Dear readers,
Welcome to this new Figaro
meeting
dedicated to news items.
Every Sunday, this newsletter will offer you a selection of national and local news around police investigations and court cases of the week.
Reports, trials, exclusive stories and unpublished archives: from everyday crime to the great enigmas of our time, we invite you to guide you to the heart of the small and big events that are shaking up French society.
For this first, we take stock of the
Palmade affair
.
The image of the comedian with his three-day beard has monopolized our screens for the past three weeks.
This news item seems to have swept up everything in its path, from the war in Ukraine to pension reform.
Perhaps because, far from the revelations people and other rumors, this one represents much more than a simple car accident.
The case sheds harsh light on the gap between two parallel worlds, that of the excesses of showbiz and that of ordinary life.
Another cliché has made the rounds of the press in recent days.
They are
Leslie and Kévin
, both of whom disappeared last November in Deux-Sèvres.
The mystery of their disappearance finally seems to be cleared up.
The Gervaise affair has also had a few twists and turns:
Le Figaro
invites you to find, exclusively, the testimony of the wife of
Alban Gervaise
, this father who had been stabbed ten times in May 2022 by Mohamed L., when he came to pick up his children in front of a Catholic school in Marseille.
Wishing you a pleasant reading,
Margaux d'Adhémar, journalist in the "miscellaneous" section of Le
Figaro
Files of the week
• PALMADE, BEGINNING OF A PRISON JOURNEY IN THE HOSPITAL
If the comedian has been placed in pre-trial detention, he remains despite everything in a hospital room, for health reasons.
The six-year-old child who was in the back of the vehicle hit and who had a fractured jaw for his part “
returned weakened to his home with his mother
”.
Le Figaro
takes stock of the investigation and the state of the victims
What are the motivations that led to the immediate provisional detention of Pierre Palmade?
The answer in our decryption
For the historian and essayist Pierre Vermereen, this accident reveals, "beyond the fatality of evil, the emptiness of meaning"
• REBOUND AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE DEUX-SEVRES LOVERS
Excavations in Charente-Maritime have found two bodies, Friday and Saturday.
MEHDI FEDOUACH / AFP
Visiting a friend for dinner, Leslie and Kévin disappeared last November without a trace.
Three suspects have been indicted for "murder".
This weekend, two bodies were found near the home of one of the suspects.
Find here the story of the case by
Le Figaro
• THE WIFE OF ALBAN GERVAISE LAUNCHES THE PSYCHIATRIC EXPERTISE OF THE RESPONDENT
Military doctor Alban Gervaise.
Twitter screenshot
While a first psychiatric expertise of the suspect, Mohammed L., concludes with a "total abolition of discernment" due to an "acute delirious puff" the day of the attack, certain terms used shock Christelle Gervaise, the wife of the victim.
This father was killed in May 2022 by several stab wounds "
in the name of Allah
", in front of a Catholic school.
Read here the exclusive testimony of Christelle Gervaise
• NEW ARSENE LUPINS?
On February 22, seven individuals were arrested after committing seven burglaries in Ile-de-France, Yvelines and Moselle.
Investigators found large sums of money as well as leather goods and telephones.
The investigation, opened for "thefts in an organized gang", is ongoing
• A BORDEAUX TEEN PREVENTS A RAPE
This is the heroic act of the week.
A Bordeaux teenager prevented the rape of a schoolgirl.
For ten minutes, he intervened against the multi-recidivist aggressor, last convicted in 2012 for acts of voluntary violence which resulted in death without intention of giving it.
For
Le Figaro
, the young hero returned to the course of this terrible night
• A POLICEMAN ATTACKED WITH A KNIFE
While the police were intervening in Saint-Brieuc for acts of domestic violence, one of the officers was seriously injured.
Attacked in the throat, the victim was awarded fourteen days of ITT
Yesterday's fact
“Horrible crime in a village in the Hautes-Pyrénées” Archive Le Figaro
February 1953
: The washing machine of Arreau
It is "
a sordid affair with a thousand episodes, where the comical mixes with the drama and where everyone seems to lie to who better
," says
Le Figaro .
in 1953. The subject of a simple brief on February 28, 1953, the crime perpetrated 70 years ago in Arreau, a village in the Hautes-Pyrénées, will end up making the headlines in the press.
The day before, the gendarmes, alerted by an old drunkard nicknamed Bikini, discovered a couple's head and limbs put to boil in a washing machine, a large cauldron placed in the fireplace.
The victim, Pierre Laran, is a 70-year-old man hosted by former country guard Jean Fourasté and his partner, the widow Lapierre.
Sophie Lapierre, who allegedly defrauded her boarder, bought some gardenal and caustic soda two days earlier.
Did she want to poison him?
Dissolve the body?
The trial opened in December 1954. For two days, the Tarbes courthouse was "
literally besieged by the crowd
", contained by barriers.
A scene worthy of a "
passage of the Tour de France
" reports
Le Figaro
.
The lovers accuse each other.
By a curious reversal, the premeditation is not retained and the diabolical couple escapes the death penalty.
They are both sentenced to forced labor for life.
On the agenda
Monday
:
Beginning of the trial of "Madoff du Maine-et-Loire", a man suspected of having defrauded wealthy savers at the Batignolles court.
Tuesday
:
Deliberation in the trial of four men who beat up an unaccompanied minor suspected of sexually assaulting a young girl.
Wednesday
:
Beginning of the trial of Pierre Ménès in Paris for sexual assault.
Thursday
: National meeting on sectarian aberrations, organized by the Ministry of the Interior.
Friday
:
At the town hall of Paris, opening of the colloquium "Women of justice" and inauguration of the exhibition "Justice: the pioneers" by the president of the Court of Appeal of Poitiers Gwenola Joly-Coz.
To read / To see
The Alice Crimmins case
, by Anaïs Renevier.
Editions 10/18
BOOK.
New York, summer 1965. Two young children are found murdered in vacant lots, a few days after their mysterious disappearance.
The culprit is all found: their own mother, whose only fault is to live alone and to multiply the lovers.
Freelance journalist Anaïs Renevier traces the history of this fascinating and yet little-known American news item across the Atlantic.
The story is from a newly edited collection by publishing house 10-18 in partnership with Society
magazine
and titled “True Crime”.
The Alice Crimmins case
, Anaïs Renevier, editions 10/18, released on March 2, 2023
Next week, we will summon sociologists and historians to try to understand why the Palmade affair is so fascinating.
Also find the testimony of a Franco-American survivor of the Islamic attack in Brussels in March 2016...
You want to testify on a case, write to us at faitdivers@lefigaro.fr