The “hail” affair 35 years later, and Richard Ford for the literary season

Monday September 30, 2024, Patricia Tourancheau, co-director of the documentary series “Insoupçonnable, l’affaires du Grêlé”, and Richard Ford for his novel “Le Paradis des fous”, are the guests of “Tout Public”.

This is the case of the “killer with a pockmarked face”, alias François Vérove, a former gendarme and retired police officer, who killed himself in 2021, confessing in a letter to the serial murders and rapes that he had committed years earlier, without the police or the courts being able to catch him after 35 years of investigation. Patricia Tourancheau, journalist and co-director of this documentary-fiction, Unsuspected, the Grêlé affair (France 2), returns to the twists and turns of this cold case.

Despite the numerous advances which made it possible to identify François Vérove, and which almost succeeded in bringing him to justice, the latter’s suicide maintains the mystery surrounding this affair. The series will try to fill in certain gray areas by following psychiatrist Daniel Zagury, who tries in the four episodes of this documentary to provide psychiatric expertise on François Vétrove. However, misunderstandings and questions remain, particularly among those close to the victims. “Since he cowardly killed himself to escape justice, (…) the victims will never have answers to certain questions”regrets the journalist.

In Fool’s Paradisethe literary character of Richard Ford whose life episodes we have followed for 40 years, Frank Bascombe, now 75 years old, travels the United States to Mount Rushmore accompanied by his son, suffering from an incurable illness.

Between humor and tragedy, Richard Ford paints a portrait of his native country. Without value judgment, the author questions the current state of America, and oscillates between trust in institutions, fear of presidential candidate Donald Trump and the urgency of acting against growing authoritarianism in the West: “I don’t think Trump can destroy democracy, it is too well established in the minds of Americans ; but it can cost us four years of our lives. (…) With the lifting of autocracies in Europe, we have no time to lose”warns Richard Ford. This is without counting on the candidate of the Democratic camp Kamala Harris, of whom the writer speaks with hope, and not without irony towards her Republican opponent: “Kamala Harris’s best asset is Trump”and to add that the latter is “one’s own best enemy.”

A program presented by Matteu Maestracci, journalist in the Franceinfo culture department.