The suicide of a former policeman and gendarme could remove the mystery of the identity of “Hail”

By swallowing tablets in a rental apartment in Grau-du-Roi (Gard), did a 59-year-old former member of the police force put an end to the “Hail” affair? one of the most enigmatic unsolved cases of decades? Disappeared for three days, FV is said to have left behind a letter in which he claims to be the individual, never identified, that the investigators of the criminal brigade have suspected for nearly forty years of having committed six rapes and four assassinations between 1983 and 1994. , in Paris and in Seine-et-Marne.

The information, revealed almost simultaneously by Point and The Parisian Thursday, September 30, is not confirmed by justice, but, from a police source, it is indicated that“At this stage the factual elements brought to the attention of the public are not inaccurate”. According to our information, the man would have had a brief career in the gendarmerie, in Paris, in a unit of the Republican Guard, before joining the ranks of the Prefecture of Police, from which he was retired.

Read the story: The interminable hunt for “Hail”

The proof that it is indeed the “Grêlé”, so nicknamed because of a skin marked by acne scars, should not be provided before Thursday evening or Friday morning, after genetic expertise. In 2001, traces of DNA were extracted from a cigarette butt and the end of a tampon taken from the scene of a double murder that occurred in an apartment in 4e arrondissement of Paris fourteen years earlier: that of Irmgard Müller, a 20-year-old German au pair, and her employer, Gilles Politi, 38.

New round of investigations

Since then, the investigators were certain that the assassin was the thirtieth and last lover of the young woman, who recorded in a notebook the name of his romantic relationships and their “performances”. However, the identity of the latter had never been formally established because of the name, probably false, that he had given to his future victim, met six months before the crime: a certain Elie Lauringe, residing in the 13e district of Paris. Extensive investigations carried out by the criminal brigade with social organizations, police files, health insurance funds, town halls and prefectures had made it possible to establish that no Elie Lauringe was listed by the authorities.

In addition to Irmgard Müller and Gilles Politi, the “Grêlé” is suspected of having murdered, after having raped her, little Cécile Bloch, 11 years old, on May 5, 1986 in Paris and of being responsible for the death of Karine Leroy, 19 years old, disappeared on June 9, 1994 in Meaux (Seine-et-Marne), whose body was found a month and three days later in a forest in the region.

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