it was “a form of challenge”, believes journalist Patricia Tourancheau

The serial killer “Le Grêlé” had participated in the show “Everybody wants to take their place” in 2019. For journalist Patricia Tourancheau, who investigated François Vérove, seeing the criminal so comfortable on a set of television is “mind-boggling”.

A serial killer contestant on an entertainment show. The scene, revealed Tuesday March 12 by Marianne, provokes many reactions, between surprise and questions. In a video extract from a broadcast of Everyone wants to take its place, on France 2, we see François Vérove, nicknamed “le Grêlé”, answering innocuous questions from host Nagui. The show was filmed in 2019, two years before François Vérove committed suicide, knowing the judicial police were on his trail. This former gendarme and police officer had been wanted since the 1980s for several murders and rapes. He left behind a confession letter in which he admits “being a major criminal who committed unforgivable acts until the end of the 1990s”.

Journalist Patricia Tourancheau investigated this serial killer at length. In the reissue of his book Le Grêlé: the killer was a cop (Éditions Points), published on February 23, it notably reveals previously unpublished elements about his personality, including psychiatric and intimate ones. The journalist sees in the participation of François Vérove in Everyone wants to take its place confirmation that criminals can be “Mister everyone” but also notes “a form of challenge” from the killer.

franceinfo: You revealed in your book that François Vérove had participated in a television show. How did you react when you saw the video?

Patricia Tourancheau: I hallucinated because it was confirmation of what I wrote in the book, except that here we see it. To see François Vérove so comfortable, making his entrance a bit like a star, it’s quite striking. He takes no risks because physically, his build, his face have changed so much in 35 years that his victims cannot recognize him. But this still confirms that it is “Mr. Everyman”, who goes on the set of a very popular show, like many people.

This surely also represents a form of challenge. Even if “le Grêlé” perhaps stopped acting and committing crimes from 1997, as François Vérove said in his posthumous letter – he nevertheless continued to look at child pornography images on his computer – there are still a form of provocation, of challenge to come like that on a TV set, in public. He also dares to make a joke to Nagui about the controls on horseback in the Bois de Vincennes and neglects to say that he himself, when he was a gendarme in the Republican Guard in October 1986, was caught in flagrante delicto in the Bois de Vincennes. Vincennes, in uniform, with his weapon, in the company of a transvestite, which earned him ten days of arrest. When we know the character, this fearsome serial killer of little girls, adults, young people, who has been sought for 35 years and we see him there, quite at ease, answering questions from Nagui, it’s still appalling.

Seeing this serial killer and serial rapist face Nagui just two years before he ended his life, even for you who know his personality well, is it a surreal scene?

It’s amazing to see François Vérove like that on a TV set, acting handsome, answering Nagui’s questions. It’s incredible. For what ? Because we know he’s a serial killer and there, he appears like a normal person. It’s amazing for him to play this game and challenge everyone in a way. But at the same time, it confirms that major criminals look like Mr.

This case is not over because we are still trying to establish his criminal history?

Judge Turquey, at the Cold Case division of the Nanterre court, continues the investigation. There will be no trial since François Vérove, by committing suicide, extinguishes all legal proceedings against him. However, ‘crime’ investigators [la brigade criminelle] and the magistrate try to reconstruct his journey to see if there are no other attacks, other crimes, other rapes. For the moment, we do not yet have the result. There is doubt. There are surely others. He writes in his posthumous letter to his wife that he stopped killing in 1997. But in any case, we must fill in what happens between 1994, when ‘crime’ loses its trace in Seine-et-Marne, and 1997. Justice is trying to fill in the blanks because he probably committed crimes during these three years.