September 30, 2021, a 59-year-old former gendarme and policeman is found dead in the Gard, a DNA test will confirm the next day that this man François Vérove is “le Grelé”. A formidable serial killer who raged between 1986 and 1994 in the Paris region. The riddle is solved. Journalist Patricia Tourancheau, who published in the spring with Editions du Seuil, Le Grelé, the killer was a cop, started investigating his crimes from the 90s.
“There are plenty of files in the file. That’s what is super complicated in this story and which explains in large part why the investigators went astray and did not find him. The second thing is that this guy is an unsuspected guy. He is the good neighbour, the good husband, the good father. Municipal councilor in Prades-le-Lez, former gendarme of the Republican Guard in Paris”, says Patricia Tourancheau. The first murder of “Grêlé” is that of 11-year-old Cécile Bloch, found dead on May 5, 1986, stabbed and raped in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. Articles, books, podcasts… Patricia Tourancheau has devoted days and nights to this affair, and has piled up testimonies, leads, reports year after year.
It is no longer a cold case, an unsolved case, but there is still a lot of mystery around this man nicknamed so because of acne marks on his face. A real “chameleon”, “eclectic” also, continues Patricia Tourancheau, in the choice of his victims whose profile varied completely and who also during his criminal years “changed modus operandi”.
The day she learned from one of her contacts that the “Grêlé” had been identified, the former journalist for Release had a mixed reaction: “I am totally galvanized. In my podcast, I interviewed many police officers who had worked on these cases. Most were convinced that Le Grelé had died or gone abroad to take shelter and that maybe we’ll never know his name. And I ended the podcast by saying I’m sure this guy, he’s lurking somewhere, that he’s alive and that one day we will know. I was galvanized and incredibly moved to know his name and at the same time very frustrated not to be able to see a psychiatric expertise of this type. A personality investigation, an assize trial. Frankly, I dreamed of it and I find that for the relatives of the victims or the victims themselves, it’s very frustrating,” reports Patricia Tourancheau.
“I tell myself that this guy is an unspeakable coward. He doesn’t want to confront his victims.”
Patricia Tourancheauat franceinfo
The “Hailstone” was “an obsession among others” for the great reporter who also worked on Guy Georges, little Grégory, Michel Fourniret. The “Hailstone” intrigued her: “The particularity is that obviously if the police lose track of him in 94, writes to him in his posthumous letter that he followed therapy in 97 and which allowed him to understand certain things and that he stopped to kill and rape in 97. It’s a guy who stops like that. A predator of this species who stops, it’s also extraordinary”, emphasizes Patricia Tourancheau.
There is always a lot of mystery around her personality and this challenges Patricia Tourancheau who would like to understand “how a guy like that was able to effectively calm his impulses and stop killing and raping. I would like to know more about his family in the North of France, about other victims who can be attributed to him and therefore I I will continue with a documentary project for a major broadcaster on the ‘Grêlé’. This will allow the general public to uncover other things about this enigma.”
What fascinates the journalist so much in these cold cases, these unresolved cases, is this mixture of real characters, the sum of details accumulated year after year, the mystery, the suspense and all the human stories they reveal: “There is suspense and polar, real. What I write is true. Everything is true. What I love and what still excites me today is dealing with news items in another way, that is to say from a human point of view. It is a very noble matter, the news item, and it has long been decried, rejected, despised. And moreover, the Civil Society of Multimedia Authors has just awarded me the Christophe de Ponfilly journalism prize to reward my entire career. But usually, it’s a prize that is reserved for great war reporters. Through this prize, the Scam also rehabilitates the genre”, concludes Patricia Tourancheau.
A genre that increasingly appeals to cinema and the small screen. On the strength of the material she has accumulated during her 35-year career, Patricia Tourancheau is overwhelmed with adaptation proposals.