According to our information, confirmed by the Paris prosecutor’s office, Ari Boulogne, putative son of Alain Delon, was found dead at his home, rue de Cambronne in Paris (15th arrondissement), on the night of Friday to this Saturday. A 58-year-old woman, who would be his companion, was placed in police custody at the 15th arrondissement police station for “failure to assist a person in danger”. The measure was decided to “clarify the circumstances in which the death of the victim, who was hemiplegic”, underlines the Paris prosecutor’s office.
It was around 4 a.m. that the police were called by this 58-year-old woman, who had just discovered the 60-year-old photographer, dead in his living room, his body in a state of advanced decomposition. The fifties, who would be a childhood friend of Ari Boulogne, would have explained that she was returning from a trip to the regions when she made the macabre discovery, accompanied by her 21-year-old son.
According to the first elements of the investigation, Ari Boulogne suffered from health problems. He had recently been transported by the emergency services to the European hospital Georges Pompidou. “The last time I spoke with him, a month ago, he was in a wheelchair, following a bad fall”, slips a source close to the victim. The body was taken to the Paris forensic institute for an autopsy.
Between physical and moral misery, for about four years of memory of residents, it is in an HLM building of the 3F company that Christophe Boulogne had taken up residence with his companion. He moved in with this woman on the fifth floor. On the floor in the stairwell, the neighbors have placed strips of plastic on the doorsteps in an attempt to block the invasion of cockroaches from her apartment. “It’s because of the gentleman. He refuses to let the pest control companies in because he would have to leave his accommodation for four hours. Immobilized because of his illness, he never goes out. It’s been at least a year since I’ve seen him, ”says a neighbor. The tenants remember Christophe Boulogne as a man who never spoke to them. “He had health issues. He could not move and above all, he was a drug addict. Every day, here, it was the broom of narcotics deliverers, ”adds a third neighbor.
For the inhabitants of the building, the photographer and his companion are rather a source of trouble and are far from being pleasant neighbors. “At home, there was often shouting, arguments and violence. The police came regularly to calm them down, adds another local resident. These are social cases. This lady is strange and very aggressive. Her granddaughter was placed in foster care. His two other children are grown up and no longer live there.
Legal battle
Ari Boulogne, a 60-year-old photographer, claimed for decades to be the son of Alain Delon, which the monster of French cinema has always disputed. His mother, Nico, model and singer of the famous group Velvet Underground, who died in 1988, has always maintained that her son was the result of a fleeting affair with the comedian in the early 1960s.
Ari Boulogne, born Christian Aaron Päffgen, had filed in September 2019 a request for recognition of paternity before the judicial court of Orléans (Centre-Val de Loire), Alain Delon having a residence in the Loiret. In August 2020, the court declared “the French jurisdiction territorially incompetent”. A decision confirmed on appeal in September 2021, because “Alain Delon provides proof that his home is in Switzerland”, where he has resided since 1984, according to the judgment of the Orleans Court of Appeal. Ari Boulogne had instructed his lawyer to appeal in cassation. The appeal should be concluded very soon. A fight that could now be carried by his two children.
Alain Delon has always denied being the biological father of this child who was however largely raised by Edith, the mother of Alain Delon. She then adopted him, with her second husband, Paul Boulogne, who gave him his name. In his autobiography (“Love never forgets”, Pauvert editions), Ari Boulogne poured out his close relationship with his mother, who had plunged him into drug addiction. “From my 16 years until the end, we shared the same drug, the same syringe. It was a way of being together “, he confided in 2018 to the JDD.