Gabriel Fortin is on trial from Tuesday in Valence for having killed, in quick succession, a Pôle emploi executive in the Drôme and the HRD of a company in the Ardèche, in January 2021. He is also accused of having shot two other human resources managers, two days earlier, in the Haut-Rhin.
He has been silent for more than two years. Nicknamed the “HRD killer”, Gabriel Fortin is on trial from Tuesday June 13 in Valence, before the Assize Court of Drôme, for the murders of Patricia Pasquion, 54 years old, executive in a Pôle emploi agency, and two HRDs, Estelle Luce, 39, and Géraldine Caclin, 51, as well as for an assassination attempt on another HRD, Bertrand M. The accused, today 48-year-old man, will he speak during his trial? Explain the reasons for his murderous journey, which began on January 26, 2021 in the Haut-Rhin, and which ended two days later, with his resounding arrest in the middle of the Frédéric-Mistral bridge, between Drôme and Ardèche? The lawyers for the civil parties interviewed by franceinfo hardly believe in it. “The possibility that he refuses to appear is significant”observes Hervé Gerbi, lawyer for the three sisters of Patricia Pasquion.
Because Gabriel Fortin remains silent. He refused to answer the questions in police custody, then to the interrogations of the investigating judge, as well as to all the interviews of the psy experts. He also did not participate in the re-enactments organized during the investigation. His lawyers are just as silent: they have not responded to any media requests, including those of franceinfo. Before the Assize Court, Gabriel Fortin has the right to remain silent once again, which will not prevent the hearing from continuing as planned, until June 30. “A refusal to appear will not change anything. His trial can still take place in good conditions, in order to understand how he prepared, exhibits Hervé Gerbi. It is important to first understand the man, then his passage to the act.”
“Lonely”, “introverted” and “paranoid”
The enigmatic personality of the “HRD killer” will be at the heart of the trial. According to information from franceinfo, his brother and his mother will be the first witnesses expected, from the first day. It was to them that the accused sent two farewell letters, discovered at his home after the assassinations. Laconic letters, with a similar wording and signature. However, Gabriel Fortin did not want his family to come and visit him in prison. Since January 30, 2021, he lives “his detention in a particularly solitary and isolated manner”, according to the elements of the indictment, of which franceinfo has knowledge. His brother wrote to him, but Gabriel Fortin did not follow up. In the numerous handwritten notes found in his cell, the investigators unearthed a letter written for the attention of his mother, which ultimately remained in draft form. In this missive, he formulated “various grievances” towards her.
However, before his detention, Gabriel Fortin and his mother rubbed shoulders regularly. They saw each other a few days before the murders he is accused of having committed. She tells investigators “to have found him depressed and felt him ‘at the end'”. “When he left, he was sobbing”, she added. She also described a son “lonely”, who rarely went out and remained discreet about his personal life. A gliding and sports shooting enthusiast, he legally owned two handguns.
Gabriel Fortin was raised by his mother, with his brother, two years his senior, in Nancy. The boy was not recognized by his father, who returned to his country of origin, Gabon, shortly after his birth. His brother, like all those who knew him, speaks of the accused as a man “introvert”, which he was not very close. He also claims that he is, like their mother, “a little paranoid plotter” and that he thinks he is being followed in the street. An omnipresent tendency to mistrust in Gabriel Fortin, corroborated by the investigations. The investigators, for example, found a note in which he wrote that he was convinced of the presence of a GPS tracker in his car.
The “cold revenge” of an “intelligent man”
The family and the investigators are not the only ones to note this: the psychiatric experts also consider that the defendant has a “paranoid personality”. However, the doctors, who provide an analysis from Gabriel Fortin’s file, failing to be able to do so on the basis of his statements, believe that “the alleged acts are not to be linked to a mental disorder”. According to them, they are the translation of a “cold and determined revenge of an intelligent man, wounded by unbearable rejections on behalf of the only medium which he thought could get him a social place”.
“He chooses (…) to make known to the world this experience of injustice that he feels deeply”, analyzes Nicolas Estano, clinical psychologist, interviewed in the podcast “HRD Killer” by journalist Marion Dubreuil. The legal expert is surprised, however, by the silence of Gabriel Fortin, when, according to him, a paranoid personality has, “often”, a protesting part. “The person wants to explain to you why they took action”, he explains. But, as the psychologist points out, Gabriel Fortin chose to put the words down on paper rather than pronounce them: “He speaks through his writings, which make it possible to reconstruct his life course.”
No words, but writings
Because in prison, the former engineer, unemployed in the midst of the economic crisis of the 2000s, blackened many sheets and a notebook. In these notes, which the investigators collected and which France Bleu Drôme Ardèche was able to consult, there is a letter written by Géraldine C., this human resources manager of the company Faun Environnement, shot in cold blood in the premises of the company, located in Guilherand-Granges (Ardèche). Gabriel Fortin entered there at 9 a.m. on January 28, 2021. He had been fired from Faun Environnement after having worked there as an engineer for two years. And Géraldine C. had signed her dismissal letter. The accused comments on this letter, which he says he received on Christmas Eve, in 2009: “Will to kneel + will to humiliate. Faun: the letter sent on December 24!!!”. In another note, Gabriel Fortin says to himself “dedicated to social minima because of inaction justice”.
The “HRD killer” does not speak, but he does not stop writing, and not only in his cell. Many texts have been extracted from his computer equipment. The investigators noted in particular this sentence: “Fear must change sides.” The use of computer files also reveals “a great bitterness as to the reasons and circumstances of his dismissal”which occurred after a precedent in 2006 in Eure-et-Loir. Gabriel Fortin had then been working in Gallardon for two years, as an engineer in the design office of Francel, a company restructured after its takeover by an American group.
>> From Alsace to Ardèche, the route of Gabriel Fortin, an unemployed engineer prosecuted for the murder of HRDs
His writings also make it possible to trace his movements with meticulousness: the accused made trips to locate the premises of Pôle emploi in Valence, where he shot the adviser Patricia Pasquion. The investigation will establish that he had been registered in this agency between 2010 and 2013. He also went, four months before taking action, to the parking lot of the Knauf company in Wolfgantzen (Haut-Rhin) , where he opened fire on Estelle Luce, the company’s HRD, on January 26, 2021. However, the investigations will reveal that Estelle Luce and Bertrand M. had both conducted Gabriel Fortin’s dismissal interview at Francel.
The investigations also brought to light other plans for revenge, which remained unfinished. How far did Gabriel Fortin intend to go? According to elements of the indictment order, he agreed to write rare messages to the investigating judge at the beginning of his imprisonment, in which he evokes a “broken life” not covered by unemployment benefits.
“It’s contemptuous not to express yourself”
“You can’t kill someone just because of their job, because maybe they did something wrong. It’s unacceptable”, protests Augustin, the son of Géraldine C., who confided in France 3 Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes before the trial. The young man, just of age, fears that we will find “extenuating circumstances” to the accused, on the pretext that he lived “unfair situations in the world of work”. “If he comes to sully the memory of the people he killed, I would prefer that he keep quiet”, adds the high school student, who does not expect much from Gabriel Fortin. This is also the case for the daughters of Estelle Luce and their father. “It’s contemptuous not to express himself, but we can’t force him to speak”, points out their lawyer Jean-Marc Muller-Thomann, who acts as their spokesperson.
For the sisters of Patricia Pasquion, the situation is a little different. The investigations did not make it possible to establish a direct link between the Pôle emploi adviser and Gabriel Fortin. But the investigating judge points out that the unemployed engineer, who had been receiving aid paid for several years, “seemed to harbor a certain resentment towards the institutions”. The magistrate concludes that“it is therefore possible, even probable, that Gabriel Fortin symbolically targeted the Pôle emploi agency embodied in the circumstances by Patricia Pasquion”. Otherwise, why would he have targeted her? “This is the only question my clients would like to have answered”comments Hervé Gerbi, who recalls that “Patricia Pasquion does not have the profile of the other murdered people”.
“A judicial truth will come out of the hearing. But, for my clients, it is important that they find their own truth”, continues the lawyer of the three women, who were very close to their sister. They want each other “actors of the trial and not spectators”, he assures. This is the reason why he called, in consultation with them, ten witnesses, in addition to those designated by the prosecutor. “Some witnesses knew Gabriel Fortin before he acted out. We also had the investigating judge cited, because only she has a global vision of the case”explains Hervé Gerbi. “We are trying to understand who Gabriel Fortin is”, insists the lawyer. While the accused faces life imprisonment, Hervé Gerbi emphasizes that his clients, “without any spirit of revenge”wait “a strong penalty”. “She will, in any case, never live up to their pain.”