The Dominici Affair

by Martin Kitchen

  For the next couple of days Chenevier and his colleagues conducted a series of interviews with various people connected with the case. They wanted to concentrate particularly on Gaston’s children Augusta Caillat, Clotilde Araman, and Marcel, as well as his nephew Léon Dominici. Thus, on 21 December Chenevier and Gillard drove to Sainte-Tulle to question Augusta Caillat, the avenging angel of the Grand’ Terre, who had beaten the journalists with sticks and stones. This time she answered the policemen’s questions quietly for two hours as they sat around the kitchen table. As the police left she said, “We know what we are doing when we swear upon the heads of our children that our father is innocent.”14

  The next day the commissioners went to Montfort, a typical Provençal hilltop village surrounded by olive trees on the other side of Manosque, to question Gaston’s daughter Clotilde Araman, whose husband worked in a local factory. They remained there for almost four hours but learned nothing new. Gaston’s sons Gaston, a lock keeper on the canal at Saint-Auban, and Marcel, a farmer from La Brillanne, were also cooperative, as was Léon Dominici. None of them had any useful information to offer. As they were not in any way implicated in the crime, it seems odd that Chenevier should have concentrated his inquiry on them.

  All the witnesses were questioned about the carbine. They all professed never to have seen it. Their anger and outrage focused on Clovis, who they claimed was solely responsible for Gaston’s arrest. Gustave was portrayed as a pathetic weakling, easily influenced by his older brother. Marcel Dominici waxed particularly eloquent on the subject of his brothers. Gustave was a “manikin” who was completely under the thumb of Clovis, who in turn was “a first-class swine.” Clovis had never loved his father, Marcel maintained, and only wanted to get his hands on his inheritance.

  Chenevier, having completed his seemingly pointless inquiry on 23 December, handed over his report to Sabatier, the public prosecutor in Digne, who then forwarded it to Orsatelli in Aix-en-Provence. Chenevier returned to Paris to prepare a more detailed report for the minister of justice. He presented it to Guérin de Beaumont on 27 December 1954. He listened attentively to Chenevier’s devastating criticisms of Edmond Sébeille’s sloppy investigation, Périès’s questionable handling of the case, and the seriously bungled trial. Chenevier’s main objection to the proceedings was that the entire case rested on confessions, most of which were valueless, without any material evidential support. The tales that Gaston had told to the gendarme Victor Guérino, then to Commissioners Pierre Prudhomme and Sébeille, and finally to Périès differed substantially. He was also dismissive of the evidence gleaned from the reconstruction of the murders, arguing that the reenactment of the murders of Lady Drummond and Elizabeth contradicted what Gaston had previously stated, but Périès had gone ahead with the prosecution regardless.

  The minister of justice, impressed by Chenevier’s presentation, took precious little time to reach a decision. On 4 January his ministry issued the following communiqué: “The Minister of Justice recommends that before the Court of Appeals reaches a judgment on the case lodged with it, the prosecutor’s office in Aix-en-Provence should launch an investigation against X [Unknown] for complicity in the triple crime in Lurs.”15 It was already known that a new inquiry would be opened, a fact warmly welcomed by Gaston’s defense team. Raoul Bottaï, Gustave’s attorney, was less enthusiastic. He complained that a new investigation should not be allowed to begin before the high court of appeal reached a decision on Gaston’s case.

  This was almost Guérin de Beaumont’s last act as minister. On 20 January he resigned for reasons of ill health. His successor, Emmanuel Temple, was a lawyer from Montpellier who had gone into politics as a deputy for the Aveyron. He had previously served in the Mendès-France government as the minister of defense. Temple called Chenevier and Gillard to his office and asked them to repeat their concerns about the Dominici case. Having listened carefully, he decided that the investigation against “Unknown,” proposed by his predecessor, should not begin until the court of appeal had rendered judgment. After all, were the appeal successful, there would be a fresh trial, thus rendering any further investigation unnecessary. Temple therefore ordered the court of appeal to hear the case as soon as possible.

  On 18 February 1955 the Supreme Court of Appeal—eleven puisne judges presided over by the chief justice, Judge Nicolas Battestini—listened to three briefs. The first was from Maurice Patin, whose duty was to give as balanced an account as possible of the relative merits of the case. He had served in the same function on the court of appeal the first time that the Dominici case had been brought before the court. Patin had examined a series of objections raised by Gaston’s lawyer, André Mayer. First, the indictment had been signed by the attorney general in Aix-en-Provence, while the court of appeal had ruled that it should have been signed by his counterpart in Grenoble. Second, the advocate general’s speech had been broadcast to the crowd outside the courthouse without the permission of the presiding judge. Mayer argued that the resulting tumult had seriously damaged the defendant’s case. The next objection was that the Dominici family members should have all been placed under oath so that they could have been indicted for perjury had they obviously lied. Finally, Mayer argued the delay in permitting counsel to see the clerk of the court’s dossier had prejudiced the appeal.

  Patin dismissed Mayer’s arguments out of hand and argued that the appeal could be rejected. His reasoning was the court of appeal had decided that the trial should be held in Digne; therefore, it was appropriate that the prosecutor in Aix-en-Provence should have signed the indictment. That the trial had been broadcast was a purely technical matter. A technician had turned on the loudspeakers without realizing the consequences, and as soon as Judge Bousquet had found out what had happened, he put an end to it. The judge also had been under no obligation to place the Dominicis under oath, and the matter was decided entirely at his discretion. Patin considered the question of the date at which counsel was given the dossier to be merely trivial.

  André Mayer backed up his arguments with a series of precedents, but clearly he was no match for a lawyer as shrewd and experienced as Maurice Patin.16 Advocate General Jean Dupuiche, moreover, gave his full support to Patin and launched into a diatribe against the press, which he accused of having tried to dictate to the court. Many jurists had widely shared that view ever since the trial in Digne.

  The court deliberated the case for a mere two hours. The decision was foregone. The appeal was rejected on all counts. No further appeal was possible. Gaston could only now be saved by a presidential decree, which would have to be based on some new piece of evidence. He had reached the end of the road. Several of his children wrote a letter to him, calling upon him to be brave, as they claimed to be. Gaston’s reactions were typical: “It’s me, not them, who’ll get his head chopped off. They don’t give a fuck for me!”17 He had additional reasons for concern. That month the Mendès-France government fell. The new administration under Edgar Faure seemed less likely to be favorable toward him.

  Of all the Dominici clan the person who most energetically defended the old man was his nephew Léon Dominici. Orphaned at the age of fourteen, he left school and worked as a game warden in the Isle-de-France. In 1940 he returned to Provence and lived at the Grand’ Terre for two years until he was shown the door. He studied beekeeping and eventually bought some land at Corbières, where he tended twenty hives. He supplemented his income from his apiary work by driving a large truck for a Marseillais hauler. He had fond memories of his childhood days at the Grand’ Terre and had made an impassioned defense of his uncle during the trial in Digne. He had argued that Gaston could not possibly have committed such a dastardly crime. Waving his fist at the commissioner, he had shouted, “It’s that fucker Sébeille who made a balls-up of all this!” He had a similarly low opinion of Pollak and Charrier. Convinced that they had cooked up the absurd story of Gustave, Yvette, and the stolen jewels, he urged Gaston to drop them from his defense team.18


  Gaston’s other stronger supporters among the Dominici clan were Augusta and Clotilde. But given the defection of Clovis, the Dominicis were unable to present a united front. Clovis’s staunch stand and his refusal to retract were widely admired, and it was his testimony that had secured Gaston’s conviction. Léon, therefore, set out to bring Clovis back into the fold. One day he visited Clovis, who was working in his vineyard with his wife, Rose. It was an awkward encounter. Léon tried to convince Clovis to accompany him to the Grand’ Terre and mend fences, but for Clovis the break with his family on 13 November 1953 was definitive. He flatly refused to go to the family home, and Léon, knowing full well that Clovis was an exceptionally stubborn man, tried another tack. He suggested that the family might come and visit him, whereupon Clovis gracelessly muttered that he had not yet thrown anyone out his house. Léon immediately suggested that the meeting should take place that afternoon. Clovis sullenly agreed.

  At four o’clock two cars pulled up outside Clovis’s modest home in Peyruis. Léon had brought with him Gustave; Augusta Caillat; Clotilde Araman and her husband, Angelin; the younger Gaston and his wife, Marie; and Marcel and his wife, Victoria. Also in the party was Gustave’s lawyer, Raoul Bottaï. Clovis was furious on spotting the latter, saying that he had only agreed to meet family members. Léon argued that they might well need his legal advice. Clovis was adamant, and Bottaï prudently retired, agreeing that this meeting was purely a family matter.

  Léon pointed out that a new commission under Chenevier was about to begin work, since the appeal to the high court had failed. Therefore, it was imperative that the family work out a coordinated strategy to save Gaston. All depended on Clovis retracting his statements, but he refused to budge. The family accused him of wanting to have his father’s head chopped off. They painted him as a coward. Clovis grew increasingly aggressive.

  The clan went on the counterattack: “What about your gun, which you used to say that you could use to shoot rabbits 150 meters [164 yards] away?”

  “You know perfectly well I never had one!”

  “Liar.”

  “You know I’m not. I shot rabbits at 150 meters with a Russian submachine gun at the Perrins’.”

  The Perrins indeed had a Russian submachine gun. The police had confiscated it in August 1952 when they were trying to establish the ownership of the Rock-Ola. Quite why anyone should want to shoot rabbits with a submachine gun or an M1 remains a mystery, but they soon dropped that issue to accuse Clovis of having fingered his father to shield himself. At this he leaped upon Gustave, shook him, and accused him of the murders. Léon separated the brothers. He told Clovis that Gaston had not said “I killed the three of them,” but “they killed the three of them.”19 Clovis stuck to his version, whereupon he was subjected to a flood of insults and imprecations. Gustave even suggested that Sébeille had paid him a million francs to betray his father.

  This accusation was altogether too much for Clovis. He picked up a chair and hurled it at Gustave, who just managed to dodge it. So ended the family gathering of the Dominicis. It was their last.

  Clovis was ostracized. Even his old mother refused to speak to him. All family ties were broken. Only Germaine Perrin, who had been similarly outlawed, would speak to him. But he could not escape from his family, for they were all involved in Chenevier’s second investigation. These confrontations, accusations, and recriminations were to continue under the critical gaze of the police.

  With the court of appeal having rejected the case, the way was at long last open for the Chenevier inquiry to go ahead. The advocate general said that the new inquiry under the Sûreté Générale would proceed; thus, Gaston Dominici’s death sentence remained suspended.20 On 22 February 1955 Orsatelli and Calixte Rozan from the courts in Aix-en-Provence arrived in Paris to receive their marching orders from the minister of justice. This most unusual move clearly annoyed the two Provençal jurists. A somewhat humbled Orsatelli told the press that all the stories about their wishing to stop the Chenevier inquiry were absolutely false. In a case where a death sentence had been handed down, it was essential that the whole truth be revealed. He refused to speculate whether Gaston had acted alone or whether a fresh inquiry would likely shed any further light on the case.

  Meanwhile, the personnel handling the case changed. In January Roger Périès was promoted to the Marseille court and was replaced by Pierre Carrias. The new examining magistrate was a tough, ambitious, and brilliant twenty-nine-year-old, who was also a passionate speleologist. He arrived in Digne in a simple Renault 4CV with his bicycle tied to the roof and took a room at the Hotel Mistre, a modest establishment in the heart of town. He was determined to make sure that Chenevier and Gillard knew their place. It was said that Carrias had colleagues but no friends, and he made it clear to the Parisians that they were his associates, not his superiors. Having discussed the affair with Périès and Sabatier and having read through the Dominici dossier carefully, Carrias reached the conclusion that the dossier made a convincing case for Gaston Dominici’s culpability and that clearly he had acted alone. Thus, Carrias attributed the second thoughts of the justice minister and the Paris police to sensationalist reporting in the press.

  Among the fantastic news stories circulating about the case was one in Jours de France claiming that a migrant worker named Antoine Llorca had two colleagues who operated a threshing machine on a farm at Pierrerue and were suspected of committing the crime. According to this story, Llorca’s two companions had been absent for several days and had taken a carbine and a canvas bucket with them. When they reported to work on 5 August, they had behaved very nervously, and one of them had bloodstained shorts. On further investigation this account proved to be a pure fabrication. The two men often arrived late for work, and the other laborers would joke that the police were after them for the murders.21

  Gustave’s lawyer, Bottaï, enthusiastically embraced the Llorca tale, however, and used it as the basis for his appeal against Gaston’s conviction. Bottaï appears to have been a singularly credulous man. He also accepted at face value an even more fantastic theory. According to this version a plane traveling from London to Ankara during the war that was carrying secret correspondence between Churchill and Benito Mussolini, as well as some top-secret papers belonging to the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi, had crashed in Spanish Morocco. A Spanish secret service agent by the name of Martinez Carrera had discovered these valuable papers and tried to use them to blackmail the British Secret Intelligence Service. Drummond had been sent to France to negotiate with Carrera and had arranged a meeting on the main road by the kilometer marker near the Grand’ Terre. Martinez had disguised himself as a tramp, the one who had been seen by the clairvoyant, the dowser, and the private detective Reine Ribot. Discussions over an appropriate price had turned sour, and Carrera had killed the entire Drummond family. The British consul in Marseille had taken the documents, which were left in the Hillman, and secretly kept them from the French police. It is exceedingly doubtful whether the minister of justice lent any credence whatsoever to these madcap tales.

  In the paranoid atmosphere of an intensifying Cold War, it was hardly surprising that breathtaking conspiracy theories were advanced to explain what seemed to be a motiveless crime. The communist press suggested that the Americans were responsible. The right-wing papers countered by laying the blame on the Soviet Union. Others suggested that the Drummonds had been murdered by the Germans or by former members of the Resistance. To this day people in the area widely believe that Sir Jack Drummond was a British secret service agent who had chosen the Grand’ Terre for an assignation while on official business. The most persistent conspiracy theory is based on the case of one Wilhelm Bartkowski, who claimed to have been the driver of a group of three gunmen who met in Frankfurt, drove to Lurs, killed the Drummonds, and then returned to Germany.

  Bartkowski was a German citizen of Polish origin, who had been arrested by the police in Stuttgart on 9 August 1952 and charged with numerous bu
rglaries and thefts, some of them armed. The German police were intrigued when he was unable or unwilling to account for his actions on the fourth and fifth of August. After several days of questioning, he confessed to having taken part in the Drummond murders.

  Stuttgart had been in the American occupation zone, and the Allied military authorities still had certain residual rights. Since the crime had been committed in France, the Württemberg criminal police duly informed the French military authorities in Tübingen, who in turn referred the case to the Ministry of the Interior in Paris. Then Chenevier had sent Commissioner Gillard to Stuttgart to question Bartkowski. Gillard had received a translation of the transcript of Bartkowski’s cross-examination by the German police and grilled him on several occasions, beginning in November. He had made two reports to his superior, Commissioner Chenevier. On 9 December 1952 a final report was sent to Périès in Digne.