The next day, everyone was impatient to see the male nurse accused by Francis Heaulme take his place on the witness stand, even though he had been cleared during the initial investigation. The eagerly awaited confrontation came to an abrupt close, however.
The judge called upon several members of the Antibes hospital team. He organised an impromptu identity parade. He placed the six witnesses facing the accused. They worked closely together and were visibly stressed, looking at each other in embarrassment.
‘Is your accomplice one of the people you see before you, Mr Heaulme?’ asked the judge.
‘Yes!’ he replied without hesitation, and he pointed at one of the male nurses. ‘It’s him!’ he added.
Distraught, the man remained alone on the witness stand. His nervousness was palpable.
‘But Mr Heaulme, this is not the same person whose name you gave yesterday!’ commented the judge.
There was a general murmur. A few moments later, the supposed accomplice was cleared by the evidence of the investigation.
‘But I’m telling you, my accomplice is here, in the room,’ insisted Francis Heaulme.
There was turmoil. Exasperation was at its peak. Amid the commotion, a second identity parade was arranged. A second person was identified. Once again, confronted with the facts, the man singled out proved not to be the elusive accomplice. This absurd situation did not seem to bother Francis Heaulme, quite the opposite. Indifferent, he announced:
‘I don’t know now, I can’t remember any more.’
The judge gave up in the end. It was the turn of my two colleagues and myself to testify, one after the other. We went over the countless details that he had given us. We explained how he had talked about a ‘tree that went all limp’, then described the scene of the crime and the murder itself with extreme precision. During my first colleague’s testimony, Francis Heaulme permitted himself to make an extraordinary remark concerning the number of stab wounds the child had received from the screwdriver. In his most chilling tone, he said:
‘It wasn’t eighty-four stabbings, it was eighty-three.’
Those in the room could barely contain themselves. By the time we had finished testifying, Francis Heaulme could no longer deny his involvement in the murder. I went back to my seat in the court room. I wanted to listen to the rest of the trial, especially the testimonies of the hospital managers.
The judge examined them at length. Like many others, he found it hard to understand why no action had been taken by the medical team when Francis Heaulme had returned on the night of the murder. Had Heaulme not proclaimed to anyone who would listen: ‘I’ve killed, I’ve killed!’? But he came up against a single reply, voiced by doctors and nurses alike: ‘patient confidentiality’. There was nothing to be done, the judge himself could not break the law.
We would never find out, nor would we know why the log book of the car that Francis Heaulme claimed to have driven in with a member of the hospital staff was the only one that could not be found. One of my colleagues and I had an idea who Francis Heaulme’s accomplice might be. During the investigation, we did not have the evidence we needed to pin him down. He was visibly afraid. His eyes avoided ours. Our gazes did not meet for a second. I could not help thinking about the horrific murder he had allowed to happen.
I also realised that Francis Heaulme had scaled new heights. In the absence of a specific interlocutor at the trial, he was amusing himself by playing games with the witnesses and the magistrates.
He had realised that solely the one particular crime was being dealt with, whereas it could only be understood in an overall context. Heaulme did his utmost to baffle and confuse. Besides, had he not warned us when he had stated he was ‘used to the courts’?
The Draguignan jury was not out for long, and the sentence was the harshest Francis Heaulme had ever received: life imprisonment with a minimum of thirty years.
As I left the court room, the young victim’s mother came up to me.
‘I want to give you my testimony,’ she said, holding out the three sheets.
Touched by her gesture, I was at a loss for words. She turned on her heel and left at once, exhausted, supported by her husband who was equally drained. They walked past several members of the hospital team from Antibes. Their expressions betrayed a similar exhaustion. Their encounter with the accused would doubtless scar them for life, with the terrible knowledge that would stay with them for a long time: Francis Heaulme’s accomplice had succeeded in evading justice.
14
The cycle ride
November 1997. That autumn morning, I was a long way from imagining the storm that would be unleashed by my opening an envelope that lay among my other work correspondence. A few lines written on the letterhead of a Paris law firm, signed by Maître Estelle Dubois, outlined a case that had been in the news. She stated that a sixteen-year-old boy, Patrick Dils, had confessed to a crime which he subsequently denied. Ever since, he had dubbed himself ‘the misunderstood innocent’.
At first glance, it seemed to be a simple request from a defence counsel, convinced of the innocence of her client who had been sentenced in January 1989 for a double child murder. She was writing to me because she had a keen interest in Francis Heaulme. The way in which these children had been killed bore an uncanny resemblance to the method of the serial killer, at least from what she had read in the press. In a few sentences, the lawyer described the crime: two children bludgeoned to death, found one Sunday on a footpath beside a railway line in Montigny-lès-Metz. Had Francis Heaulme been there or in the vicinity on the day the children were murdered, by any chance? The date was 28 September 1986.
The question perplexed me. I recalled that day in 1992 when, in Brest prison, I had had to stop Francis Heaulme when he was telling, one after the other, his ‘little stories’. They all matched recognised homicides, except one. This one was about a bicycle ride. I could still remember every word.
A long time ago, on a Sunday, I was cycling down a street. It was in eastern France. There were some houses on the left. On the right there was an embankment and a railway line. Two kids threw stones at me when I rode past. At the end of the street there was a stop sign, a bridge and some dustbins. I left. When I came back later, I saw the kids’ dead bodies near some railway carriages. There were also police and some firemen.
At the time, it had not been possible to link this to any case. Intrigued, I decided to check Frances Heaulme’s itinerary that we had pieced together. With surprise, I noted that he had been in the area of Montigny-lès-Metz at the time.
Perhaps this was no mere coincidence after all. In any case, there wasn’t enough evidence to draw any conclusions. But this little incident did tie up. Supposing I hadn’t looked in the right place? Once again I checked the database of unsolved cases. There was nothing resembling this double murder. Nothing. There was nothing even remotely similar. Consequently, it was not a common type of crime.
Then I worked backwards: carrying out a computer search for solved crimes concerning children beside railway lines. I only found one result. The printout was brief. It listed the key features of the double murder at Montigny-lès-Metz. The places described by Francis Heaulme corresponded exactly to the scene of the murder. It would appear that the killer had been describing this place, and these victims.
Then I thought about all the transpositions he continually made during our conversations. As he did with Bouboule, to whom he attributed different roles according to different cases. In the Joris Viville case, Heaulme spoke to me about ‘a child who had thrown stones at him after having shouted abuse’. We knew that it hadn’t been the young Belgian boy, so whom was he talking about? This revelation had been so important that a helicopter search was organised to find places with dustbins and a bridge, where Joris might have been killed. At the time, no place corresponding to this description had been discovered, and no wonder …
Another detail came back to mind. When he was being interviewed in the Var, in the south
, Francis Heaulme said he had met a nurse from Montigny-lès-Metz at the hospital in Antibes. That was not true. What had he really meant, given that there was nothing random about his lies? … The link between his little story and this double murder now seemed obvious, but what on earth was I to do with these clues? The Montigny-lès-Metz case had been tried. Replying to this letter would, implicitly, call the verdict into question. Could Patrick Dils, the youngest person to be sentenced for life, be the victim of a miscarriage of justice? And, at the heart of the grisly affair, Francis Heaulme, once more a child-killer? It was a huge challenge and I was conscious of the repercussions that my decision would have, but I had no other choice. These doubts must be removed.
I discussed it with my immediate superiors. Fortunately, the leadership of the Rennes criminal investigation unit had changed a few months previously. However, the problem I raised caused a stir. Several months went by. The report I had given to my divisional head to pass on to the Metz prosecutor lay forgotten on a corner of his desk.
Despite my inquiries, nobody seemed to know what had happened to this document. Had it been passed on to the prosecutor or not? Nobody knew … In any case, the press got wind of it and whipped up a furore. Most of the papers talked about the loss of a mysterious report written by a gendarme from Rennes. This document could call into question the conviction of Patrick Dils for the double murder in Montigny-lès-Metz. I was aghast. Two days later, the report arrived at the Metz court, surprisingly via that of Brest. It had taken three months to reach its destination.
Coincidence or not, Patrick Dils’s lawyers seized the document and immediately lodged an appeal. As a result, in January 1998 I found myself in Paris, in the chambers of senior legal counsel. This highly experienced magistrate was heading the investigations for the retrial. It was unusual for a criminal investigation officer to be summoned at this level. I was given a very formal reception. I thought I would have to go over Francis Heaulme’s behaviour during the years of investigations point by point in order to explain the reasons for my report. But the conversation did not go along these lines at all. The senior magistrate was aloof, almost severe. Then, by way of introduction to the question of my report, he said:
‘Just because some madman talks nonsense, that’s no reason to write nonsense.’
I was speechless. I didn’t know what he was driving at. Was it because of the media pressure, the complications that an appeal entailed? I replied:
‘First of all, Francis Heaulme is not mad. He has been examined by psychiatrists, there have been second opinions and third opinions ad infinitum. Secondly, what he says always matches up with something he has done. His words are not to be taken lightly.’
Thus began an interview that was tense, to say the least. Nearly three hours later, when I left the Paris Law Courts, I felt as though I was emerging from an examination and I didn’t know whether I had passed or failed. But the main thing was that I had said everything there was to be said about Heaulme’s character. I was to be summoned again to finalise my report. The senior magistrate’s attitude was doubtless dictated by caution because of the high stakes. He probably wanted to assess my credibility and check personally some of the points raised.
A month later, I was back under the gilded portals of the Court of Appeal. The grilling I received was just as ruthless. From various things he said, I gathered that the senior magistrate intended to interview Francis Heaulme himself.
I pictured the meeting of these two diametrically opposite men, and I feared that not much of any use would come of it. As I was about to sign my interview, I decided to ask a question:
‘Do you know whether the Montigny-lès-Metz victims were throwing stones at passers-by?’
It was the clerk who replied:
‘Yes, there are testimonies that mention it.’
That confirmed that Francis Heaulme had indeed seen the boys. This detail had not been mentioned in the police messages or in the newspaper reports at the time. A few weeks later, Francis Heaulme was interviewed.
Patrick Dils’s defence counsel informed the press. The headlines talked of the biggest miscarriage of justice of the century. This new development soon made the Metz killer front-page news again. That was how I found out that Heaulme had confirmed the contents of the report to the magistrate of the review panel. Better still, he had provided further information, in particular, how he had been dressed on the day of the murder, and who his friends were at the time. Always with the same attention to detail.
Further investigations were necessary. The matter was put into the hands of the Nancy police. I kept my head down and passed on my information. Like everybody else, I learned how the investigation was progressing via the press.
The man in charge of the investigation was no other than André M. This experienced police commander had been the head of the Pont-à-Mousson investigation. Francis Heaulme’s unpredictable behaviour and the variations in his accounts did not surprise him. The police chief once again used the device of the sketch, and Heaulme complied. André M was fully aware of its importance. He in his turn gathered valuable information about the presence of the serial killer in Montigny. Heaulme confirmed that he had seen the victims but swore he had done nothing to them.
For reasons that I do not know, the judicial authorities ordered a change of team in spring 1999. It was the turn of the Metz gendarmerie to take over the case. Francis Heaulme then encountered Pedro again, an old acquaintance. He added to his initial diagrams, giving the police precise details, in particular a path that led to the victims’ bodies and which nobody had mentioned before.
On 3 April 2001, the Court of Appeal announced the closure of the investigation and ordered Patrick Dils’s sentence to be quashed and a retrial to be held at a different court of assizes. The presence of Francis Heaulme at the scene of the crime on the day of the murder was sufficient for the former verdict to be deemed unsafe. Meanwhile, I had left the gendarmerie, but that did not prevent me from being called as a witness at Patrick Dils’s retrial. On 20 June 2001 I found myself in Reims, on the witness stand at the Marne region juvenile court of assizes. Once again, Patrick Dils stood before a jury.
The man who entered the dock was no longer the shy adolescent described by the press of the time. Patrick Dils had spent more than half his life in prison, and yet he had maintained a reticent air. I could tell he was extremely tense. He looked a little awkward in his navy blue blazer that looked a little too big for him. I later found out that it had been lent to him at the last minute by one of his lawyers.
As the names of the witnesses and their order of appearance were read out, I felt that this was like a repeat of the trial of fifteen years earlier. I also knew that the investigation was not completely over. As it happened, new witnesses came forward after the verdict.
I was surprised by another aspect of the situation. Paradoxically, Francis Heaulme and I were there as simple witnesses. He was not the defendant and I was not the investigator. I would not meet him at any point during the six days of the trial, which was held in camera. I knew that Heaulme was in Montigny-lès-Metz on 28 September 1986, that he saw the boys and their lifeless bodies. I felt as if I were in a topsy-turvy world, that this was the wrong trial. I was off topic: it was Dils who was on trial, and I was talking about Heaulme.
On the witness stand, however, I endeavoured to explain who Francis Heaulme really was. I stressed the many similarities between his crimes and this double homicide, but I felt as though I was talking in a vacuum. My words seemed to ring hollow. Visibly, they were irrelevant to this trial. Even the murder of Annick Maurice, in Metz, only a month after this one, did not raise any questions.
Then it was Heaulme’s turn to take the stand. I did not attend his cross-examination. I waited in the witnesses’ room, in case I was needed.
I learned what he had said from the newspapers. Reading the different reports, I noted that he was actually delighted with the situation. This time, he had a made-to-measure role,
he who had always claimed only to be a spectator to the crimes he had committed. On the witness stand, Francis Heaulme took care firstly to address the family of one of the victims. Without the hint of a smile, he stated:
‘I give you my word as a man that I did not kill your son.’
Then he addressed the judge:
‘I cannot be the author of this double crime, because I am religious. Besides, when I kill, I kiss my victims on the forehead.’
I knew he was making things up. Without presuming to question the genuineness of his conversion, I knew that his interest in religion went back to 1991, when he had met his girlfriend in Alsace, not before. As for the kisses on his victims’ foreheads, this was the first I had heard of it. It was an intriguing twist, why had he admitted to it? Wasn’t this revelation, on the contrary, a veiled confession? That of a man who knew, and with good reason, that that strange gesture would have been impossible on these children because of their injuries?
In another little remark reported in the press, Heaulme declared to the judge, by way of a conclusion:
‘It wasn’t me who killed those children, but I don’t think it was Patrick Dils either.’
Heaulme had given his opinion like an expert. Just before leaving the witness stand, he took the liberty of wishing the defendant good luck. Naively, Patrick Dils thanked him. I found this cruelly ironic.
Most people had been expecting earth-shattering revelations, a public confession. Little did they know Heaulme. A lot of journalists talked of a ‘non-event’. There was huge disappointment. Even so, I hoped that my testimony had been clear enough for the jury to have grasped what was hidden behind Heaulme’s mask of respectability. The counsel for the prosecution called for an acquittal, but a few hours later the verdict came. Patrick Dils was convicted again: twenty-five years imprisonment. All the hopes of Patrick Dils and his family were suddenly dashed, all those wounds had been reopened for nothing.
Inside The Mind Of A Killer Page 19
