The banality of evil in its purest form.
Killer without faith or law, serial rapist, shameless liar, "le Grelé" had everything of a terrible monster.
Just this nickname, "Le Grelé" - which the criminal inherited after the broadcast of his first composite portrait, representing him in the guise of an acne-prone teenager - gives the imagination enough to feed the darkest nightmares. .
And yet, behind the one who was described as an infamous beast was actually hiding one of the most ordinary town councilors, a good family man, a loving husband and… a cop.
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It is from this terrible observation that Patricia Tourancheau set out to write her book
Le Grêlé
.
The killer was a cop
.
A seasoned journalist who has long camped at 36, quai des Orfèvres, she retraces in this breathtaking story what was probably one of the greatest "cold cases" of the last century, that of a French serial killer who has nothing to do with envy a Patrick Bateman.
Between the cracks
The ghost of "Grêlé" has long haunted the Paris crime squad.
The cops of the Crim started by taking a
"slap".
It is with her that Patricia Tourancheau begins her story, when the police receive a radio alert:
“Girl discovered at 116, rue Petit, Paris 19th, in the third basement, name Bloch, first name Cécile, 11 years old.”
On the spot, the inspectors discover a
"small body hidden under a piece of dirty carpet".
And, under the carpet, the unspeakable.
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How the criminal brigade trapped "le Grelé" after 35 years of tracking
Thirty-five years later, the author of this atrocious crime turns out to be a former gendarme who became a policeman in Montpellier, François Vérove.
Who would have believed it?
And yet,
"hidden within the Institution itself",
Vérove fell through the cracks: suspected of at least four murders (including three proven) and six rapes (including three established), he did not hesitate to wear his uniform to abuse teenage girls, while living peacefully alongside his wife and two children.
A double life à la Jean-Claude Romand, where the adversary had no other name than “le Grêlé”.
Until September 27, 2021. On that day, Chief Brigadier François Vérove, by committing suicide, killed "Le Grelé".
Thanks to an incredible work of archives but also of investigation, Patricia Tourancheau succeeds in this story to summarize this sprawling file.
We follow the author over the hypotheses and, driven by a fluid and effective writing, the reader lends himself to the game of a quest that looks like a labyrinth.
With an obvious sense of detail and gift for storytelling, first-rate interlocutors and great rigor, Patricia Tourancheau guides us alongside the investigators.
We feel carried away and we know that we are in good hands.
“Le Grêlé” could have remained forever one of those unsolved cases.
After having killed, raped, assaulted and tortured without scruple, Vérove could have died peacefully in his house in La Grande-Motte, having succeeded, overnight, in
"stifling his impulses"
and
“to reintegrate into society, as if nothing had happened”.
But his criminal past caught up with him.
Le Grêlé
, by Patricia Tourancheau, Seuil, 192 p., €19.
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