Since the creation in 2022 of the center dedicated to serial or unsolved crimes at the Nanterre judicial court, a unique procedure makes it possible to retrace the life course of certain criminals, or people suspected of being so.
What are the details of the life of Francis Heaulme, convicted of having killed eleven people? The precise itinerary of the man nicknamed “the backpacker of crime”? Did he commit more? Investigators are tracing his journey, in order to understand if he is the author of certain unsolved crimes. He is not the only one: according to the Nanterre public prosecutor’s office, eleven routes of criminals, or of people suspected of having acted in series, are the subject of an investigation.
The investigations are carried out within the framework of a procedure which emerged with the national judicial center dedicated to serial or unsolved crimes, commonly called “pole cold cases“. A specialized court, based at the Nanterre judicial court (Hauts-de-Seine), and launched just two years ago, on March 1, 2022.
Retracing the entire journey of a criminal to better understand him: on paper, the concept seems simple. In reality, “it is a legal creation”, underlines to franceinfo Pascal Prache, the public prosecutor of Nanterre. A new tool created by law for confidence in the judicial institution dating from December 22, 2021, which allowed the emergence of the pole cold cases 2 months later.
“Reverse the reasoning”
To date, ten criminal routes have been opened as part of judicial investigations and are therefore entrusted to the center’s three investigating judges. cold cases, including Sabine Kheris, its coordinator. The public prosecutor’s office is also in charge of a course as part of a preliminary investigation. “The objective is to cross-check, to check whether the person whose journey we are tracing was close to facts which have not been clarified”explains Pascal Prache.
“Instead of working on facts, we focus on a person, in order to retrace their life journey in all its dimensions.”
Pascal Prache, Nanterre prosecutorat franceinfo
In a classic procedure, recalls the Nanterre prosecutor, “the judge works on the person’s journey, but he will not necessarily be aware of facts which could correspond to his life journey and which would have been committed elsewhere”. “We have reversed the reasoning. It is a small revolution in French law, an exception to a founding principle”estimates Marine Allali, lawyer at the Seban law firm, specializing in cold cases.
“A painstaking job”
However, like a puzzle, the objective of the criminal journey is to assemble the pieces that make up the life of a serial killer, or suspected of being one. “The investigators extract all the personality elements from the procedures in which the person may have been worried or convicted. Typically, elements about prison, personal, or even professional life. They will then complete them, repeat a certain number of checks, try to elucidate the gray areas”develops the public prosecutor of Nanterre.
Professional activities, relationships, friends, travel, hospitalizations, arrests, photos, even telephone calls… All the information that exists in the files is first gathered before being analyzed down to the smallest detail.
“We identify where this person lived, what their working hours were, where they were at a particular time…”
Pascal Prache, Nanterre prosecutorat franceinfo
“Before being incarcerated, Francis Heaulme was very unpredictable. He had no geographical limits and the profile of his victims is very diverse. We can therefore think that in addition to those who earned him a conviction, there are had others. You have to check it.”points out Marine Allali.
“We put everything through the mill, it’s painstaking work, confirms a judicial source to franceinfo. And if the person is elderly, we speed up as much as possible, because we know that time is running out.” However, in certain cases, investigators are interested in the life stories of criminals who are already dead, like the serial killer and rapist Michel Fourniret.
The personality elements collected can then be transferred to specific cases to improve investigations into unsolved crimes. “The idea is to feed other files from the criminal history,” whether or not they are educated at the pole, underlines Pascal Prache. The Nanterre public prosecutor’s office confirms that witness hearings have already taken place in this context, and that they will continue.
“There are sometimes nuggets in the testimonies. A witness can make the difference.”
A judicial sourceat franceinfo
However, neither an indictment nor a referral to court is possible in this particular legal framework. No more than an interrogation of the person whose life journey we are tracing.
A “system” with no “equivalent” in the world
To carry out this colossal and meticulous work, the magistrates of the pole cold cases rely on investigators from the Central Office for the Repression of Violence against Persons, those from the Unresolved Affairs Division of the gendarmerie, where a unit is dedicated to criminal cases, or, sometimes, from the Criminal Brigade of the Paris police headquarters, depending on their specificities. These services, contacted by franceinfo, declined any interview request. Because the details of the new techniques used by investigators constitute a well-kept secret.
This French-style criminal process is a unique legal tool in the world. “We draw inspiration from experiences in the United States, the Netherlands and Belgium, but we have not duplicated a system: there is no equivalent”observes the Nanterre prosecutor. “Investigation techniques are not specific”, however, he assures. If new analyzes of seals and the sequencing of DNA segments are frequent in investigations of serial or unsolved crimes, this is not always the case for retracing a criminal journey: in this case, attention is not focused not on facts, but on a set of elements.
Investigators and magistrates also capitalize on their experience to establish connections between an author and his crimes. Thus, they try to rely on “the equivalent of a criminal memory”, supplied as the files arrive at the center cold case. “There already existed, before the creation of criminal pathways, personality investigations, obligatory in criminal matters. In this context, a magistrate was already able to work on the life course of a person, collect elements within the framework of another file”notes the Nanterre prosecutor.
This is, for example, the case of Sabine Kheris, known for having obtained, when she was an investigating judge at the Paris judicial court, confessions on the death of Estelle Mouzin from Michel Fourniret and his ex-wife. Monica Olivier. The latter was also sentenced to life imprisonment in December for complicity in the murder of the little girl who disappeared in January 2003.
An “amazing tool”, “still under construction”
Knowing the life of a criminal allows us to better understand him in order to try to have all the cards in hand against him, or even a step ahead. If a criminal is not questioned as part of an investigation into his background, he can nevertheless still be questioned as part of a specific case. A judge must create a “link”as Sabine Kheris did with Michel Fourniret and Monique Olivier, according to Corinne Herrmann.
This is why this lawyer, also specialized in cold casesinsists that magistrates who direct investigations into a criminal’s journey must be able to access all the files in which he is suspected. “How can a judge find clues about a criminal if he doesn’t know him well enough?” she asks herself. “We are making this mistake again, even though the pole was created to avoid it”, observes Corinne Herrmann. The lawyer called, as early as 2008, in her book One killer can hide anotherhas “group together all the files that can relate to the same killer, before the same magistrates and investigation services, in order to centralize the same skills, so as to identify other evidence”.
If she notes that today a lack of coordination persists, Corinne Herrmann is hopeful of seeing this “amazing tool” to build oneself “step by step”. The lawyer is well aware that we have to wait to achieve this. And that it will still take time to comb through the lives of these suspects to finally provide answers to the families of the victims and the missing, who have been waiting for them for years. “We understand their impatience, even if in two years, a long way has been covered, assures the Nanterre prosecutor. But the criminal process is a tool still under construction, like the pole.”