Jean De Koven
Jean De Koven Biography
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About Jean De Koven
Jean de Koven (1915 - 23 July, 1937) was an American ballet dancer and dance tutor from Boston, Massachusetts who was murdered in Paris, France in July 1937.
She had been staying with her aunt, Ida Sackheim, in a hotel on the Left Bank,where she disappeared on the afternoon of 23 July.
Her body was discovered beneath the front porch of a villa at La Celle-Saint-Cloud on 8 December, 1937. De Koven was the first of six victims of German-born serial killer Eugen Weidmann, also known as "Karrer", a gang leader who confessed to his crimes and had as many as nine accomplices.
De Koven, resided in Brooklyn, New York before going abroad. She taught classical dancing and had trained ballet students in New Jersey schools. She arrived in Normandy on July 19.Before vanishing, De Koven was corresponding with a man who resided in another hotel in Paris from which he later moved away. On the afternoon of her disappearance, she took her camera and told her aunt that she would return by 8pm, in time to go to the opera.
Sackheim received a letter requesting $500 for her niece's safe return, which police investigated. Later ransom notes arrived and she received mysterious telephone calls. Police could not locate the contact man even though he advertised frequently in the Paris edition of an American newspaper. By September, Sackheim offered a reward requesting information which would lead to the finding of De Koven's presumed abductors.
Police found De Koven's body doubled up in a shallow grave under a porch. Weidmann's other victims were realtor named Raymond Lesobre, theatrical producer Roger LeBlond, a chauffeur Joseph Couffy, a young German he met in jail Fritz Frommer, and private nurse Janine Keller.
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