From 1944 to 1947, doctors and police were baffled by a string of homicides committed at the Town Hospital in Macon, France, north of Lyons. Seventeen patients in the hospital's gynecology ward died mysteriously following "successful" surgery, and autopsies revealed that each was killed by an injection of poison . On June 13, 1947, helpless detectives proclaimed that the killer was growing more cautious, allowing six months to pass between the murders of his last two victims . With public exposure, the crimes ceased abruptly and the case remains unsolved.