He was only 32 when he tackled the biggest business of his career.
Inspector at the judicial police, at 36 quai des Orfèvres, in Paris, Daniel Neveu, who lives in Senlis, obtained his transfer to Creil in 1974. He had already heard of a first series of murders in the Oise.
Upon his arrival in this service of eight agents, he immersed himself in these unexplained murders.
It will take him more than a year to go back to Marcel Barbeault.
Today, he still remembers every detail, every date of the affair of his life.
Do you ever rethink this file?
DANIEL NEVEU.
Yes, sometimes it leaves traces.
During my entire investigation, I slept very little.
My partner had to put up with all this, it was not easy.
And this resolved file allowed me to have a wonderful career, even if it also aroused jealousies too.
But you tell me that he is still alive, I would be curious to see what he looks like, how he has aged
(Editor's note, the two men are only a few months apart)
.
What effect has this investigation had on you and your loved ones?
The images of these murder scenes are engraved in my head, they cannot be forgotten.
These last assassinations were so close in time… We felt like we couldn't do anything.
So we had children, as if to compensate (smile).
My daughters were born between every murder.
One of them, born after the death of Julia Gonçalves, is also called Julie… The last, born in 1979, the day Jacques Mesrine tortured the journalist in a cave near Creil, is called Marie.
A first name in reference to the young examining magistrate who had to face all these cases with me, Marie Brossy-Patin.
Marcel Barbeault, "he was physically beast, he had a good face," recalls Daniel Neveu.
DR
How did you get started on this crazy investigation?
When I arrived, the files were sleeping a bit.
We had recovered the list of all the rifles sold in the region by the manufacturer, from Saint-Etienne (Loire).
They were hundreds.
We didn't necessarily think the murder weapon had been stolen.
Then, I wanted to prove that there was only one killer.
It took me ten months.
You are the first to tie all of this stuff together.
Yes, I managed to identify his process, similar schedules.
He first watches his future victims.
Then he will neutralize them, not necessarily fatally.
It then transports the inert bodies to find themselves in quieter, sheltered places.
He then strips the women off, often violently before indulging in a game around sex, sometimes with penetrations.
Some would say with the barrel of his gun.
He then executes them with a bullet in the temple before stealing their bag, as a motive to justify his gruesome murder.
How does the vise tighten?
There were more than 600 denunciations with the distribution of the composite portrait.
Including an anonymous call, passed unnoticed, giving us all the details of Barbeault's life without giving the name of the murderer.
Besides, even his wife told him that the portrait looked like him.
We checked each of the names, alibis, to arrive at about sixty people.
Then, a rifle bullet, like the one used to kill, was found near a tap in the Laigneville cemetery.
Except that very few people know this water point.
So I crossed the 650 names of the graves with my 60 suspects denounced.
I only had 12 left!
We wanted to stop them all, Barbeault was the third on this list.
Good.
What do we feel after this arrest?
Relief because everyone had had enough.
We received a bonus with my team, which is very rare.
But it is especially the real estate agents who should have offered us champagne!
It ended the psychosis and two weeks later the prices had jumped 35%
(laughs)
.
In police custody, you faced him for 30 minutes ...
He was physically beast, he had a good face.
A thief with skillful hands who is far from being a fool.
I still think the anonymous call giving all the details about his life came from him.
He wanted us to come to his house and find nothing.
Except that it took months to finish at his place, he had taken out the rifle.
I'm sure he was planning a new murder.