What do John Lennon, Pope John Paul II and the Jaconde have in common? All have been at the center of a criminal case. In his latest book, My Criminal Archives, “those cases that I will never forget…*, to be published on Monday, the radio and television columnist Jacques Pradel plunges his readers into the heart of around thirty miscellaneous facts, some famous, others unknown. They take place in the Paris of the Middle Ages, the Canadian sky or the French countryside. Yet all of these stories ask the same question: what underlies the acting out? And why are we fascinated by certain crimes?
In your latest book, you immerse us in the heart of your criminal archives. How did you become passionate about this subject?
A bit by chance, to be honest. It goes back to the time of Lost view, in the mid-1990s. It was a family show whose objective was to find people who had disappeared in more or less mysterious ways. We had the idea of adapting this program to broken investigations. This is how it was born Witness No. 1. The idea was to take outstanding files to try to find new elements which would make it possible to relaunch the investigations.
What case, during your career, has marked you the most?
It’s hard to choose just one, but I remember very well the first one that we dealt with in Witness n°1: the little martyrdom of the A10 motorway [une fillette retrouvée morte, emmaillotée dans une couverture sur le bord de la route et dont l’identité est longtemps restée inconnue.] The investigation had just been closed without further action. This file made me dive into a terrible reality, this little girl had been massacred. I had brought two investigators on set, among the first responders. As often, the gendarmes and the police make it a point of honor not to let their emotions show through, but when removing make-up while talking with them, I asked them if it hadn’t been too hard for them. They didn’t answer me, but one of them opened his wallet and put it in front of me: on one side, there was the picture of his wife and children, on the other side , that of the little martyr. The call for witnesses did not work, but justice finally decided to reopen the investigation, then the whole judicial chain made sure never to close it so that the limitation period was postponed. Fortunately, because thirty years later, the mystery has been solved: she has been identified and her parents indicted.
What do you think is so fascinating about news items?
It’s a whole: the enormity of the scenario, its extraordinary side, the personality either of the assassin or of the victim and then the part of mystery, the thriller side. There’s bound to be a bit of a voyeur side to it, it’s like when there’s an accident on the highway, there’s almost always a traffic jam in the line opposite, people slow down to see what’s going on happens. Beyond that, there is something universal in news stories. All crimes have something to tell us. Apart from a few professional criminals, those who go to the robbery as in the factory, many are ordinary people. What fascinates me is the mystery of acting out. How Mr. and Mrs. Everybody switch to crime? We always say to ourselves: what would I have done in that case?
Why are some crimes going to be elevated to the rank of miscellaneous facts while others, with sometimes similar scenarios, remain in oblivion?
Sometimes it’s just a question of timing: at the same time, something is going on that is attracting media attention. In my book, I tell the story of the headless woman of Miomo, a vacationer who disappeared with her son in Corsica in 1979 and whose dismembered body was found nine years later. But apart from the Corsican media and myself, no one echoed it because at the same time, the daughter of actress Bernadette Lafont was missing. More generally, some cases stand out because they have a universal, almost legendary dimension. Take little Maëlys, for example, a little girl who disappears at a wedding, a happy event, it seems unfair to everyone. Even more, when we realize that suspect #1 is involved in another suspicious death [Nordahl Lelandais a été condamné pour le meurtre de caporal Noyer, commis quelques mois avant celui de la fillette].
In this respect, the cases of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès or Grégory are emblematic. There is almost a form of fascination: the issue of the magazine Society on the first recorded sales records and the Netflix series on the Grégory affair was a big success…
The Grégory affair is part of the collective memory, almost everyone has seen the photo of the investigator crossing the river with the body of this tied up little boy in his arms. It’s unbearable, we identify with the parents, with their pain. And even more when we learn that it is probably a family plot, even if all the evidence has not been found. There is this side of mystery, culture of secrecy, which fascinates even if we must not forget that the case takes place in 1984. Today with the progress of science, all the light would probably have been shed. In the Dupont de Ligonnès affair, the same springs predominate: ten years later, we still do not know what has become of him. And then, it’s worthy of a soap opera: there’s this money he borrows from his mistress, the letters he sends to his family to say that they’ve gone on a trip, this methodical killing and his Machiavellianism , the fact that he invites, for example, his last son to the restaurant before killing him.
Do you think the perfect crime exists?
By definition, the perfect crimes are those that we do not know. If you question a few country doctors or experienced investigators, they will tell you that they had doubts about certain deaths by “suicide” but no investigation was ever opened.
Wouldn’t you say that the Chevaline affair is a perfect crime? Almost ten years after this quadruple assassination on the heights of Lake Annecy, no leads have emerged…
It’s true that the Chevaline affair is a mystery with a capital “M”. It is still not known who the people targeted were, this British family or the cyclist, and moreover if there were really people targeted or if it is the work of a mental patient because the his weapon is not that of a contract killer. I would say that it is an almost perfect crime since we know it, we know that there was indeed a crime.
A prosecutor’s office specializing in cold cases has just been inaugurated. Do you think that between this and scientific progress, unsolved cases will gradually disappear?
No, because in any case, you need a thread to pull to investigate: DNA, testimony. The worst is the crime without a corpse, because there are only guesses. Take the Jubillar case, for example. There is a bundle of clues, a husband on whom weighs a number of charges. But will that be enough? But we must not forget that there is the time of the media, always in a hurry, of public opinion, which wants to know, and that of the investigation and of justice, which is not the same. Cases, sometimes resolved months or years later, illustrate this discrepancy: the investigators did not drop the case, but we moved on.
Last year, Emmanuel Macron launched the Estates General of Justice. Is there a debate to be engaged in priority, in your opinion?
Probably, that of the prescription. Currently, the only imprescriptible crimes are crimes against humanity. For murders, for example, it’s twenty years. Today, when some cold cases are judged, it is because justice has tinkered not to close the file. The question we have to ask ourselves is whether these deadlines are in line with the progress of forensic science: do we trust duration or memory to solve a crime? But the debate is not simple: the prescription was wanted by the legislator for social peace, it is estimated that beyond a certain period, we must turn the page for the good of society, but how can we you that a family resolves to say, okay we move on, when they have lost a loved one? In any case, at a time when we are talking about reconciling citizens and justice, I find it important to discuss it.