The sacred monster of French cinema, who died on Sunday at the age of 88, flirted with the Milieu for years, until he found himself involved in a criminal case with political ramifications.
“I have never acted in my life, I live my roles.” When he launched this formula at the Cannes Film Festival, before receiving his honorary Palme d’Or in May 2019, was Alain Delon thinking more specifically about his roles as a thug or a cop? The actor, who died on Sunday at the age of 88 and who will be buried on Saturday, August 24 at his property in Douchy (Loiret), played both on screen: a hunted gangster in The Samurai by Jean-Pierre Melville (1967) or seasoned inspector in Cop Story by Jacques Deray (1975). If the actor confided to Paris Matchin 2021, to have “always preferred the police”he acknowledged having “had a lot of dealings with organized crime”. Dangerous liaisons which have involved his name in a famous criminal case which became a state scandal: the Markovic case.
On October 1, 1968, the body of a man was discovered by a scrap metal dealer in a public dump in Elancourt (Yvelines). As journalist Hervé Gattegno recounts in his book A corpse on the road to the Elyséethe investigation begins slowly. The theory of a prowler’s crime is favored and the medical examiners almost miss the bullet lodged in the victim’s neck. It comes from a Smith and Wesson revolver, model 38 special, the favorite weapon of crooks. Once the body is identified, the investigation accelerates. It is Stefan Markovic, a 31-year-old Yugoslav who entered France illegally in the fall of 1958. Last known address: 22, avenue Messine, in Paris, at Alain Delon’s. At 32, the actor is already a star of French cinema: he has 28 films to his credit, including a dozen masterpieces.
The two men met in the summer of 1963, on the set of The Black Tulip. Stefan Markovic was introduced as an extra by a compatriot, Milos Milosevic, then secretary and bodyguard of Alain Delon. The actor “enjoys the company of these cheerful, free and virile Serbian immigrants, often surrounded by pretty girls, who laugh loudly and always find a table in fashionable restaurants. Most of them live off their charm, as well as petty theft”writes Hervé Gattegno. Milos Milosevic is the first in the actor’s entourage to meet a tragic fate. In 1966, he was found dead in Los Angeles alongside his mistress, the actress Barbara-Ann Thomason, wife of the actor Mickey Rooney.
Stefan Markovic replaced him at short notice as Alain Delon’s bodyguard. This gambler and small-time crook, who has since obtained political refugee status, followed the actor like a shadow. To the point of becoming his lighting double on the sets. Despite his stays in prison for fights and burglaries, Stefan Markovic also got closer to Nathalie Delon, with whom he had a brief affair when the couple separated. It was therefore natural that the police in charge of the investigation into his murder turned to Alain Delon.
They come to question him in the villa where he settled in Saint-Tropez, during the filming of The Swimming Poolwith Romy Schneider. Three days before, the actor played the scene in which he is grilled by an investigator after the suspicious death of one of the characters in the film. Hervé Gattegno, who had access to all the interrogation reports in the case, is struck by the “cold blood” with which Alain Delon responds to investigators, in reality this time.
“When you read his interrogations, it’s fascinating. He answers with an extraordinary economy of words. It’s as if Alain Delon had already learned to answer police questions by playing the roles of gangster or cop.”
Hervé Gattegno, journalistto franceinfo
In front of the police and then the judge, Alain Delon will consistently assure that he has not seen his bodyguard since the beginning of the filming of the movie in the South. But in his book, the journalist Hervé Gattegno lists disturbing elements, such as this “hole” in the planning of The Swimming Poolwho tells him “perfectly allowed me to be in Paris on September 22”the day Stefan Markovic disappeared. Or this postcard posted the next day from the capital and signed Alain Delon. The person concerned maintains that he has “asked an associate to post it for him”. Which associated “will not remember” of this service rendered. So many gray areas which gave Hervé Gattegno “the conviction”, At the end of his extensive investigation into the affair, the actor “didn’t tell everything he knew”.
Above all, access to the archives and notebooks of the investigating judge René Patard allowed the author to get his hands on a “very detailed testimony”, not included in the file because it was not signed. In this document, a witness attests that the vedette has indeed “saw Stefan Markovic during the month of August” because the bodyguard “began to be threatening and to want to blackmail Alain Delon with compromising documents”. A “mobile” found everything? Another embarrassing clue for the actor, as he recalls on his side The World : a few days before his disappearance, the Yugoslav had written worried letters to his brother. If something happened to him, it would be necessary to look at “AD” and a certain “François Marcantoni, Corsica, a real gangster”It was on this man, a close friend of Alain Delon, that the investigations focused at the time.
“Monsieur François”, a former Gaullist resistance fighter who made a name for himself in the Milieu, met the actor in the Toulon nightlife. However, a friend of Stefan Markovic claims that he was supposed to play “a game of cards with a man named François Marcantoni” September 22. Did the Corsican act on behalf of a sponsor? After 52 hours of interrogation, François Marcantoni was prosecuted for complicity in murder and sent behind bars.
At the same time, a rumor began to spread throughout Paris. Stefan Markovic had allegedly been murdered because he was blackmailing celebrities who had been photographed during dirty games. On October 17, 1968, the far-right daily Minute title : “The friend of the stars negotiated very expensively for compromising photos.” The issue is the presence, during swingers’ evenings, of “a politician’s wife”.
Little by little, the rumor mill started to get going and the name of Claude Pompidou, the wife of the former Prime Minister, who had been in reserve for the Republic since the events of May 1968, started to circulate. Georges Pompidou was then the favorite to succeed General de Gaulle as president. According to Hervé Gattegno, this “diversion” policy is fueled by a “network including crooks and political activists”. The objective of the first, “clear François Marcantoni”joins that of the others, who want to harm the candidate for the Elysée. “Every time the investigation seems to make progress towards François Marcantoni and therefore Alain Delon, the rumor goes back in the other direction towards Madame Pompidou and the fine parties”observes the journalist. François Mercantoni finally benefited from a dismissal eight years later, in 1976.
The affair did not cost Georges Pompidou his election. But as his memoirs testify, it did destroy the trust between the new president and his predecessor, General de Gaulle. As reported in the program “Affaires sensibles” on France Inter, it also led to a major clean-up in the secret services (SDECE, ex-DGSE), which worked in the shadows to get their hands on these famous photos, the existence of which has never been proven.
Alain Delon, for his part, continued to chain together roles and successes with The Sicilian Clan, Borsalino, The Red Circle, Mr. Klein…With the Markovic affair, he joins that category of stars whose eventful life and enigmatic personality fascinate as much as their talent.
“This affair did not harm him, on the contrary. He was already a huge star; after the Markovic affair, he became a legend and even a black legend.”
Hervé Gattegno, journalistto franceinfo
As for the judicial truth in this criminal case, which remains without a guilty party, “We must modestly admitnotes Hervé Gattegno, that we will never get further than a scenario”A scenario worthy of a thriller, in which Alain Delon could have played the leading role.