One fine day in April 2008, a young man shows up at the door of the sumptuous apartment of a rich Australian in Sydney. Their idyll was born twenty years ago - they met in 1988, in California (United States) -, and the two men never stopped exchanging, meeting. Their three months of living together left them with fond memories.
Peter Ikin, 62, millionaire record producer, opens the door. Alexandre Despallières, 39, a native of Argenteuil (Val-d'Oise), has not changed. Nice face, glowing embers, seductive as hell, as always. The former Warner Music leader falls back into his arms. The impromptu arrival of the "handsome Alex" was immediately accompanied by a dramatic announcement. The Frenchman crossed the globe to declare his flame to his former lover and ask him to marry him because he suffers, he says, from an incurable disease. A few months after this reunion, on November 12, 2008, it was Peter Ikin who was found dead in a hotel room in Paris. Alexandre Despallières is still alive.
On May 19, at 51, he was indicted by a Paris investigating judge before the Assize Court for the assassination of his companion, a criminal procedure which he vigorously contested.
A deadly level of paracetamol in the blood
The investigation of the criminal brigade did not start immediately after the death of the Australian magnate, at the head of a fortune estimated at more than 22 million euros. At first glance, nothing seemed suspicious. On November 6, 2008, when Peter Ikin settled down at the Abba Montparnasse Hôtel, in Paris (14th century), an establishment with a beautiful rounded facade offering the trendy charm of a four-star hotel on the left bank, its passage was supposed to be brief. This former Madonna producer is about to go on vacation with friends to the Galapagos Islands, in the Pacific, and is just hanging out in the capital at the invitation of his companion, who is staying in the next room.
The Parisian stay of the Australian, however in good health according to his friends, is a nightmare, punctuated by the interventions of the firefighters. On November 6, he fell on the hotel stairs. Two days later, he was admitted to Cochin Hospital due to headaches and vomiting. On November 11, an alcoholic and disoriented Peter Ikin presented himself in the company of Alexandre Despallières and his relatives to the emergency room at Pitié-Salpêtrière. Blood tests reveal a very high amount of paracetamol: his life is in danger but, despite the insistence of his companions, Peter Ikin refuses hospitalization again and leaves the establishment after signing a discharge. On November 12, at 4:55 p.m., his death was noted in his hotel room. A few hours later, Alexandre Despallières was examined by a general practitioner from SOS Doctors. This one will describe a crying man, prostrate in his bed.
An autopsy of the deceased is ordered, but the pathologist concludes with a natural death due to heart and liver problems. At the request of Alexandre Despallières, Peter Ikin was hastily cremated eight days later, in Paris. The investigation was quickly closed without follow-up in February 2009. End of the first act.
Murder investigation
But this death suddenly intrigues the relatives of the producer, who rather expected to learn of the death of Alexandre Despallières. Had he not stopped explaining that he had an inoperable brain tumor? And then, Peter Ikin had always indicated that he wanted to be cremated in Australia, so that his ashes were scattered on his parents' land. In the summer of 2009, new toxicological expertise is required on samples kept after the autopsy. It highlights a deadly level of paracetamol in the Australian's blood. This time, the criminal brigade is seized and the justice opens an investigation for assassination. This second act will span over ten years, with a sacred character as the leading role.
Mythomaniac, manipulator, crook ... The portrait of Alexandre Despallières drawn by the countless witnesses heard during the investigation is overwhelming. To one of his ex to whom he “borrowed” several thousand euros, he explains that he is a former psychiatric student. To a hotel owner who hosts him and describes him as a "narcissistic pervert", he calls himself an associate of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and presents himself as a psychologist who has studied medicine.
Paris Newsletter
Every morning, the news of your department seen by Le ParisienI'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to allow you to receive our news and commercial offers. Find out more
PODCAST. The lover, the will, the poisoning and the millions: diving into the affair of the "Bel Alex"
To a woman who collected him in 2011 after a first stay in pre-trial detention, he said that his troubles were linked to the Clearstream affair and that Nicolas Sarkozy wanted his skin. To one of his close friends, he claims to belong to the family of Liz Taylor and the Rothschilds. To one of his brothers, he tells about having his liver removed and strolls with pockets of blood under his robe… while his body has no scars. "He has never told the truth in his whole life, it is a fact," says one of his relatives.
He reads, travels, seduces and multiplies conquests
The reality is more prosaic, but not less romantic. Benjamin of a sibling of three boys, Alexandre Despallières grew up in Bois-Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine) within a united and devoted family. Poor schoolboy, he stopped his studies at 16 years old, after the discovery of his seropositivity, and launched out in an artistic career. In 1987, then 19 years old, he released a 45-rpm, "Love to Death", but his career did not take off. Nevertheless, Alexandre Despallières flourishes in his bohemian life. He reads, travels, seduces, multiplies conquests without ever really working.
AIDS is a sword of Damocles over his head: "Living a dream life to escape from this filthy sickness" is his mantra. "All his life is a headlong rush," analyzes a relative. The psychiatric experts who examined him speak of him as a "clearly manifestly egocentric strategist, absorbed in fantasies of success, thinking that he is a special subject deserving of all the attention". His close friends, note the experts, evoke "a sort of seductive and fascinating tyrant". His narcissism has no limits.
A false will made three months before death
Alexandre Despallières, a mythologist with an oversized ego, is he a criminal? His own brother, who describes him as a money-obsessed guru, suspects him of poisoning their parents, who officially died by suicide. Serious accusations, however, never substantiated. It is not the only shadow that hangs over the course of the young dandy. In the course of the 2000s, after the death of his father and mother, did Alexandre Despallières not get adopted by a rich American widow before she repudiated him, saying that he wanted to poison him ? But here again, the accusation, swept aside by the person concerned, is not based on any official investigation. To date, the criminal record of Alexandre Despallières remains completely blank.
With the death of Peter Ikin, suspicion became more substantial. For Crim 'investigators, it is first of all a financial track that must be dug. On October 10, 2008, Alexandre Despallières and Peter Ikin conclude in England, their place of residence, a “civil partnership”, the equivalent of our PACS. During their reunion, a few months earlier, the French had assured his future companion that his end was near. Admittedly seropositive, the "beautiful Alex" in reality never suffered from the slightest brain tumor. He also manages to make the producer believe that he is at the head of a considerable fortune thanks to the company he runs in the United States, and that he does not want his brothers to inherit it when he dies. Reason why he insists on this civil pact. Peter Ikin says he is flattered to have been chosen by the rich Alexandre to touch his fortune… Which does not exist any more than his tumor!
To formalize their union, the two men symbolically exchange a check for 50,000 pounds (nearly 57,000 euros) with, for instructions, not to cash it. What the French is quick to do. In response, Peter Ikin tries to imitate him, but the check is refused. According to an old friend of the Australian producer, Alexandre Despallières, in a hurry to explain himself, would have simulated a malaise and the case would have ended there.
After the death of his companion, the French claimed his inheritance on the faith of a will of August 7, 2008 which would make him his universal legatee. Relatives of the magnate, who find that Despallières began to use generously on the richly garnished accounts of the deceased, are surprised. This document is not written like the previous ones. And then, a month before dying, in an email addressed to a friend, Peter Ikin said he was reluctant to modify his will to integrate his companion as the latter had asked him.
The producer's nephew contests the succession before a British court, by producing the last known will of the victim, dating from 2002. In December 2009, the London High Court of Justice ruled in his favor: Alexandre Despallières was ordered to return the hundreds thousands of pounds overpaid.
The French police went further. Arrested at the same time as their mentor in June 2010, two intimate friends of Alexandre Despallières recognize that the 2008 will is a forgery, fashioned at the request of this man who subjugates them. They say that a scenario had been imagined to justify the circumstances of its signing, supposedly in a chic Parisian teahouse. Despite the compromising and precise testimony, Alexandre Despallières, indicted for assassination in June 2010, has always denied being at the origin of the slightest falsification. This will not prevent him from being judged also for forgery and use of forgery.
He claims to be the victim of a plot
Money, then, would be the motive. But what about the circumstances of the death and the weapon? The causes of the death of Peter Ikin have been the subject of numerous expert opinions with divergent results. According to the last doctor asked, the Australian would have died "of a very serious hepatocellular insufficiency by ingestion of paracetamol in large quantities in toxic doses". However, throughout the investigation, a number of witnesses described Alexandre Despallières as a man with very solid knowledge of pharmacopoeia and dosage. His nickname ? "Vidal", named after the famous medical dictionary. It was "his hobby," says his brother. He was also often seen with a bag full of medication. And then, remember three of his relatives, at a dinner in 2011, he touts poisoning as the best solution to kill someone, because he avoids contact between the perpetrator and his victim . For the examining magistrate, who dismisses the suicide track and the accidental overdose track, the dandy therefore had "material as well as intellectual resources to kill Peter Ikin by the use of medicinal substances". What the accused refutes, explaining that his companion was addicted to an analgesic containing paracetamol and that he must have died from intoxication. He says he is convinced that he is the victim of a plot to kill him.
Will this beam of suspicion convince the jurors of the guilt of the handsome Alex, who spent a year in pretrial detention in this case? His lawyer, Me Laure Heinich, dares not believe it. "In this case, the essential is missing: nothing is said about the way in which Peter Ikin would have been killed, whereas this is the only question to which an answer was expected. It is not even certain that the death was caused by a third party. After twelve years of investigation, it is regrettable that the judge did not draw the consequences of this inability to answer this essential question, "deplores the penalist, who has just appealed the indictment of her client. "The judge strove to give credibility to a criminal project through testimonies without any objectivity, avenging, and which express an obvious exaggeration, continues Me Heinich. But it's so caricatured that we made Alexandre Despallières a character in a novel! We can hate him but that does not exempt anyone from doing law. "
Pending trial, the accused lives with her new husband, who is also his partner in K3OPS, an energy company. In the photo on this website, Alexandre Despallières seems to be 20 years old. Seductive as hell, as always.