On a library shelf sits a small metal object. It is an old trumpet mouthpiece. "This is the only memory of my father that I have left," says Gérard Fesch, 65, sitting in an armchair in his living room, in Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes), staring into the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Twenty cardboard files are lined up in the cabinet. Stamped “Archives”, “Photos”, “Letters”, “Press”… all contain the elements that Gérard Fesch has compiled to find out the identity of his biological parents.
Placed in host families since his birth, never adopted, he believed for 40 years to be called Gérard Trogniou, then Drogniou - a fault would have been spotted by his mother, in 1964, on civil status papers, assured him of public assistance. Who are his parents ? Why did they abandon him? Are they still only alive? These questions tease this man from a very young age.
The turning goes wrong
The coup de théâtre occurred on a Saturday evening in the spring of 1994. Gérard was 39 years old. “A musician friend hands me an article from L'Express, devoted to guillotines. A certain Jacques Fesch is mentioned there ”, says the sexagenarian. The prisoner would have discovered God in prison before being executed, and the Church, extremely rare, claims his beatification! His photo is published. It is written that he had a son, Gérard. Drogniou's friend is sure of it, he is the much sought after father. The two men look like two drops of water and have the same clear look. Gérard does not hesitate. He then called one of the article's authors, Bernard Gouley. On the phone, the journalist asked him a question: "Did you ever call yourself Gérard Trogniou? »Bingo! During the trial of Jacques Fesch, a young woman, Thérèse Trogniou, confessed to having had a son with Jacques. A child named Gérard, whom she immediately abandoned. A DNA test carried out with Jacques' sister will confirm this filiation. "I have long sought my mother and I found my father," says Gérard Fesch with emotion.
It was on reading this article that he also discovered who was hiding behind his father's surname: the murderer of a police officer. On February 25, 1954, Jacques Fesch, from a wealthy family from Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in Paris (6th), tries to rob a gold dealer with a revolver, rue Vivienne (2nd ). His goal: to find 2.2 million francs (about 48,000 euros) to pay for a sailboat he ordered, and escape his father's yoke. But the flight is short. The young man, 24, is chased by a peacekeeper who shoots him. Another bullet bursts. It mortally injures the pandora.
Did Fesch want to kill him? Was the murder, on the contrary, accidental, if we consider that the robber actuated his revolver from the pocket of his raincoat after losing his glasses and with a bloody hand? Because, in his escape, Fesch had shot himself in a hand by mistake, holding the weapon upside down. Nevertheless, the policeman was alone, without reinforcement. Recently widowed, he had an only daughter, 6 years old. Sentenced to death, Jacques Fesch was guillotined in the courtyard of the Health prison in Paris in 1957. He was 27 years old.
"At trial, pressure was put on the jury"
The article in L'Express also relates that Jacques Fesch would have written moving letters to his son, whom Gérard has recovered, and keeps preciously. On sheets yellowed by time, the writing is tight: “With these few words, I would like to confirm my intention to recognize my son Gérard Trogniou, writes the condemned, September 30, 1957, the day before his execution. Let him know that if he could not be my son according to the law, he is according to the flesh and his name is engraved in my heart. "This father, whatever he did, had left proof of his love and his desire for fatherhood," says Gérard Fesch with emotion.
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The son then decides to fight for the rehabilitation of his father, a fight which he relates in his work "Son of assassin, son of a saint?" (Balland, 2019). He recalled that, the day before the execution, many French people had sent petitions to the head of state at the time, René Coty, to have him pardoned. "But the police unions, struck by the murder of one of their own, threatened to call a strike if the sentence was not carried out, and Paris then awaited the visit of the Queen of England", explains Gérard Fesch . The president gave in and wrote to the lawyer for the murderer, Paul Baudet: "Tell your client that he has my full esteem and that I would very much like the pardon, but if I do, I endanger the life of other police officers. Ask him, please, to accept the sacrifice of his life for the peace of the State, so that the lives of other peacekeepers will be saved. If he does, I will give him endless gratitude. "
Another element motivates Gérard Fesch: the conditions under which the verdict of the Paris Assize Court was delivered, which sentenced his father to the death penalty. To five questions relating to aggravating circumstances, the jurors replied "no". A word crossed out each time by the president of the court ... to be transformed into "yes". "It appears that very strong pressure was exerted on the jury, and that an internal intervention, illegal, led to modify the answers of the jurors", affirms Gérard Fesch, who consulted the document.
The murderer showed sincere repentance
In early 2018, he opened the door to the office of the famous criminal lawyer Eric Dupond-Moretti. The lawyer accepts this unprecedented mission: to rehabilitate a death row inmate, that is to say obtain the erasure of his sentence in the criminal record! With his colleague Me Patrice Spinosi, he seized the Court of Appeal of Nîmes, where Gérard Fesch then lived, and filed there a priority question of constitutionality (QPC). A QPC allows a litigant to challenge the constitutionality of a legislative provision applicable to his case because it infringes the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. It would be a matter of recognizing that the current Criminal Code is an obstacle to the rehabilitation of a death row inmate.
On September 5, 2019, the judges agreed with the lawyers and authorized them to transmit their QPC to the Court of Cassation. On December 11, the latter gives them the right to present the request to the Constitutional Council, which examined it on Tuesday February 4 and will deliver its opinion on Friday February 28.
At the same time, another fight began. After the death of Jacques Fesch, the Church reveals that, in prison, the condemned man had discovered the faith. He exchanged letters with a Benedictine monk, Father Thomas, and wrote mystical texts which were the subject of three works - "Lumière sur l'Echafaud", "Cell 18" and "In 5 hours, I will see Jesus" . "Many believers and non-believers are touched by my father's redemption, and even ask me for relics! "Says Gérard Fesch.
In 1987, Cardinal Lustiger opened a beatification procedure, which is still ongoing. For Father Henri Moreau, in charge of the investigation in the diocese of Paris, "the conversion of Jacques Fesch to prison is exceptional and sincere". His son Gérard focuses on his fight in court. "You can't redo my father's trial. The policeman was killed, it is indisputable, but I would also like us to take away from him something other than his crime: his redemption, recognized by President René Coty. »Jacques Fesch rehabilitated by justice or beatified by the Church? It would be a first.