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A FORMER POLICEMAN suspected of being the serial killer behind some of France’s oldest unsolved cases has been found dead after 35 years of dodging arrest, just as police were closing in on his identity.
Francois Verove, 59, took his own life at his rented home in the south of France after receiving a summons for questioning, leaving a “written statement” and with DNA evidence then confirming his identity, the Paris prosecutor and sources said.
The man, nicknamed ‘Le Grele’ (‘pockmarked’), had been wanted by police since the 1980s for the murder and rape of young girls, but was never caught.
The list of crimes he allegedly committed in the 1980s and 90s includes rape of minors, murder, attempted murder, armed robbery and kidnapping of minors, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement late on Thursday.
“DNA tests which were immediately ordered by the investigating magistrate established a match between the genetic profile found at several crime scenes and that of the dead man,” she added.
Verove took his own life in a rented apartment, leaving a written confession, a source close to the case told AFP.
In the most notorious case, he was suspected of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl named Cecile who was found dead in the basement of the building where she lived in the 19th arrondissement of Paris.
Police believe he grabbed her as she came out of the building’s lift on her way to school and dragged her into the basement.
He is also thought to have strangled a couple to death in the central Marais district of the capital in 1987.
Over the years, investigators came to believe that the suspect may have been part of the gendarmerie — police-like armed forces in charge of internal security – at the time of the crimes, and established a DNA profile of him.
In recent months, an investigating magistrate had begun questioning around 750 gendarmes who had been deployed in the Paris region at the time.
One of them was Verove, a 59-year-old man living in the south of France, who was sent a summons on September 24 for questioning on September 29.
But he was then was reported missing by his wife on September 27 and found dead two days later in Grau-du-Roi, a seaside resort on the Mediterranean coast, the Paris prosecutor said.
He was a former gendarme, who later became a police officer and then retired, she confirmed.
‘Took secrets with him’
The Midi Libre newspaper said he had been living quietly in a residential neighbourhood in Grau-du-Roi for years.
According to local media, Verove mentioned “past impulses” in a letter he left behind, which he had since brought “under control”, and said he had committed no crimes after 1997. The murder confession contained no specifics, they said.
"Un monsieur tout le monde": un ex-collègue du "Grêlé" témoignehttps://t.co/TpVJ3ANate pic.twitter.com/lDyjj248oD
— BFMTV (@BFMTV) October 1, 2021
In 1986, police had published a police sketch based on witness statements that showed a man of around 25 years old, six feet tall with light-brown hair, and with visible traces of acne on his face.
A lawyer for Cecile’s family, Didier Seban, thanked police for their work but also told AFP that it was “painful to know that the criminal took his secrets with him”.
According to the Parisien newspaper, Verove is also the suspect in another murder near Paris, of 19-year-old Karine Leroy, in 1994 in the city of Meaux.
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He will only be remembered as being a coward with nothing worthwhile or positive to contribute to the World.
I hope this brings the surviving family members some little bit of closure, if anything.
@Carol Conway: actually, takes balls to end yourself. He obviously thought he didn’t want to spend life in a cell.
@Carol Conway: “a coward with nothing worthwhile or positive to contribute to the world”. Sounds like most of the journal comments section!
@John D: Except that I hope none of us have murdered schoolchildren.
Does not look well for the French police and they talk about the West Cork murder not been solved in Ireland.
No system is perfect, but clearly more must be done (e.g. better psychological profiling) when hiring cops.
Also the public needs to be educated more about their rights when dealing with authority figures, and that authority needs to be kept in check. If the victims fell prey is because they believed a lone cop should have the authority to handcuff a young woman and throw her into his car without any explanation, probable cause or at the very least reasonable suspicion.
@Stan Papusa: You’re incorrectly assuming that people don’t change. People do change, so if you want to bring in improved screening / profiling, then it will need to be continuous, not just at the point of entry.
How can a person do such things, I mean they surely knew what was right and wrong, then after killing a few people he just moved away to a quiet neighbourhood and kept his head low. What was the point of it?
@Jj: the golden state killer in America did something very similar. Stopped committing crimes for years. DNA evidence and genealogy got him years later
@jl: the Golden State killer was a police officer also. They seem to be harder to catch because they know how the law works and how to stay one step ahead. This guy would have known his goose was well and truly cooked when he got the summons because they would be seeking DNA evidence from him.
@Sean: seems to be a lot of killers who are cops stories emerging lately – I am a bit amazed such a cunning diet bag didn’t just evade the French altogether and move to somewhere that doesn’t extradite like maybe West Cork or something rather than suicide – I’m waiting for a twist in the plot when it’s revealed the French secret service just had him killed
Am I missing something he was summons to appear for questioning. Now I can understand that if it was a minor offence that would be acceptable. But for the crimes he did that would give him the chance to flee.
@John: They weren’t after him specifically They were questioning dozens of gendarmes who had served in Paris at the time of the murders.,
The comments of Riain in this comments section are indicative of the problem that our society faces. Basically it is a contempt for women and girls by men who are sexually/emotionally inadequate or at best immature. In addition to vetting and re-vetting police and others in authority positions, we need to show zero tolerance to those who degrade or in any way interfere with women and girls going about their business. And this includes banning comments such as those of Riain.
@Bramley Hawthorne: Ban comments that you consider tasteless or offensive? Are you serious? Are you going to be the judge of what is considered acceptable? Btw….I would recommend not going to see the likes of Jimmy Carr. You would be highly offended.
@Bramley Hawthorne: I am with Riain, love serial killer documentaries and all things murderous . There’s no denying that us humans and intrigued by murders and murderers etc. and we will keep watching them ’till the cows come home. Serial killers in particualr. His comment has nothing to do with comtempt for women! Do I have contempt for women too? lol you’ll probably say i’m affected by the partriarchy all around me or some other tripe like that. I actually think people like you who object to something we as humans are so obviously attracted too, by nature you might say, have something to hide. sort of like ‘ the lady doth protest too much’ !
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