The Dominici Affair

by Martin Kitchen

  Since the Drummonds were British citizens, the British military authorities ordered the legal adviser to the UK High Commission in Germany in Bad Godesberg to investigate the Bartkowski case.22 An officer of the Special Investigations Branch and Public Safety Branch of the British Army of the Rhine interrogated Bartkowski, who confessed to having murdered Elizabeth Drummond and to having assisted in the murder of her parents. The officer reported to his superior in Bad Godesberg and sent a copy to the Home Office. The legal adviser at first saw no reason why this report should not be true. The High Commission suggested pursuing further investigation under strict secrecy to ensure no leaks to the press. From the outset, the Foreign Office was very skeptical, feeling that this matter should be left to the French and German police; but if the high commissioner felt otherwise, he should go ahead with the investigation.

  The American authorities had already dismissed Bartkowski as a chronic liar, with paranoid delusions of having been involved in espionage work for the Russians. French Sûreté had also concluded that Bartkowski had had nothing whatsoever to do with the Drummond murders. On further investigation the Public Safety Branch agreed, reporting to the Foreign Office on 30 October 1953 that Bartkowski was a “crackpot.” The Foreign Office was much relieved. Its reply to the high commissioner read: “Thank you. We have had no enquiries at all about these murders and will not volunteer any information. The story is one for the crime reporters of the press and it is unlikely that our diplomatic correspondents will be interested.”23

  That the Bartkowski affair was kept under wraps has given rise to all manner of speculation. First, William Reymond, who wrote about the murders, claims that it was because the French were anxious to avoid a diplomatic incident with Britain, fearing that it would show up the woeful inadequacy of French border security. Thus, he maintains, an innocent man was charged with the crime as part of an elaborate cover-up operation. Others suggest that in the tense atmosphere of the Cold War, it was feared that the very mention of a killer commando in the service of the Soviet Union would provide ample propaganda material both for the communists and the anticommunists, thus further poisoning the atmosphere. A third explanation is that Bartkowski was talking through his hat. Conspiracy theorists, who still cling to the idea that the Drummonds were the victims of a contract killing, complain that Chenevier was already prejudiced against the whole idea that the murders could have had anything to do with a clandestine war involving secret services.24

  Who then was this man? Wilhelm Bartkowski was born in 1926, the son of poor Polish immigrants to Germany. His mother died in 1940, and he was alienated from the rest of his family. In the chaos of postwar Germany, like so many others, he survived by petty crime and black marketeering; consequently, he was arrested on numerous occasions and spent considerable time in jail. He claimed that in January 1951 he had gone to the French Foreign Legion’s recruiting office in Cologne, where he was given a train ticket to Strasbourg. In Strasbourg he received a ticket to Marseille, where he reported to the Foreign Legion’s barracks.

  During his first night in the legion, he had a change of heart and decided to escape. He stole 30,000 francs ($90) or 40,000 francs ($120) from an office and a Spanish revolver of 10mm or 11mm caliber. He then jumped out of the window and hailed a taxi, which he seemed to remember was black with a yellow or perhaps red stripe. The driver wore a cap. The taxi drove him all the way to the Swiss border, using the bulk of the money he had stolen. He replenished his funds by burgling a house on the French side of the frontier. As he crossed the frontier during the night in a wooded area, he exchanged gunfire with frontier guards. Having crossed into Switzerland by train, he then traveled to Bavaria.

  As a result of further investigations, Commissioner Gillard concluded that the entire story of the Foreign Legion was a fantasy. The legion did not have a recruiting office in the Federal Republic of Germany or a representative in Strasbourg. It was not possible to get a ticket across the border to Strasbourg; one could only go as far as Kehl on the German side of the Rhine River. Contrary to his previous statements, recruits were not given uniforms on their first day in the legion, and the famous white kepi was only issued upon completion of basic training in a special ceremony at the legion’s home base at Sidi-bel-Abbès in Algeria. The taxi driver who had taken Bartkowski to the frontier was never found, nor was there evidence of any shooting incident with the Swiss border guards on the night in question.

  Bartkowski told Gillard that he was in prison again in Hagen shortly after his fabled time in the Foreign Legion. Here he met a man by the name of Frantz, who suggested that he should work for the Soviet Union on his release from jail. The mysterious Frantz was waiting for Bartkowski at the prison gates when he was freed on 14 December 1951. He was taken to Frankfurt, where he was driven to a heavily guarded house and introduced to some Russians in civilian clothes. They put him in touch with the other members of his team.

  He had given an alternative account to the German police of how he came to know the other members of the murder squad. He apparently met them in Lindau in January 1951 shortly after his escape from the Foreign Legion. Together they were involved in a series of crimes, which resulted in his being sent to jail in Hagen.

  The putative killers were a motley crew. Carlo Solet (or Soled) was said to be a Greek, Roman Moesto (or Modesto) was a Frenchman of Spanish origin, and Moradis was Swiss. Much later Bartkowski claimed all three were in fact Polish, which, given their names, sounds even more improbable. (Carlo Solet or Soled is certainly not a Greek name, and Roman is neither a Spanish nor a French name.) Whatever their nationalities, the gang committed a series of petty crimes, making it seem highly unlikely that the Soviets would ever have hired such a bunch of clumsy misfits for a delicate secret mission.

  Bartkowski claimed that their first serious mission was to kidnap a German and hand him over to the Czechoslovakian government. There was indeed a similar case at the time. Erich Krammer, a doctor from Sonthofen in the Allgäu, was reported missing. His body was later found in Austria near the border with Czechoslovakia. The incident was widely reported in the press, providing further material for Bartkowski’s fertile imagination.

  Bartkowski claimed to have set forth from the Bayerischer Hof in Lindau at about 9:00 a.m. on 4 August. This luxury hotel was an unlikely spot for a dubious group of petty criminals to choose as a meeting place, and the hotel staff had no recollection of having seen either Bartkowski or his associates. He told Gillard that he imagined that their target was a jewelry store somewhere in southern Switzerland and that they would then proceed to Marseille. They drove a lilac-colored Buick with American armed forces number plates, an unusually large and flashy vehicle for criminal purposes and for discretely crossing international borders. With Moradis at the wheel, they drove around Lake Constance, crossing into Austria at Bregenz, driving into Switzerland, passing through Zurich and Geneva, and entering France near Annecy.

  Bartkowski was at the wheel when they approached the murder site. Seeing a light at shoulder level on the left-hand side of the road that looked as if it might have been a camping stove, Moesto ordered him to stop. The light was sufficient for Bartkowski to see what appeared to be a tent, but we know that the Drummonds had left their tent behind in Villefranche. At Commissioner Gillard’s request, he drew a wildly inaccurate sketch of the campsite. The Hillman was shown to be parked 44–55 yards from the road and perpendicular to it. A tent was pitched to the left of the car when seen from the road.

  The men then ordered Bartkowski to move up to the light, where his three associates climbed out. He moved forward about 217 yards—in other words, close to the Grand’ Terre—where he waited with the doors open and the engine running. He stepped out of the car briefly to urinate. Some five minutes later he heard a single shot, followed by three or four others. He heard a woman or a child “groaning,” although it must have been rather more than that to have been clearly audible at that distance. After the shots Moesto came back to the B
uick with “three or four pieces of clothing,” including a woman’s red pullover. He then went back toward the tent. Bartkowski testified that the killers had two weapons with them—a handgun and a semi-automatic—but he was unable to give a precise description of these weapons.

  The three men returned to the car after about fifteen minutes, and Bartkowski drove toward Marseille. Having driven a few miles, Moradis ordered him to make a U-turn and to hand over the driving to Moesto. When he asked his companions what had happened, he was told that it was none of his business. They returned by the same route, arriving at Schaffhausen at about two o’clock in the afternoon of 5 August. They were back in Lindau by seven o’clock. The following day they went to Stuttgart to find a fence for some jewelry they had taken from the Drummonds.

  Commissioner Gillard, who was not familiar with the crime scene, had a number of Bartkowski’s assertions checked and then confronted him with a host of inconsistencies and errors. At first Bartkowski stuck doggedly to his version of events. Then he broke down and admitted that he had made up the entire story. He wanted to create the impression that he was insane so he could avoid extradition, assuming that a German court would likely be more lenient with a hopeless mythomane.

  Bartkowski, however, simply refused to go away and persisted in his delusional fantasies. In 1965 one J. Burton, a former warrant officer in the Special Investigations Branch attached to the British Army of the Rhine who now lived in Whitwick near Leicestershire, volunteered information on the Drummond murder. Hearing that Gustave Dominici’s lawyer, Raoul Bottaï, was seeking a posthumous pardon for Gaston, Burton said that he and Lt. Gwynfor Evans from the Special Investigations Branch of the British military police had interviewed a German, Wilhelm Bartkowski, who was serving a lengthy sentence for armed robbery. Bartkowski had told them that he and three other men had taken part in an armed raid on the Drummonds’ camp and committed all three murders. Bartkowski had received £65 ($182) from the money stolen from the Drummonds in payment for his services.25

  In an interview in 2004 Bartkowski next claimed to have witnessed the assassination of Lady Diana by agents acting on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen.26 He also discussed his difficult childhood under the Nazis, saying he was the only one of his family to survive. He had married two rich women, owned a car, and had traveled all over Europe. He denied ever having anything to do with the Foreign Legion but admitted to having been the driver during the Lurs murders. The rendezvous with “a British officer” had been arranged to collect a “large sum of money.” When the Englishman had tried to swindle them out of “several millions” from money that had been designated for one Frank de Roers during the war, he had to “bite the dust.” This story bears a distinct resemblance to Stanley Donen’s screwball comedy Charade, but without Cary Grant’s aging charm, Audrey Hepburn’s classic Givenchy outfits, and Peter Stone’s witty screenplay, it was a very damp squib.

  Bartkowski was not the only crackpot involved in the Drummond case. In September 1953 the British Embassy in Dublin received a visit from one Captain Febvre, who had a tale to tell. He had been one of the 180 police commissioners in Paris during the occupation, of whom all but 60 were purged. Febvre was among those who lost their jobs after the liberation. His former colleagues told him that the communists had mistaken the Drummonds for Americans and killed them to protest the presence of American troops in Europe. Febvre was obviously suffering from paranoid delusions of a vast communist plot in France. A report to the Foreign Office described him as being pathologically anticommunist and anti-Semitic. He claimed that the murderers would never be found because the police were all communists. He suggested that Scotland Yard should send him on a special mission to France to investigate the case. The embassy curtly replied the case was outside its jurisdiction. If Febvre wanted to talk to Scotland Yard, he should do so at his own expense.27

  The Marquess of Salisbury, at the time serving as lord president of the Privy Council, at first thought this story was all a “pipe dream,” but sharing some of Febvre’s fears of a vast communist conspiracy, he decided to forward the report to Scotland Yard. The Foreign Office was appalled. It stated that Febvre’s story was “wildly improbable” and hoped that Scotland Yard would not be so foolish as to send him to France. Scotland Yard promptly replied that the matter was outside its jurisdiction. Nothing more was heard of Febvre and his fantasies.

  11

  The Case Is Closed

  Having been given the go-ahead, Pierre Carrias reluctantly agreed that as a first step he would ask his distinguished colleague in Marseille Jacques Batigne to interview Gaston Dominici once again in Les Baumettes. Batigne was a controversial jurist who had been involved in a number of widely publicized cases. He was known for being ruthless with the accused and for refusing to entertain any suggestions that the police might have used somewhat rough methods of extracting confessions. In 1957 he would become notorious for his role in covering up the violent methods that the French police used against Algerian detainees in Paris. Such investigations would be boosted by the publication of both Henri Alleg’s book La Question and Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s revelations concerning the army’s use of torture against the National Liberation Front in Algeria.

  Batigne’s mission was pointless. He had not been shown the dossier. He had gleaned all he knew about the case from the press. Did he really imagine that he would be able to uncover a truth that had been so skillfully concealed for thirty months in the course of a few short interviews and without detailed background information?

  Gaston was in the prison hospital recovering from severe gastrointestinal problems. According to prison rules his lawyers were not allowed to visit him while he was in the prison ward, but Émile Pollak and Pierre Charrier asked for permission to have him examined by Professor Carcassonne, an eminent local physician from the University of Marseille. Both lawyers were convinced that Gaston had been poisoned in an attempt to put an end to the entire case. They therefore appealed to the minister of justice to order an examination of the prison’s food. This request was futile, because there was no possible way of analyzing the food Gaston had eaten in the previous few days, but the minister did give the lawyers special permission to visit their client in the hospital.

  They found him much recovered and in relatively good spirits but repeating his conviction that he had been poisoned. He told his lawyers that all he needed was some decent olive oil, and he would soon be well again. The next day he was much better, but the day after he had a severe relapse and developed a high fever. The prison doctor, having consulted with the prison surgeon, agreed that Professor Carcassonne should be allowed to examine their client. It seemed as if an operation was indicated, but once again the old man began to recover. A bulletin was issued indicating that Gaston was suffering from a severe bilious attack due to food poisoning. His recovery was relatively swift, but he had lost a few pounds and look very thin and weak. To dramatize Gaston’s sickness, his lawyers arranged for his daughters Augusta Caillat and Clotilde Araman along with Gustave Dominici and Clément Caillat to come to Marseille. Gaston initially refused to allow any member of the Dominici clan to visit him, other than his granddaughter Marie-Claude and nephew Léon. He claimed the others were content to see him rot in prison.

  Carrias still ordered Gustave and Yvette to confront Gaston at Les Baumettes under Batigne’s supervision. The meeting took place during the morning of 8 March. Gaston was much recovered but still weak. Batigne listened to the stories of Gaston, Gustave, and Yvette, but hardly surprising he learned nothing new. Both Gustave and Yvette flatly denied having had the conversation concerning the jewelry that his father claimed to have overheard. Gustave repeated the statement that he had made in court: he knew nothing about the murders until five o’clock in the morning of 5 August. Gaston accused Gustave of wanting to send him to his death and claimed that he was no longer his son. He refused to bid him good-bye. Somewhat surprising, Gustave and Yvette’s lawyer, Raoul Bottaï, said that the meeting had
been “infinitely less sensational than might have been expected.” According to him Gaston had made no accusations, and the atmosphere was “very calm, even touching.”1

  Carrias, having received a report on this worthless encounter the following day, contacted Director General of the Judicial Police Henry Castaing and asked him to send Charles Chenevier and Charles Gillard to Digne to pursue the matter further. The two commissioners were hardly entranced by the new examining magistrate’s actions. They had learned from the press and not through official channels that Batigne had interviewed the Dominicis. They considered this move would further compromise their investigation.2

  Chenevier and Gillard met Carrias for the first time on 16 March 1955. The two commissioners gave the same account of their views on the case that they had previously given to two successive ministers of justice: they argued in favor of a commission of inquiry. Their main point was that there was a strong suspicion that Gustave had been somehow involved. There was evidence that he had been outside at the time of the murders, and the persistent lying of Yvette, Zézé, and Gustave himself only made sense as an attempt to conceal the truth. The commissioners added another piece of information that they had recently acquired. While the case was still in front of the court of appeal, they had undertaken further investigations and had interviewed one Dr. Morin in Nice. He had made a statement to the Nice police in the Dominicis’ defense. He was a hunter who in 1951 had camped at the Grand’ Terre. He had met Gustave, who asked him to move his tent to a different spot nearer to the Grand’ Terre and then invited him to join in some nighttime poaching. Afterward he was invited back the next year to hunt wild boar. Having been treated in a friendly manner by the Dominicis, he was outraged that the press was presenting them as hostile to campers.