Shocked by the tragic death of her son, Romy learns that journalists have disguised themselves as nurses to photograph him at the morgue. “That journalists disguise themselves as nurses to photograph a dead child… Where is the moral? Where is the tact?” she confided in the show Champs-Elysees in April 1982 against Michel Drucker. Fortunately, no media had accepted at the time to publish the pictures.
Interviewed by Michel Drucker, Géraldine Danon (goddaughter of Alain Delon) confided: “I believe that the greatest tragedy for Romy we experienced on this set, since in the Champs-Elysées, she had come to speak to this bastard of a photographer, who had dared to photograph his son in the morgue, covered with a shroud. I think she wanted to kill the photographer.” In his book Daughter ofshe explained how these stolen photos had broken Romy’s heart: “Shis voice was from beyond the grave, she was talking about killing this photographer who had dared to take pictures of her son in the morgue. She banged her head on the marble with abysmal desperation.”
The year her son died, Romy Schneider broke her foot and then had her kidney removed due to a cancerous tumor. On May 29, 1982, she died at just 43 years old in circumstances that are still unclear. As a reminder, she had been found dead in her Parisian apartment by her last companion Laurent Pétin.
In an interview with the magazine Gala in 2018, Daniel Biasini also remembered the tragic day of David’s death: “This is the worst I have experienced in more than seventy years of life. He almost died in my arms… For six months, I didn’t go out. You wake up thinking about it… It’s a terrible time“, he confided.