For a generation of Haitians, it was terra incognita, a living version of Baron Samedit, the Voodoo lore of cemeteries and father of the dead.
Backed by his child stealing boogeyman, the Tonton Macoute presided over the land for 14 dark years like some evil spirit made flesh.
But despite his pretensions, to the contrary, Papa Doc was no spirit, no mystical figure, rather he was a man of flesh and blood just like any other with one major exception.
Behind his kindly seeming face and slight frame lay, a soul so sadistic so casually cruel that it would inflict pain and misery upon millions.
As president of Haiti, Francois Duvalier oversaw a regime of beer unlike anything the Caribbean has ever seen.
Under his watch, up to sixty thousand were murdered, thousands more were tortured or driven from their homes or while the rest of society plunged into soul-crushing poverty.
In today's episode, Biographics is investigating how a gentle seeming doctor wound up becoming absolute ruler of his country and the nightmares he unleashed.
When Francois Duvalier was born in Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince on April 14th, 1907. There was nothing to suggest it'd ever amount to anything much less become leader of his nation.
His family were bitterly poor as members of Haiti's Creole speaking black majority tended to be part of a vast underclass ruled by a tiny French-speaking light-skinned elite.
Yet it wouldn't just be life on the margins that came to define Duvalier 's upbringing but also events, because young Francois had been born just in time to experience, one of Haiti's defining eras, the American occupation.
