

Why not, you know, think outside the box? I'm just saying, I'm just telling people, if you take nothing else from affirmative murder, know that. Hey, we like to think outside the box over there, yeah.

Romanticize everyday life exactly bisquettes.

Have a nice bisquette, some tea, yeah, so. These two met while Hamida was recovering in the hospital from an amputation. Because at first he lost a leg, but then he had to have a couple of amputation surgeries. To kind of clean it up. And, you know, all that kind of stuff, get it where it needed to be.

To think about that's so scary. He's just being taken care of by this because she's like a nurse, yeah.

She comes and checks on the patients, Yeah.

And he's trying to force her into sex work. It's like, where did those two things connect? How did this happen? That's he's down and out, and he's still this evil.

When somebody's in their darkest time and they're still like, how can I manipulate and exploit people? Yes, like, this person is trying to be nice to you while you're not even more than half your leg is gone. And while they're talking, you're like, I'm gonna fucking manipulate and just trick you so bad.

That's really.

I'm gonna gaslight and destroy your life, while they're just like, Do you need a sponge bath? can I help you? That's a really evil person, that's sinister.

Yeah, that's dark-sided.

Yeah, I'll tell you what if Obi-wan Kenobi had looked down on Anakin Skywalker while he was all burnt up on that lava mountain? And he said, like, one day I'm gonna be a super evil dude and kill everybody. I think he would've killed him.

At the time.

You have that pity, you're like, I'm here to help and you're down on your luck. But if you knew in his mind he's like, I'm gonna human traffic you, you'd be like, Oh God.

Oh, fuck that.

Get out of here.

No.

He fell down that classic tractor accident to sex trafficking predator pipeline. It's an easy one to fall into, absolutely.

We've all heard of it.

Yada yada yada Sex Trafficker.

That's what his defense tried to use.

They were like, You know how this happens?

Yeah, it's like, I don't know if that was gonna work.

I ruptured my achilles like five years ago, and I was super bummed out. Never thought about committing horrible crimes against people. Was I a little bummed? Yeah, what did I do?

That's how you handle that.

I was never like, I'm gonna like, make girl scouts sell cookies for me without giving them the money to get their prizes. My brain never cooked up. Some kind of crazy.

Scheme.

I was never scheming.

She bested him.

He fixates on it until July of 1970.

That's so scary that he fixated that long.

Yeah, he just couldn't let it go.

Oh, that's so scary, that's, yeah, that's evil.

Well, men are scary, you know, and that's one thing as a man in true crime, you don't really. as a man, not in true crime. If you don't have conversations with women, you don't really know how scary men are when you're a man. But when you, when you hear a woman go like, Oh, walking down the street, like, what men are thinking about? All of these things are like, they're all. They all can be dangerous to somebody, you know? Oh yeah, but you never look at it that way.

Of course, a woman's Roman empire is being killed. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, it's like, and it's probably, you think by a man. Like, some guy that's on your Instagram, or you go to the same gym as them. And it's just some guy that's just like, I like you now.

Could be anybody.

Those are my feelings, it's like how you feel doesn't have anything to do with that. Well, I followed you to your car because I want your number.

Oh yeah, and that's fine.

But I don't want to give it to you, but like, I want it, though, that's scary. I don't think of that, as that's just not an experience I've had in my life as a man. Now you don't.

You're just like, what a weird lady, yeah.

I'm like, No, go away. I think that's a hard concept for a lot of men to be like, why don't you just say no? It's like, well, intimidation, fear, it's a lot of things.

It's a lot more complicated than that because you don't want to piss a man off, and sometimes people do say no, and it doesn't work out.

And then the bad things happen faster. Yeah, you can't even really.

Take a walk or a jog alone as a woman anymore, like, you can't. I would love to take a jog in the morning, early morning with music on, but I could never do that. My husband's like, absolutely not.

I remember telling, I told Alvin I went to Myrtle Beach maybe a couple years ago, mini golfing and there was a young lady going for a jog. It was maybe like nine o'clock at night, she had headphones on. I was like,....

Oh my god.

It kind of made me scared. I was like, that's crazy. She's jogging by herself late at night. I mean, I'm not from Myrtle Beach, but that's still terrifying, yeah.

Yeah, you're like, worried for her, right?

Be careful. We have had many conversations where we're just casually talking and we're like, I got the AirPod Max's last year. And I'm like, you hit the button and everybody goes away. I don't know what's going on, I don't know.

And you're like.

That's exactly right, it's so true. I'm like, I hit this button and you could come hit me in the back of the head with a bat. I couldn't know.

Who's in front of me?

But we're like, That's awesome, that's so awesome. I have no idea what's going on in my surroundings. When I hit this button, I'm like, yelling, Can you hear me?

Yes, it's so true because we have those too, and we were doing that. We're like, Well, I can't hear you at all. And I was like, I could never wear these outside of the house. Nope.

I would never hit this button if I wasn't in the safety of my home.

No, never, even with the button off. I'm like, should I be wearing these? Yeah, I'm like, I should wear these outside. They're going to think I can't hear them.

So, yeah, so, like I said, Hamida Jandubi fixated on Elizabeth biscuit for a year, until in 1974 he kidnapped her and brought her to his home. Oh my god, that's so scary now. His home was acting as some kind of makeshift brothel.

Wow, yeah, he straight up tortured her.

Yeah, really, yeah, really horrible. And also, to do it in front of the two other women that were under the control of his sex trafficking ring was also intentional as well. Probably.

Trying to prove a point? Oh yeah, see what happens.

Yeah.

Like, this will happen to you if you try to go.

Gotta flex his muscle a little bit.

Yep.

So Biscuit actually survived the ordeal. But after the torture, Hamida drove her to the outskirts of Marseille, another lovely town, beautiful, beautiful city. And um, but he strangled her on the outskirts of Marseille, um. He then returned from the brutal murder, and Jandubi warned the other two girls not to say anything about what they had seen. Or else, you know that whole implications thing.

There's the intimidation.

But on July 7th, 1974, Elizabeth Biscuit's body was discovered in a shed and the investigation by the police was launched. However, though, Jandubi was so arrogant that he moved on from that immediately, and not more than a couple of days later. He went back out to try to kidnap another young girl with the intention of forcing her into his sex trafficking ring, so he's looking to get a third woman into his sex trafficking ring. But the young lady managed to flee, probably because she ran, so she got away, she gets away, and she filed a police report against the police and they went and arrested him.

And thank goodness, those other two women were able to talk about what happened to them. Because sometimes they break them so hard that they don't even feel like they can speak out against them. They probably saw it as their opportunity, like, we have to do this while he's incarcerated.

For sure, yeah, exactly, I think that's what happened. I think they were like, this is our moment to get him, yeah.

And it's like, Okay, then we're gonna imprison that different person that you are today like....

That different person, exactly, you're going to the children, you're going to the children. Yeah, for sure.

There's plenty of people go through that and don't do what he did, like, come on, that's the shittiest defense ever.

It is.

It's like he lost his leg.

Yeah, to try to fucking weaponize mental illness like that, to be like I was going through a time of darkness, exactly, and I became a full-blown criminal.

Yeah, so I should be just let free.

Like, there's other ways to, like, deal with your, you know, not having a job. Listen, if you go through a tragic accident and your life has changed forever. If I ruptured my Achilles in 1977, I would have a limp for the rest of my life. Thankfully, modern science is, you know, you can get a surgery. And now I can play basketball again and I can run and everything. But if I was now a person who walked different and couldn't work the same job that I did, that would affect me mentally. That's no excuse to start ruining people's lives and kidnapping people and stuff.

It's wild. Any other outlet than hurting other human beings or yourself.

Yeah, anything else? Yeah, you know, they say, hurt people, hurt people, like, No, let's not just normalize that.

Exactly.

So the very next day, so this would be February 25th, Hamida Jandubi was sentenced to death. Like they heard all they needed to hear, his defense said, their bullshit, that they said they were like, we're not wasting time, okay? Alcohol abuse.

Yeah, guilty.

They went and deliberated for a cool 45 minutes and they came back with that death by guillotine. Verdict damn. And after a denied appeal, Hamida was also informed that he would not receive a reprieve from the then President of France. So he was, but no way. He thought he was, like, sitting there, like, Oh man.

He was like, he's going to come through.

I know it if President Ha-ha can send a reprieve, if he sends that reprieve, I'll be good to go, I'll be golden. And the president did not do that, nah.

That's not President Ha-ha's style. Ha-ha does not play like that.

President Ha-ha was like, No, no, no, Homie, don't play that. the one thing about President ha-ha. He doesn't like guys that do what he did.

He doesn't mess around.

No reprieve for you.

He said, Ha-ha, uh-uh.

Ha-ha said, Ha-ha said, So, um, so. The President of France denied a reprieve for Hamida, and in the early morning of September 10th, 1977, 12 days before his 28th birthday, Hamida Jandumi was.

28.

He was only 27.

He's literally my age, he's a literal bebe bebe, that's crazy.

Now he's sitting at the gallows, man. Crazy times being there with a guy holding a curtain rod or whatever the string is to drop a fucking a big razor on your neck.

And they walk you past that wicker basket that your headless body is going to be placed into, like you, just you just breeze right by it, I'm like.

That to me is just like they said. He was like, really trying to buy time? He's smoking cigarettes. Oh yeah, they told him, like, that's enough.

There's so many cigarettes. He's a chill out.

And a glass, I think he had, like three cigarettes and a glass of water. I don't blame him, though. I mean, like he was taking those things.

For a walk. I think he had some rum, too. He was like, I'm going to save this, I don't blame him.

Yeah, he was taking those. You got a Gillette razor just staring at you and you're like, Oh, this is the end. That last meal? yeah, oh, the last meal where you can see somebody like, swing, swing, swing.

Literally everything. Take me to the buffet.

Because you think about it.

And you're like, when I finish this cigarette, that is the last thing I do.

That is it.

Or if I take this last sip, that's the last thing I do. I would want to be like, a little tipsy.

They would have to fight me, they would have to pull that cigarette. No, I'm not done yet. you got to sit down and do the cigarette. They would have to pull that from me.

Smoking the filter?

They spray it, they spray it and put the fire out, put it out.

Oh my god, oh my God. It's so stressful to think about. Yeah, that's a lot to reconcile.

It's like, it's coming to an end, yeah, and then, like, this is the bucket your head is going to fall in.

Like, here's the basket that will put your headless body in.

He has white gloves on, like, This is me. Oh yeah, he's real classy, he's a real classy guy.

Eugene Weidman there, the guy at the last public execution there in, Uh, or 39, he. When they walked him out, his eyes were closed the whole. He didn't want to look at anything. He just squeezed his eyes shut the whole time. And I was like, Oh.

Yeah, I would be the same way, same. I don't want to see that, I don't want to look at this.

I wouldn't either.

That's where my head is going to fall.

You bump into the basket.

They're like, this is a second-generation guillotine. Yeah, they start taking it through like it's a Winnebago. they're like, this is, uh, it's guillotine 2.0..

You're like, this ambitious serial killer is reduced into, like, squeezing his eyes shut like a kid. Yeah, like, it's just like, EW, I know. And for a second, I was like, Ah, and then I was like, wait a second, and then you're like, wait a second.

Yeah.

Too many emotions?

That part is kind of when you talk about it being the great equalizer. Yeah, when you talk about somebody being this horrible thing, person that did this horrible thing, and then them being.

It brings you right down, yeah.

In that moment, them being scared. Absolutely. It's like, no matter who you are or what you did, when you see that in the basket, in the thing, everybody's, it's the same reaction.

No one's looking at that stoically. No, it's not happening.

No, no, no. Marie Antoinette was so flustered and fucked up and scared. They killed Marie Antoinette for a lot of fucked up reasons.

Yeah, they did.

It was really fucked up. But she apologized to the guy that did the thing because she stepped on his shoes. She was so flustered she didn't know.

It's like, Meanwhile, you're going to be cutting my head off in a second, but I'm sorry I stepped on your shoes.

Yeah, I was like, Sorry, I got scuffed up your shoes. sorry. who knows what I would say? Did I leave the pot on?

Yeah.

Don't record that. I don't want anybody laughing at it. It's so gross. Yeah, it's crazy, man, yeah. September 10, 1977, 12 days before his 28th birthday, Amita Jandubi was guillotined at the Bomet prison in Marseilles shortly after 4.40 a..m.

There you go.

For the last time, nice, and then they take you off to slice your head off. Now there is some debate as to whether a person is still alive, even briefly, after a beheading. And some physicians have done studies in the last century that show brain activity in animals like rats and stuff, for like, up to 30 seconds.

They do, I can attest to that. That does happen because air will be forced out sometimes and it'll a little bit of a moan will come with it sometimes, because it's just like a trapped moment.

That rocked my spine when she told me that.

No, that's fucked up, that'll rock your shit when you're alone in a morgue.

Luckily, I think.

I'll never find myself in that position, so.

That's terrible.

They warned me ahead of time of that, thankfully, because when it happened, I was like, and I was like, Okay, all right, I know what that is.

And she said, It was like, melancholic. It's very much like....

It is, yeah, it's a very sad...

It's like a little like you're bored, is there like different tones, like it being a male and female?

Yeah, it can be, and it's like different when, like different methods of it coming out. Like sometimes when you cut, sometimes the air just escapes, so like, it'll just be like, a huh?

No, when you're there in that moment.

Like that, oh God, certain air will escape.

In certain ways, hurry up.

So it's interesting, wow.

Get this over with.

I didn't know that that when you cut even, yeah. Just like there's certain ways when you're like, manipulating a body. If there's trapped air somewhere, it's coming out.

So it is controversial. But anyways, it is possible that Amita Jandubi sat with his head in that basket, reflecting on his life for like 30 seconds. Before the curtains faded, you know, those curtains closed and....

You kind of hope so that, like, he was like, Fuck, I shouldn't have done that.

Yeah, as he sat in that basket.

Does that last 30 seconds? Yeah, yeah, he should have a moment of like, ooh, regerts.

Are they tied up, like, are they laying down? I think they, you know, tie their hands behind their backs. Or they might even be like, We got you here, man, just sit down.

On your knees, I think they lay like belly down and somebody holds their feet. You'd have to tie me up so like, they can't.

There's no way I'm just gonna like, Yeah, I'm just gonna like, go along with this, it's not happening, didn't?

Like a hood over your head, too. I think they did for.. ..

They did it for hangings.

For hangings, because you're sometimes you're so scary.

But they might have done it for that. Because then the head falls in the basket and then it's in a bag, you take the bag out. And then they like your head more hygienic, what is the thing called they like your head because you can't? Oh, that's a stockade that's for when you want to be fomaled with tomatoes.

Yeah, when you want to be.

Those are for minor crimes. That's for like, you know, you look at a married woman in public, they put you in the stockade and throw tomatoes at your face.

You showed an ankle.

Yeah, you were a Jezebel, you had your knees out.

Oh, scandalo.

You just get beat.

With tomatoes.

In the town square. But yes, that was the story of Hamida Jandubi. And the last time a guillotine was used on a human being in France and in western Europe.

Damn, that's so wild, that's crazy. They also used to call it the National Razor, No.

I did look up because I always wonder why the razor was at an ankle, so they said they'd do that. So it's an easy slice, because if it was flat, it'll like bounce. It would be some breaking of the neck, yes.

That makes sense.

Yeah, well, like I told you in the beginning, when you talk about their methods, they used to just have one guy with an axe. Yes, and it was kind of dull. And so it would take a couple of swipes, like two, three, four swipes. And there was even, you know, everything creates a market, right?

Yeah.

Here's 20 bucks, man. Can you try hard to, like, really get it in one go?

Because there were some where it was like they would slip and hit them in the back, there was some where they would like they would slip. Yeah, like, slip, fuck you.

Completely missed.

Yeah.

Wow.

And then sometimes I think the person who was being executed had to pay the executioner as they walked up onto the.

For the service.

The scaffold. Could you cut my head off, please? Like a lot of like King Henry VIII's wives who were murdered that way, like handed them like a bag of coins before.

The beheading tax, Yeah, hey, listen, they tax you till it's over, man, yeah.