Inside The Mind Of A Killer

By Jean-Francois Abgrall

True crime at its most potent: a riveting account of tracking down and convicting an evil serial killer by the detective who trapped him. "In the duel between a small-town cop and France's most dangerous serial killer, the advantage appeared heavily in favour of Francis Heaulme, the criminal known as the 'man from nowhere', who may have killed more than to 50 men, women and children. "Heaulme left few ordinary clues during a career of crime spread across the country. Faced with a master of ingenious alibis and innate resistance to interrogation, all his gendarmerie opponent could count on was instinct. This psychological hunt for a killer has echoes of Dostoevsky. "Heaulme never spoke murders. He referred to pepins - bothersome details, before noting days when pepins coincided with killings he had supposedly witnessed. He gave the impression he was an accidental observer of events in which women were beaten to death or children repeatedly stabbed. He had no criminal record and was scrupulous in living in the law. While he is thought to have been involved at least 50 murders, Heaulme once said that 'every time I visited somewhere there was a pepin.' So far 400 towns and villages have been identified where Heaulme stayed." Paul Webster in the Observer, reviewing the French edition This is the best, clearest, most decisive account of the work of a detective possible. It shows how deadly criminals can only be caught by a combination of luck, patience - and most important of all skill and determination. It is frightening stuff.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Profile Books
• Release date: Sep 3, 2010
• ISBN: 9781847651051

Jean-Francois Abgrall

Jean-Francois Abgrall was an adjutant in the Rennes homicide squad when he started investigating the murder of Aline Perez. By the time it was over he was famous throughout France. His book, Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer, was made into a successful drama by French television, with the actor Thierry Fremont winning an Emmy for best international actor. After leaving the police force, Abgrall he set up as one of the only French private detectives licensed to investigate serious crime. He has worked on other celebrated cases since the Heaulmes affair - including tracking down another serial killer in the South of France - and also lectures on criminal psychology at the University of Rennes.

Book preview

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INSIDE THE MIND OF A KILLER

INSIDE THE

MIND OF A

KILLER

ON THE TRAIL OF

FRANCIS HEAULME

Jean-François Abgrall

with

Samuel Luret

Translated by Ros Schwartz

5082

First published in Great Britain in 2004 by

PROFILE BOOKS LTD

58A Hatton Garden

London EC1N 8LX

www.profilebooks.co.uk

First published in France in 2002 by

Albin Michel as Dans la tête du tueur

www.albin-michel.fr

Copyright Editions Albin Michel S.A. – Paris 2002

Translation copyright © Ros Schwartz, 2004

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN: 978-1-84765-105-1

Ouvrage publié avec le concours du Ministère français chargé de la Culture – Centre national du livre.

This work is published with the assistance of the French Ministry of Culture – National Centre of Books.

1114115207

This book is supported by the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs, as part of the Burgess programme headed for the French Embassy in London by the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni.

Author’s note

For the purpose of this book, the investigation is described in chronological order. However, only the statements, reports and miscellaneous documents made public during the court hearings have been used.

Translator’s note

It may help the reader to know that in France there are two police forces, the Police and the gendarmerie. The Police operate in cities, and the gendarmerie, which is a military structure, in rural areas. Under French law, serious cases are referred to an investigating magistrate, the juge d’instruction, who takes formal charge of the investigation. He or she determines which witnesses are to be called, and will hear evidence from the witnesses and the suspect before the trial.

To all those who believed in and assisted

with these investigations.

Contents

PART ONE

Pursuit

1 Moulin Blanc Beach

2 The first meeting with Francis Heaulme

3 On the trail of the killer

4 ‘The Gaul’

5 Confessions

PART TWO

Dangerous liaisons

6 True and false faces of Heaulme

7 Inside the mind of the killer

8 A trail of blood

9 The trail continues

10 Fear of the precipice

PART THREE

An unfinished story

11 First trial

12 The last visit

13 Acquittal and life

14 The cycle ride

Afterword

PART ONE

Pursuit

1

Moulin Blanc Beach

Sunday 14 May 1989 was one of those long sunny days that make being on duty even more tedious, particularly as that weekend was the culmination of a stressful week for the Rennes gendarmerie’s criminal investigation unit.

The offices were deserted, the telephones silent. Time plodded by, punctuated only by trips to the coffee machine and the radio operations room to collect the occasional fax. There was nothing earth-shattering: a few sporadic burglaries in different parts of Brittany that would have to be investigated to see if there were any links, notifications of arrests for car thefts, brawls and two or three flashers. The warm weather often brings them out of the woodwork.

To relieve the monotony, I reread various documents and planned my forthcoming trips. I had to go to Nantes to take part in a series of arrests in a drug-trafficking case. Then, if all went well, I would go on to Saint Brieuc, where the local gendarmerie had asked for our help in investigating a series of armed robberies. The day wore on.

5.10 p.m.: an urgent telex. A murder had just been committed on Moulin Blanc beach, at Le Relecq-Kerhuon, just outside Brest. Aline Pérès, aged forty-nine, had been stabbed. Her body had been found lying in the middle of the beach by passers-by. Lying in the middle of the beach … Odd. I knew that beach well. I had lived in the area for nearly five years. It was a quiet place where nothing ever happened, where families went for a stroll, especially on Sundays. A strange place for a murder.

That was all the message said. I needed more information. Most homicides committed in the region were handled by our division. I would probably be put in charge of the investigation.

I called the local gendarmes. We often worked together. The year before, we had collaborated over the murders of a company boss and an oyster farmer. The officer on duty had very few details. He informed me that several teams were already at the scene.

5.15 p.m.: Joseph, nicknamed ‘Jop’, my partner at that time, was nowhere to be found. Head of the Rennes mobile delinquency squad, he was fluent both in Breton and the language of the gypsies. A few weeks away from retirement and anticipating an uneventful spell on duty, he had decided to take a little trip to south Finistère, to see some ‘intelligence agent’ known only to him. He had gone off without leaving a contact number. I got the message.

The Commander’s Peugeot 305 was the best available vehicle. We were routinely assigned old cars as apparently we spent too much time on the road. The advantage was that it was grey and could always be used as an unmarked vehicle.

I drove fast. The 200 kilometres sped by. If the old traffic cops saw me, they’d come out with their usual clichés – ‘Slow down, death will wait, take it easy …’ But I knew speed was the essence. An investigation is a time-machine for going backwards. The murderer had been in the vicinity of the beach around 5 p.m. I had to be there as fast as possible before vital evidence was lost. Clues are often short-lived.

6.50 p.m. The road took me right to the beach car park. The place is popular with windsurfers all year round, in all weather, a busy beach, over a kilometre long, where walkers pause to gaze at the sea, where people like to stroll, and children come to swim. Bordered by one of the roads into Brest, its sandy stretches unfurl in a leisurely fashion from the Moulin Blanc marina to the Sables Rouges headland. Near the car park there’s a pebble beach. I knew that this less savoury section was not frequented by the same beachgoers as the sandy part. Older people liked to come here to avoid mocking stares when they put on their swimsuits. It was quieter here, and the regulars knew each other by sight.

Despite the holiday atmosphere created by the spring sunshine, I was aware of the murder scene nearby. Soon I spotted the gendarmerie’s vehicles and recognised several colleagues. The victim’s body was still lying on the beach, covered with a white sheet. It looked abandoned, lying parallel to the sea, as if by mistake. I noticed signs of a struggle being carelessly trampled by a gendarme. I hoped they’d been photographed. Other clues were vanishing under my eyes: bystanders were beginning to amble off into the distance without having been identified.

I quickly examined the body. The victim was a small woman of around fifty, with short, light-brown hair. She was lying on her back, her legs straight and her arms by her sides. There was grit clinging to her right cheek. She was wearing only the bottom half of a bikini. I was struck by the grisly wound to her throat, though there was surprisingly little blood. Her throat had been slit from the middle to behind the left ear. It was a ‘clean’ wound, sharp and precise. There were other stab wounds to the heart and at the base of her spine where the marks from the hilt of the weapon were still visible. The suddenness and brutality of the attack were unusual. It had the air of an execution, an explosion of violence. I looked around, scanning the area for vital clues.

It was too incongruous, crazy even, to kill on a Sunday afternoon on this packed beach. Had this spot, which I knew so well, changed? Or was it the crime that was out of place? And who was this woman?

My colleagues’ activity broke into my thoughts. Each person concentrated on his job: mug shots, fingerprints and IDs of curious onlookers drawn to the scene. The atmosphere was tense, heavy. Sheer disbelief was visible on every face.

The victim’s belongings were a few metres away, resting against the sea wall. I looked carefully. The marks on the ground pointed to the presence of another person. Did a bloodstain near the towel necessarily indicate the start of the attack? All around, the little flat pebbles had been disturbed, trampled, but there had not been any big movements. Two identical deep imprints indicated to me that Aline Pérès had knelt down. Car keys protruded from her jeans pocket. Nobody leaves their keys lying around on a beach. The victim had probably been trying to grab them. And those other blood stains … They started by her bag and continued less visibly to the position where the body lay. This woman had been helpless. Each thrust had hit home. The murderer was precise, experienced … I had the impression it was the act of a madman, but committed consciously. A cold-blooded killing.

I joined the team at the edge of the beach. The lieutenant supervising the investigation was summing up the facts. ‘The victim has been identified. She’s a nurse from Brest.’ Then he expounded his theory on how the murder had been carried out. He could already picture the whole thing. ‘After being attacked unexpectedly from behind, the victim crawled a few metres. The murderer stabbed her first in the back, then in the heart and lastly he slit her throat …’

How could he be so sure? The expressions on the faces of some of the seasoned officers spoke volumes.

On these initial military conclusions, they were asked to meet at the local gendarmerie to set up an incident room. The lieutenant was in a hurry. He had two objectives: to inform his superiors as soon as possible and to arrest the murderer in record time. His hectic activity betrayed a state of agitation that can often be contagious.

In the lobby, witnesses were waiting to give statements. Many of them lived near the scene of the crime. Among them was a short, shy-looking man of around fifty, sitting in a corner, looking ill at ease and quite distraught. Nobody was taking any notice of him. I went over. He told me that he was married and that he had known the victim for years. ‘I was with her last night. What happened?’ he asked me.

‘We’re going to take care of you,’ I told him.

At that point, an officer appeared and announced that everyone would have to wait a little longer.

As it turned out, the witnesses were interviewed immediately, without any precautions or any real detachment. They would probably all have to be questioned again. The witnesses were party to the constant coming and going of the officers; they overheard the radio communications and the various conversations of the teams returning from the beach. There was no discretion. The twenty investigators who had been brought in were rushing around in all directions. With the help of Bertrand from the local gendarmerie and François, the head of the Brest criminal investigation unit, I gently tried to calm things down.

8.30 p.m.: the end of the first case review. Now we had to organise the teams and put the right people in place. We entrusted the most important checks to the steadiest, most experienced officers, who wouldn’t be discouraged if they failed to obtain immediate results. Everybody had a particular line of inquiry to pursue. We seemed to have struck a balance between emergency measures and background investigation. After talking to the Brest substitute public prosecutor, I was put in charge of the case.

Experience has shown that the beginning of an investigation is the most crucial time. It is vital not to omit anything or to rush into things, even though sometimes it is tempting to dive straight in. Details overlooked can never be retrieved.

The first task was to find new witnesses. Maps of the district were issued. One by one, the residents were methodically questioned. We passed on the information to the Brest police. The fire service, hospitals, taxis and all-night bars were alerted. None of the team got any sleep that night, but by dawn there was little to show for their efforts. There was not a single eyewitness account.

5768

9 a.m., Monday 15 May 1989. Everybody looked tired, but they battled on. It is not unusual to have so little to show after only one day of inquiries. During a criminal investigation, we proceed first of all by elimination, exploring every possible avenue, starting with the list of the most recently released convicts, arrivals of injured patients in the hospitals, and reports of stolen vehicles. Refuse collection in the vicinity of the beach had been suspended in case the murder weapon was in one of the bins. All the manholes in the area were also examined one by one. Records of all calls made from the public telephones on the beach were requested and the numbers traced. Somewhere there had to be a witness, a clue … We followed up every lead. I found it hard to believe that a woman could be murdered on a beach, in the middle of the afternoon, without anybody seeing or hearing a thing. I returned to the scene with Bertrand and tried shouting. My cries were drowned by the noise of the waves and the traffic. They couldn’t even be heard sixty metres away. But was that really an answer?

In the space of a few hours, numerous interviews had taken place. They only seemed to add to the mystery. All the evidence confirmed that the beach had been far from empty at the time of the murder.

The first glimmer of hope came in the early afternoon. One of my close colleagues returned to the gendarmerie accompanied by a man from Brest, around sixty years old, sturdy and athletic, a regular from the beach. They shut themselves in one of the offices, where I joined them.

A first crucial testimony. ‘On Sunday, I was sunbathing about a hundred metres from the victim,’ the witness told us. ‘I walked past her when I arrived at the beach and even said hello before choosing a spot further on. At 5 p.m. she was alive, I’m certain. I was watching her while I listened to the finish of a horse race on the radio.’

He even remembered that at that point two men had been walking towards her. ‘They were shabbily dressed, but not dirty, they weren’t tramps. I can’t give you a precise description because I had the sun in my eyes,’ he explained.

He told us apologetically that he had turned his head the other way to hear the radio more clearly, and stayed like that until the police arrived.

‘A boy of around twelve wearing fluorescent green was playing on the beach, between the victim and myself,’ he volunteered at the close of the interview.

The call to the fire brigade had been logged at 5.04 p.m. Thanks to the evidence we had just heard, the time of the murder had now been established. We decided to appeal for witnesses through the press. With a bit of luck, the amateur photographers and video enthusiasts who were on the beach that Sunday would give us more useful clues. Perhaps someone had caught the murderer on camera.

5 p.m. I was given the backup of two colleagues from Rennes, Jean-Claude and Jean-Paul. These two were tough, top-level professionals, hard-boiled characters forged by years of experience. Their presence was reassuring. They had given me vital help in the past, in a hold-up case. Their arrival couldn’t have been more timely.

The journalists had been on our heels for several hours and we were under mounting pressure. Not everything was to be made public; but there had been a number of leaks.

I prompted the two investigators to find out everything they could about the victim. Her work life, her love life and her family, everyone she knew, friends or otherwise. We retraced her day-to-day movements, found out about her hobbies and her tastes, delved into her preferences and her passions … We explored every facet of her personality. Uncovering a victim’s private life is a delicate, sometimes unsettling, task. It is hard to pry into a person’s secrets without it affecting both their relatives and the investigators. But that is a crucial part of the investigation. Knowing the victim well would give us a much better chance of finding out what had happened on the day of the murder.

My job was to handle the forensic analyses. Aline Pérès’s car, a little blue Ford Fiesta, had been taken to the gendarmerie garage. Nobody had touched it yet. The CARME private laboratory on the outskirts of Brest used advanced technology that the gendarmerie didn’t have. I called up one of the technicians. He used the Polylight technique which projects light frequencies that reveal normally invisible evidence such as fluids and fibres. In total darkness, he swept the bodywork of the vehicle. We wore strange welder’s goggles that enabled us to see various different marks appear, as if by magic. Fingerprints and dust began to glow. Inside the car, the fluorescent fibres from passengers’ clothing could be distinguished from the fabric of the seat. They looked huge. Stray hairs became valuable clues. Cigarette butts were gathered up and sealed in bags. A sample of dust was taken from the floor. It could be compared to samples taken from the shoes of a suspect.

I felt heartened by these micro-samples. The clothing fibres gave me a description of the passengers’ clothing, the colour of their trousers and shirts … It was encouraging.

They were added to the samples taken on the beach from under the victim’s fingernails. Had she scratched her attacker? Did we know the killer’s blood group? It was still too early to tell, but these were the first clues.

5809

16 May 1989, the date of the autopsy at the Kerfautras forensic medical institute in Brest – not an attractive place. At 2 p.m. the procession of investigators and magistrates crossed the huge cemetery giving access to the morgue. We were shown into a small room with a high ceiling. There were about ten of us standing round the metal table on which the victim’s body lay. The only sound was the tinkling of the coroner’s instruments. There was a general awkwardness; everybody avoided looking at the body, their eyes drawn instead to the wall charts informing us of the average weight of a man’s liver, or that of a woman’s or a child’s brain. And yet there was something powerful about the presence of this body, as if it held the key to the mystery.

Aline Pérès had graduated from victim to prime witness.

Methodically, the coroner examined every mark, every detail, and explained them. He was surprised at the violence and precision of the stab wounds. The main injuries were on the neck, the sternum and the lower back. Right from the start the one on the neck had caught